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.
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 ).
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):
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
)
- 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)
- enable Telnet or SSH (if not already enabled) (under Control Panel – Terminal & SNMP)
- open a Telnet or SSH console session to your NAS device (PuTTY is one of the tools that can help you)
- enter the following commands into your console window:
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df -k ### OUTPUT ### # Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on # /dev/md0 2451064 526740 1821924 22% / # /tmp 59248 736 58512 1% /tmp # /dev/vg1000/lv 1913548228 1167461820 745984008 61% /volume1 fdisk -l /dev/sdd ### OUTPUT ### # Disk /dev/sdd: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes # 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders # Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes # Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System # /dev/sdd1 1 38914 312568832 7 HPFS/NTFS mkdir /tmp/ntfs ntfs-3g -o ro /dev/sdd1 /tmp/ntfs df -k ### OUTPUT ### # Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on # /dev/md0 2451064 526740 1821924 22% / # /tmp 59248 736 58512 1% /tmp # /dev/vg1000/lv 1913548228 1167461820 745984008 61% /volume1 # /dev/sdd1 312568768 270452224 42116544 87% /tmp/ntfs dir ### OUTPUT ### # drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Oct 11 10:11 $RECYCLE.BIN # drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4096 Oct 11 10:11 . # drwxrwxrwt 10 root root 1300 Oct 20 22:11 .. # drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Oct 11 09:55 FILES # drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Oct 11 08:44 System Volume Information cp -R /tmp/ntfs/FILES /volume1/public/ |
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!