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my NAS drive (2 HDD in RAID 1) stopped working and I need to recover the data. I assume that 1 out of 2 HDD drives from the NAS has failed and the data can be recovered using the other working drive, but not sure how can it be done. Can anyone advise how to do this please?

The NAS is a Buffalo Linkstation LS220D0D0402-EU, with 2x 2TB WD Blue HDDs When I connect both HDD to a PC (with SATA to USB adapter) it's says that drive is not accessible and it's asking to format it.

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    You have not provided anything like the amount of detail required to help you. You may want to edit your post to include that ngs like the make and model of NAS and how the failure manifests.
    – davidgo
    Commented May 8, 2023 at 21:22
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    As a general rule for RAID1 - you can take the disks out of the NAS and read the data off them individually - ie as if there were no RAID. I am not sure this is globally correct but has been the case on all hardware I've tested it on.
    – davidgo
    Commented May 8, 2023 at 21:24
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    Ita worth noting that RAID1 should NOT fail if a drive fails - rather a nofification shoud be sent to replace the failed disk. If thr NAS is not working ot is likely there are either problems with both disks or there is a hardware failure seperate from the disks.
    – davidgo
    Commented May 8, 2023 at 21:26
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    One important bit of info missing is where/how do you see the drive failure on the NAS (not connecting it to a PC, as the PC doesn't know about the RAID, but on the NAS itself that knows about the RAID and should be able to indicate what's going on.)
    – Yisroel Tech
    Commented May 9, 2023 at 14:02
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    What OS you attach the drives to? If Windows, it won't know what do with partition types / file systems it can not handle. Which is very likely to be the case as most (all?) NAS boxes run a flavor of Linux and use Ext, XFS etc..
    – Joep van Steen
    Commented May 9, 2023 at 14:24

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There is a paucity of meaningful information on useful details about this device but it seems that -

  • from your description of the problem the disks are physically Ok.
  • Its extremely likely the issue of reading the data off the disks in Windows is that it does not understand the filesystem used.
  • The filesystem is probably XFS - which is supported on Unix. This is not an extremely common filesystem but was probably on the rise when the system was developed and can be accessed.

There are (at least) 2 ways to tackle this -

  • The way I would do it is to attach a drive to a Linux system, mount it and pull the data off. This is definately the superior way - but requires Linux skills. If you don't have Linux skills maybe find a LUG (Linux User Group) or a student doing computer science at a Uni/Trade School to help.

  • Find some data recovery software that can work under Windows. Google came up with UFS Explorer. Never used it - not a recommendation. Paragon Software claim read-only support for XFS under Windows. I've not used them either but they are a credible company.

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  • I'm already scanning 1 HDD with Easeus Data Recovery trial tool, hoping for some good results. With the first solution; would it be possible to do it in Ubuntu or Linux Mint?
    – La Chupacabra
    Commented May 9, 2023 at 20:02
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    Ive never used it but I dont think Easeus is the correct tool for the job. Yes, Ubuntu should work fine. I imagine Mint would be OK. You just need something with XFS support. You will likely need to install xfs support with a command like 'sudo apt update sudo apt install xfsprogs'
    – davidgo
    Commented May 9, 2023 at 20:07
  • Will give it a go and later post an update how it went. Thank you very much for your help
    – La Chupacabra
    Commented May 9, 2023 at 21:03

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