NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
ReadyNAS Data Recovery - VMware recovery tool
Description
This topic contains links to linux VMware images (Debian / Ubuntu) that have been modified to enable you to access your ReadyNAS duo HDDs from any machine with a USB plug and a SATA to USB cable.
Advantages:
* VMware player be downloaded freely
* Can run in both existing linux / MS Windows (XP,Vista etc) operating system without any further modification
Disadvantages:
* Requires a SATA to USB cable
* Mac users will need to find another program to run the VMware files
Background
At some point your ReadyNAS Duo unit is going to stop working (which hopefully will be long and far into in the future) and there may be a point where you'll need to rely on your external backups.
While it's a good strategy to ensure you (and your family / clients) have a good disaster recovery process (having external off-site backups, checking the backups, knowing how to restore from backups etc), in some cases the backups might not work or the backups aren't available to you.
Due to the architecture of the ReadyNAS Duo (more specifically the 16KB blocksize of the partitions), you cannot simply pull out the hard disks, place them into a standard windows / linux pc, then copy all your files across to another computer or storage device.
Unfortunately there are no windows drivers that can properly access the drives and the process to configure a linux pc is complex (see viewtopic.php?f=25&t=24861&hilit=16+blocksize for further background on this)
The following VMware images contain all required patches to read your HDDs in linux just by entering a few terminal commands.
VMplayer Link
To get started, you will need to download a version of VMplayer for your operating system Win/Linux (Mac not directly supported yet), this can be found
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
VMware Linux Image with Ext2Fuse
acmtn Debian release - tested ok, reports are that it works fine except for files greater than 4GB)
http://www.readynas.com/contributed/dek ... ebian5.zip
acmtn VM login info (username/password): root/rootadmin, vmuser/vmuser1
(please read the forums for more details on how to use this vmware )
_vito Ubuntu release - currently being tested, enables you to use the HDDs directly plugged into your pc without the need for a SATA to usb cable.
http://www.readynas.com/contributed/dek ... buntu9.rar
Details on this alternative vmware can be found on this post (you'll need to review the instructions carefully):
viewtopic.php?p=203653#p203653
dekkit Debian release - tested, a number of issues.
my initial attempt that helped start this thread has been found to have quite a few issues and may not work for you, but can be found here if you would like to try:
http://www.readynas.com/contributed/dekkit/VMwareDebian5.0%20-%20ext2Fuse.rar
dekkit VM login info: User: vmplanet pass: vmplanet.net
the acmtn version at this stage appears to be getting more reliable results for users. Unfortunately, I have not had time improve on my original dekkit release due to time constraints but if you would like to try please post your results.
Dekkit release Notes:
* You will need 8GB of free disk space once you have uncompressed the image
* You will still need to execute some of the terminal commands to mount the drive (take precaution so you don't accidently blow away your data)
* This VMware can access other windows file shares and can also be configured to host windows shares (see the docs for debian for more info on this)
* To uncompress the file use WinRar: http://download.cnet.com/WinRAR-32-bit/ ... 07677.html or for non-windows platforms try: http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
* This image is a work in progress (WIP) so please post all errrors !!!!!.
Dekkit release Usage- this may apply to the other versions (eg acmtn
Login to the OS
Access the terminal and enter the following once the HDD has been attached (take note that your /dev/c may differ):
modprobe fuse
vgscan
vgchange -ay c
mkdir /mnt/lvm
ext2fuse /dev/c/c /mnt/lvm
there is a delay in output but then ..
"/dev/c/c is to be mounted at /mnt/lvm
fuse-ext2 initialized for device: /dev/c/c
block size is 16384"
Dekkit Release Acknowledgements
The original VMware image was found http://www.vmplanet.net/node/85 (before the various patches were applied - so feel free to drop them a donation), if you can improve this image by way of a script to make it even easier to use for us 'non-linux users' then please do so and share it back with the rest of us
This topic contains links to linux VMware images (Debian / Ubuntu) that have been modified to enable you to access your ReadyNAS duo HDDs from any machine with a USB plug and a SATA to USB cable.
Advantages:
* VMware player be downloaded freely
* Can run in both existing linux / MS Windows (XP,Vista etc) operating system without any further modification
Disadvantages:
* Requires a SATA to USB cable
* Mac users will need to find another program to run the VMware files
Background
At some point your ReadyNAS Duo unit is going to stop working (which hopefully will be long and far into in the future) and there may be a point where you'll need to rely on your external backups.
