HELP!! - Cant access my disk after upgrading to new Asustor NAS

[neil5m]

Hi Guys
Really need your help on this. I recently upgraded from a AS3102T to a AS5202T. The disks in my AS3102T were being run as single disks configuration. I copied my photo library and data from my primary disk, say Disk1-4TB (primary) to Disk2-3TB. Then I took out both the Disks. In the new AS5202T, I put in the Disk1-4TB as primary and a new disk, Disk3-6TB as the secondary. This time I selected RAID1 configuration. Contrary to the Easy Migration Asustor said, when initialising the new Asustor AS5202T, it wiped my disk clean so I lost all the data on Disk1-4TB. I accepted it because I had saved everything to Disk2-3TB.
I then bought a SATA to USB3 connector for Disk2-3TB to use it as an external disk on the NAS to transfer the data to the new NAS. I went to File Explorer on the NAS and was shocked to note that it says the Disk2-3TB disk only has some 256MB of data on it and there are some weird locked files and folders. I had saved nearly 1.5TB of data on it. I'm so upset as all my photos etc were on it. Any idea how I can access/recover this?? I dont even know what file system this is as it did not work when I connected to my windows laptop.

I'm going to try using Disk2-3TB again as a secondary disk in the old AS3102T which I still have and putting some other new disk in as primary. The problem is that I will have to initialise the NAS and it may wipe it out the disks again. I dont know what to do. Asustor technical help still has not gotten back to me. If anyone can help I would be grateful. Am really stressed.

[father.mande]

Hi,
I am in travel and can't have time to analyse the problem but :
... STOP using your backup disk in NAS ... use it only as external , size you see is for some specific partition directly usable, the DATA are in a GPT partition configured as Raid 1 EVEN you are in single disk
... ... so if your A.D.M. used ext4 ... you must remount the Raid to access your data ... if A.D.M. use Btrfs it's a little more complex.
... Raid1 is to use 2 disks of the SAME size (or biggest lost space) and when you have a disk ALREADY formatted for NAS you MUST start with the single disk ... and AFTER, when all run as well, you can use the upgrade/migration to move from single to Raid1

So the first and unique target is to verify that your data are available in the backup ... so better is to use a live-USB Linux with Raid tools (mdadm) to test and verify
Windows can also be used but it's more complex and risky.
Try to ask to a friend with Linux knowledge .. or call again again and again the support.

Philippe.

[neil5m]

Hi Philippe,
Thanks for your advice. I've stopped using the disk. Yes the ADM used ext4. I downloaded a software to remount RAID and will try doing if after the Asustor tech team does a remote login to check the problem.
I hope Asustor can change the detail on its website to talk about Starting with Single and then using the upgrade/migration function to add another disk. They just say go ahead and plug them in and you wont lose any data. In reality, if it is a higher version of Asustor NAS, it wipes the disk while reinitialising it.
I will update as soon as Asustor tech desk has done their job. Thank you

Neil

[neil5m]

Hi Philippe
The Asustor helpdesk manually accessed the disk and all its contents were there. Quite surprising as using the Linux system to check, it said no contents and 0 bytes. But it was all there. So I guess there was some encryption. So thankful!

[patrickjburt]

Did you Upgrade your NAS?