Seeking advice on recovering RAID on Terramaster F4-300

[Figbert]

While living in China, I bought two Terramaster RAID units (F4-300 and F4-800) to store my research data (I may soon regret this decision-- it'll depend on what happens next .

Yesterday, while using the F4-300 unit, it went offline and the 'Terramaster HW Raid Manager' reported "[Controller 1: 1, Disk 1: ST3000DM001-1CH166 (W1F22KE9)] Error- This disk has the following error(s): Page 0 Damage Error"

Strangely, the HW Raid Manager reported Disk 1 as having the error, but the LED light on the unit itself indicated that Disk 2 was faulty. I turned the unit off, and found that the serial number on Disk 2 was W1F22KE9 leading me to believe it was this disk W1F22KE9 that was faulty, not the drive in slot #1.

When I replaced the faulty drove W1F22KE9 with a new harddisk of identical brand and size, nothing happened. The F4300 did not try to rebuild the RAID array. Why?

Also, Windows 8 "Disk Management" (inside "Computer Management") wanted to initialize the entire F4300 RAID. I did not do this. I shut the unit off and have been seeking advice on how to proceed.

I have included the report shown on the Terramaster HW Raid Manager as an image below.

I really hope someone here might be able to offer advice on what to do next to get the RAID to rebuild.

 

[L&LD]

Have you confirmed that the NAS actually is not malfunctioning and the HDD's were okay?

 

[Figbert]

Hi! No I haven't confirmed that. Actually I have no idea how i might go about determining if the NAS hardware itself has failed.

I do have an F4-800 that I could put the drives into and test in that unit. Terramaster claimed (when I talked to the tech guy on the phone) that the F4-300 (the one that contains my failed drive) and the F4-800 are the same motherboard, with the only difference being the F4-800 offers SATA and 1396 Firewire 800 outputs. I have avoided trying this because I have an underlying fear that if the motherboards are in fact different, the F4-800 could end up damaging the disks from the F4-300. Is that possible?

Any other advice or suggestions? Does anyone out there own a Terramaster?

 

[L&LD]

At this point, assuming the data is the most important thing, I would be buying one or two USB drive(s) of appropriate capacity, connecting to the original NAS with the original drives (even if it shows as failed, it should still allow you to browse and copy the data, correct?) and simply getting the data off.

Depending how important that data is, I would copy this data to two different (sets of) USB drives.

Now, I would install the latest firmware available for the NAS after I have initialized the original drives first. Even if you do have the latest firmware; I would re-install it once again after the drives were initialized and the original RAID configuration was deleted.


If after testing for a reasonable time it seems stable, copy the data back to it from one set of the USB drive(s).

Myself? I would be wary of the other Terramaster possibly failing in the same way (if indeed it is NAS hardware or software related). At the very least; get large enough USB drives to backup the data from that NAS as well.

 

[Figbert]

Thanks very much for your advice.

When the TerraMaster NAS failed, it went offline and I was unable to read any of the data on the drive (the drive was not visible in windows file explorer). There is a row of LEDs at the bottome of the drive HDD2, HDD2, HDD3, HDD4. The LED for HDD2 was glowing red, the rest were blue.

I turned the unit off and back on thinking it might reset. It did not and the Terramaster RAID Manager software reported the RAID was broken and specified that disk W1F22KE9 had failed. I powered off the unit, and replaced the disk with a new blank disk. The red LED for HDD2 had turned to blue, but there was no indication that the unit was rebuilding.

I talked to Terramaster support yesterday and they claimed I pulled the wrong drive and when I inserted the blank disk, the array was corrupted. This reply seems ridiculous - when I asked which drive had *actually failed*, he was unable to give a sensible reply. Later he said it was W1F22KE9 but another drive had failed too. I am unable to make heads nor tails of the Terramaster RAID Manager report that I have attached in case its useful in figuring out this mystery.

Right now, the NAS RAID does not appear in windows file explorer at all. I cannot access the drive unless I reinitialize it in Computer Management (and I'm certainly not going to do that).

L&LD, thanks for your suggestion. My data is crucial. I'm a researcher and the NAS holds my photo collection. With this failure, it seems I've lost most of my data for the last 3 months - I was out "in the field" a lot and neglected to backup the most recent stuff.

I have a few questions:

1. I prefer to cut down on the number of external hd boxes sitting around as I have far too many. Would it be OK to implement the solution you recommended by buying a Thecus N5550, loading it with WD RED 4TB disks and using that setup for recovery? The Thecus N5550 is on sale in Canada at a very good price ($370). Its only USB 2 but I could use its eSATA for photo editing.

I'm on a tight budget but if the Thecus N5550 is definitely not recommended, then I'll go with a QNAP or Synology. I'm looking at QNAP TS-651 (6 bay assuming it will offer more redundancy as I NEVER want to go through this again) and the QNAP TS-569-PRO.


2. Will I have any luck trying R-Studio to recover the failed RAID? Is there any way to recover a failed RAID? Or will it be insanely expensive?

