Buffalo NAS-Central Forums

I have a Terastaion 1.6GB NAS ( silver box, HD-H1.6TGL/R5 ), that is acting screwy.
Its using the 1.12 Firmware.

Last Thursday, I logged into the unit because I noticed some of the disk status lights were flashing red.
After logging in, the unit said that it was in the middle of diagnostics and checking the disks.
Everything seemed fine until later that evening.

A few hours later I logged back in to check the status of the diagnostics and noticed that I was unable to access any of the data on the unit. Red lights are blinking for all 4 disks.

When I click "Home" everything looks normal except for the "HDD Space Used" field. It returns nothing, its blank.
When I try running a disk check on the RAID5 array, it starts and then fails out with "The Disk Check has failed.
The File System or Disk Format is not recognizable."

There are no errors reported that says I must delete the RAID5 array to be able to use the data, so I am still hopeful.

Is there ANYTHING I can do to repair the disks?
There is quite a bit of data on the unit, most of which is backed up. However there is a small amount of data that there are no other copies of, so I'd be willing to try anything (including opening the machine and inserting the drives into another computer).

Any tips ?

It might be worth reading this thread to see if you think the situation might apply to you?

Mel i feel your pain. however, i managed to recover from a '4 red lights' error with some poking around. see my thread as itimpi says - feel free to message me if you don't understand anything.


however, it sounds like your Array is titsup - it took 3-4 runs of the repair to fix it for me, before i could deal with the file system corruption

first thing you'll need to do is update your firmware - if you call Buffalo they will give you v2 firmware, however if you need to do anything with the console may i suggest itimpi's firmware as it gives you console access to your tera,

Reb (off to do 2 days of exams -eek)

link to firmware

use at your risk - it worked fine for me (thanks itimpi)

Hi, Reb. Thanks for all this info in this thread and the other. I, too, am suffering from the 'unable to mount array1' error. I can hook up my four drives to a PC and see all the partitions and access the 'system' partition on the drives, but no partition three where all my data is. I called Buffalo and after two hours, determined they didn't know how to help me. I've tried flashing the firmware to a version that allows TELNET, but I can't even flash my drives because it errors and says there are zero megabytes availalbe or not enough room or something like that... I have over 400gb of data that I trusted to this thing. (hey, RAID 5 is safe, right?). I really need my data back. (oh, the web management says everything is okay, of course, but doesn't give me free space or a partition type format). Any ideas on how I can flash my unit with itimpi firmware so I can telnet and try the xfs repair idea? This is a terestation pro, 1tb unit. I'd be happy to 'redo' all my hard disks after I get the data off SOMEHOW. I'm just concerned that it won't even let me update the firmware.... THANKS for any info you (or others) can give. Have a good one.

Deven

It would be normal to not be able to see the files on the data partitions in the way you describe - because this is a RAID 5 array you would need to have all 4 drives mounted under Linux and the Raid array activated.

The system partition on the hand is simply mirrored to all drives and so even individually the file systems on them are visible. This is a bit inefficient in terms of space as you have identical data on 4 drives - but I guess it is only a bit less than 400Mb on each drive used in this way. When you looked at them on the PC what did they says was the case in terms of free space? Not being able to flash new firmware is a bit worrying as it suggest the system partitions might be corrupt in some way.

Thanks, itimpi. I actually used a program called UFS explorer, which has an option to create a 'virtual' RAID drive, using the four drives I had hooked up to the PC. Still no luck on accessing the third partition. Nowhere am I able to actually view any info on partition 3 aside from total partition size... so I'm not sure about free space on it. However, I know for a fact I had at LEAST 150gb free on the device.

Maybe I should mention this... Buffalo had me boot into EM mode by pressing the red button and then turning the unit it. It made the creepy beeping sequence and said it was booting into EM mode... but, I'm not sure it did. Buffalo said that now all the lights should be flashing, but they don't. It appears, after saying it's going to EM mode, that it just boots into regular mode. I guess it could be possible that is why it says no space when trying to flash?

I dunno, I'm really grasping at straws here, in a panic. This all happened because of a power outtage. It wasn't even storming outside. Wish I would have read about the importance of a UPS for this thing sooner.

Partition 3 is irrelvant as far as flashing is concerned - this is purely for data. However whether you can mount the raid array in the way you describe I am not sure - does the software you are using understand Linux software RAID? If not I cannot see how it could get the parameters correct. There is a file on the first partition /etc/mdamd.conf which is used by the Linux RAID software to hold the setup parameters for that array.

The flash writes to the first partition only which is the system partition. Normally this partition is about 380Mb in size with only about 100Mb used. Difficult to see how this can be full unless you have somehow corrupted the directory.

I took this quote (and tried this out, as stated in previous post) from another WIKI forum. It appears this person used the UFS Explorer and did build the array correctly.

"
Data Recovery on x86 (Windows) using UFS Explorer
As with some other readers, I did not have access to a PPC box to recover data from my bricked Raid 5 TeraStation. Looking around on the net for some way to read the XFS Raid from a Windows box, I stumbled upon UFS Explorer[3] which can recover data from Linux partitions and Raid setups on a Windows box.

Initially, the software could see the partitions but failed to recognize the file system on the Raid. I have spent a few days working with them and they have come up with a new version which can now read the data from an TeraStation XFS formated Raid 5 setup.

The initial hardware setup simply involves connecting the four drives to an Windows box. Depending on your hardware setup, uou may need to get an additional IDE card to accomplish this. Once the hardware setup is completed, you can download the trial version of UFS Explorer at the link above and follow these steps.

Create a virtual raid (my disk order was 1, 3, 2, 4) but it may need adjusting depending on how you connected the disks
Select Raid 5, Stripe Size 64K and Left-Symetric.
Once the raid partition is created, right-click and select "Fine File System".
If all works, you should then see the folder structure of the drive. The trial version of the software will let you browse all files and copy files which are <= 4K. The registration for an individual (non business) license is $40. Depending on your data, it is more than worth the cost!
"

I will try to flash again. I'm thinking the telnet thing will work best for me, but am open to any other suggestions.

itimpi, thanks so much for your replies. Let me know if you have any other ideas.

Deven

If you are going to flash again, then if you are prepared to go for the latest 2.13 or 2.14 firmware then you might want to look at the Emergency Boot facility before you flash these release (I added the relevant links under those firmware versions to my web site today). In the short term it will not help, but later it could really help if you ahve problems as it gives a way to look at the hard disks without needing to take them out of the TeraStation.

lternatively you could stick with the firmware version you already have and simply use the telnet enabled variant.

Eh, not so good news. I did get the flash to work, and was able to telnet into the TS. I ran the xfs_repair and it went through and I could see it go through some of the existing files on the array. It finished. The array now mounts fine on the TS-- no more error. Except, all the data is gone. It's not invisible, just gone. Amount of disk space taken up says zero, and it says 100% of drive space available. *sigh*. Oh, well. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

Anyway, thanks for everybody's help!

Deven