While it's a good strategy to ensure you (and your family / clients) have a good disaster recovery process (having external off-site backups, checking the backups, knowing how to restore from backups etc), in some cases the backups might not work or the backups aren't available to you.
Due to the architecture of the ReadyNAS Duo (more specifically the 16KB blocksize of the partitions), you cannot simply pull out the hard disks, place them into a standard windows / linux pc, then copy all your files across to another computer or storage device.
Unfortunately there are no windows drivers that can properly access the drives and the process to configure a linux pc is complex (see viewtopic.php?f=25&t=24861&hilit=16+blocksize for further background on this)
The following VMware images contain all required patches to read your HDDs in linux just by entering a few terminal commands.
VMplayer Link
To get started, you will need to download a version of VMplayer for your operating system Win/Linux (Mac not directly supported yet), this can be found
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
VMware Linux Image with Ext2Fuse
acmtn Debian release - tested ok, reports are that it works fine except for files greater than 4GB)
http://www.readynas.com/contributed/dek ... ebian5.zip
acmtn VM login info (username/password): root/rootadmin, vmuser/vmuser1
(please read the forums for more details on how to use this vmware )
_vito Ubuntu release - currently being tested, enables you to use the HDDs directly plugged into your pc without the need for a SATA to usb cable.
http://www.readynas.com/contributed/dek ... buntu9.rar
Details on this alternative vmware can be found on this post (you'll need to review the instructions carefully):
viewtopic.php?p=203653#p203653
dekkit Debian release - tested, a number of issues.
my initial attempt that helped start this thread has been found to have quite a few issues and may not work for you, but can be found here if you would like to try:
http://www.readynas.com/contributed/dekkit/VMwareDebian5.0%20-%20ext2Fuse.rar
dekkit VM login info: User: vmplanet pass: vmplanet.net
the acmtn version at this stage appears to be getting more reliable results for users. Unfortunately, I have not had time improve on my original dekkit release due to time constraints but if you would like to try please post your results.
Dekkit release Notes:
* You will need 8GB of free disk space once you have uncompressed the image
* You will still need to execute some of the terminal commands to mount the drive (take precaution so you don't accidently blow away your data)
* This VMware can access other windows file shares and can also be configured to host windows shares (see the docs for debian for more info on this)
* To uncompress the file use WinRar: http://download.cnet.com/WinRAR-32-bit/ ... 07677.html or for non-windows platforms try: http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
* This image is a work in progress (WIP) so please post all errrors !!!!!.
Dekkit release Usage- this may apply to the other versions (eg acmtn
Login to the OS
Access the terminal and enter the following once the HDD has been attached (take note that your /dev/c may differ):
modprobe fuse
vgscan
vgchange -ay c
mkdir /mnt/lvm
ext2fuse /dev/c/c /mnt/lvm
there is a delay in output but then ..
"/dev/c/c is to be mounted at /mnt/lvm
fuse-ext2 initialized for device: /dev/c/c
block size is 16384"
Dekkit Release Acknowledgements
The original VMware image was found http://www.vmplanet.net/node/85 (before the various patches were applied - so feel free to drop them a donation), if you can improve this image by way of a script to make it even easier to use for us 'non-linux users' then please do so and share it back with the rest of us
187 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- Here's a PM I've sent to Dekkit earlier today. As Dekkit commented in his response PM it might be helpfull to update this thread with the question and his answer :)
Here goes!
Hello Dekkit,
I hope you don't mind me dropping a question in your PM box. If you do then please mark this message as to be deleted .
Ok so I've been working with some different ReadyNAS system for the past couple of weeks and wondered if data from the disks could be recovered if the NAS breaks down. The Google search lead me to this forum and especially to your post "ReadyNAS Data Recovery - VMware recovery tool" (http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=35153). I've been reading and testing a lot of the options the last couple of days and first all of let me thank you for the great post you've made. It's been a superb help so far!
I am, however, stuck on a rather silly issue. I've managed to get the Ubuntu distribution (_vito Ubuntu release) running and after some testing I've been also able to load and access the NAS-disks. Copying files from the NAS-disks from Ubunto to Windows also works to a certain extend. Apparently I'm unable to copy big (4.4GB) Symantec System Recovery image files from the NAS-disks to the Ubuntu OS. For some reason Ubuntu sees these files as 500MB big while on the NAS they show as 4.4GB.
