Synology RAID 5 Recovery

Synology offers storage solutions for a wide range of users. For home use, there are small two- and four-disk NAS devices such as DS 223 or DS423, and for large corporations, devices such as 8-disk DS1823 or DS3622.

Synology NAS devices have won the hearts of millions of network device users. However, despite all their reliability, NAS devices from Synology are also susceptible to a variety of failures, which inevitably lead to the user being unable to access data. The most common types of Synology crashes include:

  1. Damage to the NAS box.
  2. Failure of more disks than fault tolerance allows. For a RAID5 array, you can only lose one disk.
  3. RAID driver failure.
  4. File system failure.

Except for the case described in the second paragraph, you can try to restore the data yourself. The full-scale data recovery process from Synology RAID5 consists of two steps:

  1. Restoring the RAID5 array configuration.
  2. File recovery.

In cases where the array parameters are not destroyed, and you are dealing, for example, with a file system failure or with the recovery of accidentally deleted files, then you will not have to restore the RAID.

How to recover data from Synology RAID5 using ReclaiMe

  1. Remove the drives from your Synology and label them according to the bays they were in your Synology.
  2. Connect all available drives from Synology to your Windows computer. It is advisable to connect the drives directly to the computer via SATA. However, if there are not enough free SATA ports, purchase special USB-to-SATA adapters. Since you are dealing with RAID5, you can exclude one of the disks from the recovery process, since the program itself will be able to reconstruct it. Also, if you suspect that one of the disks is not entirely healthy, then it should be excluded from the process. To check the health of your drives before restoring data, run a special hard drive diagnostic program. If a particular drive is not 100% healthy, disconnect it from the computer.
  3. Download install and run Synology data recovery software – ReclaiMe File Recovery.
  4. In the software window, where all devices available for scanning are displayed, select the volume from Synology and start scanning by clicking Start. Typically, the required volume will be located under the BTRFS section. If you do not see a suitable volume or the volume is displayed in red, then skip steps 5 and 6 and go to step 7.
    5. Data recovery from a Synology RAID5
  5. Wait until you receive a message that the Initial Scan is completed and start checking the quality of the recovery using Preview.
    6. ReclaiMe software - file preview
  6. If the files are displayed correctly in Preview, buy an Ultimate license key and start saving data to a prepared device (another NAS or external hard drives).
  7. If the required volume from Synology is not in the list of devices from ReclaiMe, then most likely the RAID metadata is damaged. In this case, you first need to restore the RAID configuration using ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery.
  8. Download, install and run ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery.
  9. Select all disks from RAID5 and click Start RAID5.
    10. Synology RAID5 recovery
  10. Wait until the software determines the RAID5 configuration and click Run ReclaiMe to recover files.
  11. In the ReclaiMe File Recovery software window, select the recovered RAID and start scanning. Next, return to points 5 and 6.

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