Data Recovery from a Single-Drive Synology NAS

If you’re dealing with a single-drive Synology NAS, the data sits directly on that drive, so there’s no RAID protection. Here’s what you can do:

Remove the drive – Power off the NAS and take the hard drive out. Don’t keep trying to boot it if it isn’t working.

Connect it to a PC – Hook the drive up to a computer. Synology uses EXT4 or Btrfs, which Windows can’t read without help. A Linux machine or live USB works best.

Mount the drive (Linux) – Once connected, check the partitions with lsblk or fdisk -l. The main data partition is usually something like /dev/sdb3. You can mount it with:

sudo mkdir /mnt/nasdrive
sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdXN /mnt/nasdrive

If it won’t mount – The file system may be damaged. In that case, you’ll need recovery software. Some options:

NAS data recovery software like R-Studio, UFS Explorer, Stellar Data Recovery Technician, or ReclaiMe.

Free tools like TestDisk or PhotoRec can also work, but they’re more limited.

Copy your data out – If you manage to access the drive, back up the important files right away to another disk.

If the drive itself is failing – Stop DIY attempts and take it to a recovery lab. Further use could make the situation worse.

Want me to also write a Windows-only recovery path using NAS data recovery software, so forum readers don’t have to touch Linux at all?