Recovering data from 3.5" NAS drive

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sxz

761 posts

Ultimate Geek

#288401 26-Jun-2021 01:03

Hi, I need advice.

My Nas crashed, and I can't access data on the drive. I've put it into an old USB housing, and windows says it need to be formatted.

Is there any good free software that might be able to help me access what's on the disk?

The Nas is qnap, and seems to boot fine without the drive, do I suspect something for corrupted in the drive.

Thanks very much,

CYaBro

4568 posts

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#2734837 26-Jun-2021 06:55

A few things first, how important is the data on that drive?
Don’t try anything yourself if it’s too important, rather get the drive to a specialist who knows what they’re doing. That’ll give them the best chance of recovering anything.
Anything you try yourself first only lessons the chance of a specialist being able to recover anything.

If you’re ok with losing the data then it’s not recommended to attempt data recovery on a drive that’s attached by USB, you want it connected directly to the mainboard.
And you really don’t want to use Windows, Linux is much better for this.

Since the drive was in a NAS chances are it’s probably been formatted in a Linux file system so it may be able to read the drive straight away.

Linux has a free tool included called ‘ddrescue’ that you should use first to take a full image of the corrupt drive and if that’s successful then you can attempt data recovery on that image.
You’ll need at least as much free space as the size of the faulty drive to save that image too, or another spare drive that’s the same size or bigger.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

openmedia

3309 posts

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#2734959 26-Jun-2021 11:07

@sxz what type of USB housing are you using?

Not housing behave the same way, for example Seagate housings appear to reserve / hide the last block of the drive. This can cause serious issues if the drive is GPT formatted as the PC can't see the partition table.

I've picked up an Orico SATA Dock which supports UAS for performance and doesn't mask any of the drive layout.

As suggested tools like ddrescue are awesome as they can create an accurate mirror of your drive even if there is some small degree of damage.

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

SomeoneSomewhere

1787 posts

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#2734993 26-Jun-2021 13:06

Step one: Inspect drive for obvious physical damage, i.e. bent connectors, components knocked off PCB etc. Not likely but...

Step two: Plug drive in and view SMART data. Particularly around bad sectors and read errors. Pay attention mostly to the normalised values, not the raw values. Listen for any bad sounds from the drive too. Some head movement is normal. Repeated spinups, spindowns, loud clicking, grinding etc. is not. If you hear this or get very bad SMART data, you ought to strongly consider sending it for professional recovery - nothing you can do will improve internal hardware issues and more time spinning just makes it worse.

Step three: If the drive appears to be mechanically fine, stick it in a linux system and attempt to read the data out that way. You may want to take a ddrescue image as above, particularly if it appears to have any corruption or hardware damage.

1101

3121 posts

Uber Geek

#2735619 28-Jun-2021 09:57

Step 1 .
If the data is important, take it to a specialist eg Datalab (Not a PC repair shop) . Expect to pay $1000+
Just leaving it running can make it harder & harder to get data off, you can be making things worse .

step 2.
Listen for clicks , drive spinning up & down , weird noises.
Put you ear up against it .
If any weird noises, assume you wont be able to recover data . Take it to a specialist

step 3 :all the comments above . Use a Linux bootable CD & see if you can read any data .

Chances are , its a hardware failure .

btw, we are all assuming its a single drive NAS .

sxz

761 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2739345 5-Jul-2021 22:58

Hi guys, thanks for your responses. Sorry for not responding sooner, have been away from home for a week or so.

Update:

It's a Dual drive NAS - QNAP TS228a, with a single 3tb HDD in it.

The drive contains photos, luckily I had a backup external drive with all but the last 18 months photos on it. Making copies of that now as i type. All photos are backed up to google photos too, but not in original quality sadly. Will soon purchase google drive storage to make further copies in original quality.

So I may have lost about 12-18 months original quality photos, but I do have them saved in google photos normal quality.

Following everyone's advice, I have stopped any attempt to recover the 3tb drive just yet. I tried booting the NAS without drives, and it seemed to be operating OK, so I purchased a new 6tb drive to use in it moving forward, and to try be able to try and recover the photos from the 3tb drive. Might try that one in the next few days.

Thanks for the tip about booting into Linux - I might try that to see if I can recover the 3tb drive first. The drive itself didn't sound to me like a failing drive, so fingers crossed it wasn't a hardware issue.

I haven't been totally stoked with the QNAP to be honest, it's not as easy as I'd have liked it to be, and now I'm a little worried about reliability long term. I guess I'll just try and keep at least 3 copies of everything up to date all the time...

sxz

761 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2739346 5-Jul-2021 22:59

openmedia:

@sxz what type of USB housing are you using?

Just a cheapie of trademe - I honestly expected them all to be the same!

I've been laptop only for years now, so unfortunately can't easily access 3.5 drives other ways.