WD ShareSpace NAS RAID-5 disk failed - recovery failed?

[tived]

Hi Guys,

I had a drive failure the other day on my raid-5 (4 disks), I replaced the drive as described in their instructions (one clean disk of same model and make 2TB WD Green 64mb cache.)

It started the recovery which lasted a day or so, maybe two, not really sure.

Anyway, the recovery failed and now I am unable to get to my data. I have 4 disks installed which according to the WD software - are in good condition!

WD obviously takes no responsibilities, their NAS, their Drives, their software. 1 wheel falls off, we crash, we install a new wheel and would expect to be back on the road - installation is successful but the four wheels won't talk together!!!

What to do from here, make a new raid-5 and then try to recover it from there? or do i need the VIM details for the RAID?

Any ideas anyone

[Gogeta]

Do you have a good backup of the data set? It's probably best to blow away the failed/degraded array and create a new one. Restore the data and you're back in business.

Edit: ditch the green drives for models meant for RAID ops, too.

[tived]

Thanks Gogeta,

I know what you mean about the drives, they were the drives that I got with the unit - well, they upgraded them from 1 to 2TB but still kept it green.

Now for another backup, I was using this as I was in the middle of doing my housekeeping - sorting my files and they were meant to be on a raid-5 so that I at least had some protection in that only one drive could fail which it did and I should have moved the data back when i saw that. But looked at the instructions and thought, replace drive and it will automatic rebuild/recover ....it just wasn't the case.

Now I have recovered raid before (RAID-0) using the Runtime software, but there I had to find the VIM details first before i could re-build it all. Do you have any experience with this?

Thanks

Henrik

[Gogeta]

Thanks Gogeta,

I know what you mean about the drives, they were the drives that I got with the unit - well, they upgraded them from 1 to 2TB but still kept it green.

Now for another backup, I was using this as I was in the middle of doing my housekeeping - sorting my files and they were meant to be on a raid-5 so that I at least had some protection in that only one drive could fail which it did and I should have moved the data back when i saw that. But looked at the instructions and thought, replace drive and it will automatic rebuild/recover ....it just wasn't the case.

Now I have recovered raid before (RAID-0) using the Runtime software, but there I had to find the VIM details first before i could re-build it all. Do you have any experience with this?


Thanks

Henrik

I dont have any experience with that software. It may be worth your time to visit forums on WD's site or do some general google scouring for similar problems. Sorry I can't help more. Good luck!

edit: didn't mean to include the thumbs down icon.

[tived]

Thanks for your time Gogeta,

When I get some time i will pull the drives and rebuild the raid in one of the recovery softwares I have (either using the Runtime software or UFS Explorer) and keep my fingers crossed.

What I find frustrating is that there is absolutely no support from Western Digital on this - Looking at their web-forum, I am not the only one.

thanks

Henrik

[josh1980]

Have you tried a cold boot? I haven't used your software, but I've found that once in a while when I've had weird hardware issues a cold boot would fix problems that a reboot would not.

If you get desperate and you decide you need to try to recover data from your RAID, I recommend you try rstudio. I've recommended it several times for other people in similar situation and they all thank me later .

[tived]

Thanks Josh,

I will try the cold boot and I'll have a look at rstudio. thanks

Henrik

[traveler]

I once was looking at the WD Sharespace NAS device.

As is my customary pre-purchase activities, I read extensively all the reviews and comments I could possibly find.

The one comment I remember regarding the WD Shareware device which might help you is this: It seems that WD makes two different green model hard drives. One model is for retail sales and the other model is specifically for the Shareware NAS. The post I read indicated that the Shareware owner had no success rebuilding his array with the retail model of the hard drive but did have success with a matching hard drive model which he had to special order from WD. He did not like it at all that the firmware of his WD NAS tied him in to a specific model of a hard drive. But he did recover his data.

Another possibility (which is a current concern of mine) is perhaps one of the hardware components inside your NAS has also failed and needs to be replaced.

Best of luck to you.

[tived]

thanks traveler,
All the drives in the unit are retail drives, I upgraded the unit from 1TB's (total 4TB) to 2TB's (Total 8TB) when I bought it, as there were no 2TB units. Its a bit of a buggar as the unit was bought in Nov last year and really hasn't seen that much use.

I appreciate your comments

thanks

Henrik

[traveler]

Good luck tived.

[tived]

Thanks, it looks like I am going to need it, I have tried the various recovery softwares I have UFS and Runtime, both without any luck, I am going to give R-Studio a try now, after that I think I will have to outsource it.

Henrik

[traveler]

Have you tried putting your drives into another working WD Shareware box?