Hi guys

I need you expertise and help on this one, i have wdmycloud ex4 NAS

he has four bays

yesterday after updating the firmware i got into problems... my spanned volume disappeared, data with more than 10 years... ithe irony is that i was backing it to the web but still in a very early stage

all the 4 HDDs are perfectly healthy without any bad sectors or error... it happen after the firmware upgrade

didn't had this issue before, i need this data

could you please give me some tips? im thinking of using recovery services but if i can solve saving a few euros i will be very happy ... im unemployed and i would need to ask permission of my parents before taking the drives to a lab


just for knowledge

the spanned volume is in EXT4 format

all the HDDS have the partitions like this one



this is the first of 4 drives

i know what is the right order of the volume too :/ i know what is the hdd number 1, 2 etc

hope that someone can share some knowledge

*i did firmware upgrade on the NAS WD MY cloud ex4

not on the HDDS itself

bad luck i guess

This job a little bit complicated even for experts. You don't just need to find order and connect all the drives together proper way, you need to find front and back offsets to make right regions , afterwards, need run special SW for searching lost FS (which could also in your case after FW upgrade) .

_________________
Angel Data Recovery

What if you downgrade the fw version?
If that was what created the problem, maybe the oposite can put it back again.

_________________
http://www.pclab.com.pt facebook.com/PCLAB.A.T
ACELab partner

I was not expecting this complexity. My idea was to make simple recovery...
I tought its spanning hard drives will fill by order ... after first drive is full the nas begins writing to the next hdd is transparent to windows/user

Im a little scary about trying to recover myself and complicate things but if you know some good software that doesnt harm the volumes just reads the content im able to test it.... i dont want to destroy my good chances of recovery... I didnt format any partition for example

If you want to safely recover your data, take it to a pro right away. If you want to do it yourself, safely:

1. Get a full sector-by-sector clone of each drive
2. Set the originals aside and attempt recovery with the clones
3. Connect the clones to a linux system
4. Use mdadm to read the RAID config from each drive, determining raid type, order, etc
5. Use mdadm to mount RAID volume
6. Recover data to a drive large enough to hold the amount of data on the drive

The above steps only help, if the RAID meta data for the spanned volume wasn't altered during the update. Otherwise, you will then need to go the manual route of figuring things out.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

@ seed.helper
the FW update process was Smooth? no problems?
not stuck somewhere? power off whatever?

_________________
Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

i love you guys thank you very much for trying to help

pclab
when i downgraded to the old firmware that worked before now it doesnt work too... it says volume 1 Failed and cant see any of my files ( says volume not mounted) v1.03.39


when i try with the new firmware that didn't recognized my volume and gave problems it doesn't even detect any errors and asks me to create a volume (says volume not mounted) v1.03.41

lcoughey i can use linux on the nas and try to recover using the NAS system i have SSH enabled, The NAS has Busybox installed

i will do a clone from this RED to a green 2TB that has been working in the last 4 years and will use the green for "testing purposes and do it yourselfs"

can i try to recover one by one?? i dont have any spare drives, i will need to copy the contents from the green to another several 500gb drives that i have :/

einstein9

yeah the unit upgraded smooth it even recognized my volume at first boot after the firmware upgrade !!!!!! so i think all my files are fine on the drives itself.

I only lost them because i did a system restore. I do this every time i upgrade firmware and i don't loose any data on the process. It should have been the same like every other times

i didnt have space on my other drives to backup 6TB of data before trying this so i just did...




MORE closely




after using system restore see the info on the picture i lost access to my files. This hasnt supposed to happen like it says on the picture...

No, you don't want the drives in the NAS when attempting to recover via Linux. You need direct access to the drives without the NAS trying to interfere.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Can you post a picture of the Storage part of the NAS?
Didn't it changed??