I've been reading the forum/Google searches/your post several times now but I simply can't figure out how to make Ubuntu see these bigger files. Do you know of any way for this work?
Currently I'm also downloading the Debian distribution (acmtn Debian release) to see if It's able to work with bigger files. However, your comment in the post says "tested ok, reports are that it works fine except for files greater than 4GB)" so I guess that won't work either.
Also, I noticed you've also made your custom Debian distribution (dekkit Debian release). Does that OS maybe support the bigger files?
I'm currently downloading the distribution but for some reason it's very slow and takes me almost two days to download them. That's also a reason why I'm dropping you this PM, thought I'd ask about your experiences before testing those two other distributions.
Again, thanks for the post. It's greatly appreciated!
Hoping your willing to answer to this PM.
Sincerely,
Andy - Small update:
Just finished installing Ubuntu 12.4 and managed to configure it the same way as Dekkit did for the v9 version (initial post). Unfortunately the files still show as 516MB in Ubuntu while on the NAS they show as 4.4GB.
I'll try to keep posting updates.
Andy - Perhaps you could try my method outlined in this thread
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=64206 - Thanks for the tip mjw.
However: I've been able to get it working under Devian 6 64-bit. Followed the same steps as described in Dekkit's initial post. I'm able to copy files with a maximum filesize of 4GB from the NAS-disks now.
I'll try the same again in Ubuntu later this week and I'll post the results.
Andy - Last update:
I managed to get a working situation in Ubuntu as well as in Debian. I can copy all the files from the NAS-disks as long as they're not bigger/larger then 4GB.
Thank you for the help - Hi guys,
My ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer edition gave up recently. I contacted tech support and will get a replacement unit, but I would very much like to recover my data.
Will the procedures outlined in this thread work for my unit?
The problem is I have a lot of files larger than 4GB.
All help appreciated! - Agresvig no the procedures are different for the NVX Pioneer
Anyway you can migrate your array over to the replacement unit that NetGear sends you.
What firmware was running on the NVX Pioneer when it failed? If you can put a spare disk (not from your array) in the replacement unit and ensure the firmware is at least as up to date as what was on the NVX Pioneer. Then power down, remove the spare disk and migrate your disks across as per http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how_do_i_migrate_disks_over_from_an_existing_readynas_to_another mdgm wrote: Agresvig no the procedures are different for the NVX Pioneer
Anyway you can migrate your array over to the replacement unit that NetGear sends you.
What firmware was running on the NVX Pioneer when it failed? If you can put a spare disk (not from your array) in the replacement unit and ensure the firmware is at least as up to date as what was on the NVX Pioneer. Then power down, remove the spare disk and migrate your disks across as per http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how_do_i_migrate_disks_over_from_an_existing_readynas_to_another
Thank you mdgm for the reply.
However they are issuing a ReadyNAS Pro 4 as a replacement unit (my NVX is no longer in production). The Pro 4 has a 64-bit Intel Atom D510 CPU in it while my dead unit has a 32-bit Intel Tolopai CPU, so if I've understood correctly, the array will not be transferrable to the new unit because of the different architechture.
Correct me if I'm wrong!- Whilst you're correct about the CPUs used you're wrong about the migration. It would work fine. See your thread: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=67678
- Looks like this thread has generated quite a bit of interest since i last visited.... here is a visual step by step guide that someone has kindly posted on their blog after doing a few google searches.
http://firstpersontroubleshooter.blogsp ... dynas.html
they also include an example on how to check if your usb hdd is being properly detected within the VMware (as mine wasn't).
While I was hoping this day would never come, it appears that I've crashed ReadyNAS duo and in recovery mode. While I turned off the RAID on my 2 disk duo (so each HDD was its own volume eg C and D), the first disk i tried appears to be too corrupted to be mounted properly up in the VMWare (doh!). The commands don't detect anything, even though within the linux vm the partion manager shows my drive and the partitions (with a nice warning flag next to both indicating things aren't quite right!)...
My next steps have been to try out Rstudio's Rtools which has so far been able to detect the files that weren't lost and should be able to pull of most of them (even though most of the stuff is backed up anyway).... just need to find a spare drive large enough to store it all on now.
I'm thinking it might have just been easier if i had just started off with an old laptop and added a few usb NTFS formatted hdds in it, particularly as a windows user - anything that can go wrong with the duo is just so time consuming to fix / rebuild ..but then again moving TBs of data around was always going to be slow.
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
