Datavolume doesn't exist ! message

3 weeks later and today i finally received my advanced replacement , for which WD will charge me for if i don’t return it by the 4th April, today’s the 10th March…Anyway i booted it up and finally i can see the NAS units folders (shared and public) on my network, so far so good. Next  I swapped out the HD’s for mine and guess what folks I can’t see the folders anymore, and i get the same old story of Datavolume doesn’t exist, and the drives are unassigned.

What is the use of RAID 5 if you can’t swap drives from one NAS unit to another and recover your data?. There has to be something fundamentally wrong that you can’t do this with this unit.

(For the record the firmware is 2.1.96 rather than the 2.1.92 i downloaded back in December, yep that’s how long this saga has been to date). Next stop is the telephone help line, but methinks i can say goodbye to my data, and to think that’s why i bought this unit in the first place!

By the way has anyone made a backup of the configuration?, if so did the unit lets you choose where to save it, as mine just goes to /admin/system_config_mangage.php

I just talked to WD Tech support on the phone, and was told that only a couple of things can cause the “Datavolume doesn’t exist” error: it’s either that one of the drives failed or the raid degraded.  The agent told me that if you get that, then you need to check the network storage manager to see which failed.  If a drive fails, you can replace the drive.  But if the raid degrades, you can reset it to see if it will restore the raid (losing all data of course).  If it doesn’t restore the raid then you need to replace the whole unit.  Looks like some of you may be looking at data recovery.  :frowning:

Wayne, Txs for the heads up re the Datavolume doesn’t exist. My drives all read good, but unassigned and went this way one day after my transferring a great deal of data across to them. I don’t get why all four would fail at once.

I have spent 1/2 day trying different things after a few calls to the WD ‘help’ line. Here’s what I’ve found to date, and I find it ‘illogical’ hence my blog name tag.

I tried installing my old HD’s across to the working RMA NAS replacement unit, to try and recover my data without success. What I found really strange was that on any drive inserted it came up with firmware version 2.1.92 was now installed on the unit whereas it had been 2.1.96 before indicating that the firmware is loaded on the HD’s and not the unit its self .

As I was unable to install and read my old drives(HD’s unassigned) WD help then suggested that I update my ‘old’ HD’s with the latest firmware, trouble was that  the units auto update told me I had the latest firmware installed albeit 2.1.92. There is a manual update option but you need  the file and it’s nowhere to be found as i can see on the WD download site, and anyway it’s not as upto date as my RMA replacement anyway. I spoke to WD again and they to date were unable to help me with a file copy of 2.1.96.

During the swapping of drives i managed to loose 1 drive of the RMA replacement and only a hard reboot (push button on rear of the unit) recovered it for me. I went systematically through my ‘old’ HD’s into the RMA replacement until finally it gave up the ghost totally and refused to boot or turn off, which was exactly the fault i had on my first unit which i bought back in NOV 2009! (this is my third replacement).  Pushing the reset button had no effect.

Next  I reloaded my ‘old’ drives into the RMA replacement and it booted and switched off OK, but of course no data as all the drives are unassigned. Therefore it appears that the new RMA drives are knackered, having self destructed during a boot sequence, and it is they that prevented the unit booting correctly.

What I just don’t get is why this unit is so flaky on booting up and why on earth would you have firmware on essentially ‘dumb’ HD’s. If they don’t have an answer for me tomorrow WD will be getting their unit back as is, and I’m stuck with trying to get my money back from my original supplier.

Given all the feedback of others with data loss I really think WD should offer a  mechanism where you can get your data retrieved FOC within a say 12 month time frame, and perhaps offer an out of warranty discount scheme to assist other older WD users who suffer at the hands of this NAS unit losing their data, after all that’s why we bought it in the first place.

Better still have a service centre where you can send or drop the unit into worldwide, rather that this convoluted RMA system that takes forever and a day, in my case THREE WEEKS for the last one, and your loathe to use anyway as you need to keep your data.

