10 yr old RN-NV stopped working after power loss. What are options to get XRAID drives working again

[Helevitia]

Hey everyone!  I actually bought my REadyNAS NV in october of 2006.  There was the PSU fiasco after a year, but after replacing the PSU, it has been chugging along ever since.  The only other hting I've done is to replace my original 250GB drives iwth 1TB drives in an X-RAID setup.

Fast forward to yesterday and we lost power briefly and of course my REadyNAS is set to not power back up after that.  I manually the power button and I heard a crack and pop adn that was it.  No more power to the RN.

Of course, to get the data off, I need another ReadyNAS because it's using the proprietary X-RAiD.  I am wondering if I buy this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BNI4CVG/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=1944687702&pf_rd_s=lpo-to...

Will that allow me to pop the drive back in and everything will start working again?  If not, what are my options?  I have 13 years worth of pictures and music adn vidos and documents and so on and so forth.

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

XRAID is layered on top of standard RAID modes.  You can access your data from an x86 linux system:  http://home.bott.ca/webserver/?p=306

The RN104 isn't compatible with your disks (the CPU is different, and the data volume disk is formatted differently).  However, Netgear support can help if you are migrating your NV+ data to a new OS6 platform.  There is more information here: http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/29876

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

XRAID is layered on top of standard RAID modes.  You can access your data from an x86 linux system:  http://home.bott.ca/webserver/?p=306

The RN104 isn't compatible with your disks (the CPU is different, and the data volume disk is formatted differently).  However, Netgear support can help if you are migrating your NV+ data to a new OS6 platform.  There is more information here: http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/29876

[Helevitia]

Awesome, thanks!  Exactly the kind of info I was looking for.  Have a great day!

[Helevitia]

Quick question.  If I access my data via linux, it doesn't talk about how to setup the drives physically?  I'm assuming x-raid is just raid 5?  Do I need to plug the drives in order and then do I need to do anything in linux such as software raid 5 before trying to mount the drives?

[StephenB]

I don't think the order matters.

Technically the NV V1 xraid uses RAID-4 (because it has a dedicated parity disk) but we usually call it RAID-5 here (and flexraid for the v1 also calls it RAID-5 in the admin ui and the manual).

[Helevitia]

Hi Stephen, 

I appreciate your help in this. I have found an old NV+.  Assuming it is the same that I had, can I just pop the drives back in?  Is the metadata on the drives?  Thanks!

[StephenB]

All the data is on the drives, and the operating system is on the drives too.

The only caveat is that if the NAS firmware on the replacement doesn't match the firmware installed on the disks, then the NAS will attempt to reinstall the firmware to the disks.  If the firmware on the replacement is very old, that reinstall might fail.  The way to avoid this problem is to install a scratch disk (not part of the array) first, and then install the firmware you want on the NAS.  Then power down, remove the scratch disk, and install your original disks.

If you aren't sure what firmware was on the failed NAS, just install the current production firmware on the new one (4.1.14).