How to connect MSS HDD directly to a PC

[cdebackere]

This howto explains briefly how you can connect a functional HDD from a failed MSS directly to your PC.

(I have been updating this 'howto' already several times today and might continue to do so, based on your feedback. So check back later. If you need personal assistance then contact me personally)

It is a very simple and fast procedure. If you do it well, then there is no risk of loosing data. It shouldn't take more than 30-45 minutes to follow these instructions.

Note: this is the procedure for the MSS, 200GB. It probably also applies to other models, but not validated by myself.

You need to consider 4 steps:

1: the physical part
get the HDD out of the enclosure en connect it as slave in your pc.

2: get your computer to see the partitions (the most difficult part)
As you will see, the pc (linux or win) will not see any partitions on the HDD. The reason it the socalled 'Broadcom partition table'.

I would recommend not to not use any tool or fdisk or whatever.
The easiest/safest way is to write your own partition table.

This requires that you have installed a hex-disk-editor (there is a myriad of them available as freeware)

You only need to edit sector 1 of your HDD.

(added info: 1 sector = 512 bytes. Do not modify anything beyond this first sector. This will guarantee you will not loose data, even if you put in the wrong data in sector 1 wile you are 'trial and erroring' as I was when I first tried this)

In case you would like to reinstall the HDD to it's original position, then first backup the 1st sector to a local file on your pc. FYI, the sector starts with 'Broadcom NAS Version 1.1 MBR Tag ....' or something like that.

Now, just putting the partition table isn't enough. I noticed that you need a valid bootcode in the MBR (first part of the sector), otherwise a pc will not attempt to read the partition info in the last part of the sector.

boot code: copy the first sector from your primary drive to your MSS HDD. (other methods possible, such as "fdisk /mbr", but I didn't use that) It is probably advisable that you change the 'windows drive label' on the copied 1st sector (4 bytes at offset +1B8h, marked yellow in the example sector). This should prevent windows getting confused when assigning drive letters. Just change it to whatever you like.

partition table:
This part needs to be customised, depending on your specific drive. I'll try to explain what to do in a generic way and give some examples for the MSS200GB
First you need to find the correct partition info to put on the drive.
You can get the correct partition info from someone with an identical working MSS.
Alternatively, you can look on sector 2 and/or 3 of your failed MSS HDD where you will also find the number of sectors and offset of the start sector for the different partitions (3* 2* 4 bytes), except for the swap partition, but you don't really need that one. The rest of those sectors are 0, so they're easy to find: see the origianl partition info
Beware that each 4 bytes need to be reversed in the pc-partition table due to the format differences (most-least significant byte order); see the partition table examples below.

NOTE (based on unfortunate feedback): I advice not to open a functional MSS and directly put it's HDD in a PC to get the partition info. Either let the functional MSS work, and use telnet with the proper unix commands to access it in it's enclosure, either read the data from the bad HDD which is connected to your computer.

With the sector offset and length for all the partitions, and the HDD geometry, you can easily transform them into sector/head/cylinder start and stop values. (in Excel, there are some functions to help you do that, just activate the analysis toolkit first)
It is possible that this information isn't even necessary as modern kernel only work with sectors anyway, due to size restriction of the head/cyl/sect format. However, I read that many partition table 'interpreters/kernels' still check the values to see if they are in line with the absolute sector values .. and then discard them.
However, the values '83' and '82' on offset 1C2h, 1D2h, 1E2h and 1F2h are a must : they tell what kind of partition this is (hex 83 = linux generic partition)

This info now needs to be put into the typical partition table format, which is again very easy, see http://www.datarescue.com/laboratory/partition.htm

Now copy this info to the 1st sector of your HDD at offset +1BEh with the disk editor. It's only 64 bytes so you can just type it in the disk editor.
Don't forget to put the executable marker at the end of the sector (55AA), but if you copied the sector from your working drive, then this should already be there.
Now save the 1st sector and you're finished.

For the 200GB HDD this is the partition table info(and new executable boot code). The partition table section is highlighted as bold. The sector size and offset are in red background. See here forthe original 2nd sector of the HDD with the original sector partition info, marked in red background also.

(if you have an identical MSS200GB, then this paragraph can be reduced to: copy my 1st sector onto your HDD, et voila)

3: read the files

in linux, just mount the 3rd partiton which is the reiserfs data partiton
(not tested by myself)

in windows, use any reiserfs tool to read the data. I would recommend not to use the reiserfs driver, its'n not stable.
You're better of with "rfsgui v2.2" (freeware) or even more conveniant: "total commander" with the reiserfs plugin "ex2fs", which can be found on the total commander website. (30 day shareware)
Note: in windows it's read only

4: restore the HDD if needed by copying the backup of sector 1 to the HDD and save the info.

Done: as I said : Piece of cake.


Regards,

Christof De Backere.

[Bryan]

You are most likely the hero of many folks out here. Well done!

[mikel]

You are a dude.

I have recovered all my data after one years

I use WinHex and rfsgui 2.2.

I'm happy.

[theviking]

WAAW,

if this does what it says it does, someone here's going to get very lucky
(Wife lost all data)

To say it in your own language:

Hartelijk bedankt, ik probeer het dit weekend!

