Hi, I have a client with an unresponsive ReadyNAS NV-something. The LCD panel currently displays "Disk 3 inserted" after having had the drives removed and then replaced. Unfortunately, I've not had physical access to the rear to use the rnasguide.com guide to telling with model.
The background is that my client called to say the share on her Windows workstation was showing very little space left. I asked her to check the display on the front of the NAS and she came back with "0.3/2.0T Free". We discussed an upgrade and I said I'd find out (probably by reading here) the upgrade process and find out which drives are on that hardware compatability matrix. I wanted to confirm what it was populated with at the moment and she suggested she knew how to check the capacity of each drive so I asked her to email the details. She came back confirming that they were all 750GB drives, then later called to say it was inaccessible from her Windows workstation.
Further conversation revealled that she checked the drive capacity by physically pulling each of the drives and looking at the capacity printed on them. Since then, for days now, it has displayed only "Disk 3 inserted" and has remained inaccessible.
My concern is that by pulling the drives and re-loading them, the NAS enclosure thinks it has been presented with four new drives and is currently formatting and partitioning them and that all of the data on them is potentially lost. Can anyone confirm, though I'm aware I haven't been able to state exactly which NV model it is, what the NAS would do when each drive was pulled and then replaced?
Apologies for the sketchy details, I've not yet had physical access to the NAS so I'm relying on information from her texts, emails and phone calls. I've been aware of this forum for as long as I've had a client with a ReadyNAS box but thus far have not had to do anything with it, just knowing that there is a forum of helpful experts has always made me more relaxed about looking at her NAS.
You probably have a NV+ (v1 - silver chassis) not a v2 (charcoal chassis). The colour of the chassis should be easy to notice without needing to move the unit or access the rear.
750 GB drives were discontinued well before the v2 was released.
Did she power off the NAS before removing the drives?
Warranty may have been as long as five years depending on when purchased. If possible you may wish to power down, remove disks (label order) and test them e.g. test SeaGate disks using SeaTools.
Warranty may have been as long as five years depending on when purchased. If possible you may wish to power down, remove disks (label order) and test them e.g. test SeaGate disks using SeaTools.
Will do. Thanks for confirming that powering down won't make matters worse.
Assuming the drives to have been undamaged by this process, any comment on the data?
You probably want to clone the disks using dd_rescue onto another set of disks before trying anything to recover your data. That way if you make a mistake with data recovery attempts you hopefully haven't reduced the likelihood of being able to recover your data any further.
You may also wish to contact support to see if they have any paid options to help you attempt to retrieve your data if that is needed.
Thanks for your help with this and I hugely appreciate your candour with respect to the data recovery. Assuming I can get the clones made, is there a known-good utility I can use to recover data from the RAID set?
I've noted below my proposed sequence of events for a recovery attempt, would anyone like to suggest anything I should add or do differently? Power down NAS Mark drives Pull drive 1 Make clone (using dd_rescue live CD) Repeat cloning for drives 2, 3 and 4. [As yet unknown data recovery steps] Repopulate NAS with 4x 2TB drives (upgrade)
I've just wrapped up this job and thought I should update in case Google or a site search brings anyone to this thread.
Essentially, the NAS recovered from having the drives pulled but it took more than two weeks and maybe as long as three(!). I don't know exactly how long as the client went on holiday and the error message was displayed for a week or so before she went away but was resolved when she came back. Though the screen was clear, the NAS was still unresponsive until it was restarted. After a restart, it's back in business and is reported by the client to be running faster than before. Seems like the fault tollerance included user error induced faults?
The capacity upgrade went well too. The information and support available on this site is really first class.
