Causes of NAS Drive Failure

It can be quite a complicated task when you try to recover one network attached storage server. Commonly known as NAS, these servers are basically cheap RAID storage servers that are used commonly in small and medium sized enterprises. These low-cost services are technically much complex in terms of operation. More importantly, during data recovery from these servers, scenarios can get really complicated and difficult. 

Since these NAS storages come with features like ISCSI Targeting, support of virtualization, and deduplication, organizing data takes places in different layers in a sequential format. The process is similar to high-end storage devices. As a result, if you want to access the actual data files, you need to restructure and recover all the different layers in a sequential pattern. The process can be time-consuming and complicated.

Sudden shutdowns can be risky

Just imagine a sudden failure of QNAP NAS system. It would result in a sudden shutdown of the entire system comprising of say, a dozen of hard disks, each storing high volume of data. During the setup process, ISCSI LUNs were created, each containing a high volume of data. Henceforth, you can imagine the criticality of the situation. It’s not common to experience some kind of sluggish behavioral pattern on the NAS device. In the case of such scenarios, you need to force shutdown to prevent data corruption. Therefore, you must ensure that when using NAS devices, proper backup of the data is taken on a regular basis. If there happens to be no backup and both the LUNs have gone inaccessible, things can get horribly wrong. During such instances, file recovery from the NAS devices may seem unlikely or rather difficult.

Looking for the perfect recovery tool

If searched properly, you can find some NAS drive recovery tools. However, even with the most specialized tools available, it may take several weeks to take entire backup from high-storage capacity NAS device.

Many times, failure of NAS drives happen due to improper configuration of the NAS servers. Henceforth, it’s widely recommended that the configuration part is carefully checked before proceeding to avoid any kind of drive failure.