Thecus N5200 RAID data recovery?

[ezrem]

I have an N5200 that had a healthy RAID. It had frozen once a week or so ago, I powered it off and it had to rebuild the array when it booted. I should have taken this as a sign to update my backup, but didn't.

It froze again last night, when I power cycled it it just stuck at "Self Testing..." on the screen. Won't post now.

So, I guess it's time for a new NAS. Does anyone have any tips for doing data recovery with something like R-Studio?

 

[odditory]

what raid level, what size disks, and did it finish rebuilding the array last time it tried?

all your data is still there, but getting at it is a process of escalation, all depending on how much time/patience/money you want to put in based on how valuable the data is. i'm not familiar with that NAS unit but if its no longer presenting the array to the O/S, the next step would be attaching the drives to the computer directly in JBOD mode and reconstructing the array configuration with R-Studio's 'Build virtual block RAID" function. and doing that usually requires some low level knowledge of file systems, because different vendors use different block patterns for a given raid level - often proprietary and usually unpublished.

bottom line, R-Studio's basic functions like scanning a partition for deleted files is easy enough for end users, but getting into virtual raid reconstruction will require expert assistance, since the built-in presets (block patterns) for RAID0/5/6 in R-Studio likely aren't applicable to that NAS's raid controller.

but first things first - I'd contact the manufacturer's tech support before you go any further. and start stocking up on harddisks to recover your data to.