I have absolutely no faith in this unit keeping my data long term given the troubles I’ve seen and I’ve only used it TWO DAYS in total. It’s by far the worst purchase I’ve ever made and to think I trusted it with my data what an ■■■■■…you live and learn.

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I had the exact same problem and 16+ hours of work later I have recovered all the data and am copying it off.

Disclaimer:  This will not restore your device to normal working condition but I was able to connect to it over the network and copy my data after these steps.  Also the info here is for one RAID 5 2.7TB  volume on the 4TB Sharespace NAS.

Here is what I did.  First you will need to SSH into the device.  You might need to go ahead and update the firmware to the latest to get the option.  I did.  Under the network services enable SSH.

Connect to the device.  I used the free program Putty

username: admin

password: welc0me

This is Linux so everything is case sensitive.

at the prompt type: mdadm -D /dev/md2

You should get a message about it not existing.  If it does then this might not be the solution for you.

Then type: mdadm --assemble /dev/md2 /dev/sda4 /dev/sdb4 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdd4

Then type: pvcreate /dev/md2

Then type: vgcreate lvmr /dev/md2

Then type: lvcreate -l 714329 lvmr -n lvm0

Now we need to rebuild the journal and check the FS.

Type: **bleep**.ext3 /dev/lvmr/lvmr0

This will take a really long time.  I then asked me a ton of Yes/No questions.  Prob 1000+ to answer.  I ended up just holding down the enter key to just shoot through them.

After it was finally done I just typed: mount -t ext3 /dev/lvmr/lvmr0 /DataVolume -o rw,noatime

I was then able to access it from my Windows 7 computer using the UNC ( [\192.168.1.6](file://%5C%5C192.168.1.6)) and copy the data off.

Be warned if you reboot the NAS you will have to do this all again.  I’m not spendning any time to learn how to make the config work ever time.  I am just copying off my data and then resetting this thing back to factory defaults wipping it out completly and then copying the files back.

Hope this helps!

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The **bleep** is suppose to be

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Stupid forum software thought I was trying to cuss.  hehe

Txs Fibreiv. Too late for me though as i had to reboot my unit to default (which restored it to working i might add) so that i could return it for credit, and i’m now attempting to recover data from my previous HD’s but its a mess doing it this way.

I’m sure your info will help a lot of people in getting their data back. it’s a shame though that WD could not post this or help it any shape or form via the ‘help’ lines. My third unit is going back to WD today as it happens, as this failed to boot up during drive ‘swaps’ between units which is another failure of this unit.

Anyway many thanks for posting this and well done, at least your 16+ hours was productive unlike mine:-)

I cannot login to SSH (access denied)

How can I recover my data (about 3Tb lost)

I have activated SSH obtained the latest drivers but now…

With Raid5 it should be secure !?

Any idea ?

I have had a similar problem with a 8TB WD Share space after 8 weeks.

WD have failed to provide any information on this issue and I may have lost 2 years worth of scientific data thinking it was safe on RAID5.

Has anyone come up with a solution for stripping data off the drives or is it gone forever?

I am giving WD 14 days to come up with a solution to this known problem otherwise I will be lobbying the Universities over here in the UK to blacklist them for procurement purposes

