My ReadNas Duo stopped booting, displayed a pulsing power, solid disc 1 and blinking disc 2, would not fully boot in any drive configuration, would respond to PINGS but RAIDar would list 'booting' and eventually lose the connection, FrontView was never accessible, 5 second reset did nothing, USB reset seemed to work fine but had no effect on the state. NetGear online support has been completely useless after a week of form/bot replies at 6 hour intervals, so I decided to try the VMware approach, after duplicating the drive that is. So I picked up one of these,
Approx $60 USD, I chose this one because it doesn't require a PC connection to duplicate, avoiding any chance for the PC to attempt to mount the disc to be recovered. I also picked up as close to the same model of drive as I could then duplicated disc 1 to the new drive. This took about 4 hours for 1TB. Then using VMware Workstation 7.1 and the acmtn image I was able to mount the cloned version of the drive and access my data, without having to mess with the original drive. Some notes, some obvious perhaps,
* Ensure the drive you wish to recover the data to is FAT32, not NTFS, mounting NTFS as Read/Write is not a given in Debian * Files over 4G will be truncated when copied without warning * Do not attempt to write to the mounted recovery drive in anyway ( delete, rename, create files / directories, etc) you will lose the mount
Some useful commands for those with limited Linux knowledge,
* Mount a fat32 drive ( may not be sdb1, try sdb's and sdc listed under /dev/ ) mkdir /mnt/myfat32drive mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/myfat32drive -t vfat
* Copy Directory or File and Sub-Directories and show items as they copy ( verbose ) cp -R -v /mnt/lvm/backup /mnt/myfat32drive
* Find files over 4G and dump list to a file ( run from /mnt/lvm ) find -type f -size +3500M > /mnt/myfat32drive/bigfiles.txt
All in all I'm very grateful for the image. Great work, I highly suggest duplicating the drive before attempting this, if the data is valuable enough than it should be totally worth the $150 it would cost for a duplicator and a new drive.
You could use EXT3 (does not have 4GB limitation that FAT32 has) not FAT32. An EXT3 drive should be able to be plugged into a USB port on the ReadyNAS once you have it up and running again.
Well, I'm assuming at this point that in order to get the ReadyNas Duo up and running again I will have to do a full factory reset and thus blank the data. I figure the quickest and easiest option for Windows users using the VMware method to access 4+GB size files would be to FTP them to a local server, unless someone compiles an image with NTFS write supported.
First off many thanks to dekkit (and all other contributers) to the linux VM that can access the ReadyNAS du disk over USB.
As a newbe to ReadyNAS Ive had some "issues" that make me nervouse of trusting it completely. (see my post Duo Adding 2nd disk Fails. Reinit with both disks OK ?)
I installed the VM and it can see and access files on disk1 over a USB disk docking station.
But when I swap disk 2 in to the docking station vgscan does not detect it. (both disks 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda x-raid)
Any guidance?
Also see reference to accessing HDD internally from a VM but have not found an actual "how too" Any link would be welcome
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.
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.
modprobe fuse vgscan found volume group “vmw.debian5” using… vgchange -ay vmw.debian5 6 logical volume(s) in volume groupe “vmw.debian5” now active mkdir /mnt/lvm ext2fuse /dev/vmw.debian5/vmw.debian5 /mnt/lvm /dev/vmw.debian5/ vmw.debian5 is to be mounted at /mnt/lvm fuse-ext2fs: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/vmw.debian5/ vmw.debian5
I have mounted the drive from a ReadyNAS Duo on a Ubuntu VMWare image using an external USB enclosure. I can see the c/home directory which only contains an admin directory but I do not see any shares. Is it still possible that my shares exist on the drive and can be accessed? I have used R-Studio to recover some files but without filenames. The filenames are replaced with numbers by R-Studio. I can see the c/home and c/home/admin folder in R-studio and I don't see any shares there either. In R-Studio the block size for the partition is reported as 4KB. The ReadyNAS is about a year old I think. Is it likely that this is a block size issue and I need to use one of the VMWare images with fuse to recover the files or does the fact that I'm able to mount and view the directories mean the shares are not there? Thanks in advance. - Scott
Hi to you all and thanks for your work ! ...and especially to VITO and his vmware image.
