Author Topic: Buffalo Link Station Died - How can I access data  (Read 1747 times)

Tomster2

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Buffalo Link Station Died - How can I access data
« on: March 17, 2012, 03:13:51 PM »

I have two Buffalo Linkstation Duos that have died in the last couple of months... shortly after warranty expired, of course.

 

If I remove the drives from the housing, each can be connected to a USB drive adapter and all four will spin up fine... and Drive Management (On either an XP or Windows 7 machine) recognizes them... but cannot read anything on them.

 

Is there anyway I can access this data to move it to another device?

 

Thanks for any suggestions.


Tomster2

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Re: Buffalo Link Station Died - How can I access data
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2012, 03:15:36 PM »

Additional info... the drives were configured for RAID 1.


Tomster2

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Re: Buffalo Link Station Died - How can I access data
« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2012, 06:28:55 PM »

I found a way  - thanks to contributors at forum.Knoppix.net

 

http://knoppix.net/forum/threads/29779-Knoppix-does-not-recognize-sata-drive-on-usb-adapter

 

Knoppix is a version of Linux.  Their website has an iso download that you can burn to disk in the language of your choice.

 

To burn the CD I used CDBurnerXP.  This is free on the internet and has the redeeming quality of being very simple to use... and when used... it works!

 

Once your machine is booted in Knoppix, the rest of the steps using the command line are nicely spelled out in the knoppix thread above. In English, the steps taken are:

 

1) Boot the PC using the Knoppix disk

2) Plug in one of the drives from your Buffalo Unit using a USB Drive Adapter

3) Plug in another external drive to copy the data to (if the local PC drive does not have room)

4) Find the name of the partition with the data using the command line tools described in the thread

5) Deactivate the RAID 1 for that partition using the command line

6) Mount the drive

7) Open the Knoppix file manager (located under Accessories) to view the files you want

8) Copy and Paste as desired

9) unmount the drive using the command line

10) Stop the drive using the command line

 

Hope this proves helpful to anyone else that encounters this situation.

 

Tomster2