recovering data from a Samba based NAS

thread says it all..... i am a linux noobie, and the only reason i know it is samba cuz it says on the side of the box

this is a NAS from airlink...WMU 6500FS.....

i really really need your help

i need to recover nearly 8gigs of un recoverable data (my wedding pics and movies...and misc home vhs to digital)....and some presentations

any idea..the hdd partition are in ext2 format

i need a software that you'd all/ most recommend

 

OK, I'll bite...first, can we assume the NAS is dead? ie, it is not working, and you are pulling the harddrive out of it?

Easiest way would probably be to mount the drive in a Windows box, boot it with a linux live disk like unbunto, and then copy the data from the NAS drive to your windows drive.

Samba is more of a network protocol and really doesn't enter into the equation

 

no the NAS is not dead, i actually had made a partition via it's online HTTP based setup, and i could not secure it (as in anyone on my network would be able to peruse my data) as a result of which i just thought of removing the limitation (as this account was overiding my NAS, and even the public/ open partition was being locked down because of my user) and once i removed it, well...you know what happened.....

overnight i took out the HDD and ran Rstudio....it did pick up the entire volume of that data (nearlly 8 Gb) but it is unreadable......
they are filed as *.FILE....now i s there a program that can

a.... retieve the data as intended files
b...a program that can ID and restore the attributes of those files

thank you gerry for most urgent response

 

I'm a little fuzzy on how you "removed the limitation"

I took a look at the manual for this device and was trying to figure out what you did----do you mean you put it in authorization mode?

If that is the case, the problem is simply a file system issue as "authorization mode" is only a network access issue controlled by the NAS. It is not file encryption as far as I can tell.

If so, with the harddrive mounted in your second PC, download ubuntu to a CD,and boot your computer with it. It can read the extfs2 file system. Mount the NAS drive and your C drive. You should be able to copy the files from the NAS drive to your C drive.

If that doesn't work, there is a fairly nifty, albeit expensive program called Captain Nemo that will allow your Windows computer to read a linux file system

http://www.runtime.org/captain-nemo.htm

 

p.s.--not quite sure why, if you set authorization mode, you just cannot log into the NAS and get your files....that's where I am fuzzy on what you might have done

 

i removed my user...or the user with which i had initially (tried) to enable lockdown of the partition..ie authorization mode, (from network use atleast...i hope)

once i removed the user...it concomitantly removed my files under that user...ergo my situation

 

i did hook up the HDD to the PC...and ran recovery through esata (i am sorry i have no PC's....only a laptop..cuz my job provides me subsidy on purchasing it )

i used R studio, and it recovered the exact size of the data...'cept they are in *.file format...

interestingly if i rename the extension, i get access to the file...almost immediately....but is there any way... a program that can isolate and provide me a way to change the extensions of multiple files....cuz it would take me forever to sift through those files...there are a few ZIPS rar's and tiff's.....

 

did you try the linux live disk?

I need to know if that sees the files or not. The .file extension may be windows way of seeing a linux file or it may be a custom file estension created by your NAS software.

 

tried it just now, had an older version of ubuntu, ran as live CD, connected via eSATA and USB no change

empty folder there...or no data

 

hmmm, I am puzzled. How can Windows see a ext2 file system but not ubuntu....you only tried an old version of ubuntu? What version?

 

well i used R studio, and it can see ext2 file system, did a recovery like you'd do on a regular FAT32/NTFS partition and it simply retrieved the files...iin the *.FILE extension

 

Does the file show up in the Rstudio file recovery window with the proper extension?

I am guessing that your NAS software actually deleted the files when your removed access--I think I was thinking it simply removed the user access to it.

Perhaps you would have more luck with a linux based file recovery program

 

yeah man, but look on the bright side, i have the files albeit in a weird extension, but now i need to sit down run through each file (nearly 3000) changing extension by random (ok so the hundreds of MB would prolly be a vid. files and the rest pictures)

the recovery from RSTUDIO returned JPGS PDF's etc....even broken down PPT's...but all of them were like half you could view the file but it would be nearly half corrupted......like half a picture etc....

 

There are programs that can automatically rename files (or just extensions).

I would probably remove anything larger than say 10 mb (or smaller depending on camera) to another directory and use such a program to automatically rename the extensions to jpg.

Then using windows thumbnails, you can move the pictures to a pciture folder (thumbnails will only thumbnail those that are pictures), then you cna save yourself some work

 

well thanks dude for all of the help, and paticularly about the frequency of answering my queries...i did pickup a few freewares (extension renamers) but have yet to find a program that can isolate the extensions itself.....

so now my rudimentary way is...please do not laugh

if i put a file to play back into KMP, it gives this little script (error) and if you look thru it hard enough you can spot where it says .exif,jpg,avi, etc.......

 

might be faster to use a hex editor

http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/Hexplorer/hexplorer.html

You can drag a file into this and read the header information (at least enough to discern the file type), fairly quickly.

 

Now that gains you a rep

 

Ah, but I didn't write Hexplorer...we should rep the programmer!

 

but there is a leetle problemo


the script it writes out is a bit small...actually nearly microscopic, how to enlarge?????