Viking

[theviking]

Works for the 300Gb as well, just change Christophe's
AD17 into DF22 and B0C5 into 40A4.

I've used YAReG-1.0 to copy the data. (based on rfs)

Thanks Christophe!!!

[delphes]

Hello,

I have only few words to tell Christof is a god, I was able to get back 60 gigabytes of very important data... Christof YOU ARE THE BEST no more words...

jean-Michel

[seanlv]

waaaooooooo~~

excellent ~ hero of YEAR 2006 ---- cdebackere

[vedichymn]

We had one of these fail at work (it was just holding our software volume, not a huge deal), but I figured I'd give this a try before we chase down all our CDs again.

It was a 500GB MSS, and this worked great!

Thanks!

[mark_adsett57]

Hi
Could someone copy in a sector from the 300Gb Maxtor MSS disk.
I have followed these, very clear and concise instructions and it does not make the partitions viewable by any of the reiserFs mounting tools.

On my disk, sector 2's partition info is located on lines 2,3 and 4 of that sector, (not lines 1, 2 and 3 as stated in this example)

Or is my disk corrupted?.

Many thanks, if you can shed any light.
Mark

[ikd19652]

Hi,

My 500GB Maxtor Shared Storage drive died after only 6 months. Maxtor’s solution is to just swap it over. This of course does not recover my data. Another problem is the data on the disc will be available to be recovered by other parties.

I can edit/replace the boot sector but my skills/knowledge gets lost when it comes to creating the partition parameters in the boot sector.

If you have a boot sector I can use or can create one for me from the instructions I will be most thankful.

You can find some screen shots that may assist in creating the sector at http://www.103home.com/boot_sector. If you need any more information or can help you can email me at mailto:iain@103home.com

Thanks for any help you can offer,

Iain

[ikd19652]

Hi,

I am still in need of a boot sector to get vista to recognise the drive (Maxtor Shared Storage 500GB - DiamondMax 11 6H500R0) so I can get my data back.

To show my appraciation I will give a DVD/CD of your choice to the first person who helps me get access to my data.

See http://www.103home.com/boot_sector for details that may assist you.

Thanks

Iain

[cdebackere]

Gentlemen,

I have recently updated our webserver and app. As a result, the links in the original message to the sectorinfo got lost.
I still have that info and I'll put them back online in the next few days.
In case I would forget, just remind me.

One more thing: it's been a while since I last visited the site (threw away MSS, now only RAID based servers) ans I must say I'm delighted to see I helped several people.

I'm also sorry for those people who tried to contact me in order to seek some assistence with their drive... and who I eventually lost out of sight due to too much at hand. If it's really important then try again, I'll see what I can so.

regards,
Christof

[Estriss]

Something for the Shared Storage II victims :

Own two MSSII , one of them gave disk errors after a few months, the other one died completely after only 6 weeks.

Just recovered the data by means of several tools.

device a)

mbr / sector 0 seemed to be still intact, directly attached it to an xp machine and xp showed the partitions.
theres a total commander plugin ( linux-drives ) which is able to able to read the ext3 partition directly from within windows and copy the data off.

device b)

mbr / sector 0 dead, directly attached it to an xp machine and xp showed no partitions.
BIOS had successfully shown the disk as LBA mode with 500 gb.
Several tries with linux boot cds, if sector 0 is dead, they won't even try to mount the disk.
Then found a tool called testdisk for xp which accesses the physical disk and searches for orphaned ext3 superblocks,
that was able to show me the files, but not copy them off ( see Edit below ). After spending some hours searching i
finally found a tool named "Stellar Phoenix Linux" which seems to do the same thing as testdisk,
it also runs under xp and scans the disk, then shows the files it finds. Trial version does not allow to copy ,
full version costs around 70 euros. Fair enough, bought it and copied off 20 gb data. End of story.

( Edit : If your adventurous and testdisks lists your files without problems you could let testdisk rewrite the partition table.
I did that only after having recovered my files already, after rebooting xp showed the partitions just fine and i could
even use the totalcommander method. )


Conclusion : bye bye maxtor ..

[bokesand]

Thanks a lot!!!
Got our companys "yellow led of death drive working"
Had some trouble to get the pc to find the drive correctly on low-level. (Bios and avalible disks in WinHex) but the sollution was to put the disk alone on IDE2 interface, and using shielded 80-ribbon cable.
Sector 1,2 and 3 was bad. I did as instructed with sector 1 and filled sec2-3 with zeros. Had great luck and recovered ALL data!
WinHex almost hang when reading and writing the bad sectors, but patience payed well...

/Mattias

[mortee]

Hi guys!

I am still wrestling with a 500GB MSS+ disk ...disk is just fine but the enclosure died on me. Have tried a few reiserfs data recovery tools but cannot recover the data in a meaningful way. Sure using Winhex I can see all of it but we're talking about A LOT of files in a rather large directory structure.

Just wondering if it is possible to do a reiserfsck rebuild-sb and then mount the drive (OpenSuse 10). ?

What version of the reiser fs is used on the MSS+ ?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated .... I have since bought a 300GB MSS+ but it will not recognize the 500GB drive ... any tips?




Thanks a bunch!!