Help requested on data recovery

[bobby4]

I had a TS-421 with 4 disks running in raid 1, i.e. 1 mirroring to 2, and 3 to 4. I decided to upgrade the first two disks to larger ones, so I selected the command that I thought would break the raid on disk 1 and 2 (I forgot now what it was). I removed the two old disks, and installed my two new 1 and 2 disks as single disks, then attached one of my old ones externally via usb. However, it shows up as 4 separate usb drives, of which two smaller ones are mounted, and the large sdi3 (1.8 terabytes, obviously the one with my data) doesn't appear as mounted. I tried the other old mirror, and see the same thing. Panicking, I tried to put one back in the QNAP, but it looks the same way. Is there any way to rescue my data?

[ddrecovery]

I had a TS-421 with 4 disks running in raid 1, i.e. 1 mirroring to 2, and 3 to 4. I decided to upgrade the first two disks to larger ones, so I selected the command that I thought would break the raid on disk 1 and 2 (I forgot now what it was). I removed the two old disks, and installed my two new 1 and 2 disks as single disks, then attached one of my old ones externally via usb. However, it shows up as 4 separate usb drives, of which two smaller ones are mounted, and the large sdi3 (1.8 terabytes, obviously the one with my data) doesn't appear as mounted. I tried the other old mirror, and see the same thing. Panicking, I tried to put one back in the QNAP, but it looks the same way. Is there any way to rescue my data?

Could you just clarify a few things.
When you say 'upgraded the first two disks', do you mean 1 & 3? as these contained the primary data. The NAS would probably be saving data to disks 1 and 3 and mirroring to 2 & 4. A RAID 1 can only have a volume as large as the smallest drive, so even if you installed a larger drive, it would only show the volume as the same size as the smaller drive. Your USB connection to the drive may be showing the separate volumes (partitions) on that particular drive. This is probably what you are seeing. Also if your new drive is not formatted, it will not mount.

If your data is important to you I would strongly suggest finding professional help. Dealing with a RAID is complex and your stand a chance of deleting all your data if you mirror to the wrong drive. If you have not already done so, mark each drive so you know which is which.

Desert Data Recovery, Phoenix AZ

[bobby4]

Thanks for the response. I was just running Raid 1, so I wouldn't expect recovery to be complex.

I indeed had Disk 1 & 2 mirrored (Raid 1), and bought replacements for 1 & 2 (3 and 4 are not important for my current problem). I intended to break the raid (in retrospect unnecessary) and remove them, install the new disks, then mount one of the old ones externally and copy the data over. Unfortunately I thought that breaking the raid was necessary, but I couldn't find any reference to breaking the mirroring - so I selected 'remove' under volume management (it seemed logical at the time). As it turns out this means' remove' the data partition, not the other ones - just the data one - which is irreversible according to QNAP support. I don't think the support person knows anything about file systems.

Fortunately it seems that I can carve out the files still, hopefully with minimal loss. I am currently using 'Diskinternals Linux Recovery' which seems to be (very slowly) craving and recovering them. If that fails I can try some command line forensic utilities, or foremost - or even do it 'by hand' using something like Winhex.

I recently migrated from nas4free for a simpler user interface and friendlier experience, but after years of relatively trouble free life on nas4free I am kind of regretting the decision. I should have stayed with what worked.