@scottalanmiller said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

@openit said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

Again, since it is RAID 10, it will have a pair (for striping), is it HDD 1 and HDD 2 will be pair one ? HDD 3 and HDD 4 will be pair 2?

Only QNAP will know that one. I bet no one has it documented.

I asked QNAP Support on this, below is his reply:

" Due to I do not have information of the RAID array metadata, the information provided below is based on default assumption, which is same as your reply.

Disk 1 and Disk 2 is first pair

Disk 3 and Disk 4 is second pair"

I went with straight configuration while setting up RAID on this, so I believe it will have same default pair.

In that case, Disk 1 and Disk 2 are like RAID 0 array, and I can use any recovery software with these two drives, which supports RAID 0 to recover, obviously by taking precautions like disk status check and dupe the drives?
@scottalanmiller @CCWTech

@scottalanmiller said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

@openit said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

It seems, you are suggesting here like below scenario?

have a server which takes more hard drives, let it be lower end server
install hardware raid controller
insert as many hard drives the raid controller or server supports
install linux on top (prefably) CentOS, and run SMB Shares

If yes, I have similar plans with Dell PE T310 older server I have.

Hardware RAID is an option. But MD RAID is free and comes with Linux and it was fine for you to use when you had the lower grade QNAP, so should be even better now. So while hardware RAID is great, it's also not free. MD RAID is free and 100% acceptable.

As someone said above, not as many drives as you can, there is a "right number of drives" and that might be two, four, six, or maybe more than the box will support. But don't just assume that more is better, there are some big benefits to RAID 1 with just two drives if they are big enough and fast enough for you.

But yes, in general, this is the advised path. A NAS is nothing more than this, but typically with a nearly pointless web interface added on and cheaper consumer hardware underneath. A NAS only means it's a "limited server", nothing more. A QNAP is considered a consumer level device, so several steps below an entry level general purpose server. And file serving is the most common function of a server traditionally.

NOthing wrong with a NAS but it offers nothing special. It's not safer, faster, or more featureful than a traditional server. It's actually less safe, same speed or slower, and definitely far fewer features than a normal server.

In this case, MD RAID is software raid, does that means, I will allocate one hard drive for OS (which linux by the way?), and connect 2 or 4 additional hard drives other than Hard Drive for OS.

Then implement RAID on additional hard drives with MD RAID?

I already have RAID Controller in this PE T310, Perc 6i/r, which supports only RAID 1 with 2TB max Virtual Disk, which is almost no use space for me.

@PhlipElder said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

GetDataBack with RAID Reconstructor is a utility set we've used to recover data from a set of drives that were originally in a NAS box.

Don't see any option for RAID 10
https://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

@scottalanmiller said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

@openit said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

SMB IT always sucks at budget, if you have other expense at that time, you will need to wait for sometime to get new things.

Actually, what burned you here was overspending, not being cheap. QNAP is more expensive than a small equivalent Linux general purpose server.

Might be general impression on NAS made me to go with NAS.

It seems, you are suggesting here like below scenario?

• have a server which takes more hard drives, let it be lower end server
• install hardware raid controller
• insert as many hard drives the raid controller or server supports
• install linux on top (prefably) CentOS, and run SMB Shares

If yes, I have similar plans with Dell PE T310 older server I have.

@CCWTech said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

@openit said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

@CCWTech said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

@scottalanmiller said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

This is when you call Allen at @CCWTech

Thanks! Yes we do data recovery. https://ccwtech.com/data-recovery-services/

Well, we are in other side of globe from you I believe, no way of getting service. Any suggestions would be great.

Where are you?

Middle East.

@Pete-S said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

It's not very smart using RAID10 on a small NAS. I bet you don't have more than a 1Gbit ethernet connection which means that you'll saturate it with RAID1 using modern harddrives. So you added complexity and risk without any benefit.

If you had used RAID1 you could just pop the drives in another linux system and read the data.

I'm also not a fan of putting the OS on data drives on a dedicated fileserver/NAS. But that is how they do it. So maybe you have a corrupt OS, maybe you have a hardware problem on the NAS, maybe you have one or several drives that are bad.

Right now it's better to send it away if you need to recover data from the drives. I don't know if QNAP has that service.

I was not sure that I will not gain anything if I use 1Gbit with RAID 10, anyway, can utilize other network cards on it, in that case. But, with 4 hard drives on RAID 1 will give less space to use?

I assume, QNAP has it's OS on the device, not on Hard Drives I inserted, isn't it?

@scottalanmiller said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

@openit said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

Once I connected, how can I combine data from HDD 1 and HDD 2 as singe drive to get the data? with any software?

Only MD RAID. Make sure it is set to read only or you can EASILY hose the images.

How about using these tools on Windows? I would prefer graphical in this situation than Linux CLI.

http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/library/raid10-recovery.aspx

https://www.z-a-recovery.com/tutorials/raid-recovery.aspx

@bnrstnr said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

Is buying another QNAP box out of the question?

I know with Synology you can move the drives to a new Synology box and restore everything from the drives. Assuming it's the box that went bad and the drives are still good, of course.

It is available with QNAP as well.

Don't see any chance to buy it soon, in between I need to look at data if possible. SMB IT always sucks at budget, if you have other expense at that time, you will need to wait for sometime to get new things.

@CCWTech said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

@scottalanmiller said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

This is when you call Allen at @CCWTech

Thanks! Yes we do data recovery. https://ccwtech.com/data-recovery-services/

Well, we are in other side of globe from you I believe, no way of getting service. Any suggestions would be great.

@RojoLoco said in How can we recover data from Hard Drives were on RAID 10 without controller?:

If you have a server with a hardware RAID controller, you might be able to connect all 4 and import the foreign configuration. We have done this on different Dell models when in a pinch (funny how those dev systems that didn't need to be backed up suddenly became mission critical to recover).

It's a QNAP, situation is not on Server. Even if it is fine, just in case, I don't have RAID Controller that supports RAID 10.