ReadyNAS Data Recovery - VMware recovery tool

dekkit wrote:

Hi BoyQuiet, its been a great to see the ReadyNAS community come together on this....and yes a detailed how-to-guide / video example is probably in order but unfortunately requires time but is on my to do list (unless someone else does it first!?!). I'll eventually get around to editing the first post on this forum again to help make this clearer but some things to note (that have been mentioned elsewhere around here) Things to note: # Only the 1st disk of the duo will work in the VMware (usually in the 1st bay in a 2xbay duo). Because of the way the RAID works in the duo, the second disk is considered the parity disk (apparently when you yank out the first disk, it will write the partition table to the 2nd disk - or something to this effect - and the duo will kick on). To view the contents of the 2nd disk, you'll need to use something like R-tools to scan and index the partitions on the 2nd disk. # When you run the VMware, you'll need to run 2 x terminal windows. (which it sounds like you've done) ..the 1st will mount the ReadyNAS duo filesystem and will appear to 'hang' (with info about the size of the disk) you then need the 2nd to access the files # Accessing readynas drives plugged into your motherboard requires the _vito vmware version. You may need to google using VMware with internal hdds to ensure you configure _vito's image to meet your drive size. Please report any progress / success. :) Dek

Sorry but I have no idea what _vito is :-( and my googling skills have not helped.

Tried starting the Duo with just the second disk in (simulated disk1 failure) and the Duo just blinked at me for ever ...

So now thinking of using raid-0 on both disks and backing up one to the other. At least that way the VM would be able to read either one if the other failed. I could loose the date since the last backup but the upsides seem worth it to me.
1. take either disk out when going away for any length of time.
2. not worry that inserting a new disk will loose all my data (looks like this happened in some posts)
3. I can use your VM to recover data from either drive.

I know it looks all wrong but may just work for me.