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Author Topic: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure  (Read 20118 times)

Serhiy

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Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« on: July 30, 2010, 05:39:10 AM »

Unfortunately my DNS-323 died after lightning struck our house. Looks like the HDDs are still working and I can mount them in Ubuntu.

The problem is, when I mount the drives, I get 500GB partition with only "backup" folder. The NAS was configured as RAID 1, so I guess I need to mount the drive as a RAID drive.

Anyway, anyone knows how to recover data? Also, if I buy another DNS-323, can I just put my old drives in and read the content?

Thanks in advance.
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tentimes

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Re: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2010, 11:02:18 AM »

I can recommend Gibson Research's Spinrite (http://www.grc.com) as the best low level recovery software that will actually get your files back - it works for linux file systems. It can take days on big volumes though - just a warning ;) If you can mount them then I reckon there's hope!

Good luck - let us know how you get on :)
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dosborne

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Re: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2010, 04:22:53 PM »

I would think the easiest wayt would be to pop them in a new enclosure. Although it shouldn't matter, if you have a backup of the config then it may make setup easier.You should be able to do it with a single drive, keeping one "safe" just in case.

I bought (and use) 2 units myself, so that if necessary I could swap the drives in an emergency. I also backup and store the configuration files on a flash USB stick for easy retrieval.
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3 x DNS-323 with 2 x 2TB WD Drives each for a total of 12 TB Storage and Backup. Running DLink Firmware v1.08 and Fonz Fun Plug (FFP) v0.5 for improved software support.

fordem

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Re: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« Reply #3 on: July 31, 2010, 04:54:25 AM »

I've been successful at retrieving data from RAID1 DNS-323 drives (either one, you only need one) using the ext2ifs installable file system driver and Windows XPSP2 - I'd like to believe that you can do it in ubuntu if you use the correct syntax when mounting the drives, there are 3 or 4 partitions on each disk and you need to mount the correct one.

Spinrite is not intended for file recovery, what it does is read & rewrite the disk sectors - it is an amazing tool, when used as intended, but I don't think it's what's needed here.

If the drives are good and the data intact, you can simply insert them into a new DNS-323 and you'll have access to your data.

And last but not least - this is why you should back your data up.
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RAID1 is for disk redundancy - NOT data backup - don't confuse the two.

wlee

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Re: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2010, 11:24:40 PM »

Just wondering if ext2 or ext3 file system would make a difference in recovering effort?
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fordem

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Re: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2010, 07:58:31 AM »

Just wondering if ext2 or ext3 file system would make a difference in recovering effort?

That might depend on the tools being used - generally speaking I would say it shouldn't - the difference between the two file systems is that ext3 is journalled, which impacts how files are written, but not how they are read, and the ext2ifs file system driver which I have used, will allow data to be read from an ext3 file system.
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RAID1 is for disk redundancy - NOT data backup - don't confuse the two.

coops

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Re: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« Reply #6 on: August 03, 2010, 09:01:41 AM »

This will do it... http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-recovery/

I did mine last weekend, because I accidentally deleted some stuff off my DNS-323.

I used this simpler tool - it's a command line thingy but has a simple windows front end to get you started.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Only thing that confused me was the "Filesystem type" which you must answer as "intel"

I found that the process made my machine sluggish so i used the laptop that could just do that one thing over the weekend. My method was to check everything on the desktop machine first (xp 32bit) both then run the recovery software off a USB stick into my laptop (Windows 7 x64), then plug the drive using one of those simple SATA > USB adapters.

It took many hours - if I remember correctly about 9hrs to scan the unused areas of a 1TB WD Green. A full scan would have taken even longer, but I was only looking for deleted files, rather than everything.

But still... as dosborne  said it's worth sticking them in a new enclosure first. I hope you wrote down which one was disc 1, so it can go back in teh same slot  ;)
« Last Edit: August 03, 2010, 09:05:13 AM by coops »
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Serhiy

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Re: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« Reply #7 on: August 04, 2010, 10:35:58 AM »

Thank you all for you replies.

