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Netgear NAS Disk Repair

NETGEAR SC101 RAID1

I am trying to get a data recovery company to recover data from a Netgear SC101 storage centre, which was working fine until recently. I had a set-up which involved using 2 drives with RAID1 settings. What happened was that I updated the devices Firmware, and this appears to have changed the settings somehow, with the result that the partition drive is completely gone. I tried to make a data recovery, hoping to undo the update, but it does not seem to have worked. The drive has disappeared completely from the computer, until I use the UT system. When this is running, the partition appears, although there is no drive letter attached to the system. The name is there, clearly, but I cannot see how much is remaining on the drive, whether the data is safe, or any other thing. However, as Netgear have this proprietary thing going on, I cannot remove the drive and assess it through another enclosure. In fact, running all kinds of recovery tools doesn’t seem to help at all. Even Windows Rescue software doesn’t find anything. I can see the drive, but can’t access it.

NETGEAR READYNAS RAID5

I started out with an easy task, which was replacing one disk which had failed. I removed the disk, and tried to install another. However, during the rebuild, there was a warning, and then the build failed. I took the enclosure apart, and suddenly realised that I had picked up the wrong disk when making the change. I tried to put that disk back into the enclosure, along with the other disk, and tried the rebuild again. This also did not work, and I did not know what to do. I phoned Netgear tech support, and they advised me to replace the ‘new’ disk with another. And then another. However, I now have a device with 4 disks, and another 4 extra disks, it is a complete mess. After experiments, I can find RAID on four of the disks, and the data is described as good. However, when I am looking for any files or folders in the memory, there is none available. I know that I have the ‘good’ disk from the first build in the enclosure, and I also know that the others have been approved by the system.

Netgear NAS Disk Repair

Netgear are among the top manufacturers of computer peripherals and network solutions in the world and within this ever-expanding remit they have ventured into the production of Network Attached Storage (NAS).

With a history of providing solid ideas when it comes to contacting computers, printers, modems, routers and the likes together, it seems a logical notion that such a world-renowned company would make the transition into network storage.

Netgear are currently manufacturing a great number of NAS devices all of which while stable and excellent in their own ways, can suffer the same fate as many other NAS devices when it comes to hard disk drive problems.

As much as we would like there to be there is nothing we can do to legislate for these problems other than keep a level head and try to deal with them in the most methodical and cost effective way possible; this is where www.swanseadatarecovery.co.uk can help.

A regular source of problems for the Netgear NAS devices would seem to be power shortages or surges. One might thing that you can never have too much power but a sudden electrical surge to a hard drive or its Printed Circuit Board (PCB) can have devastating effects.

A regular and friendly feature to many of the Netgear range as the blue LEDs that represent ports and drives contained in the array. When a power outage has occurred and you have rebooted your system you may notice that not all of these lights return to their original lit state. This is an indication that something is wrong. You will also find that combined with this warning sign you will see that disk management on Windows, Linux and OS may show the array or individual drives as being visible but not contactable. In essence the drives have become nothing more than icons on the disk management screen.

Corrupt root problems also occur with this particular range and even though the drive may allow you to access information simply stored on it the setup will not allow you to boot from a drive should you be running a dual operating system.

In essence you have lost your master boot sector that is allowing you to access the root and log files that run your operating system and will cause the system to either spin up and hang or continually reboot until there is some kind of human intervention.

As with all systems of this kind you will find forums and message boards on line that offer many and varied tips on how to fix such a problem. It should be noted that although some of these tips and ideas may work in practice, they only do so for a very small percentage of individuals. For the most part trying to repair something like a NAS device by swapping disks over may work in the sense of replacing one disk with another but it does render the information on your aforementioned disk null and void.

You should really consider consulting the professionals in this instance who have a much higher success rate when it comes to securing the return of valuable data from faulty and often written off drives.