hard drive - How to read a Linux HD from a NAS on a windows machine?

07
2014-07
  • Michael

    I have/had a Buffalo NAS drive, LS-WSX Series working fine until I decided to clean out the trash folder on the NAS. Since then I can not access the shared folders that I had set up.

    I have spoken with Buffalo and they ran me through formatting and connecting an external usb drive and to attempt to backup the data and see whether it was readable but I had no joy.

    They have advised that the next step is to remove the drives (2x500gb) which I have done and try to and access them directly and hope that the data is readable. When in the interface of the NAS there is data registered on the drive, what I mean by that is that it says 141gb used of available 500gb for example, so I am hopeful?!

    I am hoping that I can connect the drive to my windows 7 machine with a usb disk caddy but after plugging it in it will not recognise it's format.

    Can anyone shed any light as to the most straight forward way of accessing the drive so I can hopefully recover my data?

    I am thinking maybe a linux boot disk for my machine but from then on, who knows?

    Kind regards in advance, Michael

    This is the drive (not mine) I dismantled http://buffalo.nas-central.org/wiki/Disassemble_the_LS_MINI

    • Answers
  • Bruno9779

    I would try to recover the partitions in linux with the use of testdisk.

    First boot any live linux usb/cd.

    Second install or download testdisk for the linux distribution you choose.

    Third, connect and mount the HD and run testdisk.

    Lastly, after you have recovered the partitions, copy the data to another drive and wipe the old one.

    There are several testdisk tutorials on the net, so I won't bother googling one for you.


    • Related Question

    nas - How to read external USB hard drive formatted ext3 from Windows 7?
  • CChriss

    I had to format a USB hard drive to ext3 to use it with a Linksys nas box. Now I can't read the hd when I unplug it from the nas and plug it directly into my Windows 7 computer. (The computer accesses the nas over a wireless connection, so I like to plug the hd directly into my pc when transferring large files.)

    How can I leave the hd formatted with ext3 and yet be able to access it (read/write) when I plug it directly into my pc?


    • Related Answers
  • John T

    You can try Ext2 IFS for Windows, which may require a bit of tweaking on 7. Another option is to use Cooperative Linux within Windows itself to access the volumes.

  • The Operator

    EXT2FSD works great for me on Windows 7 X64. http://www.ext2fsd.com/

  • Ilia Rostovtsev

    I would recommend using Total Commander with DiskInternals Reader Plugin! Easy and powerful!