Successful! Broken Raid Reconstruction on a PC (XP-SP2)

[UberTrombone]

Keywords: CS-407, retrieval, recover, dead, how to retrieve data from RAID volumes on a PC, XP
I am only too happy to report a successful recovery of ALL of my data from my Synology box using my PC!

Situation: Distinctly Unpleasant
My CS-407 died (it wasn't it's fault but I won't go into it now). The motherboard was roasted through the USB port in the middle of re-constructing a failed Drive 3. 4X500GB RAID, 700GB of data, 40GB not backed up to secondary storage.

-No way to buy another Synology product (I live in Moscow, Russia).
-Don't know if the drives are burned out or not
-No backup of my CS-407 for the last week

On hand: One PC with 4 sata ports
-Need a way to do a non-destructive read of the Linux EXT/2 EXT/3 broken RAID

Software required: UFS.Explorer Professional Recovery v 3.9.1 ~$80US (http://www.ufsexplorer.com)

Procedure I followed:
-Attached the 3 drives to my PC
-Run UFS Explorer
-Command: Build Software RAID
-Figure out the EXACT order originally from the Synology CS-407 through trial and error. Settings: 64K, Left-Symmetrical, 4 drives, use a "Broken Placeholder" for the missing drive. Build the software RAID by identifying and putting in the correct order.
-UFS Explorer immediately detected the Linux partition (after my 10th iteration) and gave me FULL access to ORIGINAL file structure. I was able to copy any files and/or directories at near hard drive speeds.

For example, my Synology hard drives that worked were numbers 1,2,4. I plugged them into various sata ports on my computer and discovered that I had 6 hard drives (3 Synology drives and 3 of my normal drives). Each of the synology drives were formatted into 3 partitions. The 3rd partition is the RAID data storage. My magic combination was "2, 5, BPH (Broken Place Holder),3". I went through "2,5,bph,3", "2,3,bph,5" etc. etc.
Obviously, your configuration will be different!

[Zouk !]

Hello UberTrombone,

Thank you for sharing your experience. It could very useful for anyone with similar configuration (as me), be sure that I will keep your precious informations somewhere, we never know...
I'm happy to learn that you recovered all your data and to see that there is always hope.

Zouk !

[MansterRock]

THANK YOU UBERTROMBONE!

Wow! I thought I was in deep doo-doo. I had the unthinkable happen. Disk 4, died. and I replaced it, when I turned on my CS407, Disk 3 was no longer part of the volume. I thought my RAID 5 volume was toast.

I took a step back. Calmed down and started scanning the boards. I found your post and bought ufsexplorer and a sata controller with 4 ports to connect to my desktop. My first attempt should have been correct. disk 4 died, so disks 1,2,3 and Placeholder should have been the correct order. However, it was 1,2,P,3 that worked, my second attempt. I am beginning to wonder if the CS407 is mislabeled internally.

You are a lifesaver! Thanks again for your hard work.

For those that may need this in the future. I have enumerated the possible combinations of 4 drives. $65 for UFSexplorer PRofessional (http://www.ufsexplorer.com) is totally worth it.

Position in UFSExplorer SoftRaid VIrtual Disk - Enumerated combinations - VPH stands for Virtual Placeholder Disk

1 2 3 VPH
1 2 VPH 3
1 3 2 VPH
1 3 VPH 2
1 VPH 2 3
1 VPH 3 2
2 3 1 VPH
2 3 VPH 1
2 1 3 VPH
2 1 VPH 3
2 VPH 1 3
2 VPH 1 3
3 1 2 VPH
3 1 VPH 2
3 2 1 VPH
3 2 VPH 1
3 VPH 1 2
3 VPH 2 1
VPH 1 2 3
VPH 1 3 2
VPH 2 1 3
VPH 2 3 1
VPH 3 1 2
VPH 3 2 1

[MansterRock]

Just a quick update. Mirraculesly, after I copied off my data made accessible by UFS Explorer, then re-assembled the CS-407 after running extended WD diag test on all the drives(including the originally failed drive).

All the drives were in different positions than originally placed, the volume came up fine.

I wonder what the deal is with that?

I don't trust it as it's the second failure I have had on raid 5.

I am going to try out raid-6 (in the new 728 firmware) Loose 931GB of space, but add more protection.

Can anyone give me a benefit of using raid 6 on 4 x 1TB drives vs straight mirroring?

[Zouk !]

Can anyone give me a benefit of using raid 6 on 4 x 1TB drives vs straight mirroring?