Your advice is much appreciated. Its wonderful when strangers can come to each other's assistance and offer good advice.

- FB.

PS. Are there other forums where I might go to ask for advice regarding RAIDS

 

[Figbert]

Myself? I would be wary of the other Terramaster possibly failing in the same way (if indeed it is NAS hardware or software related). At the very least; get large enough USB drives to backup the data from that NAS as well.

My overall plan now is to copy all the data off my other Terramaster F4-830 RAID 5 and reconfigure the unit to be a JBOD with each disk independent. I'll just use the unit as a box for individual drives. If the Terramaster box has a hardware failure, each of the disks inside should be fine/intact. Am I correct in assuming this? At very least, it will be easy to perform data recovery on single disks.

From my discussions with Terramaster support, I infer that they are reverse engineered from older QNAP units. A true shame as the boxes are very well built, look nice, are compact with a convenient handle on top. A shame I dare not trust them.

 

[L&LD]

At this point I would be looking at data recovery options to get your photos back. Shop around, prices vary wildly. I had a customer that was quoted from $800 to simply look at the drive (recovery of data or not) to close to $3K to recover 30GB of data, but in the end he found and used a service that did that same job for less than $400 (even if it did take almost 2 months to get his drive and data back).

A RAID array will be more expensive than the single drive that my customer needed to recover.


I searched a little more at how Terramaster works. Seems like it installs a software raid program on your computer. This is certainly not a NAS.

It seems like R-Studio is a possible option for recovering your data. But unless you know what you're doing with low level disk operations, it could just as easily destroy any further chances of recovering that data too. Thread carefully.

I would recommend QNAP going forward while Synology is also a consideration.

I am more wary than ever about using the Terramaster products. Even / especially in JBOD mode.

Copy whatever data you can from the working one and be prepared to spend some money to do this correctly.

Remember that a NAS with RAID5 or RAID6 or RAID10 is not a backup. Leave room in your budget to have a USB / eSATA (depending on the capabilities of the NAS you buy) external drive to do backups to frequently.


I hope someone can offer better suggestions, but the implementations of a NAS (whether RAID or not) that the Terramaster units offers are inferior to Windows built in RAID options.

I haven't seen or heard of them before this, but I too 'dare not trust them' for important data from the quick search I just completed about them.

 

[Figbert]

Thanks again for your advice!
I think I'm going to try the Thecus N5550 but will decide tomorrow. I've read many good reviews on it, and though QNAP is likely the best, I have to consider my budget. Seems that the Thecus N5550 will work well and is a very good price.

Another consideration is to build a unit based on the general instructions here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsRyGb28IlI
It would cost about $600 CAN for the box without drives, with the advantage being the parts are all user replaceable.

The Terramaster worked without any software installed on my computer and I used it that way for quite some time. The techs told me there was no need to use it in fact if I didn't want to. Anyway, I'm certainly not going to trust that company again. Boxes look very nice however

 

[azazel1024]

At this point I would be looking at data recovery options to get your photos back. Shop around, prices vary wildly. I had a customer that was quoted from $800 to simply look at the drive (recovery of data or not) to close to $3K to recover 30GB of data, but in the end he found and used a service that did that same job for less than $400 (even if it did take almost 2 months to get his drive and data back).

A RAID array will be more expensive than the single drive that my customer needed to recover.


I searched a little more at how Terramaster works. Seems like it installs a software raid program on your computer. This is certainly not a NAS.

It seems like R-Studio is a possible option for recovering your data. But unless you know what you're doing with low level disk operations, it could just as easily destroy any further chances of recovering that data too. Thread carefully.

I would recommend QNAP going forward while Synology is also a consideration.

I am more wary than ever about using the Terramaster products. Even / especially in JBOD mode.

Copy whatever data you can from the working one and be prepared to spend some money to do this correctly.

Remember that a NAS with RAID5 or RAID6 or RAID10 is not a backup. Leave room in your budget to have a USB / eSATA (depending on the capabilities of the NAS you buy) external drive to do backups to frequently.


I hope someone can offer better suggestions, but the implementations of a NAS (whether RAID or not) that the Terramaster units offers are inferior to Windows built in RAID options.

I haven't seen or heard of them before this, but I too 'dare not trust them' for important data from the quick search I just completed about them.

Agreed. For a number of reasons, mostly portability and commonality, if using an external enclosure, I would look at an eSATA enclosure and using Windows software RAID for it, if you felt you needed/wanted RAID and also wanted/needed an external enclosure. I supposed you could do the same through some of the USB enclosures out there too.

I would generally not rely on an enclosure's controller to provide RAID functionality. I am wary of hardware RAID, to many possible secret sauces out there where if you pull the drives and put them in something different, all your data is gone (of course with the exception of RAID1).

I am willing to trust the RAID in something like Synology, QNAP, or Intel, ONLY to the extent that the hardware is common enough and their RAID support is generally pretty multi-generational, that so long as I know the drive order, pulling them from one and dropping them in to another should not present any problems. Should (and yes, I have my SATA ports labeled on each drive. Example, in my server my 2TB drives in RAID0 were on ports 1 and 2 (port 0 has the SSD), so there is some painters tape on each drive telling me which port they are plugged in to, so if I ever had to pull the drives and stick them in something else, I know which order to plug them in.

