2 Drives Failed: Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 (Raid5)

[Geeksmirage]

I own a Blackarmor NAS 440.
I sent up 4 brand new 3TB Seagate drives in RAID 5.
It has been working fine for ~2 years, until this July.

HDD3 failed. I requested a replacement under warranty, and rebuilt the disk. Then HDD2 failed 2 weeks later. Received new disk under warranty, then rebuilt. After another 1 week, HDD1 failed, but came back up again a day later. Then HDD3 failed the next day. I sent for a replacement, but by that time HDD1 had failed again .

Now I have 2 failed drives.

I thought that it may be the RAID Controller. I got a new NAS Box from seagate, and transferred over the HDDs carefully in the same order, but it says that the system has foreign disks. According to Seagate:
"Inserting the old drives into the new NAS box will not give access to the data stored to the drives. To recover the data on the drives, professional data recovery is needed. I have provided the link for the data recovery services we offer below..."

So I have no clue what I can do. I have 2 questions:
1. Is there any way in which I can recover the data? If I connect is as a secondary? Boot into Linux and mount it etc ?

2. If I had to use another NAS in the future, which one should I get? Or should I simply rely on secondary drives, since Ive never had one of those fail (And I have used 10-15 drives over the last 8 years - Seagate, WD, Samsung, Hitachi etc.).
This is relatively important, coz then I can buy one on Black Friday.

 

[tential]

I recommend you build your own NAS box using the UNRAID software. You can find a ton of info on it on the UNRAID forums. With only 4 drives yo uintend on using it should come out cheaper than a Seagate BlackArmor.

What do you use the data for? Is this a media box? What is the actual use that helps a lot towards the recommendation.

 

[Geeksmirage]

Its a simple data storage box. But I wanted redundancy for it to be safe. Which didnt really work out for me in this case.

On a separate note, any clue how I can pull data directly from a RAID drive?

 

[Geeksmirage]

From what I understand, UNRAID is basically software based RAID. Ive heard that hardware based raid is much better.

In this case, I basically see that one uses a simple desktop server, which i used only for unRAID. Whats the advantage of using this over a off the shelf solution like BlackArmor ?

 

[tential]

Control. Which is always important to me. I really just don't trust another person to do it for me. It's DATA it's way too important to me. 2 drives dying like that in a NAS Box? Unacceptable to me. You control the cooling, etc.

You can do hardware raid if you want, nothing is stopping you because it's your own box! That's why I prefer my own NAS box.

Currently, I didn't have enough money to build the NAS box I needed (a 24 bay Norco box for around $1000) but for only 4 bays? You could build your own very easily.

I say use UNRAID because I rarely see cases in which user built PCs have 2 drives fail at the same time. If it's just data storage especially I just don't see it.

I mean look at the reviews for this thing:
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-BlackA...pr_product_top

NAS Boxes aren't a bad idea at all, but me, I just feel better assembling one myself. I use the generic SMB in Windows to access all my content, although 99% of the content is Movies/TVShows which is organized by XBMC.

But it's YOUR data and if you don't feel that 1 drive redundancy is enough and you want it to be duplicated and want a hardware raid solution go ahead and do that. But I recommend building your own box if you have experience building PCs. It's quite simple and you'll know things are assembled correctly.

 

[Geeksmirage]

I agree with every point you have.

So couple of things:
1. Is my old comp wayy to powerful to use for RAID? Coz I have 4x3TB from my NAS, and I guess I can pull 2x1TB or some others from my desktop. Im not sure if I can get an additional SATA controller for the rest. (My mobo has 6 sata slots).

GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD4-B3
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad Core
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 2x8GB DDR3 1600
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 2x4GB DDR3 1600 (Some weird reason when I put both in, I get only 1333Mhz). Im using 20GB total right now (Stupid ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm Cooler blocks one slot)
OCZ Fatal1ty 650W (IIRC)
COOLER MASTER Storm Scout case
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6850
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2

2. What about USB External drives? Use them as externals? Throw away the casing and put them in as internals?

3. What about my current situation? Do you have RAID 5 setup? If so, do you know what happens if you pull a drive from your RAID and connect it as a secondary?

 

[tential]

I agree with every point you have.

So couple of things:
1. Is my old comp wayy to powerful to use for RAID? Coz I have 4x3TB from my NAS, and I guess I can pull 2x1TB or some others from my desktop. Im not sure if I can get an additional SATA controller for the rest. (My mobo has 6 sata slots).

GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD4-B3
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad Core
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 2x8GB DDR3 1600
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 2x4GB DDR3 1600 (Some weird reason when I put both in, I get only 1333Mhz). Im using 20GB total right now (Stupid ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm Cooler blocks one slot)
OCZ Fatal1ty 650W (IIRC)
COOLER MASTER Storm Scout case
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6850
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2

2. What about USB External drives? Use them as externals? Throw away the casing and put them in as internals?

3. What about my current situation? Do you have RAID 5 setup? If so, do you know what happens if you pull a drive from your RAID and connect it as a secondary?

I would use it for more than just a NAS. I'd use it exactly how I use my current PC. As a "Media HTPC". So it's hooked up to my HDTV and I watch movies on it. In fact, my sister and cousin are watching Frozen on mine right now. I'd find a way to software RAID under Windows to duplicate your files. Then I'd just share the folders you want to share with the rest of your PCs. That way you can pull data off of it at any time.

Maybe you can set it up to also allow you to do some light emulators (SNES, PS1, Maybe Dolphin Emulator on something lower than 4x Internal Resolution (A setting I can just not turn down lower for some reason.... I don't even see a difference in most games between 3x/4x, I just have to turn things up to the max lol), etc.

Purely a NAS though? Overkill, but multipurpose PC? Absolutely. My sister probably uses my rig more than I do. I still use my Core 2 Duo Laptop from 2008 as my primary PC lol.

My current setup is as yours, all my HDDs are in my main rig, and I didn't set up software raid because I'm lazy...
I'll move it all to a dedicated UNRAID box when I get the money because a 24 bay server chassis and the controller card to use 24 bays is expensive.

As for Drives? I use externals and strip them and use them as internals because I'm cheap. Haven't had a single issue yet but I'm very very careful. even then you could still have issues, do what you feel comfortable to keep your data safe in that regard. 5TB Seagate Externals on ebay from Newegg for $130 but you can't return them so that's a downfall. I'm out of space almost (22TB and I'm down to my last 500 GB) so I might just pick it up. Depends on how I feel and if they're still in stock.

 

[Cerb]

Its a simple data storage box. But I wanted redundancy for it to be safe. Which didnt really work out for me in this case.

You data did not get the redundancy you needed to keep it safe. It got redundancy needed for you to keep accessing it with failed parts.

On a separate note, any clue how I can pull data directly from a RAID drive?

Maybe, but it would be a lot of work, and would require that you buy multiple additional hard drives, the same size or larger (actually check the total number of bytes, as another 3TB might be slightly smaller, and important data might reside at the end of the drive). Using the failed disk for any length of time increases the chances that its next operation minute may be its last.

You want your data backed up. RAID does not do that. RAID 5 allows for read errors on one drive, or for a failed drive, to not bring the system down. Your data is not safe due to that, as you have found out. Distinct copies, in separate physical locations, the farther apart the better, help make your data safer.

I know, it sucks, but this is not a mistake to make again. It would also be a good reason for RAID 10, as that will put less stress on the drives during a rebuild. Old drives failing soon after one another, rebuilding a RAID 5, is anything but uncommon.

 

[Geeksmirage]

I would use it for more than just a NAS. I'd use it exactly how I use my current PC. As a "Media HTPC". So it's hooked up to my HDTV and I watch movies on it. In fact, my sister and cousin are watching Frozen on mine right now. I'd find a way to software RAID under Windows to duplicate your files. Then I'd just share the folders you want to share with the rest of your PCs. That way you can pull data off of it at any time.

Maybe you can set it up to also allow you to do some light emulators (SNES, PS1, Maybe Dolphin Emulator on something lower than 4x Internal Resolution (A setting I can just not turn down lower for some reason.... I don't even see a difference in most games between 3x/4x, I just have to turn things up to the max lol), etc.

Purely a NAS though? Overkill, but multipurpose PC? Absolutely. My sister probably uses my rig more than I do. I still use my Core 2 Duo Laptop from 2008 as my primary PC lol.

My current setup is as yours, all my HDDs are in my main rig, and I didn't set up software raid because I'm lazy...
I'll move it all to a dedicated UNRAID box when I get the money because a 24 bay server chassis and the controller card to use 24 bays is expensive.

