Sorry to pose such a dumb-sounding question. My ancient Netgear ReadyNas NV+ died overnight--won't turn on, smells faintly of electrical fire, no smoke/char seen. Over the years I have upgraded the hard drives, so it had 4 WD 2.0 TB SATA hard drives in it, running RAID 1 config. I used the NAS as a network HD, excess storage for all the computers on my home network, pictures, documents, music streaming within the network, and as a backup time machine for a couple of the computers.
I'm going to replace the NAS, but not necessarily Netgear, just another 4-bay that can run these 4 HDs. In theory, when I boot up a new network NAS with these HDs should I still have normal access to the data on the drives like I used to (as of yesterday) like any other network drive?
Over the years I have upgraded the hard drives, so it had 4 WD 2.0 TB SATA hard drives in it, running RAID 1 config.
I suspect you were actually running XRAID (which is the default). If you were using RAID-1, you'd have set up two volumes (C and D) with FlexRAID, and would have needed to place some shares on each volume. The RAID mode does make a difference in how you could off-load data, so it would be useful to get clarification on this point.
In theory, when I boot up a new network NAS with these HDs should I still have normal access to the data on the drives like I used to (as of yesterday) like any other network drive?
No. Other NAS would use different formatting, and many are using a different file system. In addition, ReadyNAS boot from the drives, and a new NAS would need different software.
If you were to buy a new ReadyNAS, you could get support's help to temporarily mount the drives. Then you'd copy off the data to other storage, complete the setup, and restore the files from your copy.
If you can connect the drives to a PC (using either SATA or USB adapter/docks), you could also purchase R-Studio's RAID recovery software (or similar products), and offload the data using that. https://www.r-studio.com/
If you have a PC power supply that you aren't using, you could also connect it to the NAS, using suitable a cable extender. Note that the NV+ uses a non-standard pinout, so you'd also need to modify the pinout a bit in the extender cable. It's not a long-term solution, but it would let you off-load the data.
