Synology NAS Data Recovery
Recovery of lost data from Synology diskstations and rackstations.
Diskstation and Rackstation Recovery
We can recover data from all Synology NAS boxes. Please contact us about recovering the data from Diskstations and Rackstations. From single drive to multi-bay and Synology expansion units. No recovery, no fee service.
There are many versions of Synology disk stations, and they have changed considerably over the years. The technology has advanced that even the single drive NAS are powerful and have so many features, including email server, MySQL, web server, advanced backup systems, Virtualisation, iSCSI, etc. They are some of the most advanced NAS equipment available.
We can recover data from failed Synology NAS systems, including those in the list below. Synology uses the same or similar file systems in all their NAS equipment, so if your NAS box is not in the list below, the chances are very high that we can work with it. If you have any doubts, call us on 0800 072 3282
We recover from Synology Thin Provisioned dynamic LUNs and standard LUNs
What is Synology Thin Provisioning
Thin provisioning is where a LUN can be created without guessing how much space it will need. You create each LUN and the Synology looks after the space. Compared to ‘thick’ provisioning where the size of each LUN is of a pre-determined size, thin provisioning makes more efficient use of the available space.
So let’s take an example. So, we have a Synology RackStation with 40 TB of storage, and we want to share it equally between, User data, the sales department, accounts, and database storage, using Non-Dynamic Provisioning, aka Thick or Fat Provisioning.
| Users | Sales | Accounts | Databases |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 TB | 10 TB | 10 TB | 10 TB |
After, say, a year, you want to check how much data is on the system, we find that LUN usage is…
- Users 10%
- Sales 30%
- Accounts 20%
- Database 90%
| Total space | Used | Unused | Users | 10 TB | 1 TB | 9 TB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | 10 TB | 3 TB | 7 TB |
| Accounts | 10 TB | 2 TB | 8 Tb |
| Databases | 10 TB | 9 TB | 1 TB |
| Totals | 40 TB | 15 TB | 25 TB |
You notice that the LUN storing the databases is almost full. So, you think, we better expand the system to add more space for the database, as it’s starting to slow down.
But, you can see that there is more unused space than that used. An upgrade to larger drives will only be a temporary fix, as, even if you double it, the space will soon run out again. If you add it all up, there is 25 TB, or 62% of unused storage space. So, how can we make better use of that storage?
Thin provisioning uses a different approach, where the free space becomes available to all LUNs, meaning that all the space is available to all the LUNs.
Thin provisioning uses a different technique of storing data. Meaning that all 40 TB is available, and will only need upgrading once the total 40 TB is used.
You create your 4 × 10 TB LUNs as normal. However, the data is stored in a fragmented order, as such, making it much more space efficient. If you use BTRFS as the file system, you can use defragmentation on the LUN to maximise data throughput efficiency.
| Unused | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Data recovery from thin provisioned storage
Because of the way, data is stored in thin provisioned systems, data recovery can be extremely complex. We have studied this closely and understand how the data is stored on systems using thin provisioning, and have built scripts to extract data.