As far as disk recovery software goes, I hope I will not need this, since the HDDs seemed to survive.

I just gor the new DNS-323 delivered today and the first thing I have noticed is that it says

"The DNS-323 will format your internal SATA drives before usage"

in big bold letters.

Some comments suggested that plugging in the old drives might work. Did I understand correctly?
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ojosch

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Re: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« Reply #8 on: August 04, 2010, 01:51:23 PM »

Whenever I have issues like this happen to me, the FIRST thing I do before trying any experimental recovery procedure, is to copy one of the disks to somewhere else FIRST.

I typically use DD, a tool in the Linux recovery console, to make a bit-for-bit copy of your data to somewhere else. Then you make all recovery attempts only to that copied, backed up, 'somewhere else' disk. You plug in one of the disks that has all your stuff on it, then plug in a spare empty disk that is at least as big or bigger than the one with your data on it.

To copy a drive bit-for-bit:

-Get your favorite distro of linux and boot from it. Choose 'Recover from a previous install', but at the prompt when it wants to mount some files to an existing linux install, just select the SKIP button.

-It should now be at a prompt with the common tools loaded.

-I always do the fdisk -l first to see all my current drives and partitions first so I know what's what. Not sure if this is necessary, but I always do the fdisk /dev/sdb then m for menu and d for delete existing partitions on the destination drive first. Then choose write partition table to disk and exit. Like I said, I don't know if it even cares what was on the destination drive since it is just going to do bit-for-bit copy anyway.

-To start the actual copy, type: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb& pid=$!  (replace sda or sdb with whatever your input path and output paths are, respectively: if = Input File, and of = Output File), and hit enter.

-Now, to periodically check the progress of your copy project, type: echo; ps r -p $pid; kill -USR1 $pid; echo and hit enter.

-Just hit up arrow and enter each time you want to repeat the progress indicator command and it says how many megs, or gigs is copied. Occasionally it does not return to the prompt (maybe some bug in the shell), but just hit up arrow anyway and enter, and it still works, don't worry.

Once it completes. Then put the 2 disks away for safe storage and use the new copied disk and attempt to use partition recovery tools and mount it, get your stuff off it.

The way it looks now, if you install those into a new DNS-323, it'll probably wipe them both and you'll lose all your data.

You probably could also install both of those 2 drives into a desktop PC with linux installed on it, and you could probably manually mount the 2 drives as an existing software RAID array and import the configuration from the drives to successfully mount the RAID pair, and mount it as a drive, but I wouldn't attempt this until I FIRST did the bit-for-bit copy from one drive to somewhere else for safety. A RAID array is not that hard to assemble in this fashion, but you may need to find a how-to by Googling for it, and I bet you'll find a good detailed method to import and mount your RAID array and mount the file system. But as always, proceed with caution and backup the data in it's untampered state before you experiment around with recovery procedures.

I suppose it also depends a lot on how important this data is to you, but just be careful.
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fordem

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Re: Recovering Files after DNS-323 hardware failure
« Reply #9 on: August 04, 2010, 03:30:43 PM »

Thank you all for you replies.

As far as disk recovery software goes, I hope I will not need this, since the HDDs seemed to survive.

I just gor the new DNS-323 delivered today and the first thing I have noticed is that it says

"The DNS-323 will format your internal SATA drives before usage"

in big bold letters.

Some comments suggested that plugging in the old drives might work. Did I understand correctly?

You understood correctly.

If you have drives removed from a failed DNS-323, you can plug them into a new DNS-323 and use them without formatting them - assuming that the drives are functional and have not suffered any form of corruption when the original DNS-323 failed.

If you're uncertain - plug the drives in & power the unit up - if it does not recognize the drives for some reason, it will prompt you before it formats them, and you have to agree before the format will happen.
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RAID1 is for disk redundancy - NOT data backup - don't confuse the two.