CONNECT RAID HARD DRIVE TO NON-RAID PC

[cmdornan]

hi, i am hoping someone will be able to help. i hav 2 identical samsung 400gb (HD403LJ) sata hard drives that until 5 mins ago were installed in an icybox ib-nas4220-b hard drive. i have removed them as the drive is constantly crashing when i try to transfer large files to or from that drive.

that nas is being returned to the manufacturer and in the meantime i need to access my files on these hard drives. when i originally installed the drives into the nas many months ago, i chose the mirroring facility as i didnt want to lose any data as i had done in the past so mirroring was my only option.

when i connected the hard drive to my pc as a normal hard drive, it did not appear in my computer but did in device manager > disk drives.



MY QUESTION IS: how do i access my files which are on that mirrored hard drive connected to my PC?

i am very familiar with building and upgrading pcs etc however have extremely limted experience of raid so all elaborated suggestions are welcome.

chris

 

[505090]

You can't access the drive without the original raid controller.

 

[MrLinux]

Normaly with RAID1 you should be able to access the data; however these things are Linux based (old 2.4 kernel) and use ext2/3 as the drive format.

You either need a Linux based PC, or a Windows ext driver.

 

[JDocs]

Agreed RAID 1 is normally fine if you just want to access a single drive to read however do not write to it! That'll invalidate the RAID 1 causing issues when you get your NAS back.

 

[cmdornan]

thanks for the replies. with reference to setting up a linux operating system, would ubuntu (unsure of the version) be suitable? Is there anything in particular i would need to do on the OS in order to read the files on the drive?

Please add any comments you think may be relevant to fix this problem.

chris

 

[MrLinux]

You should be able to do it with an Ubuntu Live CD (without installing), stick the drive in a USB caddy, boot from the Live CD, connect the caddy and see if the file can be read.

 

[cmdornan]

i used the live ubuntu cd and installed the drive into a sata port on the board as i didnt have any usb caddys handy. unfortunately this did not work either which i thought it should have.

any other suggestions?

 

[cmdornan]

Hi again guys, a full explanation on everything ive tried. hopefully there is a GENIUS out there willing to read the following story...

I have a problem you may be able to help me with: RECOVER FILES FROM A HARD DRIVE. I have done this many times on many hard drives but this time is particularly difficult.

I have 2 identical samsung 400gb (HD403LJ) sata 2 hard drives that were installed in an icybox ib-nas4220-b NAS. the file systems on these drives as read from partition magic in windows are "type FD" and from reading articles on the internet is a file system based around linux (i thought i had originally set the drive up for ext2 or ext3 (which are apparently also read from linux) but i obviously did not apply this file system). i have removed the drives as the NAS is constantly crashing when i try to transfer large files to or from that drive and at the moment does not even appear within my network places > view network connections (windows) as it usually would.

that nas is being returned to the manufacturer and in the meantime i need to access my files on these hard drives and store them on a hard drive drive with file system which can be read from windows (e.g. ntfs). when i originally installed the drives into the nas many months ago, i chose the mirroring facility (raid1) as i didnt want to lose any data as i had done in the past so mirroring was my only option.

when i connected the hard drive to my pc (in windows) as a normal hard drive using sata cable connected to motherboard to try and recover the data, it did not appear in my computer but did in device manager > disk drives.

I booted a live cd of linux ubuntu hoping i could see the drives in "places" alongside my other hard drive (ntfs format). i could see ntfs drive but no "type FD".

I have had a suggestion to mount the drive in linux. I have read up on this and it looks complicated (prob because im not familiar with linux - something i intend to work on though). If anyone else recommends this then could they please provide detailed instructions from start to finish on this procedure.