Hard to say. Each case has advantages and disadvantages.
RAID-5 will be more efficient in performance & in space management but you will have to buy "3TB of drive" to have a straight mirror.
RAID-6 will bring you more security but you lose 1 TB and performance will be probably lower than RAID-5 (but there aren't at my knowledge any benchmarks)

So your choice could be sum up : better performance with additional cost for drive backup or lower performance, lower space but no additional HDs cost (even we should have always a backup).

Make you choice !

[DS508_customer]

... Figure out the EXACT order originally from the Synology CS-407 through trial and error. ...

... I am beginning to wonder if the CS407 is mislabeled internally. ...

... All the drives were in different positions than originally placed ... I wonder what the deal is with that? ...

Is there any way to pro-actively determine/ check the order of the internal labeling/ positioning, without discontinuing operations of the NAS? Perhaps by temporarily disabling the status-LED of each HDD independently?

[nono_ch]

Hello

Great Job

Thanks a lot.

I'have lost my system partition and the synology assistant would reformat all the disk whith data partition.

I have use UFS explorer and i have recover and backup my raid partition before trying to reconstruct the system partition.

Surprisingly the disk order for my CS406 is 1 3 2 4 .....

Bye is a good day

CS 406 with 1.7 To data....

[BBourgeois]

Thanks for sharing!

I took the risk upgrading the firmware and expanding the drives of my synology cs407e without a backup.
Not the best desicious I realize now, the synlogy station stated that my volume crashed and is not recoverable.

The method you described worked 1ste time (after trying 17 HDD combinations).

Thanks for your hard work, you are a lifesaver!

[lauge]

I would also like to say thanks for sharing! It was really a lifesaver!

My CS407 with a 4 disk raid5 configuration also crashed, and because the worng disk was changed the entire raid was dead. Tried with some other guides for fixing the raid, since I still had 3 good disks, but somehow synology just wouldn't read the raid.

Anyway found this guide, tried UFS explorer on my windows 7 (64 bit) and bought it. Now I have a working copy of my "lost" 1TB data So now I can reformat the synology raid and copy the data back.

So again THANKS!

[chrisflow]

Wow, I have to say THANK YOU!!!

After 5 days without any response from the Synology support I decided to try to recover data by myself.

RAID5 on a CS407 4x500GB. I first made a backup of 3 drives using Ubuntu and the dd command. The fourth drives was about to fail and I could not backup it.

Then, I rebuild a soft raid with ufsexplorer with the 3 backup disks. In my case the order was the same that on my NAS. Disk 1, DPH, DISK 3, DISK 4.

I had to choose the option "RAID on disk partition" and select the right partition for each drive (the larger partition corresponding to the data.).

then miracle: I'm copying my data on an external device, everything seems to be OK.

THANKS AGAIN.

[aaronsomek]

Whew, so glad you made this thread! My DS410 died this morning for no apparent reason and corrupted the RAID array. The actual unit is fine (I tested it out with a spare 2TB disc and made a new RAID). I tried reinstalling the DSM software about 30 times and it would just reboot and beep at me. I finally found this thread and bought the UFS Explorer software. It wouldn't build a virtual array with 3 discs though, I needed to use all 4. When I saw the file list appear I could have done backflips I was so happy.
I'm currently watching the progress bar as it recovers all my data.

For the technical details: because I was using all 4 discs I didn't need to trial-and-error disc order or VPD, it just built the RAID5 aray automatically.

Happy days!

[Tromos]

Hello,

I have a DS410 with a crashed 4x2TB volume in RAID5.

I got the message "System volume (Root) on DiskStation is in degraded mode." After a short time next message came: "Volume 1 on DiskStation has crashed, the server may not be able to start up."

I know if 1 of 4 disk is failed, then no problem in RAID5, but now it seems 2 of 4 disks are not initialized.

Can I restore a part of data from the volume with the above mentioned method, using UFS Explorer and a PC?

Thank you

[Tromos]

Hi,

my RAID5 volume has been crashed because of an unknown reason. I tried all the suggestions in above posts, but neither UFS Explorer, neither Runtime raid reconstructor did not help.

Finally an expert solved the problem. My 4 HDDs have been taken and returned soon; the volume is visible again, I can see all contents incl. encrypted folders. Of course I was charged for the data recovery.

During the recovery procedure, all the 4 disks have been checked and all of them were found in good condition without any defect or problem.

I found this in the DS410 log, which happened in the last 1,5 day before the crash:

- Volume [1] was crashed.
- Apple file service was started.
- Windows file service was started.
- Sytem started to boot up-
- Disk [3] was removed.
- External disk [External SATA disk Partition 1] is mounted and shared folder [satashare1-1] is exported.
- Windows file service was stopped.
- Apple file service was stopped.
- Disk [4] was removed.
- Server started counting down to shutdown.

Does anyone have any idea what could be the problem, how all of us with RAID5 can avoid happening it again?