I have 2 seagate hdd drives. One is 1.5TB and the other is a brand new 2TB. The 1.5TB hdd is a disk that I want to recover. The file system is in XFS format as it was installed in a buffalo NAS drive. These 2 hdds are mounted on a new Astone DOC-230 Dual Hard Drive Dock and I'm using windows 7 64bit. I also have a 2TB NAS Drive from Western Digital called mybooklive hdd.
The seagate 2 TB drive is a brand new harddisk so I setup everything through Astone dual drive bay, went to disk settings, chose a drive name, chose simple drive for it, and did a quick format. Success.
At this point both seagate hdds are detected by the system connected via Astone drive bay. The 1.5TB drive is detected as a raw drive which is normal. Under my computer, both drives are detected correctly by the system.
Happily, now I wanted to use Norton Ghost 15 to do a disk image copy from the 1.5TB to the new seagate 2TB drive.
When I load up Ghost 15, it detects my 1.5TB hard drive but it doesn't detect my 2TB new drive. I swap sides with it from the astone dock, resetted my comp but no go. It also doesn't detect my WD mybooklive 2TB drive.
My computer detects everything correctly. This puzzles me deeply because everything is setup as it should be. Or have I missed something? Bottleneck is in Ghost 15?
I have 2 seagate hdd drives. One is 1.5TB and the other is a brand new 2TB. The 1.5TB hdd is a disk that I want to recover. The file system is in XFS format as it was installed in a buffalo NAS drive. These 2 hdds are mounted on a new Astone DOC-230 Dual Hard Drive Dock and I'm using windows 7 64bit. I also have a 2TB NAS Drive from Western Digital called mybooklive hdd.
The seagate 2 TB drive is a brand new harddisk so I setup everything through Astone dual drive bay, went to disk settings, chose a drive name, chose simple drive for it, and did a quick format. Success.
At this point both seagate hdds are detected by the system connected via Astone drive bay. The 1.5TB drive is detected as a raw drive which is normal. Under my computer, both drives are detected correctly by the system.
Happily, now I wanted to use Norton Ghost 15 to do a disk image copy from the 1.5TB to the new seagate 2TB drive.
When I load up Ghost 15, it detects my 1.5TB hard drive but it doesn't detect my 2TB new drive. I swap sides with it from the astone dock, resetted my comp but no go. It also doesn't detect my WD mybooklive 2TB drive.
My computer detects everything correctly. This puzzles me deeply because everything is setup as it should be. Or have I missed something? Bottleneck is in Ghost 15?
I deleted the partition as you adviced. I reloaded Norton Ghost and checked Show Hidden Drives.
It's still not detectable.
Curious, I downloaded some open source tools like CrystalDiskInfo and Acronis Drive Monitor for detection purposes, both can detect the 1.5TB and 2TB drives too..
Can you temporarily install the drive internally to see if the problem is with the drive or the docking station?
Be aware that it may be may be a moot point, I don't know if Ghost supports XFS in the first place.
But I would be willing to say that the drive is fine and the problem is with the docking station. USB does not give direct low level BIOS support and I would suspect the docking station. Just because the drive may appear in windows or using other tools doesn't mean it's going to work with a sector by sector utility like Ghost imaging or drive copy.
I will be doing that as I wanted to leave it as a last option to rule out all possibilities first..
I am suspecting the docking station too from my own tests...
Using an opensource tool DriveImageXML, it detects both my drives. I can pick either as source but I can't pick the other as destination.
I'm planning to actully use fedora 16 live to to try and retrieve the xfs system once the cloning is done to the new hdd.
My next question comes next actually.. once I have done an image disk copy, how do I actually recover those files since it will sorta be encrypted in some norton format..
If you do a drive copy, it's not encrypted in any way. It's basically just a sector by sector copy of the drive and the copy should end up identical to the original.
If you were to create an image of the drive then you end up with a .v2i file that can be opened easily with the image explorer tool by doubleclicking on it, or it can be mounted as a virtual hard drive.
I'm also not familar with your NAS but it must have some sort of embedded version of Linux or something to be able to use that type of file format, and that must be what provides the translation when your using the NAS with a Windows system.
Since the drive doesn't hold an operating system and really only holds data, you may not need to even do a sector by sector image or drive copy.
If your intent is to just backup this data, why not just do a file and folder copy of the data instead of a sector by sector copy?
Using your network you could simply use windows explorer to copy all the data off the NAS onto your 2TB drive and if your 2TB drive is formatted in NTFS, not only do you backup all your important data but you end up with it on a more common and usable drive format.
If your intent is to put the bigger drive in your NAS, maybe it might be eaiser to just copy the data using an operating system that can natively handle that type of format.
A regualr file and folder copy like that may be all you need if the drive only contains data and not a bootable operating system of any sort.
Thanks for the advise on how to do the recovery of data, thats relieving to hear.
Yea, basically the NAS installs and embeds the hdd into a xfs file system. I wish i could do the file and folder copy, it's my first choice but the NAS enclosure could no longer detect my drive. Hence to access my original files back, it has to be accessed in linux.
But then there's only a 50/50 chance to read the filesystem due to the bad sector, at least I have to try to get to this stage first. I did not want my hdd to be further damaged at this point so i wanted a drive copy.
A file and folder copy is going to be a whole lot less "wear and tear" on the drive because it's only going to need to copy the data and it can skip all the free space. Doing a copy drive or making an image with Ghost you would have to uncheck the setting "use smart copy" (or something like that, I'm not at my Ghost system). When your using the "smart copy" option it reads the master file table and only copies all the sectors that contain data.
Since Ghost doesn't really support that type of file system your only hope is to disable that setting so you can make an exact sector by sector copy of each and every sector in that partition.
(Because if an operating system does not support that file system, it has no idea what is important and what is not, it can't distinguish free space from data or "good data" from old deleted data) It's also going to have a hard time with the bad sector(s) for that same reason.
So if your hard drive is failing, the fastest way with the less wear on the drive will be a file and folder copy with an OS that natively supports that file system. You'll also have the added benifit of being able to start with the most important folders first.
I have managed to recover my data successfully after 2 crazy weeks of readups and research. :) Yesterday, I changed the 2TB hdd to SATA, so the limitation was indeed on the dock station. It took 12hrs to transfer 1.5TB data to the new hdd. Success, major phew.
There was 1 more problem, the file system was written in Linux-XFS Format by Buffalo linkstation duo bay NAS.
I couldn't get Fedora 16 to run / bootup on my dvd so while searching for new solutions, I stumbled on a windows 7 software called UFS Explorer and I installed the 64bit since I was using Win7 64bit. Basically this software can read many different types of file systems, particularly linux version and it could detect my raw copy drive, needless to say I finally saw my original data again.
I was afraid this project was too complicated for me to handle but can I say a huge relief! :) I am now starting to do my large backups to another hdd! If you ever had a NAS 2-bay hard drive crashed, you know this is the thread to look for. I believe the software can help 4 drive NAS bays too. Your mileage may vary.