Terastation Web manager & failed drive

[Boone608]

   

I had a hard drive (HD1) fail in my Terastation Live.  So I got another (same size) drive from local retailer and replaced the bad one with it.

 

I then went into the web manager and clicked on the drive error and it took me to the Disk Management page where I should be able to select the new drive and click on the Restructure Raid Array button. 

 

Problem is the button to Restructure Raid Array is grayed out and all the disk drives are checked and grayed out as well.  This is preventing me from rebuilding the raid on to the new drive.

 

I've contacted support and they are sending me a new disk drive but they were not able to explain how this would help me out with the web manager and why these important options are grayed out.

 

Can anyone explain why the drive has to come from Buffalo and why I can't just use similar in size drive off the self?

 

And in the mean time how would I get access to the data on the existing drives?  It's running in a degrade mode but shouldn't I at least be able to retrieve data off the Terastation?

[Paul]

what format is that drive in?  Should be Fat32

 

[Boone608]

   

Yes the format is Fat32.

 

When I put the drive in it will show up but I'm just not able to select the option to Restructure the drive array.  It is grayed out, unselectable, in the disk maintenance area.  The other 3 disk show up the same way, selected but grayed out.

[Paul]

Try to flash or force flash the firmware

[Boone608]

   

Ok, I got the replacement drive and force flashed the firmware (v.2.14).  I still get the same thing.  I've included a link to an image of what I am seeing.

 

http://boonetown.com/buffalo/buffaloscreen.jpg

 

There just has to be a solution to this with out starting over.  Any other ideas?  Thanks

[Paul]

Couple of things come to mind, first see if you can run a raid check, also it is possible that one of the sata cables came loose from the mother board, you should check that as well.

[Boone608]

   

So far none of the suggested solutions have worked and after a call to tech support I have concluded that the knowledge that Buffalo Tech support has is lacking in any depth to their own product.

 

I have taken another direction and researched other solutions on the internet that have given me positive results. I did not want to spend any addition money on getting my data off the failed buffalo RAID but that is better than losing the data all together.  Here's the links to the solution I used.

 

TS Live Data Recovery

 

Since I only had a PC platform computer I had to use the method of recovering a RAID using "Data Recovery on x86 (Windows) using UFS Explorer". 

 

UFS Explorer

 

I had to download and purchase the above software.

 

Here's a brief step by step of recovering my data. 

I had Disk 1 of the TeraStation Live fail.  After tech support supplied me with a new drive and no solution to getting the disk to be restructured I had use the following to recover my data. 

 

Since one of the drives was "dead" I only needed three USB enclosures.

 

 

1. I had to purchase USB SATA drive enclosures for each of the drives that had data on them. $90 at mwave.com

 

2. I purchased the UFS Explorer software.  There is a trial version to first see if it will see your drive config and data.

 

3. I removed the drives from the TS Live. Took them out of the trays and put them into the USB drive enclosures.  I made sure I labeled them all appropriately.

 

4. Then I hooked them up to a PC that just happen to have enough available USB ports.  If you don't have the ports available use a USB hub.

 

5. I turned on each of the drives in order.  Drive 2 first, drive 3 second, drive 4 third.  Keeping in mind Drive 1 is the failed drive and the replacement drive was not used in the recovery.

 

6. Opened UFS Explorer and all the drives are displayed.  Based on how many disk you have already you may see that the USB drives you just added may start at a different number than what you had labeled them.  But they will be displayed in order to how you turned them on.

 

7. Create a virtual raid and find each disk and Add it to the virtual RAID.  Make sure they are in order. 

 

8. Select Raid 5, Stripe Size 64K and Left-Symetric. After you select these items then you will be able to add a Place Holder Disk.  Add one and move it to the position of the failed drive.  In my case it was "drive 1"

 

9. Once the raid partition is created, right-click on the newly created partition and select "Fined File System".

 

You will now see all your data listed in the right hand panel and then right click on whatever folder you want recovered and select "Copy to..." option and copy it to a backup drive.  This can be a local drive on the PC or another USB drive.

