Recovering Data from Drives with damaged DSM 7 Installation

[kami001]

Hi Everyone,

 

I have a huge problem and I'm hoping to solve (or at least mitigate it) it with your help.

Here's my apocalyptic scenario:

1. Until last week I had a fully working XPenology DSM 7.1 3622xs+ on BareMetal installed via Tiny Core RedPill. For unknown reasons, after another power break, the DSM web interface breaks resulting in a no longer accessible page. The OS is still there, the loader still works and loads the system, making it visible even via the Synology Assistant but there's no way to get to the interface again.
2. I tried to reinstallthe DSM, hoping for the installer to see the disks with already present data but they looked like "new" to the installer. Installation failed systematically at 55%.
3. I rebuilt the tinycore pendrive and reinstalled. This time the installation arrived to its end but (even after the usual 10 minutes to wait for the system to reboot) for some unknown reason the server wasn't available. This time not even the Synology Assistant could see it anymore.

 

At this point, my only objective has become to "just" recover the data so - while panic starts to rise - I started researching: my system was running 4x4TB units (WD Red) configured in RAID0 for a total available space of about 8TB with BTRFS filesystem so basically data has to be recovered from 2 of the 4 physical drives.

 

1. I saw there's a driver allowing Windows to see BTRFS and I installed it on my laptop so I took the disks out of my XPenology build and plugged them into my drive docking station connected to one of my Windows Laptops. Disks are seen by the OS's disk utility but not accessible. They result as "not formatted".
2. I tried then to use Paragon Partition Manager, hoping to get to access the disks' content. No progress.
3. Then I installed a BTRFS data recovery utility (on Windows) for damaged drives and while it started scanning one of the drives it started finding some "familiar" stuff.

 

I am now literally stuck into deciding whether to give up and say forever goodbye to my data or to keep fighting what in the end could still be a losing game but I am a fighter.

 

• My next step would be to try to access the drives with a Linux (instead of a Windows) machine, which should support BTRFS, but maybe some of you has some experience already thus I ask the question "is it worth trying?"
• Also I wonder, on top of all this, if maybe there is a way to make everything "visible" if I firstly install a new XPenology DSM 7.1 3622xs+ on the same machine with a separate empty drive and then I start connecting the disks once I get this new system fully up and running.

 

Has anyone of you experienced a similar issue and found a solution? If yes, how did that happen?

 

I do not have other ideas about how to solve this problem so I'm open to any possible constructive advice.

 

Thanks a lot in advance just for the patience to read this post!

[dj_nsk]

Don't do anything yet that will write data to your work disks!

2 часа назад, kami001 сказал:

if I firstly install a new XPenology DSM 7.1 3622xs+ on the same machine with a separate empty drive and then I start connecting the disks once I get this new system fully up and running.

This should have been done after this "I rebuilt the tinycore pendrive and reinstalled. This time the installation arrived to its end but (even after the usual 10 minutes to wait for the system to reboot) for some unknown reason the server wasn't available". 

Disconnect (physically) your working disks and put them aside, connect an empty disk to the same machine and try to install the DSM again (preferably the same model and version). Only when you make sure that the DSM is working on your old hardware, you can connect the old disks. And if DSM does not work, then the problem is in the hardware.

Edited May 24, 2023 by dj_nsk