As for Drives? I use externals and strip them and use them as internals because I'm cheap. Haven't had a single issue yet but I'm very very careful. even then you could still have issues, do what you feel comfortable to keep your data safe in that regard. 5TB Seagate Externals on ebay from Newegg for $130 but you can't return them so that's a downfall. I'm out of space almost (22TB and I'm down to my last 500 GB) so I might just pick it up. Depends on how I feel and if they're still in stock.

I have similar space issues, almost out of space at 21TB.
I didnt really understand the concept. Currently, I connect my NAS box to my PC, use plex for my library and chromecast it to my TV (In the rare cases I use my TV).

What ur saying is that I should have a separate box, but use it is a proper media server instead of thinking of it as a RAID box. I guess I could, but I dont really need it, since i spent 95% of time on my PC.

 

[Geeksmirage]

You data did not get the redundancy you needed to keep it safe. It got redundancy needed for you to keep accessing it with failed parts.

Maybe, but it would be a lot of work, and would require that you buy multiple additional hard drives, the same size or larger (actually check the total number of bytes, as another 3TB might be slightly smaller, and important data might reside at the end of the drive). Using the failed disk for any length of time increases the chances that its next operation minute may be its last.

You want your data backed up. RAID does not do that. RAID 5 allows for read errors on one drive, or for a failed drive, to not bring the system down. Your data is not safe due to that, as you have found out. Distinct copies, in separate physical locations, the farther apart the better, help make your data safer.

I know, it sucks, but this is not a mistake to make again. It would also be a good reason for RAID 10, as that will put less stress on the drives during a rebuild. Old drives failing soon after one another, rebuilding a RAID 5, is anything but uncommon.

So to get redundancy to keep it safe, I guess I should use RAID 1? Coz with 10, wont I have the same issue? That if you have parity on the disk, you cant read it like a secondary?

I dont mind the work to read my data, I used to use a lot of Stellar Phoenix back in the day, when I used to corrupt my data, play around with HDDs. And I can get the storage one way or the other. Coz its only ~8TB (12TB in RAID5 gives me 8TB). I can find 2-3TB easily on my current system, and I can buy 1-2 new 4-5 TB drives. For me, the most important part is getting the data back.

Fyi, its not that the hard disks are corrupt. I dont think they are. I think the controller is bad. So even for the HDDs that are working, can i simply read the data off of it? I dont want to connect it as a secondary, unless I know its possible.

 

[Cerb]

So to get redundancy to keep it safe, I guess I should use RAID 1?

No, you should have a backup system in place. RAID 1 still allows for quite a few kinds of failures that lead to lost data. A single drive, no RAID, with a weekly backup to a 2nd drive that is in another computer, powered from another circuit, is the kind of redundancy that might help save data.

Coz with 10, wont I have the same issue? That if you have parity on the disk, you cant read it like a secondary?

Raid 1 or 10 (technically RAID 1 can be considered a single-stripe RAID 10, with a 1-sector stripe length ), the rebuilding causes less stress on the drives. So, the chances of fialure in between a drive failing and being able to either get data off, or get the system back up and running with a healthy array, is much less. Mirroring RAIDs, like RAID 1 or 10, do not have parity. With a singly-redundant mirror, the data is simply read from the good drive, to rebuild.

Fyi, its not that the hard disks are corrupt. I dont think they are. I think the controller is bad. So even for the HDDs that are working, can i simply read the data off of it? I dont want to connect it as a secondary, unless I know its possible.

If the disks are fine but the controller not, see if you can get the array mounted with a Linux distro in another computer. Often, those NAS boxes just use Linux's own RAID, which can be repaired and used with mdadm.

 

[Geeksmirage]

If the disks are fine but the controller not, see if you can get the array mounted with a Linux distro in another computer. Often, those NAS boxes just use Linux's own RAID, which can be repaired and used with mdadm.

This is exactly what Ive been trying to figure out. I got an Ubuntu bootable USB. I plan to just plug in that onto my main computer, with one of the NAS disks as secondary and plan to read off it.
The issue is that Im not too experience with Linux and I havent been able to figure out from trawling the web, how exactly to read the data. Is it a simple mount and use like a HDD? Or do I have to do something to it (because of the parity) ?