_________________
http://www.pclab.com.pt facebook.com/PCLAB.A.T
ACELab partner

@OP
Forgive me, I don't understand the logic/purpose of using the "System Restore" function if you we go ahead and complete a firmware update, especially that was successful and per your description data was accessible.

My educated guess would be that of in the event the firmware upgrade failed, then the system restore would allow for the settings to be defaulted to the original settings.

What is your interpretation?

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

@ seed.helper

Some STUPID storage such as WD when you do FW update it downloads the FW file into its own internal MEM.
then will REMOVE the old Existing one (your case) and re-create them again (extracted from FW image)

the Pro. storage will only MODIFY/OVERWRITE the necessary files/folders

sometimes FW re-create NAS Booting partition (in order to remove old stuff) and make it again

as a matter of fact, if you need your files back, do not play a lot with the GUI will not help and will not do much

work outside the Box, which means good help from Pro. raid such as Dr.Kiev here for example

get your files back, then you may continue playing with it and discover it

good luck

_________________
Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

I don't think doing with your own self will help you anymore you already tried some basic data recovery tricks. I advice you to get some paid service from DR pro who has NAS experience.

I have completed few number of NAS cases this year now what you can do for now...

remove all hdd's from NAS and write down the correct order number on the hdd's with pen or marker.

Now start the NAS box without hdd's it give you error no hdd;s found... now shutdown the NAS box.

Now connect the hdd's one by into your system with motherboard sata interface and check the health of all hdd's one by one.

If all hdd's health good then install the hdd's back to NAS box with correct order and try check you can found partition back remember NAS sync system needs 30 min to complete it show you busy if hdd's are good... or hdd's are bad it needs 5 hours or even the day to complete the sync.

If this trick help you just send the original flag of your country to my address which i will give if you succeed.

if above suggestion did not help you i will check on-line for a solution add me on skype: ontrack86 for discussion.

agreed.

you can contact .

_________________
Data Recovery Pakistan

seed.helper, Your NAS is probably using a compound RAID. It has a RAID 1 partition that's the same on all drives, but the other partition(s) are in a RAID 5 Config.

Connect all drives to another machine (without the NAS) and try opening in UFSExplorer. If the array wasn't broken, but it's just a failed FW upgrade, you might be able to open the array through that.

Hope that helps.

_________________
Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

No, this isn't the first time we see this problem with WD NAS.

We haven't worked with this problem on this particular model yet, but looks like situation isn't too good.
Need to see what was there / what's on the drives now to tell for sure, but could be up to a rebuild with format. In terms of recoverability scenario may range from "95% recoverable" to "dead completely".

Ext4 is impossible to recover after format of the same size, even RAW recovery is unlikely (but RAW on Ext4 will be better than RAW on Ext3 anyway).
If RAID has been reconfigured, then most likely at least partial recovery is possible.

Then do not attempt any basic procedures available within OS / NAS software, let alone rebuild / initialization. They won't help, but can cause more harm quite easily.

If you want to try anything yourself, then create full sector-by-sector copies of each disk and work with them. Basically you need data recovery software, which will reassemble your RAID based on the parameters you provide. But to do that you'll need either to connect clones of your drives to a machine directly or create images as files and put them on some other storage and work with those files, opening them as a virtual hard drives.

Should you decide you ran out of options and need an assistance, feel free to contact me. We can look into this job remotely, such diagnostics is obligation-free.

_________________
• Remote RAID, NAS, SAN, VMware, DVR (CCTV), flash and tape recovery. Data recovery support.

thanks for all your opinions.

i will anwser you all tomorrow if possible

im too tired to read everything now but im glad i choose this forum for help

peace

hello guys,
wd is helping me with support guys from level 2 and see whats is possible to do

for now its looking good...

lets see what happens

i will keep you posted, but this will take a long time its an huge volume, wish me luck :/

cheers

I'd be surprised if they don't just help you make it worse. Good luck!

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

thank you

i dont forget your opinions.

i will stay in touch