Question My NAS died but the disks are all good - - - can I rebuild the RAID using a 5 disk USB Hub ?

[mere_mortal]

Hi,

I have an old Thecus N5200XXX NAS which has died. It was running 5 x 3TB disk in RAID 5 one volume around 11TB in size. The disks are all in good working order. It wasn't a crucial NAS and it's functions had been taken over by newer QNAP NAS's and as such wasn't checked as much as it should have been. It had a lot of old data on it which was regularly backed up however the RSYNC had failed and so backups run up to November 2024. Most of the data is perfectly fine however there were a couple of newer excel files that would be good to recover. Not sure if they were .xls or .xlsx just that they were Excel spreadsheets.

All disks are perfectly accessible individually/no errors/working fine. I have acquired a 5 disk USB 3 HUB

I've seen there are a few different software RAID/NAS "rebuilder" programmes such as Hetman raid and ReClaiMe and Stellar Data Recovery amongst others. I've downloaded Demos of those and they do seem to see that there is a RAID 5 volume that is rebuildable. Before I embark down this path I wanted to check if anyone else has been in this scenario or has any pointers. For example is iteven possible to rebuild the Volume using a 5 disk USB Hub? Or whether I even need too? Could I just run a normal file recovery software like EaseUS or something similar on each drive and search/recover all the .xls and .xlsx I can?

Appreciate any help or guidance.

Thanks in advance.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi,

I have an old Thecus N5200XXX NAS which has died. It was running 5 x 3TB disk in RAID 5 one volume around 11TB in size. The disks are all in good working order. It wasn't a crucial NAS and it's functions had been taken over by newer QNAP NAS's and as such wasn't checked as much as it should have been. It had a lot of old data on it which was regularly backed up however the RSYNC had failed and so backups run up to November 2024. Most of the data is perfectly fine however there were a couple of newer excel files that would be good to recover. Not sure if they were .xls or .xlsx just that they were Excel spreadsheets.

All disks are perfectly accessible individually/no errors/working fine. I have acquired a 5 disk USB 3 HUB

I've seen there are a few different software RAID/NAS "rebuilder" programmes such as Hetman raid and ReClaiMe and Stellar Data Recovery amongst others. I've downloaded Demos of those and they do seem to see that there is a RAID 5 volume that is rebuildable. Before I embark down this path I wanted to check if anyone else has been in this scenario or has any pointers. For example is iteven possible to rebuild the Volume using a 5 disk USB Hub? Or whether I even need too? Could I just run a normal file recovery software like EaseUS or something similar on each drive and search/recover all the .xls and .xlsx I can?

Appreciate any help or guidance.

Thanks in advance.

If these were JBOD then your idea might work. But if they were a RAID volume, I don't believe a USB hub could be used to reassemble the RAID. You are probably going to have to get a PC motherboard, run linux and hope you can reassemble the RAID. Then you will have to have the proper file system support loaded into your Linux host. Thecus supported multiple file systems.
Maybe look at this thread -- https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/430529/help-recovering-a-raid5-array

 

[evermorex76]

RAID splits bits of each file's data across the drives, so no, you can't just access an individual drive to locate an individual file or even the pieces of a file to be recombined, because standard recovery software like EaseUS doesn't understand the RAID format. There's nothing on an individual drive to indicate that a chunk of data is part of an Excel file, for example, and that software doesn't know how to put parts together anyway.

I don't see why the enclosure couldn't be used to access the RAID array even in Windows, as the drives would all be visible to the OS. Software RAID doesn't care how the drives are connected except for artificial limits (like Windows not allowing you to RAID separate USB drives). The software mentioned is just going to act like a specific-purpose Windows version of the software RAID used by the OS on the NAS, a translator, making the RAID array accessible. As long as that software can read the file system, it doesn't matter that Windows can't. From the software interface you can copy the data from the array to another location.

You shouldn't even need to run any "recovery" past that point, as there probably is no corruption or other data loss from the system just dying suddenly.

Of course, running over a single USB connection while accessing 5 drives the array is going to perform TERRIBLY. Also I assume you mean a 5-disk USB enclosure, which is different from a USB hub although that's irrelevant here.

ReclaiMe free version (ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery) only makes a full image of the array that you have to store somewhere else; not sure if that would mean the full 11TB or only the size of the amount of data you had, while the paid version (ReclaiMe File Recovery) lets you do individual file recovery. You will need the Ultimate license to be able to recover from the NAS file system. They offer a 7-day license to save a little money $120 instead of 190), but I'm not even sure 7 days would be enough with USB unless you only need a few files. They have an option to pay for an upgrade to the lifetime license if needed.

Stellar's RAID recovery software is only capable of reading Windows file systems after mounting the RAID array, so you can forget about that one. Hetman RAID Recovery costs $500 to be able to work with a 5-disk array and it doesn't sound like you need the files THAT badly.

You could also do it with Linux without buying anything by booting to a Live image on USB and doing whatever is necessary to mount the array (even via USB) and then the filesystem, then copy the files to your Windows drive. This would all be "native" and free, but of course you have to learn how to do it rather than just installing a single application that does it all.