NJ

Thanks Fibreiv! I know what happened to my worldspace which caused teh problem, since it has happened for the second time. The POWER was shut down, due the the UPS running dry WHILE it was consistency checking from a previous power outage. The consistency check usually takes 8++ hours. I managed to get my data back. The trick was to figure out which drives to assemble. Out of 4 drives a b c d, it seemed that 2 of them were not working. But when I checked drive sde4, the drive was fine! So I assume that what happened is that when the unit rebooted, it tried to assemble a RAID5 using drives sda4 sdb4 sdc4 sdd4, and 2 were not working. I manually created a raid5 using a b c e and it accepted it using the commands you provided. Here are some of the commands I used to see the status mdadm --detail /dev/md[0123] when it did not allow me to add e drive mdadm --assemble --force status messages mdadm --monitor more investigation messages mdadm --examine /dev/sd[abcde]4 stop the raid mdm -S /dev/md0 start raid mdm -R /dev/md0 see status cat /proc/mdstat more status, which is like what you will see int eh web interface tail -f /var/log/messages I wish WD would somehow update their software to be able to recover from these issues, since the data was acutally not damaged. And there are a lot of people getting this error and losing their data. – although not the complete process, here is a capture of the last moments of recovery. Note that the lvmr figure had to be changed from what fibreiv wrote. When it worked, it was tears of joy!!! dev $ pvcreate /dev/md2 No physical volume label read from /dev/md2 Physical volume “/dev/md2” successfully created /dev $ vgcreate lvmr /dev/md2 Volume group “lvmr” successfully created /dev $ lvcreate -l 714329 lvmr -n lvm0 Insufficient free extents (714218) in volume group lvmr: 714329 required /dev $ lvcreate -l 714218 lvmr -n lvm0 Logical volume “lvm0” created /dev $ **bleep**.ext **bleep**.ext2 **bleep**.ext3 /dev $ **bleep**.ext3 /dev/lvmr/lvm0 e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005) Couldn’t find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks… ext3 recovery flag is clear, but journal has data. Recovery flag not set in backup superblock, so running journal anyway. NASRAID: recovering journal

*sorry for the repost, the previous post did not format properly* Thanks Fibreiv! I know what happened to my worldspace which caused teh problem, since it has happened for the second time. The POWER was shut down, due the the UPS running dry WHILE it was consistency checking from a previous power outage. The consistency check usually takes 8++ hours. I managed to get my data back. The trick was to figure out which drives to assemble. Out of 4 drives a b c d, it seemed that 2 of them were not working. But when I checked drive sde4, the drive was fine! So I assume that what happened is that when the unit rebooted, it tried to assemble a RAID5 using drives sda4 sdb4 sdc4 sdd4, and 2 were not working. I manually created a raid5 using a b c e and it accepted it using the commands you provided. Here are some of the commands I used to see the status mdadm --detail /dev/md[0123] when it did not allow me to add e drive mdadm --assemble --force status messages mdadm --monitor more investigation messages mdadm --examine /dev/sd[abcde]4 stop the raid mdm -S /dev/md0 start raid mdm -R /dev/md0 see status cat /proc/mdstat more status, which is like what you will see int eh web interface tail -f /var/log/messages I wish WD would somehow update their software to be able to recover from these issues, since the data was acutally not damaged. And there are a lot of people getting this error and losing their data. – although not the complete process, here is a capture of the last moments of recovery. Note that the lvmr figure had to be changed from what fibreiv wrote. When it worked, it was tears of joy!!! dev $ pvcreate /dev/md2 No physical volume label read from /dev/md2 Physical volume “/dev/md2” successfully created /dev $ vgcreate lvmr /dev/md2 Volume group “lvmr” successfully created /dev $ lvcreate -l 714329 lvmr -n lvm0 Insufficient free extents (714218) in volume group lvmr: 714329 required /dev $ lvcreate -l 714218 lvmr -n lvm0 Logical volume “lvm0” created /dev $ **bleep**.ext **bleep**.ext2 **bleep**.ext3 /dev $ **bleep**.ext3 /dev/lvmr/lvm0 e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005) Couldn’t find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks… ext3 recovery flag is clear, but journal has data. Recovery flag not set in backup superblock, so running journal anyway. NASRAID: recovering journal

Ok, I too am having this problem (Datavolume doesn’t exist), but I am not set up in RAID5. I made the mistake of going with stripped (RAID0) under the impression that only a proper hard-disk failure could bring the system down :frowning:

I almost went with RAID 5, but it seems as though people haven’t faired much better with that, but i digress.

