ReadyNas 104 Volume inactive - 1 Drive failure on RAID5
I am hoping someone can help validate my concerns and point me in the right direction.
I noticed several similar threads about a volume suddenly showing inactive and I believe I have no choice but to pay Netgear support, I'm looking for someone to confirm if this is my only option? Is there anything I can do to fix this/recover my data on my own?
I have a 4TB x 4 Raid 5 array with a single volume
Last week I recieved a notification that my Disk 2 had failed. Which put my volume into degraded. Unfortunately I don't have the $$ to have spare disks, so I couldn't fix the problem immediatly.
Yesterday, I went to fix my array and found that Disk 3 had changed state from online to failed (without warning). Now I'm getting the remove inactive volumes error.
I restarted my NAS a couple times hoping that would magically fix the issue. It did not.
What are my options to recover my data? Is there anything I could do to the drives to bring them back?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
I downloaded my log file and happy to send it to anyone who can help.
Model: RN10400|ReadyNAS 100 Series 4- Bay (Diskless)
Unfortunately, your options are poor. RAID doesn't typically put one file on one drive and the next on another, it spreads each out over the set. So except for small files that require only one sector, most of your files will be incomplete unless you can get the most recently failed drive to work (best case, re-joined to the array). The best way to try and do that is to clone the bad drive (sector by sector) onto a new one and then put the clone in place of the original. CloneZilla is a free tool that can do the cloning, though there are some others.
If the latest failed drive can't be cloned, you can try cloning the first failed one, but that drive is out of sync with the others, so will not re-join the arrray. You'll have to use something like ReclaiMe (a fairly expensive piece of commercial software) or Netgear support to even try to recover anything. ReCliame will at least let you use the free version to evaluate if it'll work for you. But to use it, you need a way to mount the drives to a PC, which can include internal SATA connections or USB to SATA docks/cases. If the newest failed one won't re-join the array, you'll also need to use something like ReclaiMe or Netgear support. If you go with RecaiMe or Netgear support, you may have better luck if you clone both failed drives.
Thank you for the help! Even if it wasn't what I was hoping to hear, it was helpful.
I actually happen to have a RocketRAID card inside my desktop with a RAID 5 array (4TBx6) that had enough free space to store the entire rebuilt NAS array. I hooked up the NAS drives to my PC and used ReclaiME RAID recovery tool based on your suggestion (worked well). Although it took forever (30+ hours) to finish, I now have a 11TB VHDX file of my NAS array.
Unfortunately Windows is allergic to reading it though. It looks like I can't mount the drive because BTRFS isn't supported in Windows. I've tried installing the GITHUB Btrfs driver with no luck.
Is my only option to pay the $200USD to ReclaiMe and run a file recovery on the drive?
I have Hyper V running, so if there's an OS I can run for free that would fix my issue, please let me know.
I've tried ReactOS but couldn't get it to boot properly.
Question 2 - All 4 drives appear to be working fine, what's the best way for me to test/validate they are good/usable moving forward?
Is my only option to pay the $200USD to ReclaiMe and run a file recovery on the drive?
I believe you'd need to use the combination of mdadm and btrfs (both available with Windows), and not just btrfs alone. This would require turning off any hardware RAID in the PC. I don't think that will allow you to read the virtual disk you created.
Question 2 - All 4 drives appear to be working fine, what's the best way for me to test/validate they are good/usable moving forward?
Not sure how you've checked them, but I generally run the vendor diagnostic (Seatools for Seagate; Lifeguard for Western Digital). I run both the full non-destructive test, and the full write-zeros/erase disk test - as I've found that the destructive test sometimes finds errors that the non-destructive tests miss. Of course that can't be done until you extract the data.
The NAS also has several maintenance functions in the volume settings wheel that can be scheduled. This includes a disk-test, btrfs balance, scrub, and defrag. I schedule each to run quarterly on my own NAS (the tests are spread out over the quarter).
If you don't have a UPS connected to your NAS, then I would recommend that you consider getting one. Also, RAID isn't enough to protect your data, so I'd recommend putting a backup plan in place if the NAS is used for primary storage (and since you are wanting to recover data, it sounds like it is).
Is my only option to pay the $200USD to ReclaiMe and run a file recovery on the drive?
I believe you'd need to use the combination of mdadm and btrfs (both available with Windows), and not just btrfs alone. This would require turning off any hardware RAID in the PC. I don't think that will allow you to read the virtual disk you created.
I thought the VHDX file I created was free from any RAID? That was the point of using Reclaime to extract the volume off the 4 drive (16TB RAW) RAID 5 and build the 12 TB hard drive image, no?
Unfortunatly I can't turn off the hardware raid without losing access to the VHDX that's stored on the array, and to be honest, I'm scared of breaking my array while it's housing everything.
Thanks for the Seatools suggestion. I've used that tool a few years ago and had forgotten about it. Will definetly use that after I'm recovered.
The NAS also has several maintenance functions in the volume settings wheel that can be scheduled. This includes a disk-test, btrfs balance, scrub, and defrag. I schedule each to run quarterly on my own NAS (the tests are spread out over the quarter).
I do indeed run all these tests as well, at least quarterly. I had the disk-test running monthly I believe.
I do also have a UPS dedicated to my NAS and the only downtime it ever had was planned outtages.
Luckily my NAS was not primary storage and 95%+ of the data on it is redundant and can easily be deleted. It's just unfortunate that every recovery attempt I run has to take 2 days thanks to all the extra data.
Unfortunately my wife had stored some photos and videos on the RAID 5 array, thinking it was protected against drive failure and better then her external drive. This, along with some GoPro videos are really what I'm trying to recover.
I thought the VHDX file I created was free from any RAID?
ReclaiMe says it can be used for data recovery (there's other others). But they don't give details on how they formated it - and it's not something I've ever needed to do myself.
Part of the puzzle here is that there might be errors in the file system that are preventing ordinary btrfs from mounting it.
