Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

My question is, did I setup the R-Studio Virtual RAID accurately to be able to effectively recover deleted files? I have been running the R-Studio file recovery for about 20 days and it indicates that it should take about 34 more days. I would hate to wait all this time only to find out I did not setup R-Studio and the Virtual RAID correctly, thus I'm wasting time. I suspect my question has been answered before in this forum, but I cannot find it through the search option.

Background:
I am trying to recover deleted files from a WD4000A4NC-00 external NAS. This unit runs a Linux core and contained 4 - 1 TB drives in a RAID-5 configuration, yielding 3 TBs of storage, and there was about 2.1 TBs of files on the unit. I've taken each of the 1 TB drives out of the Western Digital NAS, marked each as to which number it was in the WD RAID-5, used the HDDRawCopy 1.10 utility to clone each 1 TB drive to 4 TB drives (because I had 4 TB drives available). I then purchased and installed a SYBA SI-PEX40064 PCI-Express 2.0 Low Profile Ready SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) Controller Card into a desktop PC running Windows 7. Each of the channels on this card are marked 1 through 4. I connected the cloned drives to their corresponding 1 through 4 positions on the SATA controller, drive 1 from the WD NAS was connected to channel 1 on the SATA card, etc. I then ran R-Studio on this PC and setup a Virtual RAID-5. I was not sure which partition on the 4 TB drives to point R-Studio's Virtual RAID to. In the attached picture you can see SATA drives 2, 3, 4, and 5. These are the clone drives hanging off the SYBA SATA adapter. The SATA drive 0 is the 6 TB drive I connected to the motherboard as my destination storage for the recovered files. SATA 1 is the C: drive of the PC. In the attached R-Studio screen capture, you can see R-Studio displays that I'm 45% of the way through the scan for recovery. One of the reasons I'm not comfortable that I setup everything properly is because in the attached you will see R-Studio counts for FAT Directory Entries, FAT Boot Sectors, and FAT Table Entries. I did not expect to see that since the WD NAS uses Linux formatted drives (EX3 I believe in this case). I am seeing a promising number for Specific File Documents.

I would appreciate anyone more knowledgeable than I in using R-Studio with Virtual RAID setup for file scanning and recovery, to review my post and provide their perspective as to if I have setup everything correctly so it can work.

Thank you for your time and expertise.

John

NAS systems that run linux RAIDs typically use XFS, which is not supported by R-Studio. But, also, these software RAIDs are set to work across partitions, not across the drives.

Now as to your specific case, if it is taking so long to scan with R-Studio, it seems to me that you are working with the original drives, of which at least one may have physical issues. If your data is important to you, you may want to stop and consider seeking professional assistance before it is too late.

At least, check SMART data of the disks, R-Studio can do that.

Alt wrote:At least, check SMART data of the disks, R-Studio can do that.

A feature that I really like, I might add.

RForce wrote:NAS systems that run linux RAIDs typically use XFS, which is not supported by R-Studio. But, also, these software RAIDs are set to work across partitions, not across the drives.

Now as to your specific case, if it is taking so long to scan with R-Studio, it seems to me that you are working with the original drives, of which at least one may have physical issues. If your data is important to you, you may want to stop and consider seeking professional assistance before it is too late.

RForce - Thank you for your answer. FYI, I contacted WD NAS technical support and was told the first time that NFS was used as the internal file system. I explained that my understanding was that NFS is used to communicate between the WD NAS and the PCs that are connected on the LAN, not to format, read and write to the NAS internal hard drives. I called back and was then told how to replace drives in my RAID 5 configuration. I thanked them and then explained my question is what file system is used within the WD NAS to format, read and write? I was put on hold and the person came back and said he thought it was EXT2 or EXT3. This is the best I can obtain from WD NAS technical support. BTW, in the 207 page manual for this WD NAS, it does not state what file system is used.

As for my working with the original drives, no I am not. Perhaps what I wrote in my post was not clearly stated, but I cloned each of the NAS four 1TB drives and I am running R-Studio on the cloned drives.

Regarding your statement that the data is written in partitions, not across drives - not true in RAID 5. Perhaps I did not state that RAID 5 was used in my configuration.

Thus far, the best I can ascertain is the file system used internally is most likely EXT2 or EXT3.

Thank you for trying to help me.

Alt wrote:At least, check SMART data of the disks, R-Studio can do that.

ALT - Thank you for your post. As you suggested, I will use R-Studio to check SMART data. I will wait until this R-Studio pass finishes since it is now 75% complete and the number of files recognized is 617,143. Hopefully, I might get lucky in finding some of the deleted files.

When the scan is through I strongly recommend you to save the scan info before you continue file recovery.

Alt wrote:When the scan is through I strongly recommend you to save the scan info before you continue file recovery.

Yes, I do plan to do so. Thank you Alt.

John

Good news on the file system used for the ShareSpace WD40000A4NC. I spoke with Timothy today in WD Level II support and he found out from one of the developers that the system used is EXT3.

johndem33 wrote:Regarding your statement that the data is written in partitions, not across drives - not true in RAID 5. Perhaps I did not state that RAID 5 was used in my configuration.

Hardware RAID 5 yes. Software RAID 5 no. This is a software RAID 5. When you understand what you are working with, it should only take a few minutes to figure out. I am willing to assist remotely.