Author Topic: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives  (Read 18808 times)

gopalvenu

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 8
Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« on: June 26, 2010, 11:48:47 AM »

I am writing this in case it helps others.

 

The system/bootimage partitions on my Terastation Live hard drives got corrupted, and one drive got damaged, during an abrupt power loss and could not recover.   The Buffalo support folks were very helpful, but together, we could not get the Terastation back up (I have to say they did their best to help me, and I did appreciate the 24/7 support).

 

There was no indication that any of my data in the shares were corrupted.   After investigating data recovery companies (one company I talked to wanted $2000-$7000!), I ran across references to mounting the drive on a Linux server and recovering the data (which I am sure would have worked had I known how to do this), and also to software called UFS Explorer that could read XFS drives on a Windows PC.  Thank god for internet.

 

I recovered all my data for about $100 using UFS explorer software for Windows and an external USB drive dock (Thermaltake BlacX 2.5"/3.5" HDD USB docking station).   All I had to do was remove the drives from the TS, plug in the USB dock into the PC, plug in the SATA drive into the dock, run the UFS Explorer software on the PC, and then just copy the data!!

 

I was also lucky in that I was using RAID1 - I did not have to do any "rebuilding of the RAID array" in UFS Explorer because I was using RAID1 and each disk in the pair had all the data.  In fact I recovered the data from both drives in a pair and compared them to ensure that there was no data corruption.  I would certainly recommend use of RAID1 for its simplicity during recovery - yes, you do not get as much disk space as some other RAID configs, but disk space is CHEAP!

 

All in all, the data recovery cost me about a tenth of what I would have been willing to pay.

 

[In case you are wondering, I did have the TS on a UPC backup;  in this case, I plugged in a Samsung Laser printer into the same UPC, and it overloaded the UPC, which caused it to shut down].

 

[After this incident, I also bought another NAS - Linkstation Live - and now have TS to LS backups twice daily.  The two devices are on different UPCs on different circuits in my house].

 

Hope this is of help to somebody some day.


AngelsAbys

  • El Toro
  • ****
  • Posts: 418
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #1 on: June 26, 2010, 02:10:57 PM »

Thank you for adding this to the forums, I am sure that many viewers will find this information useful for their needs


tsammyc

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 40
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2010, 09:51:30 PM »

I'd like to echo the recommendation to stick to Raid 1 for ease of recovery. I do this on my Linkstation Quad and backup to a USB drive. The only difference is that I won't backup to another NAS because backup is slow. USB drives are cheap and if you have a lot of data, it is very fast.


heidib

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 3
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #3 on: October 01, 2010, 01:42:09 PM »

I have a Linkstation LS 500GL that failed with a bad fan. I have been trying to recover the data.

The UFS Explorer Standard Access 4.4 for approx $25 DOES NOT WORK. I have had 9% recovery of my photo files.

I have also tried using UBUNTU to read the XFS (the housing part of this answer did work,), and have only had a 50% copy success rate (on bytes).

In both  cases, there are errors reading files and everything stops. With UFS, I often have to turn off the USB drive with the XFS on  it, change USB ports, and restart it.

 

Does anyone have a solution that actually works?

 

At this point, NO ONE SHOULD BE USING XFS due to the disasterous recovery rate.

 

Heidi


davo

  • Really Big Bull
  • VIP
  • *
  • Posts: 6149
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #4 on: October 01, 2010, 04:15:35 PM »

 


heidib wrote:
At this point, NO ONE SHOULD BE USING XFS due to the disasterous recovery rate.

 

Heidi


NO ONE should be without a backup solution incase something like this happens to them!

 

PM me for TFTP / Boot Images / Recovery files  LSRecovery.exe file.
Having network issues? Drop me an email: info@interwebnetworks.com and we will get it fixed!

jburrell

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 5
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #5 on: December 17, 2010, 12:43:20 AM »

Well... I agree.. we should all have separate backups... I did... but they failed and did not notify of the failure... :smileysad:  

 

Remember this... Backups are just backups until you need them... THEN, you need a RESTORABLE backup!  :) :smileyvery-happy:

 

We just had a TeraStation in a RAID 5 configuration get corrupted.  I believe the data is intact on the drives... I will try the tool to read the XFS file system... hopefully we can re-construct the RAID configuration and get the data back...

