Can data be recovered by removing hard drives from ReadyNAS Duo?

Question

I have a five year old ReadyNAS Duo that seems to have kicked the bucket.

It has two Western Digital Black hard drives that have been run in mirror RAID configuration. They are both a year old so should be in excellent condition.

Is it possible to simply remove the drives, connect them to a compatible operating system, and recover the data by copying it directly off the drives?

Solution

I've had success with downloading "R-Linux" and installing it on Windows 8 machine: http://www.r-tt.com/free_linux_recovery/Download.shtml

R-Linux has straightforward steps for recovering files off Linux drives and it worked really well with one of the ReadyNAS hard drive mounted in an USB enclosure.

Comments

[ChrisInEdmonton]

Yes. Looks like ReadyNAS now uses Btrfs but used to use ZFS. 'Compatible operating system' almost certainly means Linux, and it'll be a bit tricky.

[BaronGrivet]

Thank you @ChrisInEdmonton - I've got an old machine running Ubuntu lying around I can try out. Can you elaborate on the "bit tricky"? Happy to accept/ upvote your answer.

[ChrisInEdmonton]

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how ReadyNAS sets things up. My guess is that it's just software RAID-1 with a btrfs or zfs filesystem on top, but I'm not sure. Even those assumptions may be wrong. Hopefully someone with experience comes along and helps out with a detailed answer. :)