Need some advice on what to do next. ReadyNAS in X-Raid2 with 3X 2TB Drives. After family complained that it could not access shares, I logged in as admin. Disk 1 status "Dead", Disk 2 status "Spare", Disk 3 "OK". Checked the log, no messgages in the log regarding disk failures.
I replaced Disk 1. For a while, Disk 1 status listed as "Spare". After a few hours, all 3 disk statuses now "OK". However, I'm getting "Volume Scan failed to Run" error and Volume / Shares do not show.
From what I understand, in the X-Raid configuration, Disk 2 is used for data protection, while the remaining disks are used for storage. Now that all my disks are 'OK' , how do I rebuild/access the volume and see if my data is still there? I'm outside the complimentary support time, are the chances of recovering my data enough for me to pay the 'per incident' fee?
What NAS do you have, and what firmware is it running? Also was disk 2 always marked as a spare?
I would try per-incident support next, I think it is likely that they can remount the volume w/o needing data recovery. Data Recovery has its own contract terms, and would be expensive if it is needed.
BTW, your understanding of XRAID2/RAID-5 is a bit off. If disk 2 was a spare, it was never part of your array. Normally with three disks, you'd see all disks as "ok".
Thanks for the response. Sorry I couldn't get back until now due to the holiday. It's a ReadyNAS RNDP400U with up to date firmware (just updated prior to incident). I have 3X 2TB drives and before the failure, all were Green/OK with 3.6TB of total space. When the failure occured and the NAS went into "Life Support" mode, Disk 1 was "Dead", Disk 2 was "Spare" and Disk 3 was "OK" I could access my shares and subfolders, but not the actual files.
I pulled disk 1 and replaced it with same make/model. For a while, Disk 1 and Disk 2 were "Spare", and Disk 3 was "OK". Now, all 3 disks are green/OK, but the volume is not mounted. I can't access anything right now. I'm fairly sure my data is still there, but I don't know how to re-mount the volume, and I don't want to create new volume/shares and potentially overwrite my data.
I'm going to go ahead and call support today and see if we can get to my existing data. Before I paid the per-incident price, I wanted to have a good feeling that the data was still there.
I think the data is still there. But have the old disk 1 ready too, it is possible they will require data recovery service contract, but try the per incident first.
Thanks for your warm welcome and guidance. Went throught the support system and scheduled a date/time for them to call me to work the issue. Got confirmation through the support ticket that they would call me at my "preferred time". It's currently 2 hours past that time, and I have not heard from them yet. Is this normal?
Keeping this thread up to date. Always find it frustrating when I find someone who had the exact same problem I had and then the thread ends before the solution.
Talked to Tech Support over the phone, did the admin paperwork and paid the per-incident charge. Then we went through the process to set up my ReadyNAS is Tech Support Mode, and asked if I had the failed hard drive, in case they need to do data recovery. My ticket was then pushed to the Engineers and am awaiting feedback from them. The call itself only took about 30 minutes (once they finally made contact...Thanks again JennC!!)
Now I'm waiting untill I get some response...hopefully I'll find something out soon.
Engineers made contact with me yesterday. It appears drive 2 failed as well either right before or during the time frame that drive 1 died. That doesn't make sense to me, because drive 1 was the only one that showed up as 'dead', and after replacement, all 3 disks were OK/Green.
They tried to rebuild my volume using what was installed, the engineer said could be mounted but had a lot of I/O errors, and it could only find 403GB of the 3.3TB of data I had. They requested that I put my original drive 1 (the dead one) into an empty bay of the NAS so he could try to use that to rebuild the volume.
I just did that, but the bay 4 light on the front of the NAS didn't come on. Is it not seated proiperly, or is it something to do with being in debug mode? Do I need to reboot and reset the NAS so the engineer can see the drive I put in?
I saw your case and it is being handled by one of the highest tier of support. I suggest not doing anything that was not mentioned by QH and report to him any unusual behavior you see on your NAS.
I put my old (failed) drive back into the bay and the engineer tried to rebuild the volume that way. There was some success, as he was able to mount the volume, but the errors on my failed drive kept it from being stable.
The recommendation was to clone my failed drive and put the clone into the system....but at this point we're moving away from troubleshooting and more into data recovery. I bought a large capacity external HHD to connect via USB so that when we get to the recovery point, there is some place to put the data (if there's any left).
Data Recovery contract is $200, and just waiting until payday to put that in motion.
I checked your case again and found that Joseph emailed you, he was instructed by QH that data recovery service contract is really needed in this case.
I guess next time it is always best to have full back up of important data. I understand how frustrating this is and I hope this gets resolved soon.
Just had to wait a few days to get the USB drive and make sure I had the money for the data recovery contract. Everything is ready to go on this end, just waiting for the call from Joseph so I can give them my payment information.
A better backup plan was on the list of things to do, but fell into the trap of "there's no problem with it right now" so it kept falling off the list. I have no complaints over the process, I know full well that it was a self-inflicted problem (being a tech guy for 20+ years does make it sting a little, though). However, the equipment I had to buy to fix the problem can be used to implement a more robust data backup solution going forward, once we get to a resolution on the current issue.
I also checked your ticket and our support staff have contacted you but only reached your voicemail. I will have him call you again and if he's still unable to reach you, contact our support hotline instead to process the payment details.
I just had a situation myself where I had a lost disk. I could access the data using recovery software before L2 had a go at it but all data is now gone after L2 tech support initiated a sync on my NAS. I suggest you request to have all log files of the access to you NAS (SSH/scripts etc) sent you after they have provided you with support to document what has been done.
