Recovering data from dead Qnap NAS

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01EG

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#270031 20-Apr-2020 14:18

Heya, Unexpectedly my Qnap NAS dies, I used it as a cold backup in JBOD disk volume. Thinking to buy another brand and question is it possible to recover the data? Will the other brand(support JBOD too) understands if I just re-connect HDDs? Thanks

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#2466182 20-Apr-2020 14:29

What sort of dead? Is it possible its a power supply issue and a replacement would get you sorted? Firmware issue and you might be able to re-flash the unit?

If it's a single drive, normally these devices run a Linux file system and you can connect the drive to a Windows or Linux machine and recover the files after loading a file system driver. I've done this multiple times, but not recently.

If the file system was spanned across multiple drives.... its likely trickier but I have no experience with this situation. Without first hand experience of this situation, I'd be reasonably confident another QNAP would read it just fine, and pick up where the other QNAP left off, but would be hesitant about other brands. If the data is important to you, find a way to back up the drive before you do anything with it.

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sampler

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#2466185 20-Apr-2020 14:36

This might help -> https://docs.qnap.com/nas/4.3/cat2/en/index.html?system_migration.htm

--snip--

Users can migrate their existing NAS to another NAS model with all the data and configuration retained by simply installing all the hard drives of the original (source) NAS on the new (destination) NAS according to its original hard drive order and restart the NAS.

--snip--

Sorry no warranty from me :-D .. all the best

01EG

604 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2466255 20-Apr-2020 14:52

Dynamic:
What sort of dead? Is it possible its a power supply issue and a replacement would get you sorted? Firmware issue and you might be able to re-flash the unit?

If it's a single drive, normally these devices run a Linux file system and you can connect the drive to a Windows or Linux machine and recover the files after loading a file system driver. I've done this multiple times, but not recently.

If the file system was spanned across multiple drives.... its likely trickier but I have no experience with this situation. Without first hand experience of this situation, I'd be reasonably confident another QNAP would read it just fine, and pick up where the other QNAP left off, but would be hesitant about other brands. If the data is important to you, find a way to back up the drive before you do anything with it.

No, power supply is fine, I guess something else. Its 4y.o. NAS and almost every month firmware update happens, 11/4 a new firmware arrived and same procedure applied > "yes update" > "yes T&C" > "yes go head" and I left it to finish, when I came I refreshed the browser and it gone, waited another N mins, checked the LEDs, they are flashes, checked it through my router to see if its connected, nope, its gone, rebooted, nothing, rebooted again, nothing, OK, no problem, may be it reset-ed to default setup, ran Qfinder, nothing, used reset button for 3 sec, nothing, used reset button for 10 sec, nothing, Qfinder still can't find, run ping in the loop to get ip address, got 2, used them in the browser, nothing, Ok, may be firmware fails? And did try https://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Firmware_Recovery and it did not work. Support wants US$260 + shipping + etc to fix it.

JBOD used 3 HDDs

01EG

604 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2466297 20-Apr-2020 14:54

sampler:
This might help -> https://docs.qnap.com/nas/4.3/cat2/en/index.html?system_migration.htm

--snip--

Users can migrate their existing NAS to another NAS model with all the data and configuration retained by simply installing all the hard drives of the original (source) NAS on the new (destination) NAS according to its original hard drive order and restart the NAS.

--snip--

Sorry no warranty from me :-D .. all the best

My understanding its from Qnap to Qnap, but I will try, thanks

Amosnz

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#2466306 20-Apr-2020 15:01

I've just almost finished doing data recovery from my dead Netgear NAS (hard drive issues not psu).

If you plug your drives into a desktop computer, have a look at Reclaime for reading data. It can rebuild many types of arrays (mine is a 5 disk raid 5 btrfs volume with one missing (dead) drive and one with out of sync data, and its slowly recovering a lot of the data).

https://www.reclaime.com/download.aspx/

If you want to recover the data using a new NAS, definitely stay with the same brand.

Speedtest

01EG

604 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2466310 20-Apr-2020 15:04

Amosnz:
I've just almost finished doing data recovery from my dead Netgear NAS (hard drive issues not psu).

If you plug your drives into a desktop computer, have a look at Reclaime for reading data. It can rebuild many types of arrays (mine is a 5 disk raid 5 btrfs volume with one missing (dead) drive and one with out of sync data, and its slowly recovering a lot of the data).

https://www.reclaime.com/download.aspx/

If you want to recover the data using a new NAS, definitely stay with the same brand.

