So, this happened… In short - I’ve had odd bits en pieces on an now old QNAP TS-853A - I hadn’t even opened it up, until my project to re-organize everything into a proper 19" rack started. Said and done, I powered it off as one should, put aside, and started with the tedious task of getting a rats nest a bit more proper.
Sadly - and - this is the story I’d like to share - the usb DOM and partitions holding the QTS OS decided - enough. OFC, since I hadn’t started having backups in more places yet, my first reaction was to dive into the internet, and found r-explorer professional (after a refund, since the RAID version did not support the operations I needed to perform…). This started to work great for the non encrypted portions…
In short, QNAP’s layout is quite a feat. It even includes software raid, a fake DRDB setup (locally, with their own sauce (hence, normal DRDB setup no-go…)), and ofc with lvm, snapshots and all that fun stuff. Result = I was lazy and bought software that would do it quicker for me.
But alas - when prompted with the password for the backups and a plethora of legacy files saved 30+ years - it just more or less said “nah”…
Workaround started to happen - perhaps I could revive the lovely NAS instead, it’s a “peppy” intel N3150, has four 1gbit ports, and 8 bays, I’ve crammed another DDR3L stick in it ages ago- it’s worked good-ish - at least, if I could get the DOM or a fresh “firmware” onto the DOM - hopefully it would at least be good enough to export everything more easily.
In short- no. So, I stuck the drives into one of the new servers, and they are now waiting for a VM to be attached to, and then restart the whole process with R-Explorer - yay …
And right now - as I am typing - I thought I had a TS-853 Pro - but - it’s a TS-853A …
This means that (no, I cannot follow the “guides” that QNAP have (screenshots from the late 1800’s in it…), I need to retry to figure out how to get the QTS OS onto the DOM, or even a USB-stick… I’ll update on that - onto the fun times until then -
Glancing at the stupid QNAP chassi, I started to fiddle with the screwdriver even more - said and done - it came apart and got checked out… It’s an odd machine - it has dual HDMI, extensive audio outputs, usb, and the mentioned 4 nic ports.
Good - BIOS is still accessible via smashing delete - a sparse BIOS screen appears - great - I already knew that booting from disk or USB worked after detaching the DOM module… Time to have some fun, so I just installed proxmox on it, staring at some older 1TB drives, and 2x USB 8TB drives, I think I’ve found a new purpose for it - heck, I might even dust of bacula and treat it as a real backup server :D.
So… A question - a task - a ponder - If anyone has any clarity or insight on how to rescue or re-write QTS onto either the DOM or USB, hit me up - meantime, I’ll get familiar with the recovery software, and resume the playdate with the old NAS :).