Buffalo NAS-Central Forums

Hi everybody,

after mailing with the buffalo support without an exceptable answer, i request your help!

I have a TS 1TB, original firmware 2.0 with ~400GB of personal data "living" only on TS (RAID 5, so it should be no problem i thought).

After a loss of power the TS booted up normaly, but instead of testing the RAID 5, all 4 red status leds began to blink (2 times a second). The webinterface says the RAID array is "not configured". The helpdesk wanted me to format (!) the four drives and then set up the RAID array. I thing my data will then be lost....

Please, want can i do to get my data back?

Greetings
Ralf

wasn`t there one that connected all 4 hdds to a linux workstation and the raid was recognized?

i believe there was one in the past.

because personal data always is valuable (thats why you bought a raid5 device) i would connect all 4 hdds to a workstation with a late Linux on it.

if you do not have any linux workstation it is time that you somehow get yourself one where you can connect 4 additional hdds at the same time. i would try to do this with a normal workstation, connect all hdds to the 2 ide-ports and then boot to a good linux live cd.

either knoppix
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/
or ubuntu.
http://www.ubuntu.com/

both are live versions, so they are bootable directly from cd/dvd. thats the only way to test it without needing special hardware as a i know no workstation with more than 2 ide-cables (=4 hdds/dvd-drives).

_________________
LS1 (2.6 kernel, foonas svn1062, 750 GB, UBoot 1.2) & LS Pro (FreeLink/jtymod/GenLink, changes all the time)
Thx to all donators!

Another slightly harder method is to use one drive at a time and try to mount the third partition and manually copy as much of the data as possible, repeating with the other 3 drives.

I managed to mount my first partition (mirror) by its UUID. Not sure if it will be successful for the RAID5 partition though, but worth a try.

mindbenders method would be easier and more reliable.

Actually a lot of pre-SATA PC's will have 4 IDE channels - 2 normal and 2 via a onboard RAID controller (at least all my old PC's have this).

somehow i missed something in my idea.

if you only have 2 ide channels you will only be able to boot linux from dvd and connect 3 hdds....the cd/dvd drive also needs to be connected to the board....well it was late again...

_________________
LS1 (2.6 kernel, foonas svn1062, 750 GB, UBoot 1.2) & LS Pro (FreeLink/jtymod/GenLink, changes all the time)
Thx to all donators!

Hi mindbender, hi wizardfusion and hi itimpi,

thanks a lot for your replies. I think i will try to connect 1 hd at one time (is it possible via USB?; i bought a IceBox to put the hd into).

If i will give you the results as soon as i have it done. I think i will have a couple of additional question because i am a "windows"-user. Have already downloaded knoppix 5.0.1 and bootet from CD; ok, the ui is like any other i have seen before...

Greetings
Ralf

I have updated the Terastation Wiki with the general instructions for UUID mounting.

Rralf99 have you read this post..

http://buffalo.nas-central.org/forums/index.php?action=vthread&forum=13&topic=1607

i had a similar experience and solved without a screw driver, just new firmware with telnet access from itimpi


also the above posts fail to mention that you need a Power PC MAC to read the RAID5 array from a terastation (lookup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness if you want to know more) but AFAIK you can not use an INTEL /AMD x86 CPU

regards,

Reb

Hi Reb,

You got your data back? That's a good message.

Thanks for the link. I read the post, but didn't understand every detail. Please could you give me a beginners step by step advice? Where to get the right firmware from? What to do with the hardware? TS connected to the PC (wired) and what settings for the network card? Any hints? Problems? In your post there a many "logs" that i dont understand.

At the moment i have disconnected the TS from power and network.

Regards,
Ralf

Hi everybody,

i got a straight tip from buffalo helpdesk: "... reinstalling the firmware ...". But nothing changed. So i tried a different (newer) firmware version (with root access; version 2.11) and after 7 long minutes with tachycardia (the german word is Herzrasen)... my lovely terastation was alive again.

I am very happy now. I have all of my data back, have root access without opening the terastation (but i am a windows user with very less knowledge in linux). So many many thanks to the people who made the firmware available to me.

Regards
Ralf

haha....fun, isn`t it?

i recommend to create a good backup and to buy a cheap UPS.

_________________
LS1 (2.6 kernel, foonas svn1062, 750 GB, UBoot 1.2) & LS Pro (FreeLink/jtymod/GenLink, changes all the time)
Thx to all donators!

Hi mindbender,

i have attached 3! USB drives to my TS. Every drive contains 2/3 of my backuped data. So if i loose the TS AND 1 USB drive i have my whole data on the other 2 USB drives.

A cheap UPS? Ok i will go to the next store to buy one...

((( i didn't find another word for "Herzrasen" in the leo.org translations; so please what is the right word for it?? )))

Regards
Ralf

a ups is called USV in german.

USV = Unterbrechungsfreie StromVersorgung.

we heard about many problems with the raid triggered by power outages...

after having this troubles you should try to avoid this...

_________________
LS1 (2.6 kernel, foonas svn1062, 750 GB, UBoot 1.2) & LS Pro (FreeLink/jtymod/GenLink, changes all the time)
Thx to all donators!