NAS Recovery

Although NAS devices are reliable storage, they still can fail. If you cannot get access to the data stored on a NAS, you can try to recover the data using special NAS recovery software. Generally, NAS data recovery boils down to getting the disks from a NAS, connecting them to a PC, and extracting files using data recovery software.

Supported NAS devices

  • QNAP
  • NETGEAR ReadyNAS
  • Synology
  • Buffalo LinkStation and TeraStation
  • Seagate BlackArmor
  • Iomega Storcenter
  • Thecus
  • Western Digital
  • LaCie
  • ASUSTOR
  • btrfs-based NAS servers
  • ...and many other

NAS data recovery using ReclaiMe

Below are the instructions for a full-scale NAS data recovery which requires turning off the device, removing the drives from it, and connecting them to the PC directly. If your NAS device is functioning normally and all you need is to recover a couple of deleted files, you can first try recovering data directly from a working NAS device in read-only mode, as described here.

  1. Get the disks out of the NAS and connect them to the PC. Don't forget to turn off the power and pull the plug out of the wall socket when disconnecting and connecting the disks. When you take the disks out of the NAS, label all of them according to which bay they belong to. These labels will help you to put it all back together in the same way if needed. If Windows on the PC to which you connect the disks asks you to "Initialize disks" or even "Format" them, don't. Please, refer to this page if you need more information on why you should extract the disks from the NAS when recovering data.
  2. Download and install ReclaiMe File Recovery software. Most NASes use so called md-raid or LVM drivers to handle an array. ReclaiMe is capable of parsing md-raid and LVM control structures if they are not too badly damaged.
  3. Select the NAS volume you need to recover and click Start. For the btrfs-based NASes like NETGEAR, the volume will be under the BTRFS section; for other NASes, look for it under the Linux md-raid or Linux LVM section.
  4. Select md-raid volume in ReclaiMe
  5. Wait until the ReclaiMe File Recovery starts to bring files and then check the quality of the recovery using the Preview .
    Check the quality of the recovery in ReclaiMe
  6. Purchase the license key and then copy the recovered data to the prepared storage device.
IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you can't see the array in ReclaiMe File Recovery, then you need to recover RAID configuration first using ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery software. When the parameters are determined, select "Run ReclaiMe to recover data" in ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery tool and back here. Click here for detailed tutorial.

All the steps on video

NAS Recovery Feedback

I accidently deleted files off my NAS…

I accidently deleted files off my NAS and quickly started searching for a recommended software to do the recovery with. I came across Reclaime and it has worked well with no issues. I'm happy to have the data back in my own hands.

rukey

Does a good job

I used ReclaiMe to restore deleted files from an accidentally factory-reset Buffalo Linkstation running Raid0. Overall, it did what it claimed to do, which was locate and restore files not overwritten after the reset. There was some weirdness in the results, such as 10GB shortcut files, JPEGS being identified as DOCX, etc. The search filters are surprisingly robust. They could do with a bit more granulation in functionality, but overall they helped me filter out erroneously discovered files.

BTG Works

Reclaime saved 1TB of my data from NAS…

Reclaime saved 1TB of my data from NAS server with Btrfs after accidental deletion.

Michal Koval

overall user rating - 4.8

You can see more reviews about ReclaiMe software on the Trustpilot site.

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