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[joejiz]

Ok, completed task mentioned above and two folders show , then in next 3 mins the rest of the folders show and the .pst file is still not the right size.  ( just like before ).

So all I can really do is shut it down, wait till new hard arrives at house. turn device off and put in drive.  Turn it on, connect to web answer questions - It should resync with out formatting all data and maybe file size increases?  

The unit appears to be recovering from the raid problem but why this one file is cut down from 4.5 gb to 100 mb just has me stumped.  It's like my dad left outlook open when the crash happened or something.

Or it has nothing to do with this crash, gosh it didn't get archived, I can tell you that!?

Are you stumped too?    Ever heard of this?

[fordem]

Backup whatever data you can before replacing the drive - strange things have been known to happen.

[ivan]

There are many reasons that the file is smaller than what you expect. 

1) It could be that it was being copied to the array when the disk failed and so ended up truncated.
2) Because of the several rebuild attempts the incorrect size has been reported.

The above are the most likely but there could be others.

Download a copy of Kernel Outlook PST Viewer and use that to see what you have in the PST file.  That way you will know if you need to delete it and start again.

The other very important thing is to follow fordem's advice and backup everything you can as soon as possible.  That way you don't lose anything else and, should the need arise, you can do a complete reformat and restore (which is what I recommend because of the uncertain state of what remains of the data on the good disk).
 

[joejiz]

Update:

Hi, well after leaving my dad's computer on last night while the folders starting appears my dad called me today and said ," all but 3 folders are remaining , the rest disappeared " Back to day 1 when he first called me.

I went into his pc to mapped drive the drive reports as 60gb.  But this is the good drive?  Something is very strange.  If this drive was good then this wouldn't of happened.  I think both drives might be messed up?  

The unit isn't responding to the web server request either. I'm going to have my dad turn the unit off and turn it back on.  I hope the unit brings all the folders back so we can copy off data.

I realize the rebuild and break thing has happened several times now, I know I need to copy all data off ASAP and then when new drive arrives , erase both drives, recopy data, re-do raid1.  There is also firmware v1.10 to update as well.

Thanks for your help on this, I know the product is out of warranty and this is best effort, I really appreciate checking back on this thread and you helping out.

I'll keep you posted on what happens next.

Part of me thinks once we get the data off the drive (praying) - which I should of done as soon as I saw all folders - we'll turn it off and insert the broken drive back in and remove the RIGHT DRIVE and have it boot.    See if that drive has the larger file on it.  (what have we got to lose at that point?)

Crazy.  I think the unit has recovered to many times from power outages and done the rebuild to many times that the raid 1 ability combined with a flakey drive(s) has caused this!

Talk about fun times, once the data is off I will investigate the PST file utility you mentioned-  THANK YOU AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR HELP...it means a lot.

[ivan]

This is a long shot and will depend on you having enough space somewhere local to store a n image of the good drive.

Rather than try and copy files from the drive it would be a better idea to make a sector by sector image of the drive first.  If you have an image you can recreate the drive as many times as necessary to try and get as much of your data from it as possible.  It also gives you something to work on directly rather than at a distance.  It should also work on the faulty drive if it is possible to read from it but they MUST be in the NAS as single drives, NOT TOGETHER.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

[joejiz]

Thanks Ivan, oh I see use that software and plug the drive into another working computer.  I may do that after we get the files off if we can. we are almost ready to turn it back on.

[joejiz]

Update: Turned on device, 799 gb copying off as we speak. 9mb/sec to a pc's external USB drive.  eta 23 hours but I suspect hopefully tomorrow morning.

[joejiz]

8 hrs remaining in copy 9.83 mb/sec

[joejiz]

Finished copying.  Next step is remove old hdd(one that was shown as working since day 1)
Put defective one in for kicks in it's previous bay(2)Right hand

boot it

See if pst file happens to come back - doubtful

Will report back.

[joejiz]

Did the above and drive came up no problem but pst still small.

Gonna try your utility for pst and point it to shared drive and see if really is bigger than it is.

doubtful.

Will report back

[joejiz]

Well from the windows 7 machine I ran the scanpst.exe file on the pst file in question.

It didn't expand as expected.

I went to another machine on the network (xp) and viewed the folder with the file and sure enough it was showing 3.5gb and a date on it from when this whole fiasco happened.

So back on the windows 7 machine it didn't show it more than 100mb.  On the xp machine I copied the 3.5gb file to another folder and then looked at it from the win 7 machine .  it shows 3.5gb.

So something happened to the folder that houses the it and somehow windows 7 is reporting wrong file size.  The heck I know.

I'm just glad it appears we have the mail back.

Next steps:

1 - label the broken hdd (2) as bad, get my dad to mail it to me.
2 - Put new hdd in.
3 - upload firmware 1.10
4 - Format whole thing RAID 1
5 - Copy back all files to device.

Call it a day.

[ivan]

Once you get the new RAID 1formatted and ready the long tedious job begins - checking and restoring your data.

As you have found there are problems caused by a bad disk and attempted recovery of the array.  To be certain that all the data you have recovered is 'good' will require you recreate the folder structure of the original array on the new array and do a file by file (or group of files) copy back using the command line rather than something like windows explorer (the command line will flag bad files, explorer will not).

If you had the backup disk a better way of remote restoring would be to use FTP by activating the FTP server on the DNS-323 and using something like FileZilla client at your end.  With careful setup of parameters - like a set number of tries to read a file from the backup - you should be able to transfer most, if not all, files in a folder at a time (I would still not try to transfer the folder structure because you have shown there are problems with it).

It should be possible to use FTP at your father's end but I think it will require you to talk him through what he would need to do.
   

[joejiz]

Yah when I was copying files using Windows explorer an error came out about to long of a file name for copying so I had to skip 320 files.  My dad made file names to long I guess.  256 character limit with folders and file names is the max I THINK.  What can one do?  Not even sure what folder that was in.  We may just have to abandon those files. File system limitation I guess from Linux to NTFS. 

I am able to RDP to my dad's network and control dlink and his win 7 pc and window xp machine.

I will format the whole array so it's blank after I upgrade firmware(need to download, hopefully sticky has link).

After that I was going to use Hoffman rich copy but I do like your idea of enabling FTP, creating an account and using file zilla to copy back all the info from USB DRIVE we backed up onto using THE WINDOWS XP machine back on to DLINK. 

I would hazard to "guess" the only file messed was his pst file because he left it open during the fail.

The finish line is near. 

I guess I should be running scandisk once a year for safe measure.

[ivan]

Just wondering how the saga is going.

[joejiz]

Sorry for delay, we were able to use the pst and run from the bad drive.

tonight I am removing bad drive.

inserting old (good drive)
inserting new drive
updating firmware
making new raid 1 format
then restore data using miscorsoft rich copy