We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
Every drive can fail at any moment. Even a brand new one. It is just a bit less likely than having a decade old drive fail.
If you care about your data make sure you have backups. 321rule.
Yes, you can use a "NAS" drive pretty much like any normal drive. This is an SMR drive so not even a NAS drive to begin with.
If you do not have backups pay a professional to recover it. Yes, this is wildly expensive but tinkering yourself can make recovery even more expensive or outright impossible.
If the drive isn't working and the data is important, stop powering it on and store it somewhere safe until you decide what to do.
He he, one of the drives that started SMRgate. At least it should have 3 years of warranty, but you might have trouble to get it in your region.
If you mean recover the data on it, a failed drive can only potentially be recovered by a professional facility. This is why you should have multiple backups, always.
NAS drives are often the same drives as consumer. Sometimes they have more durable and quieter noise. Sometimes they use slightly different drive components/design. But realistically, most consumer 3.5-inch drives will work fine.
If drives are expensive where you live, it's best to pick an affordable non-NAS drive with a long warranty. The more expensive the drive, the more important warranty term matters... as you are experiencing.
4TB SSDs are in the $200 USD range and have 5 year warranty now (in many regions/vendors). If you only need 6TB, you may want to go with SSD for more durability.
This is why people use RAID. Because one drive failing means you lost the data.
They also take backups. Because more than one drive can fail at the same time.
You've lost the data, if the drive is dead. There's no practical way to retrieve it, unless you're willing to pay enormous amounts of money to someone who can dismantle the drive and try to read the data directly from the disk platters in a clean room.
