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What happens when the Sinology dies? Do I have to buy another Synology to mount my array again? Does it have to be the same model, or family of models?

by Lownin 5y ago

mikece 5y ago
I haven't tried pulling one of the drives from my system and trying to read it with another box but I imagine just about any Linux system should be able to read BTRFS drives, no? Under the covers Synology's DSM is Linux with some proprietary apps on top.
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  Yeah I know at least ASUSTOR's ADM and Synology's DSM are both basically lightweight Linux distros (usually on an older kernel than what you'd expect building something custom), and they use standard Linux storage tooling (for mdadm RAID or btrfs).
geerlingguy 5y ago
I haven't tested it on Synology, but at least on ASUSTOR, the RAID arrays are set up using mdadm internally—so I was able to pull the drives, plug them into a Pi through a SATA card, and recover the array pretty easily using mdadm. The vendor NASes do seem to add extra partitions besides just one main 'md0', though—so you probably couldn't expect to yank the drives from a Synology and pop them into an ASUSTOR directly. I also tested pulling drives configured in the Drivestor and putting them in the Lockerstor, and that worked, but there were quirks if I tried in the opposite direction. In the end, I would rather make sure I have a complete/separate backup of the NAS before attempting to move the drives, just in case.
aparks517 5y ago
I'd lean toward restoring from backup either way, since the hardware failure might have caused data corruption that's not immediately obvious.
psz 5y ago
Yeah. You can pull drives out and mount them in regular Linux. Synology uses standard Linux tools. https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_from_my_DiskStation_using_a_PC https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_...

What happens when the Sinology dies? Do I have to buy another Synology to mount my array again? Does it have to be the same model, or family of models?

by Lownin 5y ago

What happens when the Sinology dies? Do I have to buy another Synology to mount my array again? Does it have to be the same model, or family of models?

mikece 5y ago

I haven't tried pulling one of the drives from my system and trying to read it with another box but I imagine just about any Linux system should be able to read BTRFS drives, no? Under the covers Synology's DSM is Linux with some proprietary apps on top.

geerlingguy 5y ago
Yeah I know at least ASUSTOR's ADM and Synology's DSM are both basically lightweight Linux distros (usually on an older kernel than what you'd expect building something custom), and they use standard Linux storage tooling (for mdadm RAID or btrfs).

geerlingguy 5y ago

I haven't tested it on Synology, but at least on ASUSTOR, the RAID arrays are set up using mdadm internally—so I was able to pull the drives, plug them into a Pi through a SATA card, and recover the array pretty easily using mdadm. The vendor NASes do seem to add extra partitions besides just one main 'md0', though—so you probably couldn't expect to yank the drives from a Synology and pop them into an ASUSTOR directly. I also tested pulling drives configured in the Drivestor and putting them in the Lockerstor, and that worked, but there were quirks if I tried in the opposite direction. In the end, I would rather make sure I have a complete/separate backup of the NAS before attempting to move the drives, just in case.

aparks517 5y ago

I'd lean toward restoring from backup either way, since the hardware failure might have caused data corruption that's not immediately obvious.

psz 5y ago

Yeah. You can pull drives out and mount them in regular Linux. Synology uses standard Linux tools. https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_from_my_DiskStation_using_a_PC https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_...