 

 


tmoran

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 3
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #6 on: March 01, 2011, 02:20:18 AM »

Since having a Linkstation die, leaving its disk OK, seems so common, and recovering that disk so difficult, I'm surprised there isn't a copy function in the firmware so the old disk can be plugged (via SATA-USB) into the USB port of a new Linkstation, and the Linkstation would copy the contents of the old disk to its new disk..  Reading XFS in Windows is a roundabou. slow, way of accomplishing that, and there seems some question whether UFS explorer will actually work after one has paid for it, and running a virtual Linux and sharing disk on a Windows system is rather extreme.  Or does brand new Linstation LS-CHL have that capability but I'm not finding it?


yoshi2000

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 35
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2011, 04:15:48 AM »

If the NAS is damaged, it can't do anything else. The best solution is to get the UFS explorer (basic will do) to copy the content out. For faster copy, mount the hard-disk into your SATA interface or best using eSATA hard disk dock.

 

 


tmoran

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 3
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #8 on: March 04, 2011, 11:12:16 PM »

>If the NAS is damaged it can't do anything else.

Of course.  But presumably the brand new NAS is not damaged.

 

UFS (approximately half the price of the new NAS) has now, after 20 hours, copied from the old, but good, disk to my Windows hard disk.  Now to copy the result over the LAN to the new Linkstation....

 


sfossil

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 1
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2011, 08:17:29 AM »

Hello gopalveu:

 

I am in the same position you were.  I just bought UFS Explorer Standard but their support is pretty bad.

 

I am running RAID 1 and found the disk that has my data.

 

Can you give me the steps you used to get your data using UFS?

 

Thank you,

SF

 

 


Bock

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 4
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #10 on: June 23, 2011, 03:14:46 AM »

I did daily back-ups from my PC and single-drive NAS to my 1TB TeraStation Live runing RAID 5.

The data drive in my PC went down and after shutting everything down and replacing the drive in my PC, when the TeraStation booted back up, I got the E04 error.

I have tried EM booting and re-flashing the firmware. It successfully flashes but it still can't load the kernel.

I've tried booting with each of the drives removed and it didn't help.

Will doing the TFTP boot thing be worth the time?

Where can I get the boot image? The links that I've found so far in the forums don't work.

I've purchased UFS Explorer and can mount the RAID, but the file structure that it's presenting isn't right -- it's flattend out a lot of the file structure and is also presenting a collection of inode_xxxxxx directories that aren't too helpful.

 

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.


babak4

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 10
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #11 on: June 23, 2011, 04:27:29 AM »

Hi,

 

Thanks for the hope!!

 

Just one question:

 

Where is the source of your healthy files? & which files did you replace? My Linkstation LS-V2.0TL-EU unit has 3 partitions on it: a 1GB with the boot image one it, a 5 GB with some folders (which seem to be related to boot process, but are mainly empty), & the last one with all my data on it.

 

I assume the files on the first partition are my target, but I've got no clue about the list of files that are supposed to be there, and the ones I'm supposed to replace. Also where can I find the source files that i'm supposed to use to overwrite the corrupted ones?

 

Thanks a lot for the help.

Babak.


Bock

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 4
Re: Recovering data (how-to) from XFS drives
« Reply #12 on: June 23, 2011, 10:23:58 AM »

In my case, I connected the four drives to my PC, Drive 1 to SATA2, Drive 2 to SATA3, Drive 3 to SATA4, Drive 4 to SATA5.

(SATA 0 is my boot drive and SATA1 is my data drive.)

Using UFS File Explorer, I created the virtual RAID, and loaded the SGI XFS partition that I could see first, which was on the drive connected to SATA5.

Thinking that I should add the other drives in inverse order, I added the largest partitions from SATA 4, then 3, then 2.

After doing that, I was able to build the drive and explore some files. The crazy thing was that I wound up with a file structure that made the most sense when I added the rest of the drives SATA2, SATA3, SATA4. Bottom line is to try it both ways.

UFS File Explorer is obviously somewhat half-baked (it doesn't even allow drag-and-drop from the file window), but it looks like it's the best shot I've got to pull data from my back-up drive.

The biggest consideration here is that I should have gotten a different back-up plan than relying on the Tera Station the first time a while back when I got my first E04 error and saw the nightmares that people have with Tera Station products where the drives are perfectly good but the Tera Station is riddled with E04 and E06 issues.