I am hoping someone experienced with the older QNAP CAT1 models can help me with a data recovery problem.
I have owned a QNAP TS-212P for approximately 10 years and have been very happy with it. It has mainly been used as private storage for family photographs and personal files.
Over the years I upgraded the disks several times. My previous configuration was:
QNAP TS-212P
2 × 1 TB HDD
RAID 1
The RAID contained very important family photographs, including photographs of my children from birth onward.
Later, I removed both 1 TB disks and installed two new 2 TB disks. I created the new storage on those disks and also updated QTS.
The problem is that I can now no longer access the data on the original two 1 TB RAID1 disks.
When I put the old disks back into the TS-212P, the old volume/data is not available. Connecting the disks to a Windows PC also does not provide access to the files.
Both original 1 TB disks are still in my possession.
There have previously been some attempts to inspect/access the disks from the command line. Because the photographs are irreplaceable, I do not want to perform any more operations that could alter the disks until I understand the safest recovery procedure.
My main questions are:
Is there a safe way to determine whether the original RAID1 metadata and data partitions are still intact?
Can one member of this old TS-212P RAID1 normally be mounted or recovered independently?
What is the safest READ-ONLY procedure to inspect the disks without changing RAID metadata or filesystem contents?
Should I first make sector-by-sector images/clones of both 1 TB disks and perform all recovery attempts only on the copies?
I specifically do NOT want to initialize, format, rebuild, repair or resync anything on the original drives.
If useful, I can provide the exact partition tables, mdadm information, filesystem information and the history of the previous command-line recovery attempts.
Any help from people familiar with TS-212P / older CAT1 QNAP RAID1 layouts would be greatly appreciated.
May we ask which version you upgraded from and to? You could try powering off the unit, reinserting the original two drives, and booting up to see whether the data can be read. If that doesn’t work, or if you have any concerns about the procedure, feel free to open a support ticket and our Support Team will be happy to look into your situation. Thanks!
Unfortunately, I do not know the exact QTS versions I upgraded from and to, as this happened some time ago.
Regarding reinserting the original two drives: I have already tried that. In fact, I did it based on advice I had read at the time, believing that putting the original RAID1 drives back into the NAS would be the safest way to access the old data.
Unfortunately, after doing that, I was no longer able to access the data on either of the original drives, which is exactly why I am now in this situation.
Because of my experience, I would strongly advise anyone with important data not to reinsert old RAID drives into the NAS without first making sector-by-sector clones or images of the drives, or without being absolutely certain that the NAS will not write any metadata to them.
At this point, my main goal is to avoid any further writes to the original disks and find the safest possible way to recover the data.
I have also tried to reach QNAP Support, but the current support flow directs me through the AI chatbot and I have not been able to reach a human agent yet.
Any guidance on a safe, read-only recovery approach would be greatly appreciated.
If your primary goal is to recover data, you can maybe try using a linux system to check RAID informations and mount and copy files. Even using one disk may works is your’re familiar with Linux. I’ve already done this kind of operation for qnap or other manufacturer with success. It doesn’t work every time. However, I don’t think this operation causes any changes to or loss of data.
As said above, Linux would work for sure. If you can access the NAS via SSH, you should be able to assamble the RAID1 (even as single disk degraded) and mount the MD0_DATA
UFSExplorer has a filesize limited Demo version as well (if you want to go the paid route)