I've had my ReadyNAS Duo v1 for a decade or so. It had been running nicely with 2x2TB drives in X-Raid with the last firmware update. It has been on a UPS since purchase.
Over the last couple of years it had a few spontaneous shutdowns. I took to backing up on a USB drive plugged into the front port, and all seemed good. It was set for incremental updates every couple of days, and the box emailed me to say they had been done. On the few times I checked, the backups seemed to have happened OK.
The NAS has been storing new information and retrieving old data perfectly well, but I had been researching a replacement. As if it had been listening, it decided that drive 1 had died, and then before I could get a replacement disk in, the whole unit has given up the ghost.
The unit will power on for intermittent periods, sometimes getting as far as being visible in RAIDar, and even letting me see the admin page a couple of times. The last couple of starts have been non-starters, and I now can't access the OS reinstall at boot.
I have had both drives out (labelled so they go back right). Drive 1 doesn't power up at all in a USB caddy. Drive 2 is visible in R-Linux, but the most important folders seem not to be recoverable.
The backup USB disk seems to be missing quite a bit of data (and alway the most important stuff). I strongly suspect that, despite emailing me intermittently to say it had done a RAID sync, the NAS has not been copying across onto drive 2 for a long time. What is on the USB drive has now been copied across onto OneDrive on 2 laptops, so I think that data is now safe...
My next option is probably a professional data retrieval service to see if drive 1 holds the missing data, but I wonder if there is anything else I could be trying in the meanwhile. Any advice gratefully received, thanks.
Model: RND2000v1 (ReadyNAS Duo v1)|READYNAS DUO v1 (DISKLESS)|EOL
The backup USB disk seems to be missing quite a bit of data (and alway the most important stuff). I strongly suspect that, despite emailing me intermittently to say it had done a RAID sync, the NAS has not been copying across onto drive 2 for a long time. What is on the USB drive has now been copied across onto OneDrive on 2 laptops, so I think that data is now safe...
Did you get any emails regarding backup jobs? RAID sync and backup are entirely different things. And I wonder why it would be doing so many RAID syncs.
I was getting emails confirming all my backup jobs (x3/week for each of the shares) to a WD Passport plugged into the front USB. I just feel stupid that I had blithely assumed that because my early backups had been perfect, the latter ones would be as well.
The sync emails were a lot less frequent - mainly following a crash. Possibly every few months. Should it have been syncing more/less frequent'y than this?
I had always assumed that data was written to disk 1 immediately, and then copied across to disk 2 almost straight away afterwards, rather than waiting for a formal whole-drive sync. Was I wrong?
The sync emails were a lot less frequent - mainly following a crash. Possibly every few months. Should it have been syncing more/less frequent'y than this?
Normally it never resyncs unless there is a problem (or you replace a disk).
It will usually resync after a crash, since there can be lost writes that weren't written to both disks. But of course it shouldn't be crashing in the first place.
I had always assumed that data was written to disk 1 immediately, and then copied across to disk 2 almost straight away afterwards, rather than waiting for a formal whole-drive sync. Was I wrong?
It isn't copied from one drive to the other. It's written in parallel to both drives. FWIW, it could be written to disk 2 before disk 1, there's no guarantee that it be written to disk 1 first.
You might need to try RAID recovery software, and see if it can get the missing data back. But I don't know if that will work on disk 2 (which isn't partitioned in the usual way).
R-Studio is the cheapest option (there is a windows version that supports the ext file system). https://www.r-studio.com/ Download it first (w/o purchasing) and see if it can recover anything.
In the end I sent the disks away to a data recovery firm. They managed to recover the folder/file structure. When we compared what the USB backup had on it with the list they sent, it was clear that only a handful of files were actually missing - just the ones my wife happened to have been looking for! She's been able to recreate each of the files, so didn't have to pay for data retrieval in the end. Phew!
All data now backed up on OneDrive pending purchase of a new NAS unit, with 4 bays rather than 2!
Was looking at the RN214, but I think I'm going to go for Synology's DS418play in part because their integration with OneDrive is more mature. Am I mistaken?
Was looking at the RN214, but I think I'm going to go for Synology's DS418play in part because their integration with OneDrive is more mature. Am I mistaken?
