Nas drive failure, migrating drives to new Nas

[vdao]

Hi all,

 

I have a Nas that has failed due to power issues. I have purchased a new one in replacement.

 

My question is, what are to steps to migrate the data from the dead Nas drive to the new.

 

Am I able to simply slot the 4 drives into the new Nas? Will this corrupt the data in any sort?

 

Many thanks

 

V

[andy_b]

I would check with the manufacturer - they will often have a recommended process, e.g. https://kb.synology.com/en-uk/DSM/tutorial/How_to_migrate_between_Synology_NAS_DSM_6_0_and_later

[Dos_Box]

What RAID settings did you use on your old NAS? I had one fail a bit back and as it was setup as RAID 1, so I could migrate the data off a disk via a USB caddy and some software I got from somewhere (can't remember which it was as it was a bit back).

A word of caution though, if it is a different make/model of NAS enclosure then it may well try and reformat the disks to suite, but I would seriously look at getting a back up of the data first before comitting then to a new enclosure.

Oh, and make sure you have them labelled as 'disk 1', 'disk 2' etc. so they go in the right way as before!

And a final point, make sure that the firmware is at the same level as your previous one!

[vdao]

Thank you for your response.

 

I believe my old NAS was a RAID 5 setup. Would I be able to back up the data from all 4 disks using a single USB caddy? Would that corrupt the data in any sort of way?

 

My main concern is to retrieve the data from my disks.

[3s-gtech]

If the disk in the caddy is big enough, yes. The issue will be getting to the data - you may need to cobble up the old NAS to get it running long enough to pull the data off. Moving the drives may (*may*) end up destroying the data.

[PotNoodleTech]

It's unlikely you will be able to shove the disks in and hey presto - especially if it's a different make/model nas.

 

It's risky as if the new NAS tries to be clever and create/adopt the raid array you could end up with no data at all!

 

Best option is to restore the data from a backup onto the new NAS with new HDDs fitted.

[nwkeene]

You mention 'Would I be able to back up the data from all 4 disks using a single USB caddy?'

 

If you mean to put each disc into a USB caddy and then read it on a standalone PC to get the data off - Then i think that won't work. At best, windows will see a disc of gobbledgook, at worse,it will see the drive as uninitialised and offer to format it for you!

This is because the hardware raid of the NAS will have put the data across multiple discs in its own format, along with a parity check on a fourth.

The only way i've seen discs recovered from faulty raid setups (that weren't disc failures) is to have an identical setup (raid version, same hardware, firmware etc) and hope the controller can read the raid config from one of the drives. Server HBA cards sometimes put the raid config on one of the drives. NAS boxes may only have the raid config in its own ROM.

 

my 2p

[Fazza]

If you have replaced the NAS like-for-like then the answer is maybe, if it's a different NAS then the answer is probably not. If you tell us the make and model of the old NAS and the new NAS then that might help get you a definitive answer.

[old_n07]

With QNAP you could put the drives from an old NAS into the corresponding slot in a new QNAP NAS keeping them in the same order and it would work, I did this with my home NAS a couple of years ago