RAID 1 recovery?

[AllThoughts 3rased]

I had a drive failure in my NAS (Buffalo LS-WVL/R1 Series) which was running RAID 1 (two drives) so I swapped the drive out thinking it would rebuild it but after a reboot it went straight into emergency mode. Updating the firmware, as far as Buffalo are concerned, is the only way to get out of it. But in doing so, I will lose all data on the NAS. I have tried other methods, but it seems that taking the remaining drive out and using software to recover the data is the only solution. Does anyone know of a free program that can recover it that doesn't have a recovery limit?

[leadeater]

Why would a firmware update wipe the data? If that is the case, which is rather odd, use a temporary HDD like the replacement HDD and take the good one out with the data on it then do the update then put that disk back in the NAS and it should import the array again.

[AllThoughts 3rased]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Why would a firmware update wipe the data? If that is the case, which is rather odd, use a temporary HDD like the replacement HDD and take the good one out with the data on it then do the update then put that disk back in the NAS and it should import the array again.

For some reason, the drive has become unpartitioned, and therefore Buffalo's NAS updater wants to repartition the remaining drive and then update the firmware which causes me to lose the data on it.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, AllThoughts 3rased said:

For some reason, the drive has become unpartitioned, and therefore Buffalo's NAS updater wants to repartition the remaining drive and then update the firmware which causes me to lose the data on it.

Only good recovery software I know of isn't free unfortunately, a lot will scan the drive for free but make you buy it to actually recovery the data. I know there is a fully featured free one out there but I forget it's name, maybe someone else will chime in with it. 

[AllThoughts 3rased]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Only good recovery software I know of isn't free unfortunately, a lot will scan the drive for free but make you buy it to actually recovery the data. I know there is a fully featured free one out there but I forget it's name, maybe someone else will chime in with it. 

Unless the software is really cheap I will probably have to go with the free one you've mentioned.

[NelizMastr]

My mind is full of wat. RAID1 disks should be able to function independantly as it's just a mirror. That it won't auto-rebuild isn't something that sends off alarm bells as this thing isn't the most advanced NAS out there. 

 

By the way, using a NAS as a back-up isn't that great of an idea if you don't back-up the NAS itself as well. 

 

One thing I haven't seen in your post, have you actually tried to put the drive back you pulled out of the NAS? Or was it dead?

[AllThoughts 3rased]

1 hour ago, NelizMastr said:

My mind is full of wat. RAID1 disks should be able to function independantly as it's just a mirror. That it won't auto-rebuild isn't something that sends off alarm bells as this thing isn't the most advanced NAS out there. 

 

By the way, using a NAS as a back-up isn't that great of an idea if you don't back-up the NAS itself as well. 

 

One thing I haven't seen in your post, have you actually tried to put the drive back you pulled out of the NAS? Or was it dead?

It's a dead drive. When put back into the NAS it makes a horrible scraping noise, I think the head's crashed or something. The remaining drive is fine, it's just that something's gone wrong and the NAS has gone into emergency mode. The NAS I have is advertised as being able to rebuild itself if a drive fails so I'm not sure what's going on.

[NelizMastr]

3 minutes ago, AllThoughts 3rased said:

It's a dead drive. When put back into the NAS it makes a horrible scraping noise, I think the head's crashed or something. The remaining drive is fine, it's just that something's gone wrong and the NAS has gone into emergency mode.

Ok. Thanks for the info  

 

I guess Buffalo did some trickery to the drive making it unreadable. I know Synology uses EXT or Btrfs for the file system, not sure what this thing would use. You could attempt to hook the remaining drive up to a PC and boot a current Linux operating system and see if the data is there, assuming Buffalo uses a non-proprietary file system.

[AllThoughts 3rased]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

Ok. Thanks for the info  

 

I guess Buffalo did some trickery to the drive making it unreadable. I know Synology uses EXT or Btrfs for the file system, not sure what this thing would use. You could attempt to hook the remaining drive up to a PC and boot a current Linux operating system and see if the data is there, assuming Buffalo uses a non-proprietary file system.

I've used a couple of scanners, and the data is definitely there, it's just that the scanners I've used all need some sort of license to recover it.

