NAS died - help needed to recover data

RonnieL

Hi Guys,

I had a Lacie Networkspace2 which worked fine for a few years. It's been acting up the last few days (disappearing off the network), so I restarted it which worked a couple of times. Anyway this evening that wouldn't work, so I tried factory resets etc, which didn't help. So, to cut a long story short I took the drive out and connected it to a data recovery thing I bought on ebay a couple of years ago. It's a power source with a usb connector. Anyway, when I connected the laptop to the disk some device drivers installed, but the disk didn't show up as a drive letter, which is what I expected. I've attached a screen shot of the windows disk management screen. It shows the disk is connected. So, can I get the data off it somehow?

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks,

Ronan

PS: The disk has all my photos on it, and a load of stuff I don't care about, but I really need to get the photos off.

TOMP

attachment?

RonnieL

D'oh!

Attached now I think...

RonnieL

Also, the option to "change drive letter and paths" is greyed out.

Torqay

RonnieL wrote: »

Also, the option to "change drive letter and paths" is greyed out.

The file system is ext2, better boot some Linux distro from CD, Windows doesn't help there.

RonnieL

Torqay wrote: »

The file system is ext2, better boot some Linux distro from CD, Windows doesn't help there.

Thanks torqay. I ran out of time last night but I was heading in that direction. If I boot ubuntu on a usb drive should I be able to copy data off the hard disk onto the laptop? Assuming the disk isn't shagged obviously. Any tips on Linux commands to Google or Linux tools to use?

900913

You could use a tool like http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/

I haven't tested this app but there loads out there.
https://www.google.ie/search?q=mount|read+ext2+files+in+windows

Torqay

RonnieL wrote: »

Thanks torqay. I ran out of time last night but I was heading in that direction. If I boot ubuntu on a usb drive should I be able to copy data off the hard disk onto the laptop? Assuming the disk isn't shagged obviously. Any tips on Linux commands to Google or Linux tools to use?

Get Knoppix, boot it from CD or USB and see if it can read the drive. Have another HDD connected to save your files.

RonnieL

Thanks for the replies guys. I'll give one of the windows tools a shot first, and if that doesn't work I'll go down the Linux route. Fingers crossed.

RonnieL

RonnieL wrote: »

Thanks torqay. I ran out of time last night but I was heading in that direction. If I boot ubuntu on a usb drive should I be able to copy data off the hard disk onto the laptop? Assuming the disk isn't shagged obviously. Any tips on Linux commands to Google or Linux tools to use?

So I tried a windows tool and that didn't work. I was able to assign a drive letter, but when I clicked on it, windows just offered to format it.

So I've got ubuntu on a dvd and I'm not too familiar with it, but I've opened the "computer" window and attached the dodgy disk. It also gave an error message when I clicked on it. The error message suggested running dmesg for more details. Here's the info it gives:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | tail
[ 706.373383] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[ 706.373387] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc]
[ 706.373391] Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
[ 706.373399] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc]
[ 706.373404] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[ 706.373410] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] CDB:
[ 706.373413] Read(10): 28 00 00 3d 48 7a 00 00 01 00
[ 706.373432] end_request: critical target error, dev sdc, sector 4016250
[ 706.373473] XFS (sdc2): bad magic number
[ 706.373551] XFS (sdc2): SB validate failed

Any suggestions? I'm desperate to recover our photos in any way possible.

RonnieL

Anyone?

I'm wondering if there are any tools that can retrieve files from a partition without mounting it (because it appears I can't mount it).

I'm going to buy a new hard disk and enclosure today, and use the dd linux command to back up the partition before trying anything else.

So annoyed with myself for not maintaining a backup, but the drive contains wedding photos, home videos etc. so I really would be grateful to anyone knowledgeable in this area if they could help.

Ronan

Torqay

Why did you get Ubuntu? It's a productivity system.

You should use a Linux distro with forensic data recovery tools. Like Knoppix or Ubuntu Recue Remix.

RonnieL

Torqay wrote: »

Why did you get Ubuntu? It's a productivity system.

You should use a Linux distro with forensic data recovery tools. Like Knoppix or Ubuntu Recue Remix.

I guess I went with Ubunutu because I'd heard of it and I suppose I thought they'd all have the same tools. Sorry Torqay, I overlooked your previous suggestion to download knoppix because I didn't know what it was.

Would you have a preference as to which one I should try next? What tools do they have that I should try?

Thanks a million for the replies by the way. I'm off to town now to buy a second disk to hopefully copy stuff on to.

Torqay

`Well, first you should see if you can access the drive at all.

RonnieL

Torqay wrote: »

`Well, first you should see if you can access the drive at all.

That's my worry. I've tried a lot of commands that I found online to try and mount the partition I'm interested in, and I've run into errors all the way. The basic mount command complains about a superblock, so I found a command that game me alternate superblock locations, but the mount commands still fail. That's why I'm wondering if there is any way to get data off a disk that is in as bad a state as mine.

A2LUE42

http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/

Great app to use to recover data. Used it on a WD NAS unit that crapped out on me.
It is better if you do it in small amounts, as when I tried to do large sections at a time it was very slow.

RonnieL

A2LUE42 wrote: »

http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/

Great app to use to recover data. Used it on a WD NAS unit that crapped out on me.
It is better if you do it in small amounts, as when I tried to do large sections at a time it was very slow.

Thanks, I'm willing to give anything a try so I'll get this downloaded later when I get home.

If anyone else has any ideas I'm all ears.

I'll get Knoppix too, because it looks like that has testdisk/photorec bundled, and that's something I haven't tried yet.

RonnieL

Hi Guys.

Just a quick update and a massive thank you!!

I ended up buying two new hard drives and an enclosure at lunch today. My thinking was I might have to back up the old drive to one, and hopefully use photorec to recover files to the other. So this evening the first thing I did was try the linux reader software in windows - no joy. Then I got a knoppix live dvd. I set about formatting one of the new drives in preparation for backing up the broken one. To do that I used the Knoppix "Disk Utility". With that complete I attached the broken drive. It appeared in the disk utility and there was a "mount drive" button. I clicked it, fully expecting an error, but IT WORKED!! I quickly copied our family photos onto the new drive. So chuffed. But then, literally a minute after the pictures finished copying (it took 40 minutes), an error appeared and I can no longer access the old drive using knoppix. There's still stuff on there that I'd like to save, but I have our photos which was by far my main goal.

I'll reply again with updates if there are any, but thanks again for all the help.

Ronan

Torqay

RonnieL wrote: »

but I have our photos which was by far my main goal.

RonnieL

Torqay wrote: »

Big time!