 

[Cerb]

With a RAID 5, you might be able to find out if it sees it as a RAID array member, but to get data off, you will need n-1 of the drives, and preferably all of them, installed to the same computer at the same time. RAID 5 stripes the data in chunks, per drive (stripes), and then has one drive's-worth of parity, which rotates across the drives. If the data is good, the final stripe is unneeded. So, a 200KB file, in a 4-drive RAID 5 might have 64KB on one drive, 64KB on the 2nd, 64KB on the 3rd, and then the final 8KB on a 64KB stripe in the 1st one again, with the 4th drive storing parity (any drive can have the parity, as it is evenly distributed amongst the drives, though). With any set of n-1 of those stripes, the data can be read or derived.

 

[Geeksmirage]

Aha. Exactly what I was looking to understand.
My understanding was that it stores 200k on one drive, but the parity on the 4 drives.

1. So assuming the drives work and I connect all 4 drives to my PC, where do I go from there?
2. If the drives are actually bad, any chance of doing any kind of data recovery? Or am I completely hosed?

 

[Cerb]

1. Google, and see. I've only had to deal with that sort of thing once, myself, luckily. It was somewhat convoluted, but cool that it did work.

2. Maybe, but it depends on how bad they are, and what the costs you might be able to handle are.

 

[Geeksmirage]

1. Cool.
https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/faq/579
Do you know if I can read the drives off the network or do I need to connect them directly?

2. Well, im definitely not sending it to seagate for a $20,000 recovery cost. Will do it myself, just havent tried it on a RAID System before

 

[tweakboy]

Don't trust Seagate. End of story.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So to get redundancy to keep it safe, I guess I should use RAID 1?

Repeat after me: "Raid is NOT backup".

 

[Geeksmirage]

Repeat after me: "Raid is NOT backup".

Yeah, I think I made the n00b mistake there.
RAID is for Redundancy, not backup.

 

[Geeksmirage]

I'm not sure what my exact use case is, on redundancy vs backup. I simply dont want to lose my data. But then the issue is about storage space.
Lets say I have 7TB of data.

Now, I can either store this on a 4x3TB Raid5 array (Usable 8TB) or store it on 3x3TB and backup on 3x3TB. The first one provides me redundancy, in case one drive fails. The second provides me with a backup, in case one drive fails as well.

The issue is, what happens when 2 drives fail? On RAID5, you lose not only the data on the 2 drives, but the data on the other 2 as well. With a backup, even if the main drive AND the same backup drive failed, you lose only the data on that one drive.

Hence, I may save space on a RAID, but the big issue is that on a dual disk failure, I lose ALL the data and not only the data on those 2 drives.

Questions:
1. If I use FreeNAS and ZFS3, I get triple parity, so that would be better than the double parity RAID5, since I have to have 3HDD failures? How much storage does one lose in ZFS3? (In Raid 5/ZFS2, you lose approximately 33% storage to parity)?

2. Are compressed backups a better idea? Any particular software that you recommend? One potential issue that I see is that it cant be TAR/ZIP images of the data, because then you cant do incremental backups. So I guess it would be more along the lines of Windows Compressed folders, where the data is visible, just compressed.

Fyi, I dont really care how long it takes to uncompress (Even 1-2 weeks is okay), as long as the data is there and I can eventually get it. This way, I can save on a ton of space for my backups.

 

[Data-Medics]

Hello, I'm new to this forum (but not to data recovery) and I think I can help. To answer your original questions:

1. To get your data back - I don't think you'll succeed with just building another RAID using the existing disks. Synology units are great, but like any NAS they aren't intended for data recovery purposes. What you'll need to do is the following

Clone the two failed drives using ddrescue in linux onto fresh drives. The syntax you use should be:

ddrescue (Triggers) (Source Drive) (Target Drive) (Log File)

So a command will look something like this
>>ddrescue -F /dev/sda /dev/sdb /home/users/knoppix/Desktop/log.log

Also make sure you use the log file. It's not just a log, it's how ddrescue keeps track of what areas have been read and which have been skipped due to bad sectors.

After you get clones of one or both drives, you can connect them to a computer using USB adapters and then build a virtual RAID using either R-Studio or UFSExplorer (depending on how it was formatted).

Or if you want I can handle the rebuild for you... we don't charge $20,000 here for RAID recovery. The highest we've ever quoted was ~$3,000 and that was for an array with a lot of drives.

