I Nearly Lost All Of My Data!

Picture the scene โ€“ Iโ€™m in the office doing some work on my personal laptop, and all of a sudden my Synology Drive system tray icon says it canโ€™t connect to my server. At first I wasnโ€™t concerned as this kind of thing happens from time to time โ€“ probably just an ISP issue at home, I thought.

Fast forward a few hours; I go home to find my Synology NAS was powered off. Our cleaner had been in that day, so I assumed she had probably just unplugged it by mistake. So I try to power it back on โ€“ nothing. The device was comepletely dead.

Shit!

My Synology has 4 x 1TB disks in a RAID 5, which also backs up my most important data to a 1TB external USB drive every evening โ€“ I wasnโ€™t concerned about my data. What I was worried about was having to potentially stump up the cash for a new Synology, as theyโ€™re not cheap.

Ok, so I unplug the USB drive, take it upstairs and hook it up to my desktop โ€“ I needed to start pulling the data off this thing so I have a backup of my backups.

I plug it in, switch it on, and the disk doesnโ€™t spin up. Just like the Synology, I was getting absolutely nothing from the USB drive either.

Double shit!

At this point Iโ€™m really worried. You see, I cancelled my off-site Amazon Glacier backups around 6 months ago. What are the chances of both a 4 disk RAID failing AND a USB drive at the same time? Not likely, I thought. Boy was I wrong.

My Synology stored all of my data, all of my partnerโ€™s data, all of our videos, pictures, music etc. plus a tonne of other stuff, like website backups. Problem is, only my data and my partnerโ€™s data backed up to the USB. Just the crucial stuff.

By this point Iโ€™m REALLY worried, but I have 1 saving grace โ€“ maybe this is a problem with the enclosures and the disks are fine. I hit the Internet looking for answers.

The Answer?

After lots of research, I finally come across this article on Synologyโ€™s knowledgebase. Itโ€™s gotta be worth a try, I though. However, my desktop didnโ€™t have enough SATA ports to mount all 4 drives.

I hit Amazon Prime, order a SATA card for next day delivery, then spend the next 24 hours panicking.

Fast forward 24 hours, I get home from work and my Amazon Prime box is waiting for me. I rush up stairs, setup the drives and run through the Synology restore guide.

I hit the power button on the desktop. Please work, please work, please effing work! Iโ€™m saying to myself over and over. I hear all 4 drives start to spin up โ€“ weโ€™re half way there, folks!

Twenty agonising minutes later I have the LVM RAID configured on my machine and I can browse the entire array. Holy shit, IT WORKED!

I donโ€™t know what happened for sure, but I think it may have been a power surge that fried the boards on both the Synology and the USB, as they were plugged in to the same socket.

The Aftermath

Iโ€™m not out of the woods yet โ€“ I still have a tonne of data to pull off these drives. My biggest problem at this point was that I disnโ€™t have anywhere to store all the data.

Itโ€™s now 6 days since my NAS & USB backups crapped out on me, and Iโ€™m STILL restoring data from the drives. However Iโ€™m around 95% of the way there now, and I hope to have it all finished this evening.

I have my data backโ€ฆphew! But now my network and data are a complete shambles. I have bits of data spread over a number of USB drives that I cobbled together, as I have no NAS.

Itโ€™s clear that I not only need to replace my old solution, but I also need to come up with a more robust one too. I have been doing a tonne of research on what to do next, and I think I now have a plan. So keep an eye out on this blog for part 2 of this story, where I will hopefully be able to tell you that Iโ€™ve fully recovered and that I have a more robust solution in place.

Do you have any data loss horror stories? Please make me feel better and tell me yours in the comments below.

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