I have a WD MyCloud 4-bay NAS with 4x 3tb drives in it setup in a RAID10 configuration (with a total RAIDed capacity of 5.5tb). A drive had failed and I got it replaced. When I entered the dashboard to have it added, I noticed one of the 3tb drives was showing as having a capacity of 4.4gb. Now the NAS says that there are no configured volumes. Anyone have any ideas on how to retain the data that's on the drives? I had about 5.4tb of data I would like to not lose.
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1Another case of incompetence killing the cat, sadly. I got seriously stern warnings about taking backups 30 years ago - how times have NOT changed. – TomTom Nov 27 '21 at 11:10
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Voting to close: Questions should demonstrate reasonable information technology management practices. Questions that relate to unsupported hardware or software platforms or unmaintained environments may not be suitable for Server Fault. Not taking backups is maybe acceptable when you work at the counter at McDonalds - but NOT when you are responsible for data. – TomTom Nov 28 '21 at 11:27
3 Answers
RAID is not a backup. If you have important data, take backups.
There are recovery options though, which have 0% - 100% probability of getting your data back.
The basic process is to take image copies of the hard drives to other hard drives, and then try to reconstruct the arrays from the images. To actually do this, you need to know how drives, RAID systems and filesystems interact with each other.
If you don't have such knowledge, then your only option is a data recovery company.
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... and monitor your RAID, scrub periodically and have notifications about component status. Unmonitored RAID equals no redundancy, because in this case you only recall there was a RAID when it was already failed below its survival mark.
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Anyone have any ideas on how to retain the data that's on the drives?
There is no data on the drives. THere are fragments of data, but you literally ask how to put together a mirror from half the pieces.
There is something like common sense. Which includes backup - since 30 years or so. Ever since leaving school back then i have been told times and times ago how people ruined companies by not making backups.
So, SOEMONE decided to not make backups or SOMEONE decided to not grant you the funds when you asked. That person is legally responsible for gross neglect and incompetence, should your boss want to pursue that legally.
The only answer we can give is: Reinitialize and restore from backup. Not that hard - you DO have tapes or at least disc backups. Now you may realize why there are still tapes around.
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