[Muskyinoz]

Hi all,

Does anyone have any experience with recovering data from a RAID 5 array? I'm not holding out much hope but here goes.

Last night I had a power cut at home, when my NAS came back up I got the most frightening message of my life "RAID not found, please format". After the blood came back to my body I restated the NAS, same result. I logged into the web interface, same result. About this point I started to panic.

My NAS is/was 4 x 1.5tb drives in RAID 5, etx2 and contained all my music, all my TV shows and a butt load of other misc stuff, thankfully iTunes Match has 90% of my music (best $25 I ever spent) but all my TV and the rest is gone. I can re-rip the tv but it'll take forever.

The drives pass a smart test and I've tried them in another identical NAS with no joy, (I also tried a working set of drives in the original NAS) so the drives are fine and the NAS is fine, it has to be something in the file system.

I've contacted a recovery service but they're asking close to $500 per drive and $350 just to look at it.

I'm pretty much resigned to the conclusion that everything is lost but there's still a little hope someone more knowledgeable than me might know some magic software that can help. Anyone?

[voip-ninja]

Whose NAS is it? Some of the bigger companies often will take a look at it to see if they can recover the data and would be cheaper than a full data recovery service, which, at the end of the day might be your only option.

Two lessons to be learned from your mishap for others.

1. Put your NAS on a UPS and have it programmed to shut itself down gracefully in the event of a power failure.

2. RAID is not a backup. Is making a backup of a large RAID-5 volume expensive? Yes, and so is data recovery and/or total loss of your data.

Best of luck.

[darkscout]

Hardware or software RAID?

[thethirdnut]

Ditto on the requirement to know what type of NAS, raid config.



Not that it matters to you now, but I had a bum power supply on previous mdadm build and the raid array survived about a dozen unexpected shutdowns while sorting that issue out.

Linux software raid / mdadm seems to be very robust.

[Muskyinoz]

@voip-ninja - they're OEM samples, my company does occasional work with the manufacturer so the same hardware that's in your brand name ones but no support unfortunately

This is the model but not the manufacturer

@darkscout - Software (I think)

[T800]

What about trying one of these:
http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

http://www.unistal.com/raid-data-recovery.html

http://www.remosoftware.com/how-to-recov...id-5-array

[darkscout]

It's probably hardware.

The fun with hardware RAID is if the controller fails. You often need not only the exact make and model, but often firmware version. Somewhere there is a guy out there that buys up 1-2 models of old RAID controllers and resells them. Because when your hardware RAID controller from 1995 fails companies will pay about anything to get it back. Problem is they're out of stock and out of production.

[Muskyinoz]

@darkscout - I'm no expert but I don't think that's the case here.

I have two of this particular NAS, exact same hardware, exact same firmware. I tried the drives in both and the result is the same. I can swap a working set of 4 drives (exact same drives, I bought 8 in one batch) and they still work in both NAS which makes me think it has to be something to do with the drives and as they're all passing smart tests I can only think file structure.

@T800 - Thanks, I'll give those a shot, I'm going to bring the drives into work on Monday and set them all up in my work PC then try some various software options. If I'm lucky I might get some data back

[teaguecl]

2. RAID is not a backup.

+1
Sorry it's less than helpful for the OP. Hope you can recover your data.

[CpTHOOK]

I've contacted a recovery service but they're asking close to $500 per drive and $350 just to look at it

WOW....are you sh#tting me, what type of robbery is that? Don't pay it boss unless you have sentimental data to recover.. you can always re-rip DVD's/BD's and Music. Yes it will be a pain but the $500 you save can go toward the HD's you'll put into your new NAS... unRAID may be worth looking into with an APC Back-UPS battery to save your server in the event of tradgedy!!

......Good Luck Bro

[eskro]

try to run your drives using Data Recovery app named SPINRITE, watch VID --> http://www.grc.com/sr/themovie.htm