Terastation HD-H2.0TGL/R5 inaccessible...how to salvage data?

[psybertek]

   

As the title says, I've got a Terastation HD-H2.0GL/R5 that just recently has become inaccessible and will no longer connect to my network or any other network that I plug it into. I've got over 800GB of data that I need to get access to and offload to another NAS, but I have no sure fire idea how to do it.

 

I've got a few options which might work but aren't supported by Buffalo Technical Support....

 

1) Open the Terastation and do some component replacement on the systemboard from the ethernet port back to wherever and see if I can fix the ethernet/networking issue... This will be the cheapest way, but very time consuming because it's a trial and error method of finding out which component has failed on the networking side. 

 

2) Buy a IDE RAID5 controller card off eBay and plug it into a PC and take the 4 (500GB) drives out of the Terastation and plug them into the RAID controller and hope I can access all my data and move it off to another NAS. $50-75 for a controller card, but will it work without losing data????? On the enterprise/server side I know it can be done if you swap out the RAID controller with an identical one, but this isn't in the same ballpark...

 

3) Buy another used Terastation off eBay that's almost exactly like mine except it's a 1TB, remove the systemboard from mine that's not allowing network access and replace it with the systemboard from the unit purchased off eBay, or swap drives out between the two units, whichever is easier to do and hope I can access my data that way..

 

Are any of the above mentioned ideas really worth doing and I can really expect positive results in my favor??

 

There's nothing wrong with the RAID5 array in my Terastation that I know of.. The drives all work and the data is there, but the networking side is gone. It won't get a IP address from any router I plug it into, and plugging it directly into a PC doesn't do anything either.

 

Any help would greatly be appreciated!!!

[Colin137]

1. That's gonna be hard. The NIC is built in to the motherboard, so it will be very difficult, if not impossible.

 

2. No need to use a RAID card, since the device uses Linux software RAID. This won't work.

 

3. That may work, but it's up in the air. Hard to tell what the chances of that working are.

 

If you have Linux experience, you could put the drives on a PPC Mac, and use a Linux CD to mount the RAID. This is not for the faint of heart, and the PPC Mac is required because of the archetecture of the Terastation (PPC is big endian, x86 is little endian). Newer TS models use ARM processors in little endian mode, so it's much easier with the newer models.

 

The easiest way would be to use UFS Explorer on a Windows machine to virtually mount the RAID. This gets around the endianess restriction.