I am using a 2TB (4x500gb) WD Sharespace, and there appears to have been a minor hicup on drive 3. At first I could still see the Files, however after a restart I am now getting the “datavolume doesn’t exist” message. All drives appear to be ‘good’ but ‘unassigned’ under disk manager in the WD gui. I’ve enabled SSH, downloaded putty, and managed to log in as “root” with the default password “welc0me”. I’m not familiar with linux commands, and am only slightly tech savy. I’ve managed to run the “df” and “mdadm --detail /dev/md[0123]” commands, but as I am not using RAID5 (as others) I’m not sure where to go from there to, do anything at all to, access the files.

md2 and md3 do not appear active on my NAS, but i’m not sure if that’s because they’re corrupt, or because of the way RAID0 works… I was hoping some of you lovely folks who are more familiar with these commands could help point me in the right direction… it seems a rather steap learning curve for someone who cringes at the very sight of a command line interface :cry:

Any help would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

-Brian

Hello.

Guess what problem do I have on my WD SS 4TB in RAID5 :frowning:

Can pretty please with sugar on top someone help me with the data recovery trough SSH? I know nothing about linux…

Basic info:

accessing with Win 7 Ultimate x64

WD connected directly to PC

Firware: 2.1.92 (and says its the latest)

Trough Putty I managed to access the drive

login: root

pw: welc0me

  • i get ASCI logo saying S6M-4MC

then I followed the guide:

mdadm -D /dev/md2

       → mdadm: md device /dev/dev2 does not appear to be active.

mdadm --assemble /dev/md2 /dev/sda4 /dev/sdb4 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdd4

       → mdadm: dev/md2 assembled from 2 drives - not enough to start the array.

following commands just show me various errors.

Any clues?

Thank you very much for any kind of help!!

I am experiencing the same sort of problems as Storm8.

I really hope that somebody can help.

Recovery of the data is the most important thing to me at the moment.

Hello,

I also have the same issue with my 4TB Sharespace.

Need some detailed help in getting data off the drives…

Please help.

Thanks

Deepak

I am also having the same problem as Storm8.

I am having the same problem and it looks like  cohiba88 figured that it is due to the raid thinking that it is unable to rebuild from 2 drives. After testing i found that drive 2 and 3 (out of 0123) are not active but cannot be rebuilt into the raid. hence the assemble from 2 drives - not enough to start. so we need to start the array from disk 0 or 1. cohiba88 can you help with that please and maybe give a “Datavolume doesn’t exist ! message for dummies” guide. Please help. THANKS.

Hi hmblm1245 I pretty much gave up on running RAID5. I changed the setup to a not use RAID5 and just span all the disks.  I know this is risky, but its less risky than my volume failing every other month and having to restore.

I think my problem  has to do with my Power setup, where I am, I have frequent power issues lasting about 1-2 minute  5 - 10 times a day.  My UPS lasts about 15 minutes.  When the interruptions happen frequently, the UPS does not get a chance to recharge and then cannot sustain an outage of even 20 seconds.     So, on the first outage, the RAID5 olume breaks because there will be an inconsistency in writing the parity data, and then the system will rebuild the drive, on the subsequent outage, it will then break the RAID5 completely.   So now I’ll end up with a bunch of completely healthy (physically) drives, but no data!!

So my solution was to strip the data with parity so when the power does go out, that there is no inconsistency check to fail (I think this is how it works).  I tested it by yanking the power and then doing it mutiple times.

The next part was to make the Sharespace talk to my UPS, it couldnt! because my UPS did not have a USB port, so I went out and bought a APC SmartUPS, with the Sharespace CANNOT recognize!!!   there is absolutely no documentation about UPS on teh WDC site.  So now I just connect the UPS to my MAC, which instantly recognizes it, and will try to create a script to log into the Sharespace and shut it down gracefully when there is a low battery condition.

Will I ever get a Sharespace again?  NEVER!!!   I’ll stick to independent USB / Network Drives and partition my data instead of centralizing it, together with a 1:1 backup.

I also had my Sharespace connect to a UPS and the power flickered off and on and right after it caused this issue. I am guessing the same thing happened. Is there any other options that I could try to help get the rest of us poor WD Sharespace owner’s data back?

