Forum Discussion

Aspirant

Jan 15, 2020

Readynas Ultra 4 Plus no valid volume exists

I had a disk failiure on drive 3 which then rebuilt. Then I had a disk failure on drive 2 and my volumes are gone. I got another replacement, but something is not right and the array won't aut...

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

Jan 16, 2020

What firmware are you running on the NAS?

FWIW, md1 is the swap partition with OS 4.2.x. The C volume starts with md2. There would be other partitions/raid groups in the volume if you vertically expanded the array (or if you have unequal drive sizes in the NAS). The log entries for sdx5 suggest that the C volume does have multiple RAID groups (3 or more, with sdx5 being in md4). Partition.log will show you all the partitions on the drives.

theali3n wrote:

If anyone has any suggestions or would like any info to help suggest a few things please let me know. If anyone thinks I should STOP and contact Netgear support please let me know.

Whether you should stop or not depends on your confidence in your recovery skills. Its easy to do damage in this situation, and that will make recovery harder or impossible.

Netgear support does offer data recovery ( https://kb.netgear.com/69/ReadyNAS-Data-Recovery-Diagnostics-Scope-of-Service) but it might not be available to you if you've converted your NAS to OS-6.

Another option is to connect the drives to a Windows PC and use RAID recovery software. R-studio is a reasonable option for 4.2.x firmware, OS-6 would need the more expensive ReclaiMe software. You can connect the drives with USB adapter/docks - though with four drives you should consider getting a multi-drive USB enclosure. You don't need an enclosure that has hardware RAID (and hardware RAID could get in the way).

theali3n wrote:

I have years of data on there and I would like to try and get it back.

Hopefully you will get it back.

After the dust settles, put a backup plan in place for your NAS. RAID isn't enough to keep data safe.

theali3n
Aspirant
Jan 19, 2020
It was running latest firmware for this encloser/board. I haven't hacked at it at all.

Do you know if I can pay netgear for a support case and have them login remotely and take a look ? This would be the best option IMO.

I can try a ton of things, but raid recovery from PC would be "last resort" to get the content back. I already have another array, I just need to get this data back and move it over if I can get to it.
- StephenB
  Guru - Experienced User
  Jan 19, 2020
  theali3n wrote:
  
  Do you know if I can pay netgear for a support case and have them login remotely and take a look ? This would be the best option IMO.
  
  As I posted earlier:
  
  https://kb.netgear.com/69/ReadyNAS-Data-Recovery-Diagnostics-Scope-of-Service
  
  You could explore with them the possibility of starting with per-incident support, but given the multiple disk failures they will almost certainly move straight to data recovery.