Ok, thanks.

Dynamic

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#2466311 20-Apr-2020 15:05

01EG: No, power supply is fine, I guess something else. Its 4y.o. NAS and almost every month firmware update happens, 11/4 a new firmware arrived and same procedure applied > "yes update" > "yes T&C" > "yes go head" and I left it to finish, when I came I refreshed the browser and it gone, waited another N mins, checked the LEDs, they are flashes, checked it through my router to see if its connected, nope, its gone, rebooted, nothing, rebooted again, nothing, OK, no problem, may be it reset-ed to default setup, ran Qfinder, nothing, used reset button for 3 sec, nothing, used reset button for 10 sec, nothing, Qfinder still can't find, run ping in the loop to get ip address, got 2, used them in the browser, nothing, Ok, may be firmware fails? And did try https://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Firmware_Recovery and it did not work. Support wants US$260 + shipping + etc to fix it. JBOD used 3 HDDs

Hmmmm... it sounds like you have been thorough. Removing the drives was an important step for me with one firmware recovery ages ago, but if you followed those instructions, then I'm out of ideas other than a replacement device be that new or used.

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01EG

604 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2466328 20-Apr-2020 15:19

Dynamic:
Hmmmm... it sounds like you have been thorough. Removing the drives was an important step for me with one firmware recovery ages ago, but if you followed those instructions, then I'm out of ideas other than a replacement device be that new or used.

Yeah, thinking about a replacement one, don't want Qnap, a lot of complains

SomeoneSomewhere

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#2466330 20-Apr-2020 15:24

What model QNAP is it? The older ones based on Intel chips had a display connection and you could get a terminal from that, or boot off a USB.

RAID arrays were set up with mdadm, a linux software raid tool. JBOD disks are probably just formatted ext4 or similar?

01EG

604 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2466341 20-Apr-2020 15:35

SomeoneSomewhere:
What model QNAP is it? The older ones based on Intel chips had a display connection and you could get a terminal from that, or boot off a USB.

RAID arrays were set up with mdadm, a linux software raid tool. JBOD disks are probably just formatted ext4 or similar?

TS-531P, the CPU is AnnapurnaLabs, an Amazon company Alpine AL-314 Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A15 processor(?) JBOD disks were formatted by default, whatever is was, believe it is ext4.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#2466410 20-Apr-2020 16:40

Yeah, that's an ARM model. Some of the older ones could actually just be booted off a linux disk connected to a display, which helps a bit.

I would first try putting the disks into a machine running Linux and see if they can be mounted.

nitro

657 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2466411 20-Apr-2020 16:41

SomeoneSomewhere:

What model QNAP is it? The older ones based on Intel chips had a display connection and you could get a terminal from that, or boot off a USB.

RAID arrays were set up with mdadm, a linux software raid tool. JBOD disks are probably just formatted ext4 or similar?

this makes sense, though i haven't tried it myself.

the easiest way for you would probably be getting a new qnap nas. i have moved disks from a qnap to a new qnap before (nas upgrade) and it worked without a hitch.

01EG

604 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2466422 20-Apr-2020 16:53

SomeoneSomewhere:
I would first try putting the disks into a machine running Linux and see if they can be mounted.

Thats a bit of problem, don't have any Linux, Win10 supports Ubuntu cmd, will it work?

nitro:
the easiest way for you would probably be getting a new qnap nas.

There are complains about their NAs/s, have to think

nitro

657 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2466449 20-Apr-2020 17:16

01EG:There are complains about their NAs/s, have to think

you can say that of any brand of nas... :)

another option would be to get a cheap qnap off trademe (not sure if nas can be shipped right now), and just put your disks there to read them. even just a 2-bay one would probably be fine, since it's jbod. or borrow someone's (spare/backup), perhaps? just to allow you to get your data back.

01EG

604 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2466531 20-Apr-2020 18:41

nitro:
another option would be to get a cheap qnap off trademe (not sure if nas can be shipped right now), and just put your disks there to read them. even just a 2-bay one would probably be fine, since it's jbod. or borrow someone's (spare/backup), perhaps? just to allow you to get your data back.

Unfortunately there are no qnap cheap nas/s on trademe. The cheapest option I found is Asustor 4 bay ~$429, that was my question is it possibe to use other brand/s

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