Data Volume lost after disk replacement on Readynas Pro Pioneer

[DDixson]

First time user of the community and trying to find some answers. So I have a RNDP-600E ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer purchased in March 2009 that is out of warranty. I believe my NAS is running RAIDiator-x86-V4.2.27. It has or had 6 X WD RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB Internal Hard Drives Newegg Item#:9SIA9SC4N43556 from the compatibility list with a volume of about 4.6TB running on the XRAID.

So last year around this time the PSU went out. Not bad concidering it ran 24/7 for about 9 years. I purchased the exact same one a SeaSonic SS-300SFD 300W SFX12V v3.1 80 Plus Certified Active PFC Power Supply from Newegg.com Item#:N82E16817151089 coupled with a StarTech ATX24POWEXT 8" Power Extension Cable for 24 pin ATX 2.01 Motherboards Newegg Item#: N82E16812200121. This got the NAS back up and running with no problems. I also purchased at that time 4 new WD Red 2TB NAS Hard Disk Drives WD20EFRX Newegg Item#:N82E16822236343 from the compatibility list.  This is where my disaster begins. Hind sight being 20/20...backup, backup, backup. Anyway.

Having bought the new drives to expand the array volume I began replacing a disk at a time starting with disk #1. I powered off the NAS and swapped the 1TB drive for the new 2TB drive. I replaced the disk and stored he old disk. I powered the unit back up and it recognized the new drive and rebuilt the array with increased volume size. I repeated this process with disks, #2 and #3. With disk #4 however the rebuild hung for more then a week. I powered down the NAS. Upon restarting the NAS it showed as if everything was fine but the array was not recognized. The admin shows drives 1,2,3 and 5 green. 4 and 6 are blinking yellow and show dead. They are infact not dead but work just fine. Having kept all original array drives I placed them back in the NAS in the original order. But the NAS only recognizes the newer larger drives and shows all but drive #5 blinking yellow/dead.

So life got busy. Here we are a year later and having searched the internet for hours and buying 7 new 4TB WD hard drives I figured it was time to see if I could recover some of the 65,000 plus family photos and videos that were stored on the NAS.

I used R-Drive imager to image the drives initially. R-drive shows Disks #1-3 of the 2TB drives show 4GB GPT partitiion, 512MB GPT partition, 927GB GPT partition, 931GB partition and 2MB unallocated. Disk #4 shows 4GB GPT partitiion, 512MB GPT partition and 1.81GB unallocated. Disks 5 and 6 are the original 1TB drives and Disk #5 shows 4GB GPT partitiion, 512MB GPT partition, 927GB GPT partition and 2.49MB unallocated. But Disk #6 shows 4GB GPT partitiion, 512MB GPT partition, 927GB GPT unallocated.

The original drives #1-4 show 4GB GPT partitiion, 512MB GPT partition, 927GB GPT partition and 2.49MB unallocated. I was going to use Reclaime to see if the data was recoverable. But could not use the R-drive images in Reclaime. So I deleted those images and used the imager in Reclaime to image the drives and ran the recovery programs. Using the last setup of disks #1-4 being 2TB and #5 & 6 being the original 1TB drives I had some success, but mostly files with numbers, most if not all photos showing an error has occured with lots of read fails in the hexadecimal view. Using the program with the original 6 1TB disk yielding a little more success as about 30 to 40 % of the folders had the original names instead of numbers, but the same failed success on the pictures. Of course the Mp3's, excel docs, pdf docs and word docs are all showing up just fine. What luck.

I have read some good news stories online and in the community of Data recovery. At this point my expectation of success is very low. I know enough to be totally ignorant. I have my daughter assisting me who has a vast knowledge of Linux, but want to proceed cautiously to preserve all 10 drives and not change the parameters on the NAS box in hopes that it will assist in the recovery.

Is there a way to use the original 5 disks to rebuild the 6th and recover the data using software outside of sending it to Netgear for recovery? Like I said earlier up top, putting the originals back into the NAS does me no good as its now programed to read the newer large volume disks. I was reading on Netgear's website article 69 about level 3 TSE's. Would they be able to use any combnation of the the original 5 1 TB disks to make a fully functional 6th or the later setup of 4 2TB disks and the 5th/6th 1TB disks to restore the data if I sent them all 10 disks and my NAS unit? By the way all the logs are still in the admin of the NAS. I can provide the logs if needed but need to replace the drives and run the admin.

In the den of lions atm

Daniel

[mdgm-ntgr]

The data recovery we do is almost always done remotely. There is a cost to this.

Some analysis would need to be done to see which disks need to be used, whether cloning is required (e.g. of the disk that failed during the resync causing the volume to go offline) etc. Data recovery may be unsuccessful.

When you replace a disk the resulting resync updates the RAID. So for best data recovery chances most likely the disks that were in the NAS just before the problem started would likely be required.

You can attempt data recovery yourself but you would likely have a lower chance of success and may make it less likely for a professional attempt to be successful.

[DDixson]

At this point I have spent $200 on a license from Reclaime which has a 30 day money back policy. I have requested a refund. So the initial assessment fee of $200 is a wash. Anything is better then having all those memories lost, if there is hope. But trying to understand the support process online is confusing at best. I know what I need I just need to get in touch with the right person(s) to facilitate the process.

[DDixson]

All attempts have been using the images of the disk, nothing on the actual disks themselves. All disks have been stored and not used except for the imaging process.

[mdgm-ntgr]

You would fill in the support contact us form and then contact support and explain that are you after data recovery. You can let me know your case number if you like.