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[roger24]

I did not properly track hard drive space. While copying some files over to the DNS-345 the storage limit was met and an error message appeared "...no space...". As a result, the DNS-345 disappeared from the network. Similarly, the web UI was accessed to see if the problem could be resolved, however, none of the folder structure (or files) appears.

The DNS-345 contains four 3Tb SATA drives formatted to RAID 5.
Through diagnostics, all four drives appear to be good.

Is it possible to access the RAID 5 drives to "free up some space" and resume accessing the drive normally?

[FurryNutz]

Link>Welcome!

• What Hardware version is your DNS? Look at the sticker behind or under the device.
• Link>What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the DNSs web page under status.
• What region are you located?

What Mfr and model is the main host router?

Can you  access the drive using map drive in windows to remove some of the data?

[roger24]

Hardware version A3
Firmware 1.04
North America
Windows will not recognize the drive nor will  a Linux machine.

[ivan]

You have a problem that may or may not be fixable.

RAID 5 is a block level striping that has distributed parity and requires a minimum of 3 disks to work.  That boils down to it is over complicated for small NAS boxes (we have one client that uses it on one of their servers because that was the way the supplier set it up - we use RAID 1 on our servers, storage arrays and nas boxes).  It is designed to even out the possibility of data errors caused by disk read or write problems.  It will also allow for the catastrophic failure of one disk (as will all other RAID arrays except RAID 0).

You have not had a disk failure but, and here is where the problem is, a space over run.  By the sound of it one or more stripes are corrupted as well as the necessary parity information.  Now this is where you congratulate yourself for your foresight in making a verified backup of your data because the easy way of rectifying the problem is to reformat your disks into two RAID 1 arrays (there is little or no advantage of using RAID 5 and it sounds as if you can use the extra space) and then restore from your backup.  You can then add the latest data to the second RAID 1 array.

If you don't have a backup and you must recover your data then be prepared to spend some money on a recovery program and a caddy that will hold three disks at once.  You should get some idea of what is involved from the 'Data Recovery' sticky at the beginning of this forum,  RAID 1 recovery is easy as long as there is one operational disk, RAID 5 requires a special setup both with software and disks and the physical requirements are available on the software vendors web sites.

[roger24]

From similar issues with a DNS-323, I was able to access a hard drive through LINUX OS using a USB hard drive case. From the USB case, I was able to delete files to "free up" space on the drive and resolve the inability of the network to recognize the drive. Note that the drives were not formatted to RAID (which may be the added complexity in this case).

Is there a viable option to do something similar with RAID 5 drives?
Is there a means of reading RAID 5 file structures like a "File Explorer" (with ability to read/write/delete)`?

[ivan]

I assume you don't have a backup.  If that is the case you need software like R-Studio (costs $$$) and sufficient free disk space on your computer to make the virtual RAID array.  Google R-Studio recovery to get to their site and them download the manual (left side of web page from memory) as a PDF, read it to find out what to do.