HELP! How to salvage data from a failed RAID1 setup (Hammer MyShare)

[thiggins]

You were lucky this time, vfreak. A NAS can fail in a way that will corrupt the drive data.

Never trust your data to a single device. And if you have reason to believe that a device that you are using is flaky, replace it.

 

[vfreak]

Ok, thanks for the advice.

 

[mindbender9]

Update - 12/29/2010

It's been a while since I last updated this thread, but I figured I should mention a couple of things that have occurred since the last time.

- First, don't buy a Hammer NAS unit. I know that I've grumbled about them in the past, but I still stand by that. Their customer service policies are less than ideal based on my experiences with them.

- A few months ago, I suffered a brief power surge that knocked power out to my equipment for a second or two. And of course, that was all that was needed for the Hammer NAS to be affected. Long story short, the NAS ate it and lost the RAID 1 array.

While I had some of the data backed up, I (of course) didn't get everything saved and it came back to haunt me. Again.

The NAS unit was able to power on eventually, but I was unable to access the web interface of the unit. Replacing the drives with temporary units revealed that the NAS' built-in web server was damaged (e.g. html failures, missing links, etc.).

Long story short, I was left with a nearly-dead NAS chassis and two RAID 1 drives in a questionable state.

- Yesterday, I came across a forum post about TestDisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk) and how the user was able to recover data from his damaged RAID 1 array (ext3).

I gave it a try and ran it off an Ubuntu box and TestDisk was able to analyze/detect the partitions on one of the RAID 1 drives. Specifically, I had to look at one of the RAID partitions (not the md0/md1 areas) and perform a "Deeper Search" with the application.

When TestDisk saw the RAID partition, I entered "P" to list the files (if available). Sure enough, the data directories came up with only a few marked as damaged. I noticed that one of the options was "c" to copy files from the partition, which I was able to transfer to the local Ubuntu hard drive. I was able to retrieve 90% of my partition (undamaged) and will be looking to transfer nearly all of the remaining data soon.

If you're having issues with an inaccessible partition (but on a functioning drive), you might want to give TestDisk a try. Be advised that while it is free, it is command-line based and requires Admin rights. It is available on many platforms (Win, OSX, *nix) as well.

Please note that I do not have anything to do with TestDisk's developer, but I am a grateful user. I'll probably send him a donation for this, which he clearly deserves.

And thanks to Tim and the other users here who have made life a little easier when hardware fails us.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the post mindbender9. Hope it helps someone. Now get yer NAS backed up, willya?

 

[Mark18976]

Hammer's Personal Storage Manager (PSM)application

Hopping that you will be able to help me.

Got HAMMER STORAGE unit a some time ago ...
Unit is in perfect condition, however my desktop dead. So, I rebuild it.
But the problem is - I lost software CD for NAS storage.
All I need: copy of that soft (Hammer's Personal Storage Manager
(PSM)application).
So, can you ZIP it and email it to me? Or I can setup ftp account for you
and you will upload it for me.

Your fast reply would be greatly appreciated.
Email: mark18976@gmail.com