Got the data recovery contract details sorted out, and got the NAS configured to do the data recovery. Attached a high capacity USB HDD to my NAS, and had to put the NAS IP into my cable modem's DMZ. For some reason, they were unable to clone (the failed) Disk 1, but were able to successfully clone (the also failed) disk 2, and so far I've recieved updates as they were restoring data. Last message I recieved was on 22 Jan 2016 that stated that they restored 733GB (of 3.4TB) so far. They haven't told me that they recovery is complete, so I'm unsure if that's all that could be recovered, or they just didn't send out updates over the weekend.
I'm not touching the system until they tell me it's complete.
Once the data recovery is complete, my plan is to go ahead and replace all the old hard drives (all 3 were bought at the same time), rebuild the RAID completely and start over from scratch. My question is: When I finally get everything 'fixed' and back to normal, what kind of backup solution should I put in place so I'm not in the same situation in 5 years or so? How do other members on this forum handle the backup of around 4-6TB of data in a personal/home office type environment?
How do other members on this forum handle the backup of around 4-6TB of data in a personal/home office type environment?
I'm backing up ~7 TB of data, and am a home user (who also works from home). USB drives are popular, but I don't use them myself.
I initially installed two internal 3 TB disk drives and installed two in each my two desktop PCs. Then I created some simple robocopy scripts (which run on the desktops) and copy the shares to those drives. Those scripts are still running, but I am phasing that out (as the disks fail, I'll stop)
Later on, I started using smaller/slower NAS for the backups (a duo and an nv+ I had outgrown, supplemented today by an RN102 and an RN202). That's the mainstay of my backup now. I also added crashplan cloud backup for disaster recovery ($60 per year seemed like a pretty inexpensive safety net...).
I recommend having three copies (including the original) of all the files you care about - on different devices.
Got the data recovery contract details sorted out, and got the NAS configured to do the data recovery. Attached a high capacity USB HDD to my NAS, and had to put the NAS IP into my cable modem's DMZ. For some reason, they were unable to clone (the failed) Disk 1, but were able to successfully clone (the also failed) disk 2, and so far I've recieved updates as they were restoring data. Last message I recieved was on 22 Jan 2016 that stated that they restored 733GB (of 3.4TB) so far. They haven't told me that they recovery is complete, so I'm unsure if that's all that could be recovered, or they just didn't send out updates over the weekend.
My experience so far is that support is a bit slow. Also, it seems that Netgear does not have a good tracking of what is being done. I believe you are in good hands, though I would ask them to provide log files of what they have done. If the disk failed to be cloned they can provide you with the details and what error messages they got. Better to have a detailed final report after the work has been completed.
My question is: When I finally get everything 'fixed' and back to normal, what kind of backup solution should I put in place so I'm not in the same situation in 5 years or so? How do other members on this forum handle the backup of around 4-6TB of data in a personal/home office type environment?
Well, I have two ReadyNAS units myself, one is a pure backup unit. I use rsync to backup. However, even though I was "safe" I got into trouble as many things happened at the same time.
1. rsync filled up the backup unit due to change of folder structure on the main unit
2. I deleted the backup folder and started a new backup using rsync
3. At the same time I replaced a failed disk on the main unit - I stopped the rsync backup after a few minutes.
4. Volume on main unit "crashed" and I had lost my data! (maybe I will be able to get it back, crossing my fingers)
So, by doing things a bit "fast and careless" got me into trouble. I though that replacing the disk would not be associated with high risk of loosing data. Anyway, I lost data.
So, my recommendation is to backup the data frequently, and if you have the money get another NAS unit to backup to. Also, backup to the cloud if you can. In addition, do things "slowly" if you run into trouble. Make sure you always have one good copy before you fix the storage unit.
So, my recommendation is to backup the data frequently, and if you have the money get another NAS unit to backup to. Also, backup to the cloud if you can. In addition, do things "slowly" if you run into trouble. Make sure you always have one good copy before you fix the storage unit.
All good advice. I'd add that doing things "slowly" doesn't mean ignoring disk alerts or other signs of trouble - if you see rising error counts on a drive, you should take action right away. It does mean being careful and deliberate - avoiding mistakes like removing the wrong disk, not checking your backup status before you begin, etc.
Also if you engage Netgear, then let them drive. Doing a lot of stuff independently will just make their job harder (and could lose all chance of recovering your data).
Recovery efforts are wrapping up, looks like we were able to recover just under 1TB of data (out of 3.4TB). Good news is that 1TB incuded a lot of the stuff we needed...but not everything...so it's a partial win. Just waiting for the "All Clear" signal so I can pull the NAS off the network, replace all the old drives and rebuild the NAS from Scratch.
I have a High Capacity External USB Drive that I'm going to use to back up my NAS on a regular basis to to avoid the same kind of problem in the short term, while I figure out a long term backup solution I can implement (sooner than later)
If I were you I would have connected the drives to a computer and run ReclaiMe software on the disks after Netgear support have finished working on your disks. ReclaiMe have tutorials on their website, check out Netgear NAS recovery, and you might be able to get all your data. The software is free to try and is $199 to enable the save function, so you can try to see if you get the data before you need to pay. If you care about the data, maybe this is something you should consider.
Also if you engage Netgear, then let them drive. Doing a lot of stuff independently will just make their job harder (and could lose all chance of recovering your data).
I agree with you there Stephen. If they are unsuccessful, you can consider help from somewhere else ... or try yourself. 🙂
