Tools for hard drive diagnostics, repair, and data recovery
August 4th, 2021, 0:50
Hello out there.
Lately i recovered a lot of drown harddisks from people here in the area. The most are recoverable after cleaning. But now i got a WD My Cloud from a college here. The My Cloud is a strange Network Attached Storage device, somehow only usable when online. Well it won't get online, the LED's on the NIC are flashing but it won't show up in the DHCP-list from the router. So i connected the Harddisk (a 4TB WD RED) directly to a PC (Windows 10 21H1 and Linux Mint 20.2), the harddisk is seen, but the partition type is unknown. So it is not a default Ext3 or Ext4. Or the partition table is broken do to the power failure.
Does someone has any idea?
August 4th, 2021, 5:45
Try UFS explorer it tends to do better with the more obscure file structures.
August 4th, 2021, 6:39
I would clone it as a first step, then work on the clone...
pepe
August 4th, 2021, 9:28
A clone would be a good idea, but unfortunately i don't have a 4TB hard disk atm.
I tried the UFS Explorer, it sees the harddisk and Partitions but it cannot access the partition containing the data. I'll try more tomorrow.
August 4th, 2021, 10:24
it cannot access the partition
Huh? What does this even mean? It tells you it can not access the partition? Or you can access and it does not show data?
August 4th, 2021, 11:18
Roman78 wrote:A clone would be a good idea, but unfortunately i don't have a 4TB hard disk atm.
I tried the UFS Explorer, it sees the harddisk and Partitions but it cannot access the partition containing the data. I'll try more tomorrow.
Then buy a 4TB drive.
August 5th, 2021, 1:47
Arch Stanton wrote:it cannot access the partition
Huh? What does this even mean? It tells you it can not access the partition? Or you can access and it does not show data?
All the partitions are seen by the software, but after clicking on the biggest one, it tells me it cannot open the partition.
Also tried testdisk, here it also sees all partition, but cannot access it.
I tried to receive any information trough the network port, but there is non. I used wireshark to sniff on the network, but there is none coming from the WD, although the led's on the nic are flashing.
August 5th, 2021, 2:14
These are the partitions shown in Linux:
- Code:
Festplatte /dev/sda: 3,65 TiB, 4000787030016 Bytes, 7814037168 Sektoren
Festplattenmodell: WDC WD40EFRX-68W
Einheiten: Sektoren von 1 * 512 = 512 Bytes
Sektorgröße (logisch/physikalisch): 512 Bytes / 4096 Bytes
E/A-Größe (minimal/optimal): 4096 Bytes / 4096 Bytes
Festplattenbezeichnungstyp: gpt
Festplattenbezeichner: AA57E45C-3311-41A5-A289-5E56129BCE23
Gerät Anfang Ende Sektoren Größe Typ
/dev/sda1 1032192 5031935 3999744 1,9G Linux RAID
/dev/sda2 5031936 9031679 3999744 1,9G Linux RAID
/dev/sda3 30720 1032191 1001472 489M Microsoft Basisdaten
/dev/sda4 9428992 7814035455 7804606464 3,6T Microsoft Basisdaten
/dev/sda5 9031680 9226239 194560 95M Microsoft Basisdaten
/dev/sda6 9226240 9422847 196608 96M Microsoft Basisdaten
/dev/sda7 9422848 9424895 2048 1M Microsoft Basisdaten
/dev/sda8 9424896 9428991 4096 2M Microsoft Basisdaten
The /dev/sda4 is the one containing the Data, at least i hope so, it is the biggest one.
fsck tells me, it cannot read the Superblock
- Code:
roman@roman-PH67A-D3-B3:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sda4
fsck von util-linux 2.34
e2fsck 1.45.5 (07-Jan-2020)
fsck.ext2: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler beim Versuch, /dev/sda4 zu öffnen
Der Superblock ist unlesbar bzw. beschreibt kein gültiges ext2/ext3/ext4-
Dateisystem. Wenn das Gerät gültig ist und ein ext2/ext3/ext4-
Dateisystem (kein swap oder ufs usw.) enthält, dann ist der Superblock
beschädigt, und Sie könnten versuchen, e2fsck mit einem anderen Superblock
zu starten:
e2fsck -b 8193 <Gerät>
oder
e2fsck -b 32768 <Gerät>
August 5th, 2021, 2:42
There's a tutorial on the ufsexplorer website for the wd my cloud, did you follow it ?
https://www.ufsexplorer.com/articles/how-to/recover-data-wd-my-cloud-home.phpAs others have said - don't work live, not on a customers device. Hard drives are cheap data is not, clone the drive just in case something goes wrong.
August 5th, 2021, 4:06
i am not sure this one is based on restsdk, it has too few partitions for that (at least compared to what i have seen).
+1 for Luke, buying a 4TB disk in such case should not be a limitation. Especially if you are running invasive sw like fsck.
pepe
August 5th, 2021, 4:34
Hmmm it is working now. Strangely the Partition was marked as "MS DATA". I changed the partition type to "ext3" using testdisk, corrected the superblock and i was able to access the data. At the moment it is copying the data. The Filenames are normal, so not as mentioned in a strange format.
And.. yes.. normally i make a clone.
August 7th, 2021, 8:58
I tried UFS on my brothers "My Cloud Home" and it did see the data with the correct structure and theoretically I can restore his files that he accidentally deleted but the problem is that it is way too expensive as €699.95 is way too much and we can never afford it to retrieve his accidentally deleted data.
It is personal data so there is no company or business owner to pay for it and my brother sure can't.
Is there another tool moderately priced that does understand the "My Cloud Home" data structure??
Thanks in advance.
August 8th, 2021, 8:28
You either buy the professional tools or you pay a professional with the tools.
August 9th, 2021, 1:11
Raptordin wrote:I tried UFS on my brothers "My Cloud Home" and it did see the data with the correct structure and theoretically I can restore his files that he accidentally deleted but the problem is that it is way too expensive as €699.95 is way too much and we can never afford it to retrieve his accidentally deleted data.
It is personal data so there is no company or business owner to pay for it and my brother sure can't.
Is there another tool moderately priced that does understand the "My Cloud Home" data structure??
Thanks in advance.
I used Testdisk and it worked perfectly.
August 9th, 2021, 19:05
I love Test Disk, did it view the deleted files using the correct file structure or did it see the sql file structure?
Thanks.
August 10th, 2021, 7:59
After setting it to Linux ext3 on the big data Partition, it saw the correct file structure. Somehow the MBR got rewritten at the moment i connected it to the PC and all the partitions shown as "MS Data" instead of ext3.
August 10th, 2021, 11:34
Roman78 wrote:After setting it to Linux ext3 on the big data Partition, it saw the correct file structure. Somehow the MBR got rewritten at the moment i connected it to the PC and all the partitions shown as "MS Data" instead of ext3.
That was brave. Cloning it first would be safer before using Testdisk. I can't recall, but I think with Testdisk you can back up before you commit changes in case it made it worse.
There's always Recovery Explorer Standard or Pro by the same guys. It's a free trial and cost much much less than UFS Pro for personal use.
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