Also, backups, backups, backups. In some ways they are almost tripley crucual with RAID. You have a higher chance of a drive dying (because more drives) and the chances of things being screwed up rebuilding an array are non-zero, and the chances that if it is an enclosure/controller failure that dropping the array in to a different machine/enclosure has a failure rate greater than zero...backups are CRITICAL with RAID. The odds that some "failure mode" protection might save your butt with RAID1, 5, 10 or 6 might save your butt are semi-decent (but it won't save you from volume corruption, virus, accidental deletion, etc.)...but the odds that a disk will die are much greater.

Catch 22 and the only solution for any data is duplication at every step of the process. I never delete pictures off a memory card until they are on both my desktop/laptop/tablet AND my server at a minimum (an external USB HDD also gets loaded with backup's periodically...about once a month). That is generally my most priceless stuff. When I can, I also copy the memory cards to whatever I have with me (often my tablet, sometimes my laptop). Sometimes every day, sometimes it does go a bit more than a day between backups of the memory cards.

It can be a bit of a pain, but it only takes once to bite you in the butt. I have, so far in my life, only had one memory card die. Just about everything was recoverable when I used image recovery software (took a good 8hrs to get it all off...from a 16GB card, that I had maybe used 3GB of). I also try, when I can't backup memory cards, to swap memory cards every day, until I can backup the memory card. So, again, if one dies, I am probably only losing a day's worth of stuff (why I carry a couple of 16GB and a couple of 8GB memory cards. I think I have ONCE in my entire life used up an 8GB card in a day shooting my brother-in-law's wedding recently, but it allows me to swap a memory card per day for a few days if I am too lazy/haven't had a chance to backup and reduces risk that if a card dies, it takes everything with it).

 

[stevech]

L&LD, thanks for your suggestion. My data is crucial. I'm a researcher and the NAS holds my photo collection. With this failure, it seems I've lost most of my data for the last 3 months - I was out "in the field" a lot and neglected to backup the most recent stuff.

Decent NAS should automatically backup what you designate as important to a USB drive always present when you're gone.
Or as I do (Synology), don't use RAID. Use two drives, two independent volumes, auto-backup one to the other, some or all folders.
All of us should use a 3-2-1 backup strategy and automate it fully. I do.

 

[htismaqe]

Also, backups, backups, backups. In some ways they are almost tripley crucual with RAID. You have a higher chance of a drive dying (because more drives) and the chances of things being screwed up rebuilding an array are non-zero, and the chances that if it is an enclosure/controller failure that dropping the array in to a different machine/enclosure has a failure rate greater than zero...backups are CRITICAL with RAID. The odds that some "failure mode" protection might save your butt with RAID1, 5, 10 or 6 might save your butt are semi-decent (but it won't save you from volume corruption, virus, accidental deletion, etc.)...but the odds that a disk will die are much greater.

Cannot be stated enough. Backups are always crucial but there are even moreso when using RAID because of the chances of things happening ABOVE the drive level.

 

[stevech]

Cannot be stated enough. Backups are always crucial but there are even moreso when using RAID because of the chances of things happening ABOVE the drive level.

Opinion alert:
For small NAS, I think the merits of and risks RAID has been grossly misrepresented in marketing. It's an outdated solution from an era when drive failure was more likely than other risks as we see today.

 

[htismaqe]

Opinion alert:
For small NAS, I think the merits of and risks RAID has been grossly misrepresented in marketing. It's an outdated solution from an era when drive failure was more likely than other risks as we see today.

I absolutely agree. For most home users, I think RAID actually CREATES risk because of the introduction of additional complexity, e.g. not being able to mount a RAID1 drive normally and extract data using a PC.

 

[azazel1024]

Opinion alert:
For small NAS, I think the merits of and risks RAID has been grossly misrepresented in marketing. It's an outdated solution from an era when drive failure was more likely than other risks as we see today.

Only reason I use it is for the performance benefit of RAID0. I stay far away from RAID1, 5, 6 and 10. They have their place, but it isn't a place that is useful for me. 5 and 6 tend to have fairly slow writes, due to the large parity striping overhead (and read and writes are slower than an equivelent number of disks in RAID0). RAID 1 can have some uses, but not for me. RAID 10 just takes wayyyy too many disks to accomplish.

And that said, both RAID1 and 10 take the same number of disks that a main and a backup would for the same configuration speed. If you stick them all in the same machine, it doesn't even cost any more, just more drive letters and slightly more management. Or better yet at least a seperate enclosure or another machine entirely and you move away from a lot of the risks that RAID can present with file system corrupt, dead controller, dying controller (that writes occasional bad data) and so on.

I feel like RAID0 (for performance) and RAID5/6 (for up time ONLY) are the only really useful RAIDs and none of them are legitimate data backup mechanisms nor are any of the RAID modes space/disk/cost savers.