 

Total cost of this solution was about $160.  Worth the cost but still burns my britches why I was not able to get access to the data through the TS Live even with one failed drive.  I'm not a genius but I believe that is one of the purposes of RAID 5.  A drive can fail but you should still have access to the data in READ ONLY and then you should be able to recover from one failed drive.  In both of these cases the Buffalo TS Live FAILED.

 

[Paul]

If none of the solutions have worked in repairing the raid then I would consider a bad controller.  Contact support for an RMA, Buffalo will send you an advanced replacement that you can swap all the drives on, leaving your old drives in a new case.

[wparish]

   

Two observations from my latest crash.  Note that UFS Explorer saved my butt twice so far.

 

The biggest trouble is figuring out where to put 3 gb worth of data to back up the unit before I try to let it repair.

 

Anyway, Boone608 was square on the mark but this last time I added the three drives and a placeholder and to my constant shock no combination of the drives wanted to let me see a filesystem on the last parition in the virtual raid.

 

Instead of doing raid by disk, I ended up trying raid by parition.  I added the three virtual partitions and a placeholder and it came right up with a filesystem.

 

Also I figured out if you right click on the other parititions (which do come up in the disk mode) you can at least drill down to the /var/logs folder and figure out which drive was most recently giving you errors...on my unit it seems they go e,f,g,h so h was my drive 4.  Weird, that's the same drive that failed last time and I used a totally different manufacturer/model for the replacement drive...

 

(this was more or less a confirmation for me at this point because before this I tried to build a virtual array with all four drives and disk 4 was giving me intermittend timeouts)

 

[Nukeman10]

   

Try having 168GB and then they want to repair it. Maybe you can get a 4GB USB mem drive.

 

[davo]

   Looking at the thread it doesnt seem to be a controller issue but a RAID issue, there has been a corruption somewhere with the software RAID and so deleting the recreating the RAID shoild solve your problem however this will cause data loss so i hope you have a backup somewhere

[Boone608]

   

It certainly was a failure in the software RAID which did or did not cause disk 1 to fail or made appear to fail.  After recovering my data using UFS Explorer I stuck all the drives back into the TS Live and deleted then rebuild the RAID from scratch.  I've got my TS Live up and running again but a software RAID failure to me is a major problem with this product.  The idea of having a RAID 5 to use for the purpose of recovering from a hard drive failure is what made me buy this system in the first place.  All indications and error codes pointed to a hard disk failure but instead maybe it was only the RAID itself that failed. 

 

If Buffalo wants to stand behind its product they should provide a means to recover any data off a failed RAID system without a person going through the expense that I did.  Obviously it can be done so I suggest that Buffalo implement a means to access data on a failed RAID in read only mode so a person can recover their precious data.  And yes I use backups but not for the purpose of failed hard drives (that's why I went with a RAID 5 solution) but for archiving finish projects that I work on.

[Paul]

I have yet to find any hard drive manufacture or NAS manufacture that offers such recovery options.  If you know of any please let me know I will pass it up to marketing.  Until such changes are even considered please follow the standard back up practice of 3 copies.

[pta552]

   

I had the exact same problem as Boone608. Can't believe a device purchased with the very intent to keep data safe turns out to cost me several extra bucks just to recover data that I considered to be in a safe place.

 

Sure everyone needs to make several backups, but this way it appears safer just to stick with my desktop machine, buy two USB HD's and make a regular backup to them. Much cheaper, but above all much less troublesome if one drive fails (or appears not to have failed in the first place - as was the case for Boone608, but also for my disk: all checks I carried out revealed that the drive was in perfect order).

 

Anyway: Boone608 many thanks for sharing this issue with the wider community. Without your suggestion I would have been lost (I'm not safe yet: I bought the software and intend to recover over the weekend). Buffalo helpdesk has not provided a solution so far.

 

I just wonder: is there no other alternative to fix a "software RAID" issue so that no data is lost (and not requiring taking out all drives and put them into a different machine)? I'm not sure I fully understand what a software RAID issue is, but guess that if all drives are in order, it must be possible to perform data recovery just the same way UFS Explorer does it.