# Failed NAS, help with the drives please

**URL:** <https://forum.freenas-community.org/t/failed-nas-help-with-the-drives-please/267>\
**Category:** How-to\
**Created:** [January 24, 2023, 4:36pm UTC](https://forum.freenas-community.org/t/failed-nas-help-with-the-drives-please/267 "2023-01-24T16:36:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MalcolmH](https://forum.freenas-community.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b38774/32.png) [@MalcolmH](https://forum.freenas-community.org/u/MalcolmH)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2023, 4:36pm UTC](https://forum.freenas-community.org/t/failed-nas-help-with-the-drives-please/267/1 "2023-01-24T16:36:10Z")

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Hello. I am hoping someone may be able to help me, I have a HP Proliant N36L which went pop yesterday, I am running Freenas 11.1-U4 which runs ok but now the two 1tb drives (Raid 0 zfs) are not recognised, I presume the motherboard has failed, I can however plug the drives into the USB ports using adapters on the front panel and they will show up in the web interface as drives, but what do I do from there to get my data back ?, I don’t want to mess about and lose everything, I would appreciate any help please.

Also is it viable to copy config from boot usb stick to a fresh install of freenas on a hard drive and use the hard drive on another PC with the Nas drives connected and access my data from there ?

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**Author:** ![danb35](https://forum.freenas-community.org/user_avatar/forum.freenas-community.org/danb35/32/14_2.png) [@danb35](https://forum.freenas-community.org/u/danb35)\
**Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 12:26pm UTC](https://forum.freenas-community.org/t/failed-nas-help-with-the-drives-please/267/2 "2023-01-26T12:26:31Z")

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> [@MalcolmH](#):
>
> is it viable to copy config from boot usb stick to a fresh install of freenas on a hard drive and use the hard drive on another PC with the Nas drives connected and access my data from there ?

Yes, it is, though ordinarily I’d recommend installing FreeNAS (or its successor, TrueNAS; the version of FreeNAS you’re using is several years old) to a small SSD rather than to a spinner.

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**Author:** ![MalcolmH](https://forum.freenas-community.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b38774/32.png) [@MalcolmH](https://forum.freenas-community.org/u/MalcolmH)\
**Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 1:55pm UTC](https://forum.freenas-community.org/t/failed-nas-help-with-the-drives-please/267/3 "2023-01-26T13:55:28Z")

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Thank you for the response, I hoped that would have worked for me but in the end I decided to strip my Windows PC, fit an old hard drive, install freenas and make a temporary server, copy the config from my usb stick that booted the old server to the hard drive and fit the server drives into the PC case, I was amazed when the thing booted just like the old server did and I was able to drag off my files to another laptop, worked a treat !.