Recovering data from dead Qnap NAS

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#2466543 20-Apr-2020 19:01

I've just been through this with an eleven year old single drive Buffalo NAS (LS-CHL).
Simply removed the drive (which is formatted in XFS), put it into an external usb drive case, plugged it into my Linux (openSUSE) pc, mounted the drive and retrieved all my data.

Can't see why it would be any different with a qnap nas - particularly if it is formatted in ext4 and the drive is still in ok condition.

01EG

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#2466551 20-Apr-2020 19:11

farcus:
I've just been through this with an eleven year old single drive Buffalo NAS (LS-CHL).
Simply removed the drive (which is formatted in XFS), put it into an external usb drive case, plugged it into my Linux (openSUSE) pc, mounted the drive and retrieved all my data.

Can't see why it would be any different with a qnap nas - particularly if it is formatted in ext4 and the drive is still in ok condition.

Good point, don't have any Linux, win10 support ubuntu cmd, will it work? And my disk volume is JBOD.

nitro

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#2466610 20-Apr-2020 20:09

01EG:
farcus:

I've just been through this with an eleven year old single drive Buffalo NAS (LS-CHL).
Simply removed the drive (which is formatted in XFS), put it into an external usb drive case, plugged it into my Linux (openSUSE) pc, mounted the drive and retrieved all my data.

Can't see why it would be any different with a qnap nas - particularly if it is formatted in ext4 and the drive is still in ok condition.

Good point, don't have any Linux, win10 support ubuntu cmd, will it work? And my disk volume is JBOD.

haven't used the linux shell from win 10, but as an alternative you can run linux from a bootable usb drive.

farcus

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#2466639 20-Apr-2020 21:29

01EG:
Good point, don't have any Linux, win10 support ubuntu cmd, will it work? And my disk volume is JBOD.

I don't know - haven't used windows in years.
Win10 (as far as I'm aware) doesn't natively support ext4 - but in the past I have used ext2fsd on windows to mount linux drives.
A quick google seems to indicate that this software is still around and supports ext4 (despite its name).
I'm sure there are other solutions around for mounting linux drives on windows.
But a live linux image on a usb drive would also achieve what you want.

kobiak

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#2466715 20-Apr-2020 23:51

I had similar issue when software update caused NAS unit to not respond. I have Omega aka Lenovo NAS. I did not known that it was due to firmware update.

Spend days on forums, faq, etc... Support calls and my pushing gets me to engineer who gave me devs firmware tool with no guarantee it would help. Thanks to that guy. But after few tries I was able to boot into service menu, install new update and everything was back to normal after disk checks which took 3 days...

So you might give their support a call :)

helping others at evgenyk.nz

SomeoneSomewhere

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#2466746 21-Apr-2020 02:09

A linux live USB is likely the fastest and easiest option.

Calling support could work - if it is a failed firmware update, they often have a rescue mode that relies on you doing something like holding a reset button while booting it, and it grabs new firmware off a TFTP server or a USB drive.

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01EG

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#2466824 21-Apr-2020 09:05

Yes I did try this https://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Firmware_Recovery

01EG

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#2466828 21-Apr-2020 09:18

Sorry I'm confused, actually I do not need to recover the data? I think its safe, what I need is a new 4 bay NAS which can read Qnap JBOD, so my question was if asustor(or any other) can do that. my knowledge tells me that it is possible Qnap JBOD ext4 = Asustor(?) JBOD ext4. I'm not so keen to buy Qnap again. Just want to confirm it is possible?

farcus

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#2467018 21-Apr-2020 12:27

01EG: Sorry I'm confused, actually I do not need to recover the data? I think its safe, what I need is a new 4 bay NAS which can read Qnap JBOD, so my question was if asustor(or any other) can do that. my knowledge tells me that it is possible Qnap JBOD ext4 = Asustor(?) JBOD ext4. I'm not so keen to buy Qnap again. Just want to confirm it is possible?

I think probably not as the disk contains info that tells the firmware where and how to mount the disk (and the firmware may even be on the disk - I'm not familiar with qnap).
You could try it but I would retrieve the data before doing it - just in case the NAS you put it into overwrites your disk.

farcus

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#2467023 21-Apr-2020 12:37

take a look at this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFIW7ciDpMg
In short, a guy tried to put a qnap drive into a synology nas - and it wouldn't work without the disk being initialized and erasing everything.

Incidentally, the drive he took out of his qnap drive was formatted in btrfs, not ext4. Are you sure your drive is ext4? If it is btrfs I don't think you can use ext2fsd to mount it in windows - you'd need another solution.

01EG

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#2467050 21-Apr-2020 13:05

farcus:
take a look at this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFIW7ciDpMg
In short, a guy tried to put a qnap drive into a synology nas - and it wouldn't work without the disk being initialized and erasing everything.

Incidentally, the drive he took out of his qnap drive was formatted in btrfs, not ext4. Are you sure your drive is ext4? If it is btrfs I don't think you can use ext2fsd to mount it in windows - you'd need another solution.

I can't remember it was 4 years ago, but I guess I used the default one and I think the default is ext4.

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01EG

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#2467629 22-Apr-2020 10:06

So I got some results, not the good ones, what I have tried

1. connected one of HDDs to my another NAS(Synology)/USB port, Synology sees it as unformatted disk

2. connected HDD to Win10/USB port, and used the ext2fsd soft, ext2fsd sees the disk as 4 partitions, 1 partition as ext4 with Qnap system files ~500Mb, 2 partitions as RAW ~500Mb and ~8Gb and last partition with my data in RAW format. RAW partitions are not accessible.

Looks like I have to get Qnap again somehow.

Yoban

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#2467648 22-Apr-2020 10:34

01EG: 2. connected HDD to Win10/USB port, and used the ext2fsd soft, ext2fsd sees the disk as 4 partitions, 1 partition as ext4 with Qnap system files ~500Mb, 2 partitions as RAW ~500Mb and ~8Gb and last partition with my data in RAW format. RAW partitions are not accessible. Looks like I have to get Qnap again somehow.

As mentioned previously I believe, I would repeat #2 using a Linux live USB. That is boot your desktop off the Linux USB, which would give you a Linux environment without destroying your win10 one and with the NAS disks in a USB cradle on another port, you may have better success viewing the contents.

Here are the steps to make a USB boot disk for Ubuntu https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#1-overview

Amosnz

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#2467651 22-Apr-2020 10:42

01EG: So I got some results, not the good ones, what I have tried 1. connected one of HDDs to my another NAS(Synology)/USB port, Synology sees it as unformatted disk 2. connected HDD to Win10/USB port, and used the ext2fsd soft, ext2fsd sees the disk as 4 partitions, 1 partition as ext4 with Qnap system files ~500Mb, 2 partitions as RAW ~500Mb and ~8Gb and last partition with my data in RAW format. RAW partitions are not accessible. Looks like I have to get Qnap again somehow.

Yes QNAP drives have 4 partitions (I only know this as I removed them on a borrowed drive while cloning my NAS drives).

While you have the drive attached to your Win10 computer install/run Reclaime as per my earlier post.

Speedtest

01EG

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#2467652 22-Apr-2020 10:42

Yoban:
As mentioned previously I believe, I would repeat #2 using a Linux live USB. That is boot your desktop off the Linux USB, which would give you a Linux environment without destroying your win10 one and with the NAS disks in a USB cradle on another port, you may have better success viewing the contents.

Here are the steps to make a USB boot disk for Ubuntu https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#1-overview

Thanks, will try this one too

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