 

[Data-Medics]

2. Going forward, I'd go with RAID 6 over RAID 10. Not only will it save you some drives if you go larger, but it actually offers better protection. A RAID 10 can still go down from two failed drives, it they are of the same set. Whereas RAID 6 can sustain the failure of any two drives and still rebuild. (I know a lot of MCSE's will disagree, but I've had to recover data from a lot more RAID 10 array's than RAID 6).

That having been said, you should always backup your data. Preferably with versioning, as any array can be corrupted or even sabotaged by a virus such as CryptoWall.

Synology is a great option because of the diversity of plugins it supports (time backup, rsync, cloud backup, etc.). You're sure to find one that will suit your needs. I've been using an old 2 disk diskstation for my personal use, and now I'm retiring my old power hungry 20Tb FreeNAS server for an 8 bay unit.

 

[Cerb]

RAID 6 will be very slow, like RAID 5, except for large sequential transfers. For many uses, that's an excellent reason not to use it. I don't see how anyone would disagree that RAID 10 can go down if a whole mirror fails, though. Every step you take adding redundancy decreases your chances of a system that won't run. Making that chance basically nil is going to take more than any single RAID array.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Questions:
1. If I use FreeNAS and ZFS3, I get triple parity, so that would be better than the double parity RAID5, since I have to have 3HDD failures? How much storage does one lose in ZFS3? (In Raid 5/ZFS2, you lose approximately 33% storage to parity)?

2. Are compressed backups a better idea? Any particular software that you recommend? One potential issue that I see is that it cant be TAR/ZIP images of the data, because then you cant do incremental backups. So I guess it would be more along the lines of Windows Compressed folders, where the data is visible, just compressed.

Fyi, I dont really care how long it takes to uncompress (Even 1-2 weeks is okay), as long as the data is there and I can eventually get it. This way, I can save on a ton of space for my backups.

1) RAID5/Z1 isn't double parity. RAID5/Z1 is single parity. RAID6/Z2 is double parity, RAIDZ3 is triple parity. I wouldn't think of either a RAID5 or a RAIDZ-whatever as a back-up necessarily. If you're storing backups of your workstation, or your HTPC media drive on the RAID, then yes, it is a backup. If you're storing all of your media on the RAID for access, then that is ipso facto, the master copy w/ some redundancy to improve availability and not a backup.

To be a proper back-up, you really want something that can protect you from NOT ONLY drive failures, but also from things like natural disasters (flood, fire, berserk SATA controllers), and human error/malice (i.e. not a RAID mirror that will blindly mirror said errors/malice). It should ideally have versioning, and be secured when a backup is not being made or they are being tested.

2) Compressed backups can work. They have the advantage of being relatively easy to do. They have the disadvantage of taking up lots of space quickly. It isn't very hard to write a script that uses rsync+hardlinks to create "snapshots" of filesystems. I'd be happy to send you a basic one if you PM me. There is even a utility called "rsnapshot" that does this out of the box! This could allow you to do incremental backups, and structure the incremental backups so that each snapshot looks like your whole filesystem. Versioning! Yay!

Edit:
This is kind of old/hokey, but it captures many of the ideas of what we mean by "backup".
http://www.taobackup.com/

 

[Geeksmirage]

Hello, I'm new to this forum (but not to data recovery) and I think I can help. To answer your original questions:

1. To get your data back - I don't think you'll succeed with just building another RAID using the existing disks. Synology units are great, but like any NAS they aren't intended for data recovery purposes. What you'll need to do is the following

Clone the two failed drives using ddrescue in linux onto fresh drives. The syntax you use should be:

ddrescue (Triggers) (Source Drive) (Target Drive) (Log File)

So a command will look something like this
>>ddrescue -F /dev/sda /dev/sdb /home/users/knoppix/Desktop/log.log

Also make sure you use the log file. It's not just a log, it's how ddrescue keeps track of what areas have been read and which have been skipped due to bad sectors.

After you get clones of one or both drives, you can connect them to a computer using USB adapters and then build a virtual RAID using either R-Studio or UFSExplorer (depending on how it was formatted).

Or if you want I can handle the rebuild for you... we don't charge $20,000 here for RAID recovery. The highest we've ever quoted was ~$3,000 and that was for an array with a lot of drives.

Im looking to rebuild the array because I have a feeling the drives are good, only the controller is bad. If that doesnt work, I'll definitely try your method.