Help Wanted To Recover A Linux RAID

Linux Support
1

Hello All,

I need to recover data from a RAID 5 box of 5 x 750Gb SATA drives which had about 2.4Gb data on it. It’s a Thecus N5200 based on Linux but I cannot manage to configure Internet access to the box in order to request Thecus support. And it is ~ 7 years old so they are not obligated.

I suspect the answer is to get the 5 drives into a Linux PC and then recover data to a sixth drive. I don’t have it yet but I can purchase a 3Tb drive for this purpose. Data was not lost due to hardware issue but an ill-advised firmware upgrade.

I do not have a PC with 6 or more SATA ports and I do not have the Linux skills to do this. I am based in North Essex and I am happy to pay for this work. My ‘missing’ data is not worth £1000s as it is mostly music so I cannot go to a commercial recovery company. I am happy to pay a skilled enthusiast for assistance.

Regards,

Peter

2

Problem is, if you put the drives into another box, unless you can also put the RAID controller in that box, you won’t be able to access the RAID array (which, by the sound of it, won’t work anyway as the firmware is borked). Assuming this is a hardware RAID - if it’s software RAID, you might be in luck (although the mention of firmware worries me in this context)

Have you tried reflashing the firmware? At this point, it sounds like it wouldn’t do any harm, and might resolve the issue easily

3

Hello,

Thanks for the prompt response.

The N5200 is running on firmware 3.00.04.5 which I upgraded to even though it is unsupported. Other users said it was alright…

I cannot downgrade the firmware as the web UI on the box does not allow it, and this would do little more than change the UI anyway. I did have my RAID working for some hours under the new UI until I was asked a question I cannot recall. The wrong answer deleted the RAID but left me as a user. I’m fairly sure this is software RAID wrapped up in a nice 5-drive box with a web interface.

I see this in the log files:

2013/09/25 13:17:12 N5200-2 : mdadm: /dev/md1 has been started with 4 drives (out of 5) and 1 spare.
2013/09/25 13:17:26 N5200-2 : Assemble RAID [md1] from [ /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2 /dev/sde2 ]

If I could give Thecus access to the box I might have a chance. It has two Ethernet ports, ‘LAN’ and ‘WAN’’ which I think have to be on different networks. I can login via the web interface on both. What I can’t do is manage to access either from the outside World via a Talk Talk broadband router via the DMZ or NAT settings. Years ago I gave Thecus access via BT and a Cisco Pix 525 firewall but I can’t recall the config. And the Talk Talk router works for an FTP server in the DMZ anyway if change to that config.

Regards,

Peter

4

I’m not familiar with the UI - would it normally give the option to rebuild a degraded array?

You could try booting it from a liveUSB, but I’m guessing it’s a headless unit?

5

Headless, yes. If the RAID existed it would offer an option to rebuild. At present it says no RAID exists. See log extract above which I just added.

P.

6

I am no expert on RAID but this may help you.
If you have a PC with 5 sata ports then you could run a Live CD/USB distro and use the sata ports to attach the drives and then recover data to an external USB drive.
Alternatively you may try (as you have a working N5200) to get shell access and may be able to run the recovery commands.

7

This seems to describe how to get SSH/shell access - http://thecususergroup.proboards.com/thread/4074

8
2013/09/25 13:17:12 N5200-2 : mdadm: /dev/md1 has been started with 4 drives (out of 5) and 1 spare. 2013/09/25 13:17:26 N5200-2 : Assemble RAID [md1] from [ /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2 /dev/sde2 ]

This would imply the RAID is running … (!)
Can you supply the output from;

cat /proc/mdstat

??

9

Hello All,

These are some logs from the NAS:

2013/09/27 13:09:51 N5200-2 : [Disk sda] UUID[raid5;716a6abf:09bb9851:72da2647:2c8643ad;Sun Feb 10 23:17:52 2008]
2013/09/27 13:09:51 N5200-2 : [Disk sdb] UUID[raid5;716a6abf:09bb9851:72da2647:2c8643ad;Sun Feb 10 23:17:52 2008]
2013/09/27 13:09:51 N5200-2 : [Disk sdc] UUID[raid5;716a6abf:09bb9851:72da2647:2c8643ad;Sun Feb 10 23:17:52 2008]
2013/09/27 13:09:51 N5200-2 : [Disk sdd] UUID[raid5;716a6abf:09bb9851:72da2647:2c8643ad;Sun Feb 10 23:17:52 2008]
2013/09/27 13:09:51 N5200-2 : [Disk sde] UUID[raid5;716a6abf:09bb9851:72da2647:2c8643ad;Sun Feb 10 23:17:52 2008]
2013/09/27 13:09:56 N5200-2 : Assemble RAID [md1] from [ /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2 /dev/sde2 ]
2013/09/27 13:09:56 N5200-2 : mdadm: /dev/md1 has been started with 4 drives (out of 5) and 1 spare.
2013/09/27 13:10:03 N5200-2 : Assemble RAID warning, try to force assemble RAID
2013/09/27 13:10:03 N5200-2 : Can’t mount data volume, and you can do filesystem check try to recovery your data.
2013/09/27 13:10:10 N5200-2 : Assemble RAID [md1] from [ /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2 /dev/sde2 ]
2013/09/27 13:10:10 N5200-2 : mdadm: /dev/md1 has been started with 4 drives (out of 5) and 1 spare.
2013/09/27 13:10:23 N5200-2 : Can’t mount data volume, and you can do filesystem check try to recovery your data.
2013/09/27 13:10:23 N5200-2 : N5200-2 boot
2013/09/27 13:10:25 N5200-2 : The system N5200-2 change to degrade mode.
2013/09/27 13:10:31 N5200-2 : The system N5200-2 is recovering the RAID and rebuilding is in progress.
2013/09/27 13:10:39 N5200-2 : The system N5200-2 change to degrade mode.
2013/09/27 13:10:45 N5200-2 : The system N5200-2 is recovering the RAID and rebuilding is in progress.
2013/09/27 13:10:49 N5200-2 : User admin logged in from 10.0.0.98
2013/09/27 13:11:55 N5200-2 : Swap Disk Damage

So the RAID is almost there. Which is like being a little bit pregnant…

I can’t load any modules now, unfortunately, beacuse I don’t have a RAID so I can’t get SSH access. And I can’t seem to initiate a filesystem check in the UI because I don’t have a RAID.

P.