Getting data off the drives of a dead NAS

[Crackle]

Basically, how. My Zyxel NAS has died, looks like the mainboard has gone. Zyxel were at first less than helpful, saying it was out of support, tough. I told them I'd posted their curt repsonse on social media. After that, they re-considered but only confirmed what I already knew; it's dead.

Anyway, I'd failed to appreciate that it might not be as easy as I thought it was to get the data back which was on two mirrored 1Gb drives. Stupidly, now in hindsight, I hadn't backed this data up anywhere else, well a lot of it anyway so I have to access at least one of the drives which is proving difficult.

I've tried a couple of programs, Diskinternals and ext2fsd but I don't completely understand how they work, especially the latter but neither can access the data in a caddy, even though both can see it. I tried a Linux boot disk but I think I'll need to attach the disk as a Sata device, which I'll try tomorrow.

Can anyone offer any help. All the solutions look deep into Linux territory and that is far from a strong point. I've sent Zyxel support another mail but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[MossCommuter]

Step one: clone both drives (clonezilla?) Then start to play

At least you then backed up at least what to you have

 

[Crackle]

Step one: clone both drives (clonezilla?) Then start to play

At least you then backed up at least what to you have

Good thought Mossy, I'm rather shitting myself that I might lose the data if I eff it up.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

There's a walkthrough at: https://kb.zyxel.com/KB/searchArticle!gwsViewDetail.action?articleOid=013308&lang=EN that looks useful if you've got the hardware available.
Got to admit my Linux experience is uncomfortably long ago.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

I told them I'd posted their curt repsonse on social media.

 

[Crackle]

There's a walkthrough at: https://kb.zyxel.com/KB/searchArticle!gwsViewDetail.action?articleOid=013308&lang=EN that looks useful if you've got the hardware available.
Got to admit my Linux experience is uncomfortably long ago.

Excellent Google fu. I had found a similar set of instructions which is basically where I was aiming to go tomorrow. I hope I can just use one disk as I think one of the SATA channels on this motherboard is unreliable, just to complicate things.

 

[Crackle]

View attachment 370824

It worked and I was desperate.

 

[aferris2]

I've never tried recovering data from a NAS, but did have to recover data from a failed laptop disk. Put the drive into a caddy but windows wouldn't recognise it. Did a bit of googling and came up with testdisk which did read most of the data (even though there were portions of the disk that were unreadable). It's not that user friendly but the instructions in the Wiki did help. Good idea to clone the disk(s) first.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

Ignoring the brand naming here's something that looks a little simpler: https://community.wd.com/t/howto-re...ed-drive-when-the-sharespace-has-failed/26029

With this sort of thing I tend to just google like crazy until I see things in my comfort zone - and this is the comfiest I've seen so far as long as it's RAID 1.

 

[Crackle]

Ignoring the brand naming here's something that looks a little simpler: https://community.wd.com/t/howto-re...ed-drive-when-the-sharespace-has-failed/26029

With this sort of thing I tend to just google like crazy until I see things in my comfort zone - and this is the comfiest I've seen so far as long as it's RAID 1.

Excellent: yes it's Raid1. That confirms the other one you found which confirms the one I found. So between the three I should be able to figure this out. Hopefully Marcel from support will get back to me tomorrow as well. my comfort level has gone up slightly. I may actually sleep tonight.

 

[Wobblers]

It worked and I was desperate.

Aren't you always?

I see it's Raid 1. Both disks ought to be a mirror image of each other. If you put the disks into another NAS set up as Raid 1 or a PC which can be set to Raid 1 (the OS will need to be on a separate disk!) it should be reasonably straight forward to recover your data. Assuming that it's the NAS controller that died - which seems to be the case. Buy another NAs and shove the disks into that? (And back it up onto an external hdd this time!)

 

[rich p]

How come normal human beings like me and @Marmion, who have no idea what a farkung Zyzel doodah whatthefark is, don't have all these problems that you have? You IT tits are just attention-seeking, needy tarts.
Humble etceteras....

 

[chriswoody]

I see it's Raid 1. Both disks ought to be a mirror image of each other. If you put the disks into another NAS set up as Raid 1 or a PC which can be set to Raid 1 (the OS will need to be on a separate disk!) it should be reasonably straight forward to recover your data. Assuming that it's the NAS controller that died - which seems to be the case. Buy another NAs and shove the disks into that? (And back it up onto an external hdd this time!)

This was also my thoughts, it sounds like it's the motherboard in the Nas enclosure itself which is gone. So surely that will have zero affect on the data stored on the harddrives themselves.

Just plugging them into a new NAS enclosure should enable you to access the data with minimal fuss.

 

[rich p]

How come normal human beings like me and @Marmion, who have no idea what a farkung Zyzel doodah whatthefark is don't have all these problems you have? You IT tits are just attention-seeking, needy tarts.
Humble etceteras....

p.s. I was a bit pissed when I wrote this last night and I would like to say that not all IT tarts, are necessarily tarts.

 

[Crackle]

p.s. I was a bit pissed when I wrote this last night and I would like to say that not all IT tarts, are necessarily tarts.

Don't apologise, Rich. It takes years to cultivate that kind of disregard for IT users in support staff and you've just got it naturally in spades. You missed your calling. You and Marcel should get together.