NAS boxes, do they all run proprietary software?

Chris Wilson · 19 Apr 2015 at 22:30

If I bought a new NAS box and put 2 SATA drives in it as a RAID 1 pairing, and at a later stage the box hardware croaked, would a different, currently available box necessarily be able to read the drives? I can't see much redundancy in them if this is not the case, as the risk of hard drive failure is just moved to the risk of the box hardware failing. I am not sure if I am understanding how they work correctly or not.... Thanks.

KIA · 20 Apr 2015 at 13:13

Most of them do not run proprietary software.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/faq/579
http://qnapsupport.net/?page_id=318

Chris Wilson · 20 Apr 2015 at 13:37

Thanks, that info in the first link seems very convoluted, can they not be read on another Windows PC?

The second link is flagging a threat in Avast, so I haven't looked at that, thanks for your reply KIA!

KIA · 21 Apr 2015 at 12:47

You should use a live Linux system such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint to access a Linux RAID array. Windows isn't designed to read Linux file systems.

You can use applications such as this to read single drives.

Chris Wilson · 21 Apr 2015 at 14:42

OK, thanks, do all NAS boxes use Linux based OS's? Cheers

KIA · 22 Apr 2015 at 11:37

Most of the big names such as Synology and QNAP use Linux.