[SOLVED] Recover data from a Raid5 NAS thats bricked

stookie72

Commendable
May 11, 2017
10
0
1,520
Hi guys.
So no real help from WD and other places. Therefore I turn to you.

Situation:
4 Bay NAS (WD My Cloud DL4100), possibly bricked by Firmware update, no boot.

Sought after solution:
Is there a way that I can read out the individual disks (3.5" USB Sata Dock available), copy them to my WIN10 Machine, somehow put them together into a virtual RAID5 and read the data to be copied onto new NAS?

Knowledge:
Windows skills, hardly any Linux.
I know the drives are ext4 formatted (Linux).

Alternative sought after solution:
Simple way to unbrick my DL4100 (booting from a USB Stick sort of).

Thank you for any insight.
 
Solution
DMDE costs $20 and can likely do the job.

But if you want to try recovery the Linux way boot up system-rescue-cd.org then open a terminal window and post the output of the command: fsarchiver probe 2>&1 | nc termbin.com 9999

This will create a random 4 character link on termbin with a table showing a disk and filesystem summary. With that info we can offer you more advice.
it's possible a Linux distro might recognize this collection of connected drives (barring any encryption) as a RAID 5 (keep track of drive 1-4 order!), and be able to access it, but, WIndows will be completely less than useless on WD's Linux-based/Ext4/ RAID format...
 
Last edited:
From whatever I've read about this NAS - it runs on Intel Atom CPU, so find out how you can hack it (it could involve some soldering) to recover the OS inside. And I'd keep WD on the hook to help you out with recovering.

As for the data - if you can, make disk-to-disk backups of the drives inside, and work with these images. And I'm afraid you will have to hone your Linux skills.
 

S Haran

Distinguished
Jul 12, 2013
219
0
18,910
DMDE costs $20 and can likely do the job.

But if you want to try recovery the Linux way boot up system-rescue-cd.org then open a terminal window and post the output of the command: fsarchiver probe 2>&1 | nc termbin.com 9999

This will create a random 4 character link on termbin with a table showing a disk and filesystem summary. With that info we can offer you more advice.
 
Solution