On Tuesday my NAS $hit the bed. It's used to support an office and has an invaluable amount of data on it. 2, 1TB drives set to RAID 1. Called Buffalo tech support determined either a drive went bad or it's the controller. Through the RMA process a new unit is in route to me. I called tech support tonight and was floored that there's no "do it this way" process to swap out drives and keep data. I was even more floored when I found out they don't even want you to open the unit because of the unprotected power supply (some people are smart huh?) Losing this data isn't an option and unfortunately, given the current state of the economy, neither is a professional data recovery service. I'm looking at two options here and I want your opinions please of the best route to take, even option 3 if you have an idea to give me. I sincerely doubt I have two bad drives or even a bad drive at that but then again I was shocked to see Seagate barracudas in there.
1. Get the new unit in. Set it up on my network as the old one was with the data paths and whatnot. Get it talking. Swap the new drives for the old drives.
2. Since I'm running RAID 1, set up a Linux box and pull the data off one of the old drives. Get the replacement unit set up and transfer the data over.
Here are my problems... Will it matter what drives I have in the unit? Is it going to care that the hard drives it "knew" were replaced from the new ones to the old ones?
If I go a Linux route... what the heck do I do? What utility do I need? Can I use a Live CD version of Ubunto or do I need to make a Linux box?
I'm not a professional IT guy, I'm a hack at best, and my strong points are with networking, databases, software, programming, etc. Hardware is where I question myself over and over again. So please you don't have to completely dumb down any responses but if I end up asking a noob question I apologize in advance. Give me a VPN to set up across an ocean and I'll have it up and running by 12 noon. Now that it's data recovery... I'm coming to you guys.
Thanks in Advance.
First, The reason Buffalo cannot SUPPORT opening the unit is because the FCC does not allow them do to possible injury of people sticking there hand into the unit and cutting themselves on the fan of the PSU!
1. You need to check this first- Does the original unit have a reset button or three way switch? There was a hardware revision, and the replacement unit will probably have a switch. So, if your original unit does NOT have the same power feature (or same amount of USB ports), then swapping the drives will not work do to Firmware incompatibility!
Swapping the drives is a fairly easy process, they are each labeled and you simply switch them over. You may have to update FW to make sure that your drives have the same version as the flash chip.
To open the unit there are screws near the feet at the front, unscrew them and faceplate flips up, the rest you can figure out.
2. When most people hear of this process they through it out the Window the second they hear Linux but this is a painless process as well, the hardest part is burning an ISO. If you do not already have a Linux machine, then there is no need to build one, you can use a Live CD (Ubuntu and openSuSE are both really good for this). Burn the Image, boot your comp from the CD, then you will see both your NTFS (Windows) drive as well as the XFS (LinkStation) drive(s). You can transfer data between them, or to your replacement unit through the network using an SMB connection (though this may not work from a live CD, Im not sure).