Accidentially removed my RAID-5 Volume

[excellens]

I have accidentally delete my RAID-5 volume by pressing the "Remove Now" button in the view Home | Disk Management | Volume Management.

I have not changed anything after this, and now I wonder (desperately) if the volume is able to recover?
The disks are maintained as they where when I removed the volume (see attached image).

Is it possible to restore the volume, without erasing data?

[sl1000]

there could be a chance that it still is recoverable but it will need some tinkering on the qnap shell. If you want i could have look, but can't promise anything.

do you by chance ever have run the command fdisk -lu on your system, and saved the output somewhere?

[excellens]

I just did an output, but I haven't got any records from before I removed the RAID-5 Volume.
The current output is:


----------------------------------------------------------
[~] # fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 8 1060289 530141 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1060296 2120579 530142 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 2120584 1952507969 975193693 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 1952507976 1953503999 498012 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sda4: 469 MB, 469893120 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 114720 cylinders, total 917760 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Disk /dev/sda4 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 8 1060289 530141 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 1060296 2120579 530142 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3 2120584 1952507969 975193693 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 1952507976 1953503999 498012 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 8 1060289 530141 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 1060296 2120579 530142 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc3 2120584 1952507969 975193693 83 Linux
/dev/sdc4 1952507976 1953503999 498012 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdd: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 * 8 1060289 530141 83 Linux
/dev/sdd2 1060296 2120579 530142 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdd3 2120584 1952507969 975193693 83 Linux
/dev/sdd4 1952507976 1953503999 498012 83 Linux

Disk /dev/md9: 542 MB, 542769152 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 132512 cylinders, total 1060096 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Disk /dev/md9 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdt: 1000.1 GB, 1000175828992 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121597 cylinders, total 1953468416 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdt1 2048 1953468415 976733184 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/md4: 542 MB, 542769152 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 132512 cylinders, total 1060096 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Disk /dev/md4 doesn't contain a valid partition table
[~] # fdisk -lu
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Glad for all help I can get!

[sl1000]

hmmm, oke so the partition is still there, but the raidset is removed and maybe also the filesystem is gone.

could you give me access through teamviewer? (pm me the access details if so)

[excellens]

I think it's outrageous that you can remove your RAID volumen without any security questions, pop-up or other security functionality.
What was QNAP thinking when they implemented that low security functionality!?

My misstake (and yes it was my fault) was that I thought I was going to remove my USB drive that has the same Volume size as the Raid volume.
I didn't look that thouroughly and just clicked, and in a second all my data was lost!

I really recommend users to be careful with this and my message to QNAP is: CHANGE THE FUNCTIONALITY and implement a security function or heads up for users that press "Remove Voluime" in the Volume Management view.

[sl1000]

let me help... maybe we can still recover the data...

[nasywasy]

I also hit 'Remove Now' accidentally. It is indeed ridiculously easy to do this. How did you guys get on with the recovery?

[nasywasy]

To anyone who's done this, try the following.
1. Immediately after hitting 'Remove Now', disconnect your drives from the QNAP box. I'm not sure whether the QNAP blows the meta-data for the volumes away immediately from the disks, or whether it just removes the disks from the QNAP volumes listed: i.e. leaves the disks alone.
2. Connect the disk up to a Linux box & run palimpsest. This is a nice graphical viewer/modifier of LVM's, which is how QNAP creates the volumes. You may be able to just mount the disk if the old volume info hasn't been touched.
3. In my case, the volumes where reset back to factory defaults, probably because I also hit 'Check Now'. Not sure. That's when I tried out R-Studio (for Linux in my case). I downloaded the demo version & left it scanning overnight. It found lots of PNG, jpeg, avi, m4a & mkv's. i.e. all/most of my data. I bought a license & it's now restoring the files back onto (ironically) the QNAP (with a different set of disks mounted).
Hopefully, I should get most of my stuff back....