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[pkphy39]

I'll do my best to keep this short.

2x1TB drives (RAID 1) started showing about a month ago that the sync was DEGRADED (we'll call them Drives A and B).

I removed the out-of-sync drive B (pink LED), upgraded to FW 1.05, rebooted. Inserted new, unformatted 1TB drive (C), followed prompts "you won't lose any data!" to partition and format the new drive.

Hung at 94% (great, not this again). After waiting for about an hour, did a hard-reset. NO Raid info. Commence panic!

Removed both drives (A and C), and placed B in the NAS. About a month and a half's worth of data missing (from the degraded sync).

Upgraded FW to 1.06.

Questions: Is there any way to retrieve the data from (A)?
How can I *SAFELY* rebuild the RAID using drive (B) and a new drive (D)?

Going forward, how can I best plan backups? The idea was to do a HD-swap: basically, rotate drives (A), (B), (C) on a monthly basis with offsite storage? Or, should I get a RAID stable and back up to a remote enclosure before taking the backup drive offsite?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks so much for your time. I know there's a lot out there on the 94% problem (is it finally fixed in 1.06? I didn't see anything in the release notes), but I can't risk losing ALL our data.

[fordem]

Question: Is there any way to retrieve the data from (A)?
Answer:  Connect it to a PC (either running linux or Windows with the ext2ifs file system driver) and see if you can recover the data, if not, consider it gone, or consider sending it out to a data recovery firm.

Question: How can I *SAFELY* rebuild the RAID using drive (B) and a new drive (D)?
Answer: Consider building a new array using drives C & D and then transferring the data from B using the method outlined above.

Going forward how can I plan backups?  Do NOT plan on swapping drives in and out - this is NOT what RAID was intended for and you WILL experience problems - backup to another disk and take that offsite.

What's that you say about risking ALL your data?  Well - if you don't back it up - it is at risk.
Can you read my signature?
Does it make sense?

[pkphy39]

Fordem -

Thanks for the clear and concise answers.

I'll build a new array using drives C and D and recovering the info from A.

Do you not think it safe to trust the 1.06 fw to format a new drive correctly? Or just advocating the safest course of action?

Thanks so much.

[fordem]

Actually that question puzzles me - if you attempt to recreate the RAID array using disk B, you run the risk of losing that data, exactly the same way as you may have lost the data on disk A.

To answer your question - I have not formatted any disks since upgrading to 1.06, but based on my experience with the previous firmware versions (I've used everything since 1.02), I don't expect any issues.

From my point of view the mistake was in not backing up the data on disk A before replacing the "failed" disk - so I guess it's what you describe as the safest course of action.

[garyhgaryh]

If it was me, I wouldn't have upgraded the FW during your process of rebuilding the drives.  And never turn off the NAS when it's rebuilding.  If I had no idea what it was doing, I'll just wait 3-4 days then power off.

Interesting, I just posted a similiar thread http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=3609.0

Hopefully, you guys will see something I don't - i'm sure someone can bash my course of action (but i'll be constructive)..

Gary