ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer stopped working - Recovering data on ReadyNAS 316 #26373315

[hugo57]

Sharing my experience in the matter, hoping it may help others having the same problem...

My Pro Pioneer died two days ago after a power failure in the house, couldn't start it again. Blinking network interface LEDs, as also described by others in several threads. It was more than 6 years old thus way out of warranty. Having seen on Netgear's support page that this model reached it's end of life and service is not available anymore, I decided to buy a 316 and started looking for instructions on Netgear's support site for migrating the disks from the Pioneer to the 316. To my surprise and disappointment I found nothing. I knew the firmware running on the two units is very different (OS4 vs OS6), but still... The best thing I found was this thread (thanks, mdgm!):

https://community.netgear.com/t5/ReadyNAS-Hardware-Compatibility/Pro-Pioneer-Dead-Migrate-Disks/m-p/...

Followed the steps to the letter and it went OK up to step 6 but the unit couldn't boot from the OS4 disks (v 4.2.28). Had email notification configured in OS4 so I got two mails:

Subject: Missing shares detected (nas-6E-03-4E)

Text: The paths for the shares listed below could not be found. Typically, this occurs when the ReadyNAS is unable to access the data volume.

Subject: Unexpected enclosure status detected [nas-6E-03-4E]

Text: Fan 1 has failed ( -22 rpm).

The status screen on the unit was showing "Booting...". RAIDar (v 6.1) did find the NAS on the network and was also displaying status "-22rpm" (or so...). Clicking the Browse button in RAIDar I could see the shares in the Explorer screen (Win 10) but couldn't connect to them, neither using the password I had nor the default. Took mdgm's advice and, not with much hope, contacted support. And I had a big and good surprise...

The guy I spoke with was excellent. Made me reboot the 316 in "Tech support" mode, connected to my computer and the NAS remotely and, after looking around and some thinking, brought my shares online in Windows Explorer.  Many thanks, again!!!

They are still there... Obviously I didn't switch the NAS or my computer off since then... Currently in the process of copying the data to whereever I can so that I can do the factory default and copy them back. But that's the easy bit...

[StephenB]

Thx for sharing your experience.

[JennC]

Hello hugo57,

Thank you for sharing this. Thank you also for the patience in recovering the data.

Please feel free to post any suggestions, comments, question and inquiries about ReadyNAS. All your contributions are greatly appreciate.

Regards,

[mdgm-ntgr]

We have an article on what we recommend doing for situations like this now: http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/29875

When hardware fails sometimes e.g. the OS may get a bit messed up. It seems that happened in this case. Glad support fixed things so you could access your data quickly.

[tsaa]

Same situation for me. I was recomended to buy RN31600 as it should read the Pro Pioneer RAID but after paying for it same situation you described but 155 euros extra asked for initial process of trying data recovery. I'm very angry. Disks were ok, just motherboard of Readynas Pro Pioneer dead.  Not as easy as exchanging disks. Not afordable migration. For wasting this much money I think it should be better to have bought a 4 bay NAS unit and discard the data. Now I'm poorer and no data available.

At this time I have mounted the disks on a server on windows and running recovery software. Same money paid but at least I have a recovery software for other purposes.

Realize that best NAS units are 4 bays because you can try recovery in any standard computer... No free netgear service and can't understand why migration is no easier. Qnap and Synology migrations are much easier and much cheaper. It's a bad week for me. Sorry, I needed to vent myself.

[tsaa]

Ok, I tested several software for recovering files. I had a registered version of Restorer Ultimate Pro Network that did it's job for easy jobs these last years. I upgraded to latest one that announced it was capable of recovering RAID but after finding parameters with www.freeraidrecovery.com utility that scans disks and shows the most probable configuration I couldn't recover more than just a few files.

I tested several recovery softwares then I found www.reclaime.com and it's product ReclaiMe File Recovery Ultimate that allows to scan the RAID in demo mode with no need to pay. After a few minutes (no more than 5) the software found several possible RAID Disks and the first one, identified as C-C label for it's size looked right. I selected it and pressed the button "Start". and in less than 10 minutes it started to show me the shares. While the software is scanning you can click on the folders and preview the files. Dates and sizes where correct. I checked some files against the latest backup and looked with its full integrity.

It's awesome the way this software recovers the files. Don't need to achieve the 100% of the process. In my case, when it was less than 1% all shares and almost every file was there listed. I continued but the added files it found later were not relevant.

I had asked before by their support site for any kind of discount and they send me a coupon code for discount. The price after discount was very afordable so I registered and activated. Then recovered a couple of shares and tested the integrity of several tens of files and all were ok, opened correctly and seemed ok like images, audios, mp3, excel, and docs.

Indeed it was worth buying the license and on monday I'll have the satisfaction to reject the service contract Netrgear tried to sell me for that supposed initial diagnostics that would lead to an aditional recovery service contract worth in abaut 170 and up euros . I knew that recovering files should not be a problem as all disks were ok. I was abaut to fight against Linux to mount disks by myself, but after using this software I have to admit that it's so easy to use that and dumb can recover data with it. No have to deal with setting order for disks, RAID type, parity, blocks, offset, deep searches, trial and error method with a dedicated computer. 
It reads the phisical drives, logical drives, scans for configuration, and starts to do it's job with no technical questions to user.

Just recomend you a medium powerfull computer and at least 8GB of memory, but it depends on quantity and size of files. I connected the 5 disks directly to a motherboard with 6 SATA conectors, one of them for the system (Windows10) and the other five for disks. It announces in the documentation that disks can be connected by other ways, including USB, but I've not tested this point. Perhaps if sometime I have a failure of 6 disks I'll have to check connecting the disks in some different connection types.

They announce in their web that it supports a lot of manufacturers and RAID configurations or file systems. It's worth to try it as you don't have nothing to loose. 
If I find free time after recovering all files I'll try just a time to connect only 4 of the 5 disks to see if it also succeed in recovering files.
Sorry for these large sermon 🙂
I'm happy now that these time searching for some afordable solution have been successful.
Excuse my poor English.

[tsaa]

Just FYI:

Remember: Failed board on a 6-bay ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer, bought RN31600 and installed disks with no success and asket to pay for service from Netgear in a copuple of contracts for initial analisys at 155 plus VAT and later works from 175 to about 800 (VAT excluded) for recovery Netgear technician working in remote connected to the unit.

Finally recevered by myself with no problem in a Windows computer. It's been almost 5 days recovering 5TB of data through an USB connection to a couple of disks and everything is recovered ok. Now I'm about to mount the disks in the new system for a factory default and recover all data again inside the new NAS.

I've disconnected one of the 5 disks from an X-RAID2 double redundancy RAID on the Windows machine and ReclaiMe has again showed the available files from the shares in a few minutes.

I've disconnected also the second one and it still seems to find some files in the structure of the disks, but this time it took a lot more time to find the filesystems and found other files supposedly associated to NTFS, FAT,HFS  (or RAW) filesystems. I've stopped it because have no time for this tests. Just advice you that a dual redundancy disk X-RAID2 array can be recovered in case of a one disk failure with ease and confidence. Of course it works fine with all disks ok as I did. With two disks failed suppose would take days to reconstruct filesystem.