 

[mere_mortal]

If these were JBOD then your idea might work. But if they were a RAID volume, I don't believe a USB hub could be used to reassemble the RAID. You are probably going to have to get a PC motherboard, run linux and hope you can reassemble the RAID. Then you will have to have the proper file system support loaded into your Linux host. Thecus supported multiple file systems.
Maybe look at this thread -- https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/430529/help-recovering-a-raid5-array

Thankyou. That's an interesting thread. I've got Zorin running on a laptop so I can try that for sure. Thankyou.

 

[mere_mortal]

ReclaiMe free version (ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery) only makes a full image of the array that you have to store somewhere else; not sure if that would mean the full 11TB or only the size of the amount of data you had, while the paid version (ReclaiMe File Recovery) lets you do individual file recovery. You will need the Ultimate license to be able to recover from the NAS file system. They offer a 7-day license to save a little money $120 instead of 190), but I'm not even sure 7 days would be enough with USB unless you only need a few files. They have an option to pay for an upgrade to the lifetime license if needed.

Stellar's RAID recovery software is only capable of reading Windows file systems after mounting the RAID array, so you can forget about that one. Hetman RAID Recovery costs $500 to be able to work with a 5-disk array and it doesn't sound like you need the files THAT badly.

You could also do it with Linux without buying anything by booting to a Live image on USB and doing whatever is necessary to mount the array (even via USB) and then the filesystem, then copy the files to your Windows drive. This would all be "native" and free, but of course you have to learn how to do it rather than just installing a single application that does it all.

Thankyou really helpful advice. I've focused on ReclaiMe to start. It "sees" the disks and the RAID 5 which is a great start. I could definitely hook the USB hub up to Zorin. Can you recommend a software RAID utitility to use? Or better to run the commands here?

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/430529/help-recovering-a-raid5-array

Or better to see how I go with this ReclaiMe scan on Windows to start with?

Yes it is SLOW very slow. The scan is at around 8.6% as of writing this and it's been running around 16 hours.

ReclaiMe

5 disks

Thankyou so much for your response. Really helpful to give me pointers as to which direction to go in.

 

[fzabkar]

DMDE can reconstruct a virtual RAID. It costs US$20. If you have a single large HDD (12TB+), then DMDE's free version will clone your virtual RAID to the 12TB+ HDD.

https://dmde.com/

Another totally free alternative is mdadm (a Linux tool).

 

[evermorex76]

DMDE can reconstruct a virtual RAID. It costs US$20. If you have a single large HDD (12TB+), then DMDE's free version will clone your virtual RAID to the 12TB+ HDD.

Free version of DMDE says it will let you recover up to 4000 individual files at a time from a single directory (with no limit on number of requests so it sounds like it's just a matter of you having to make the effort to go back and select a batch of files over and over, or deciding $20 is worth it to avoid the hassle and do a selection one time), so that would seem to be all that's needed in this case, and no need to clone the whole RAID.

It's always suspicious when something is so much cheaper than everybody else but claims to have just as many features or even more (the free version would cover the vast majority of people's needs, and $133 for the whole shebang is nothing for somebody using it commercially), especially when there's apparently zero information about the developer and it's proprietary (could be phoning home for all you know). But, it seems to be just one guy, with no support other than sending an email and hoping for a reply, no history of other software or knowledge of their safety. Kind of brings back the old shareware days when somebody would just see a need for a utility and make it, then send it out into the world and if they happened to make a few bucks on it that was a bonus.

 

[fzabkar]

Free version of DMDE says it will let you recover up to 4000 individual files at a time from a single directory (with no limit on number of requests so it sounds like it's just a matter of you having to make the effort to go back and select a batch of files over and over, or deciding $20 is worth it to avoid the hassle and do a selection one time), so that would seem to be all that's needed in this case, and no need to clone the whole RAID.

It's always suspicious when something is so much cheaper than everybody else but claims to have just as many features or even more (the free version would cover the vast majority of people's needs, and $133 for the whole shebang is nothing for somebody using it commercially), especially when there's apparently zero information about the developer and it's proprietary (could be phoning home for all you know). But, it seems to be just one guy, with no support other than sending an email and hoping for a reply, no history of other software or knowledge of their safety. Kind of brings back the old shareware days when somebody would just see a need for a utility and make it, then send it out into the world and if they happened to make a few bucks on it that was a bonus.

If you clone the whole RAID with the free version, then your OS can mount the file system.

As for the author, he is very responsive to emails. I have reported two minor bugs. He dealt with the first bug in a subsequent release, and provided me with a workaround for the second bug in the interim. That's the only contact I've had with him.

BTW, the gold standard in data recovery software is UFS Explorer. It is also written by one individual.

 

[evermorex76]

If you clone the whole RAID with the free version, then your OS can mount the file system.

Assuming you're using an OS that is capable of reading that filesystem (which isn't the case here) or that you need more than a few files and to get back to work with all of that data in the original folder structure (which isn't the case here). A useful feature, just not needed by OP. Plus, it's back to that USB transfer rate - it sounds like it would take over a week just to finish the scan with ReclaiMe, let alone actually copying the data.