After dowloading, I just have a small problem to boot with it : After booting in the ubuntu menu, I get a boot msg problem : ___________ Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems: ... BusyBox v1.13.3 (Ubutuntu 1:1.13.3-.... ____________
As this was one of main threads i found when googling my problem I'd thought I'd post in here.
My readynas died and I no longer had access to my files. I tried for ages but eventually stumbled across this progam called R-linux, recovered all files including file names and folder structure. Winner.
I have another thread open in this forum for a week now and also a case at Netgear.
The situation is as follows:
- ReadyNas Pro, 6 X 3TB HDDs, Xraid2 with one HDD for redundancy (RAID5 + autoX, right?), 7 TB worth of data, Journaling disabled, Recycle Bin disabled.
The problem:
- accidentally deleted the media share, therefore all 7TB disappeared (Huge catastrophe for me!)
I have been waiting for Netgear's support for a week now to provide the necessary parameters in order to be able to run R-Studio on my HDDs, connected to a PC at the moment. And I am still wating (so much for efficiency).
Can this solution here help me? (just to remind you, I deleted the files!)
Note: I ran a regular undelete tool for EXT partitio on one HDD, in read only mode, scanning. It came up with a HDD full of data of all sorts. Filenames were just generic and numbered, but accessible. Of course a JPG for example would show only a small part of the picture since the rest is spread across the 5 other HDDs.
I have another thread open in this forum for a week now and also a case at Netgear.
The situation is as follows:
- ReadyNas Pro, 6 X 3TB HDDs, Xraid2 with one HDD for redundancy (RAID5 + autoX, right?), 7 TB worth of data, Journaling disabled, Recycle Bin disabled.
The problem:
- accidentally deleted the media share, therefore all 7TB disappeared (Huge catastrophe for me!)
I have been waiting for Netgear's support for a week now to provide the necessary parameters in order to be able to run R-Studio on my HDDs, connected to a PC at the moment. And I am still wating (so much for efficiency).
Can this solution here help me? (just to remind you, I deleted the files!)
Note: I ran a regular undelete tool for EXT partitio on one HDD, in read only mode, scanning. It came up with a HDD full of data of all sorts. Filenames were just generic and numbered, but accessible. Of course a JPG for example would show only a small part of the picture since the rest is spread across the 5 other HDDs.
Thanks
Bump! Is this thread alive? Can somebody tell me if this solution is suitable for me? Again: ReadyNas Pro, 6 X 3TB (terabytes) HDDs, Xraid2 one hdd redundancy.
As this was one of main threads i found when googling my problem I'd thought I'd post in here.
My readynas died and I no longer had access to my files. I tried for ages but eventually stumbled across this progam called R-linux, recovered all files including file names and folder structure. Winner.
Hello
Which RAID type were you using? Which product from R-tt did you use? Which parameters did you use in that product to reconstruct the RAID?
Your folders and file should be listed (if all goes well) in this terminal, you can now copy them to another HDD (usb, share etc that you have connected to the VMWare). Be aware there is a 4GB file limit on each filesize (a limitation of the ext2fuse).
I am using Ubuntu with fuseext2 as described here
http://home.bott.ca/webserver/?p=306
all was going well and I was getting my data, but I can not read files >4GB from my Duo drive. I can see from terminal that the directory sizes are listed correct, but they are not the sum of the file sizes. File sizes are listed as max 3.8 GB. I have tried to zip them with 2GB split, but the problem is reading them.
How can I resolve this? I really need my video files >4GB.
Thank you! Thank you! The network adapter went out on one of my client's ReadyNAS Duos, and there was new data since the last backup. Using the acmtn Debian release, I was able to mount a volume from one of the mirrored drives hooked up via a USB to SATA adapter and copy data off. The only issue I had was not being able to browse the mounted volume from the GUI. So all of the browsing, copying, etc had to be done via the command line. Not a big deal, but I am not too experienced with Linux. Very relieved that this worked!
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!
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.
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.