[NelizMastr]

4 minutes ago, AllThoughts 3rased said:

I've used a couple of scanners, and the data is definitely there, it's just that the scanners I've used all need some sort of license to recover it.

I've had some luck with Recuva before. Worth a shot.

 

[AllThoughts 3rased]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

I've had some luck with Recuva before. Worth a shot.

 

I'll give it a try, hopefully it can recover the stuff on there. Is there a recovery limit? I think i had about 28GB of stuff on there.

[NelizMastr]

4 minutes ago, AllThoughts 3rased said:

I'll give it a try, hopefully it can recover the stuff on there. Is there a recovery limit? I think i had about 28GB of stuff on there.

Afaik it's freeware, so no limit.

[AllThoughts 3rased]

I guess another idea bites the dust. It can't read the drive.

[NelizMastr]

18 minutes ago, AllThoughts 3rased said:

I guess another idea bites the dust. It can't read the drive.

 

Yeah, it only supports NTFS/FAT file systems. Sounds to me like the drives are indeed proprietary or Linux filesystems.

[AllThoughts 3rased]

Just now, NelizMastr said:

Yeah, it only supports NTFS/FAT file systems. Sounds to me like the drives are indeed proprietary or Linux filesystems.

If I boot into Linux, can I retrieve the files and copy them onto my hard drive?

 

[NelizMastr]

5 minutes ago, AllThoughts 3rased said:

If I boot into Linux, can I retrieve the files and copy them onto my hard drive?

 

If it's a standard recognized filesystem like EXT or btrfs then yes. Current release of Ubuntu should be able to handle both. 

[AllThoughts 3rased]

Just now, NelizMastr said:

If it's a standard recognized filesystem like EXT or btrfs then yes. Current release of Ubuntu should be able to handle both. 

I know it's one of the two as I used a scanner that only supported those two and it could find the drive.

[seagate_surfer]

Another one to try, and just keep in mind as a heads up that it's 3rd party so it didn't come from us, would be UFS Explorer RAID Recovery.

[leadeater]

9 hours ago, AllThoughts 3rased said:

I know it's one of the two as I used a scanner that only supported those two and it could find the drive.

If you want to confirm there is data that can be recovered use Recover My Files, that handles everything including complex RAID arrays. It's not free but you can scan the disk for free and at least that way you can know if you're wasting your time or not.

[jde3]

There is a war going on.. that war is humanity vs firmware and you need to pick a side.

[dalekphalm]

On 5/6/2018 at 5:27 PM, leadeater said:

Why would a firmware update wipe the data? If that is the case, which is rather odd, use a temporary HDD like the replacement HDD and take the good one out with the data on it then do the update then put that disk back in the NAS and it should import the array again.

 

On 5/6/2018 at 5:33 PM, AllThoughts 3rased said:

For some reason, the drive has become unpartitioned, and therefore Buffalo's NAS updater wants to repartition the remaining drive and then update the firmware which causes me to lose the data on it.

-snip-

Just to clarify, did you try @leadeater's suggestion of:

1. Pulling out the good drive

2. Putting in the replacement drive only

3. Updating firmware and restoring to basic operation

4. Putting in good drive

5. Attempt to re-import the RAID1 array and rebuild?

[AllThoughts 3rased]

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

 

Just to clarify, did you try @leadeater's suggestion of:

1. Pulling out the good drive

2. Putting in the replacement drive only

3. Updating firmware and restoring to basic operation

4. Putting in good drive

5. Attempt to re-import the RAID1 array and rebuild?

I did try that, but the NAS did not boot even after I checked everything.

[AllThoughts 3rased]

On 07/05/2018 at 6:49 PM, seagate_surfer said:

Another one to try, and just keep in mind as a heads up that it's 3rd party so it didn't come from us, would be UFS Explorer RAID Recovery.

Thank you very much for the suggestion, I will give it a try.

 

[dalekphalm]

Just now, AllThoughts 3rased said:

I did try that, but the NAS did not boot even after I checked everything.

Have you tried connecting the drive to a computer running Linux yet?

[AllThoughts 3rased]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

Have you tried connecting the drive to a computer running Linux yet?

No, not yet as the only PC I have that will connect to it refuses to install Ubuntu, having a kernel panic during installation.