I have been messing aroiund with mdadm and found that when running mdadm /dev/md[0123] i get

 Version : 00.90.01
  Creation Time : Mon Mar  2 01:11:15 2009
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 208768 (203.91 MiB 213.78 MB)
    Device Size : 208768 (203.91 MiB 213.78 MB)
   Raid Devices : 4
  Total Devices : 4
Preferred Minor : 0
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Fri Aug 13 09:53:18 2010
          State : clean
 Active Devices : 4
Working Devices : 4
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

           UUID : 70a4b827:72b11c03:f91b9113:7d13d1a8
         Events : 0.3531138

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8        1        0      active sync   /dev/sda1
       1       8       17        1      active sync   /dev/sdb1
       2       8       33        2      active sync   /dev/sdc1
       3       8       49        3      active sync   /dev/sdd1
/dev/md1:
        Version : 00.90.01
  Creation Time : Mon Mar  2 01:11:15 2009
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 1044160 (1019.86 MiB 1069.22 MB)
    Device Size : 1044160 (1019.86 MiB 1069.22 MB)
   Raid Devices : 4
  Total Devices : 4
Preferred Minor : 1
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Thu Aug 12 23:52:46 2010
          State : clean
 Active Devices : 4
Working Devices : 4
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

           UUID : 1858ad4b:ae658c2a:d86952b3:959a615c
         Events : 0.6798

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8        2        0      active sync   /dev/sda2
       1       8       18        1      active sync   /dev/sdb2
       2       8       34        2      active sync   /dev/sdc2
       3       8       50        3      active sync   /dev/sdd2
mdadm: md device /dev/md2 does not appear to be active.
mdadm: md device /dev/md3 does not appear to be active.

when i try to run fibreiv’s fi’x first line mdadm -D /dev/md2

mdadm: md device /dev/md2 does not appear to be active.

same thing that the others are having.

When i run the 2nd line to attempt to assemble the array

mdadm --assemble /dev/md2 /dev/sda4 /dev/sdb4 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdd4
mdadm: /dev/md2 assembled from 2 drives - not enough to start the array.

how wiould i format this to force array to start if that is even the right solution.

Not sure what this firmware update is. My sharespace does not update to it i am still on the official version 2.1.92 however i stumbled on this page 2.2.8 which should on the last line listed below fix the RAID 5 issue. now how do i apply it or get to download it?

Resolved full configuration restore causing failed RAID 5

http://support.wdc.com/download/notes/WD_ShareSpace_release_notes_2_2_8_r2-tw2.pdf

These release notes provide information on the latest posting of firmware
for WD ShareSpace Network Storage System.
These release notes provide information on the following:
• Version 2.2.8
• Version 2.1.92
• Version 2.1.3
• Version 2.1.1
• Version 1.2.2
• Version 1.0.5 (Initial Release)
• Firmware Installation Procedure

Version 2.2.8:
Resolved Issues:
• Added USB driver to resolve performance issues for NTFS formatted drives
• Added support for HFS+J formatted USB drives
• Added RAID 10 support
• Added support Windows Server 2008 ADS
• Added AFP/TimeMachine support
• Updated Twonky Media Server
• Corrected CTorrent to accept torrents with an apostrophe (‘)
• Corrected CTorrent to accept filenames that start with non-alphanumeric characters that were rejected
• Corrected CTorrent to accept torrent files with a back quote (‘) in the filename
• Corrected CTorrent to accept torrent files with spaces in the name
• Corrected BitTorrent lable in web UI to CTorrent
• Resolved full configuration restore causing failed RAID 5

Please help! I’m having the same problem (Data volume doesn’t exist!") but don’t even understand the 16+ hour fix description. (I’m a photographer, not an IT bod, unfortunately). Please could you explain the steps as if to an ■■■■■? (e.g. I don’t know what SSH means). (I checked for updates to firmware and got the message it was up to date). All of my photographs are on there. Yes, I do have this year’s work in two other places but it’s the historical stuff that’s only on there. RAID seems utterly pointless if you have to have a second RAID array to back up the first!

Best

Calam