Once again I find myself on the brink of data loss at the hands of my NAS device. This started as I proactively shutdown my NAS due to impending thunderstorms. After the storms passed, I applied power back to my NAS and much to my surprise, the unit would not return to a functioning state. I was able to access the device through the web admin interface and could see there was a RAID failure and that a repair option was in process. After waiting for the device to finish, still no data access. I tried to count the blinking red, blue and sometimes orange light sequences from my device and interpret there meaning but I think I entered a hypnotic state before I could get it right. I woke up sometime later and only slightly recall the event. Something about chickens. I searched the Buffalo site for interpretations of my lights sequences but nothing that makes any real sense. Buffalo could really improve the support if they gave us English answers to the meaning of the sequences. This is a RAID 5 array in a QUAD NAS box. I’ve been here before. I’ll just reconstruct the array but no such luck. The UI will not let initiate a reconstruct. I try EM mode and it gets worse, now no access to UI. OK, time to call Tech support. Standard process, standard answers. Force a reload of firmware, check. Restart unit one more time while holding tongue out left side of mouth, check. Still no data, still not able to use the UI. Buffalo tells me in very nice terms how sorry they are but your data is screwed. That is when you enter how nice mode. how nice mode is when you have nothing to lose because you’re assuming your data is lost already and you try things you wouldn’t try if you felt there was a chance, any chance the data was recoverable. So with that as the prelude, here we go. Here are the steps I followed to get all my data back. As stated before, This was a RAID 5 array so this helped tremendously. I powered the unit down and removed drive 1. Powered on and allowed the unit to start. Still unable to access data or UI. Repeat with drive 2, then 3 , then 4. Progress! With drive 4 out, unit powered on and I gained access to the web admin UI. If I put Drive 4 back in, the unit would return to a state where I had no access. Drive 4 is bad. I work in IT and have access to a lot of equipment. This also helped tremendously. I grabbed a replacement drive from work to test with and put it in in place of drive 4. The unit would boot but not recognize there was a new drive in the unit, it would not allow me to reconstruct the array. Believing the other three drives and therefore my data were good, I looked for recovery options. What I found was NAS Data Recovery from RunTime software. I removed the remaining three drives and installed them into an HP workstation that had sufficient sata and power ports. The unit is running Windows 7 Professional. Runtime’s demo lets you download, install and run the full feature software to see if it is going to work for you before you pay. Within 5 minutes I was looking at my data and could view jpg’s but could not save them. $99.00 later I was recovering all of my data off the array. I highly recommend the Runtime package, best $99 bucks I have spent in a while. Next big question, do I trust this Buffalo device with my data ever again? Never give up.
Later
David
