Synology NAS is toast - How to recover data from 4 disk Raid?


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Hi,

 

My Synology DS411Slim has stopped working. Blue light blinks but nothing else happens.

I would like to recover the data on the disks, which from memory I believe are setup as RAID5 but my PC does not have 4 SATA connections. Any recommendations on how to get my hands on the data as cheaply as possible?

I don't exactly want to buy a new compatible NAS to accommodate these 10 year old drives which by the way are not SSD and look like this:

Western-Digital-Scorpio-Blue-1TB-New-Front.jpg.31f8171a588aeac9569bf9077a0ff63c.jpg

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

I'll preface by saying I've never dealt with data recovery on a RAID setup. I've not even looked into it until about 5 minutes ago when I saw this thread, so there might be something else. :laugh:

 

Anyway, I'm guessing that it's just the controller that is dead rather than the individual disks. If all the disks had died at the same time it would be incredibly unlikely, and it would also defeat the purpose of having a RAID setup.

 

With that in mind, I briefly looked into the idea of creating an image of each of the disks which you could then virtually mount on the computer to get to the data. I found an old thesis, Mounting a Windows Software Raid as a Virtual Disk which pointed me to this: ReclaiMe Free Raid Recovery. It seems to be free and supports a RAID 5 setup.

 

But again, I haven't dealt with RAID recovery before and I don't have a setup in place for me to test the above and see if it would work. I'm just guessing and could be way off the mark.

Synology has this guide for when it stops working ...

 

https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_from_my_DiskStation_using_a_PC

 

Oddly enough Synology linked to this video from their Knowledge Center  (basically just the above steps in video form from a 3rd party)

 

Requirements:

Available on DSM version 6.2.x and above.

Only applicable to ext4 or Btrfs file system.

 

AnandTech also has a detailed article of recovering data...

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/8399/recovering-data-from-a-failed-synology-nas

 

 

  On 04/07/2021 at 05:14, Mango said:

but my PC does not have 4 SATA connections.

Expand  

 

That is gonna be a problem.  Does that mean you do not have 4 free slots ... or does that mean your PC has less than 4 connectors total?  In this PC ... can you install a 4 port sata pcie expansion card?

 

Your drives are just 2.5" HDDs w/ standard sata power/data connectors....

 

Thanks Jim, I'll see how that goes. I dug up my motherboard manual and found 2 extra sata slots hiding behind the video card that I didnt see at first glance giving me 6 total. Yay!

 

Doh... Just realized that all I needed was 4 as it boots ubuntu from the flash drive... then use an external USB to grab the data. 🙄

Edited by Mango

Hello,

 

I think your first option should be to check with Synology's support to see if there are any tricks or tips that their own support engineers might recommend beyond what is in the KB article.

 

In the past, I have used Runtime Software's RAID Reconstructor to recover data from a failed RAID array in a Western Digital NAS.  However, given the value or importance of the data, it may be better to contact a commercial data recovery company such as DriveSavers, GillWare or Kroll Ontrack.

Regards,


Aryeh Goretsky

 

 

  • 2 weeks later...

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