Using Synology to recover data from another hard drive

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 7 Comments

So, you have a disk filled with data you need and no external case or something similar (extra slot in your PC, server, …) that can be used to recover this data – if you have a Synology NAS device (with one or more free slots), you can use it to easily accomplish your task. Smile

Note: This may work with any other NAS device, but I’ve tried it only on Synology (the only devices I have access to – if you have some “extra” hardware from another vendor, send it to me and I’ll be happy to try it out on your preferred vendor’s equipment Smile).

I’ve had the Synology DS-411j device (yes, I know… but it’s budget friendly and works just fine, at least) and a Seagate 320 GB SATA drive (NTFS-formatted, holding all the data that needs to be recovered):

SynologyDS411j

 

Couple of steps that should be done before the “fun part” (a.k.a. “hardware steps”):

  • shut down the NAS device (maybe not necessary, but if your device is located “back there, under all of that useful stuff (actually junk, but…)”, it’s recommended Smile)
  • open the enclosure (there are 4 screws on the back of the device which can, hopefully, be removed just by hand)
  • insert the hard drive you’re recovering from into an empty slot
  • close the enclosure (or leave it open if you’ll be removing the drive just afterwards)
  • start the device

 

And now the “fun part” (a.k.a. “software steps”):

  • open the device’s administration website by using your favorite web-browser
  • check Storage Manager to see if the newly added drive is visible (as Not Initialized)

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  • enable Telnet or SSH (if not already enabled) (under Control Panel – Terminal & SNMP)

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  • open a Telnet or SSH console session to your NAS device (PuTTY is one of the tools that can help you)

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  • enter the following commands into your console window:

And there you go – you can copy or move (i.e. recover) your files to Synology shares (or somewhere else). When you’re finished, you can easily unmount the hard disk drive or even leave it inside (initialize and use it), as you wish.

Thanks for reading!

Resetting the switch – the harder way

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Do you remember the (good) old Catalyst 500 series switches from Cisco?
I don’t think that they are something special nowadays (being the end-of-sale and end-of-life products), but if they are in working condition – fine, I can use them.

(if you are wondering what I’m talking about, here’s the picture)

WSCE500G12TCb

Anyhow, I’ve found one the other day (near mint condition), and wanted to make use of it in my lab. The only problem with it was that its password and IP and everything else was changed from factory defaults, without any note or document saying into what. Smile

So, the adventure begins…

Well, yes, you can say “But the switch works (at least the switching works). Why would any of this be a problem?”. The truth – I’ve had some spare time, and not having the complete access to my newfound piece of hardware was bugging me… Smile

The first thing I’ve tried was browsing the Cisco website for instructions on how to reset this type of switch. Note that this switch doesn’t have the ‘console’ interface, only web management. Soon I’ve found this article, explaining the whole process in great detail. Following the official instructions, I’ve come to the the part where my PC had to get the dynamic IP from the switch, but it was unable to get it (my PC actually got an APIPA address, but the other side wasn’t responding to queries on 169.254.0.1).

As per instructions, my switch could get either 169.254.0.1 or a 10.0.0.1 IP address, and I can easily set fixed IP on my PC and the problem will be solved. The thing that was bothering me is that I haven’t received the IP address from switch, as I should have and the question is why? I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one facing this issue – there’s even an article about this issue on Microsoft Answers. So, the problem seems to be in my DHCP BROADCAST flag on my PC (which is running Windows 10 Technical Preview, by the way). Long story short, the workaround provided didn’t help in my case.

And then I’ve taken another approach:

  • find out which address my switch has at the “setup time” (switch should be “talking” something during the setup, and probably a tool like WireShark or Microsoft Message Analyzer (great and free tool, by the way), can catch this “talk”)
  • set up my PC to the corresponding IP
  • try to access the configuration page
  • set up the router as I want to

So I’ve set up WireShark on my PC and started capturing the traffic… a lot of traffic… traffic that needs to be filtered by something. But what should the filter be?

Not so long ago, when my girlfriend was learning for her CCNA exam, she mentioned something called Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) and I’ve remembered that maybe this thing can help me now… so, I’ve entered the ‘cdp’ as a filter in WireShark and voilà – now I have something that actually seems useful!

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From there, I’ve explored the CDP information in these filtered packets. In there, there is something called ‘Management Addresses’, which should be just the thing I’m looking for. And it is! I’ve seen that my switch actually has an IP of 169.254.180.146! It’s also safe to say that I never would have guessed it… would you? Smile

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So, now I have the IP address of the management interface on my switch, and when I try to open it using my browser, I’ve got this:

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Now comes the easy part – I’ve erased the system configuration, set the new one and this switch is finally ready to be used for whatever necessary.

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And this is the end of this adventure. Switch is set to factory to defaults (and then configured as needed), I’ve been using CDP and WireShark to accomplish the task, and it was such fun! Can’t wait for the next adventure! Smile

Happy reading!