NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

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radiofab
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NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by radiofab »

Hope this is the right forum.

First: I am no techie. Please keep it simple.

So, I have a TS-469 NAS, 4WD x 2TB. Oe day all of a sudden not accessible. QNAP support suggested that the whole architecture is corrupted, turn it off to avoid making it worse, and that all files should be recovered with some disaster recovery software.
Now, I have a Mac, and can't find anything that would help.
I simply got a SATA to HDMI and I thought each of the 4 drives could be read as external. Nope. "This drive can not be read by the computer".
My issue with taking it somewhere for file recovery is obviously privacy, I have family pictures, sensitive data from financial to work, etc saved there.

Suggestions? Pls help.
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dolbyman
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Re: NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by dolbyman »

Take it to a professional data recovery company (they do it all the time and don't care about snooping your private pictures)

Next time have backups (would have been cheaper than the 1000s of dollars this is going to cost you)
radiofab wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2023 1:39 am
I simply got a SATA to HDMI
I would REALLY like to see THAT adapter .. lol
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howarmat
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Re: NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by howarmat »

Should be able to maybe reload the firmware and see if that works. After that I am not 100% sure of any other good way to restore it without as mentioned some special software. You could just nuke the whole thing start new and load the backups which you surely have made. :)
dosborne
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Re: NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by dosborne »

As is covered many times in these forums, you can't easily take drives out of a completely different system architecture and plug them in to a MAC or PC.

First, the NAS uses a completely different operating system (Linux) and presumably your drives were configured in a RAID array where the data is actually striped across all the drives, so at a minimum, you would have to mount 3 of them to even begin any sort of recovery (using I assume you meant USB to SATA cable). There are other layers of issues you would likely be facing on top of that too.

Messing about trying to mount a drive here and there puts the actual data at more risk since you don't know what you are doing, and could easily make things worse.

You need to determine if the NAS is usable on its own or if it has a hardware issue. Potentially, if the drives are ok, you could migrate them to a new compatible unit and recover your data.

If the drives themselves are toast, and the NAS is actually working, then your chance of data recovery without taking them to a professional is minimal.

Without more information though it is impossible to diagnose. "Inaccessible" could be a simple networking issue for example. You say QNAP suspects the ",whole architecture is corrupted" but that is nebulous. For example, does the NAS power up? You need to start with some basic detail.
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radiofab
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Re: NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by radiofab »

@dolbyman, I obviously meant Sata to USB.

@dosborne, thanks. The NAS powers up. I've left this behind for other priorities, but at the time of support Qnap suggested all drives are affected. I understand my best, if not only, option is to check with a professional, my only issue is access to private data and information. But maybe I am over worried.

Thanks
The WalL
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Re: NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by The WalL »

@radiofab - did you resolve this? I have run into a similar issue with the recent upgrade and subsequent drive failure and bricking of the NAS...all within a 5-min period.

I swear I had a RAID-1 setup but the first recovery shop thinks it was a RAID-0...and wants over $5,000 to recover data. I want to get a second set of eyes on it.
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dolbyman
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Re: NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by dolbyman »

Them give it to a second recovery shop...very much impossible to say from here
The WalL
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Re: NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by The WalL »

For anyone that comes here looking for it...I ended up just buying ReclaiMe software for $200 and recovered all the data on my own. It was painful, and QNAP puts things in weird places, but all the data was there, even if it was scattered a bit, and over two weekends, I recovered 100% of my data.

Now debating if I should go buy another NAS or just dump things into a cloud storage solution and access when necessary. If the life expectancy of a NAS is 5 years, then $100/year cloud storage sounds far more cost effective in the long run than a local NAS.
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dolbyman
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Re: NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by dolbyman »

I have a 419p+ operational since 2010 ..24/7 (the disks were swapped a couple of times obviously)

So the usual lifespan is not just a handful of years...but you NEED backups..Make it at least a local USB drive (they have thise with up to 22TB currently)

Sure you can also backup to the cloud, but unless your internet speed is blazing fast, this is not comparable with local storage
FSC830
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Re: NAS not accessible, need to recover files!

Post by FSC830 »

The WalL wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 10:20 am ... It was painful, and QNAP puts things in weird places, but all the data was there, even if it was scattered a bit, and over two weekends, I recovered 100% of my data.
...
A Cat1 NAS (legcay) is easy to manage and data is in 3rd partition, so no weird things here, just some knowledge about QNAPs partitioning necessary. This you can find more than a dozen times here and in internet.

A new NAS with HAL firmware and using pools, data recovery is impossible (or near to impossible). All what I have read here recovery fails not at the raid level (mdadm), but at the LVM level.
Seems, that QNAP uses some proprietary settings for that. So be glad, that you was successfull.
As said, backups are mandatory. Everytime.

Regards
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