So, I ran into a client today who's WD World Book II died on them. After testing everything and looking at it, it's the actual controller that is bad. I took out the drives and I tested them and they are both OK. The only problem is they are a business and need the data off of it. I forwarded them to a data recovery center, but it's expensive and I would prefer to do it here if I can. It's worth trying, if not just to say I did all I could. Anways, I do believe that they are ext2/ext3 formatted and RAID-0. Is there any way or program that I can use to get this data off? I did find DiskInternals, and it seemed to work, but it's only a trial. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.
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NAS RAID Recovery
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SJConsultant
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Haven't had to do it myself (yet!), but Runtime.org has a program called RAID Reconstructor that will "de-destripe" the drives into a single file "image" which can be browsed via Captain NEMO.
They have trial versions if you want to try it before buying the software.
They have trial versions if you want to try it before buying the software.
@ SJConsultant
I tried both of those, they didn't seem to work for me, then again I didn't play for a very long time with them. I should give them another try at work tomorrow.
@ k1pp3r
It's either JBOD or RAID 0, I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty certain it's 0. I do know for sure that it was running a Linux-based NAS OS, so the filesystem is definitely ext2/ext3.
@ aznx
The client is already trying to track one down, but they are discontinued and being as this is in a city of ~ 17,000 people, we don't have many stores or options apart from online and she's wanting/needing this data for this weekend, so in the meantime, I'm trying other methods. I do believe that should work though.
I tried both of those, they didn't seem to work for me, then again I didn't play for a very long time with them. I should give them another try at work tomorrow.
@ k1pp3r
It's either JBOD or RAID 0, I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty certain it's 0. I do know for sure that it was running a Linux-based NAS OS, so the filesystem is definitely ext2/ext3.
@ aznx
The client is already trying to track one down, but they are discontinued and being as this is in a city of ~ 17,000 people, we don't have many stores or options apart from online and she's wanting/needing this data for this weekend, so in the meantime, I'm trying other methods. I do believe that should work though.
We had one of these go at work a while back. It was replaced with another, which did the same. Flatly, the World Book is a steaming pile of crap and has no purpose other than to cause misery. I REALLY hope they have other backups.
Coworker spent two weeks, and ultimately found that when the controller goes? You've got a 50/50 chance of the data being corrupted anyways. He used Get Data Back with very limited success; most of the files recovered turned out to have been corrupted when it was "working."
Coworker spent two weeks, and ultimately found that when the controller goes? You've got a 50/50 chance of the data being corrupted anyways. He used Get Data Back with very limited success; most of the files recovered turned out to have been corrupted when it was "working."
I got the service call with the note "Cannot connect to server." ... Uh ok... what kind of server? Our coordinator never asks enough questions... anyways, I would never ever use something like this for home or business. At LEAST a mirror RAID-1 not a striped.. how idiotic is that. She said she had backups from 2 weeks and hasn't done any since and has data that she NEEDS on there since 2 weeks ago. I'm just glad I/we didn't set them up with this thing...
Update:
So we ended up just buying the software for us (the company) to use. I'm sure we'll find another usage for it in the future. Anways, it appears that this software is working. Only one problem. One of the WD 500 GB drives in the RAID appears to be dying, it'll spin up and spin down, read for a bit and keep doing that making data recovery take a long time. I'm currently in the process of Ghosting both of the WD drives to new Seagate 500 GB drives. (I'm not at all a fan of WD... I see many of them die at work. We sell mainly Seagate.) Let's hope this helps with the recovery. It's a long and slow process... especially with having to Ghost 2 500 GB drives...
So we ended up just buying the software for us (the company) to use. I'm sure we'll find another usage for it in the future. Anways, it appears that this software is working. Only one problem. One of the WD 500 GB drives in the RAID appears to be dying, it'll spin up and spin down, read for a bit and keep doing that making data recovery take a long time. I'm currently in the process of Ghosting both of the WD drives to new Seagate 500 GB drives. (I'm not at all a fan of WD... I see many of them die at work. We sell mainly Seagate.) Let's hope this helps with the recovery. It's a long and slow process... especially with having to Ghost 2 500 GB drives...
Haha, yeah I know. I guess I gotta be careful not to stir up the fanbois and non-fanbois alike on here 
. I'll be the first to admit that every brand of HDD fails, every one has it's infamous crap "series". And yes, the person who quotes the whole Google study thing... I just like Seagates and have had good usage out of them. I've also had good life out of many other drives including WD. Anyways, I got all of her data off just before closing. She needed it for the weekend, and I got it for her. The ghosting of 2 500 GB drives took about 4.5 hours even going at 4,000 MB/sec. I got them ghosted and the backup and recovery went without a hitch. It turns out it was only ~ 1.7 GB worth of .doc and .txt and jpegs and spreadsheet and quickbooks stuff. Turns out it was worth about $10,000 to her. After a long 2 days of RAID recovery, I'm quite satisfied with it. It was a new experience and I love a new challenge and something new to learn. If anybody else runs across a problem with RAID recovery, give DriveInternals Raid Recovery a try. It worked well for a RAID-0 ext2. Now all I have to do is write zeroes to the 2 WD's, test them both thoroughly to make sure that spin up/ spin down problem is gone, and then put them in a D-Link NAS and mirror them. Then set another external drive to backup the NAS and her 2 other work computers. Nothing fancy, but it works.
. I'll be the first to admit that every brand of HDD fails, every one has it's infamous crap "series". And yes, the person who quotes the whole Google study thing... I just like Seagates and have had good usage out of them. I've also had good life out of many other drives including WD. Anyways, I got all of her data off just before closing. She needed it for the weekend, and I got it for her. The ghosting of 2 500 GB drives took about 4.5 hours even going at 4,000 MB/sec. I got them ghosted and the backup and recovery went without a hitch. It turns out it was only ~ 1.7 GB worth of .doc and .txt and jpegs and spreadsheet and quickbooks stuff. Turns out it was worth about $10,000 to her. After a long 2 days of RAID recovery, I'm quite satisfied with it. It was a new experience and I love a new challenge and something new to learn. If anybody else runs across a problem with RAID recovery, give DriveInternals Raid Recovery a try. It worked well for a RAID-0 ext2. Now all I have to do is write zeroes to the 2 WD's, test them both thoroughly to make sure that spin up/ spin down problem is gone, and then put them in a D-Link NAS and mirror them. Then set another external drive to backup the NAS and her 2 other work computers. Nothing fancy, but it works.Haha, yeah I know. I guess I gotta be careful not to stir up the fanbois and non-fanbois alike on here
I'd have her do physical backups..and maybe something on SSD.
+1 Considering she didn't seem to have much data she could buy a cheap 32 gig SSD and put it in a 2.5" usb enclosure. Then when she comes into work plug it into the nas or even her computer and have it run a backup script and then at the end of the day she can take it home.