If the nas hardware dies - can you still read the hard drives/ recover the data

[Enquiries]

Hello

I am looking for some advice on Nas's and your channel has been a great help.
But i want to ask a question that I don't seem to have a answer to.

While i know having a nas and mirroring the data across two drives or using
hybrid raid where you can lose a drive and recover the data is not a back per say.
But allows for you to be able to carry on and not lose data.
BTW by hybrid i am thinking of the raids that let you mix drives of different sizes.

What is the situation if its not the hard drive that dies but the hardware of a NAS that dies
Be it synology , qnap or terramaster. How do you get data back? Is data just lost?
Can drives be put in a normal computer or a usb hard drive dock and data be read normally.
Or if its in a raid or just straight mirror its written in such a way it can not.

I was thinking of getting a TERRAMASTER F4-423 because that was what you used with unraid.
If you have suggestions on other terramaster models for unraid please advise id love to see
other models that could do the unraid install.
As my understanding of unraid was the data is written in such a way a drive can be taken out
and just read on a normal computer. Would this be the case in a nas setup or is it just
if you built a PC and setup unraid.

Sorry if i have talked to much and asked to many questions. Any and all help you can provide would be great.
Regards
Chris from Australia

BTW NAS's down here cost way too much

[ed]

Hello Chris,
This is a very popular question. Good news for you. If NAS hardware fails, you can simply move those drives to a different model (must be the same brand though) and you are back in the game.
Some of the Buffalo NAS feature hardware RAID, so this might be an issue. You would need to find an exact replacement NAS to get your RAID back.
With unRAID the only important part of the hardware itself is the flash drive with config drive. You will need a backup of this every time you add more disks or change something. You can use this flesh drive in any other PC/NAS case and get your RAID back.
If you did want to connect those drives to a PC, you can do so, but it will need to be Linux. Or a system that runs the same file system.
For unRAID this is XFS, Qnap use EXT and Synology, Asustor and Terramaster use EXT/BTRFS.
You could use Linux Live CD and mount your RAID there. But this is probably the most complicated way to recover your RAID.
Using unRAID is OK for home use, but it is not the fastest RAID out there. But you are right about recovering single disks. This system stores the entire file on the individual disk instead of bits and bits of each file.
If you want something that can be connected to your Windows PC during recovery, then Asustor is the best choice. They offer a feature called MyArchive. https://www.asustor.com/admv2?type=2&subject=9&sub=75
It supports EXT4, exFAT*, NTFS, HFS+, Btrfs
NTFS: for use with Windows
HFS+: for use with macOS
EXT4: for use with Linux
Btrfs: for use with Linux
exFAT: for use with Windows, macOS and Linux.

But in order for this to work, You would need to create a RAID on the first 2 drives (RAID1) and set up automated data backup tasks to copy data from this RAID to MyArchive drives which can be removed. The primary RAID drives can not be removed individually if you have RAID5 for example.

RAID1 can be removed individually and I have connected Qnap drive to a Synology via USB dock and seen the data (both systems were using EXT file system).


I hope this helps.

Thank you for your support, this keeps us going.