My Buffalo NAS HS-DH500GL backup system has taken a crap.  It started with an error which seemed to indicate the cooling fan wasn't working properly and before I could get my data off the thing it has gone into Emergency Mode, which has basically locked me out of it.

I thought I'd try removing the hard drive and placing it in a external USB hard drive enclosure, but even though the drive seemed to spin up fine Windows wouldn't recognize it.  I have found out the reason that Windows wouldn't recognize it is due to Buffalo using an XFS file system.

All my Internet searches so far have made me believe that the XFS file system is widely used in Linux systems, but I know nothing of Linux and I don't want to end up downloading some supposed program off the Internet which ends up being a virus.

Is there any reasonably simple way for me to use my Windows 8.1 laptop to get this data off this hard drive and onto a new back up drive?

Any help would be appreciated.

is it a single drive system?



if so, you might be able to get the data off using a linux distro cd (like Knoppix)

Live booting a linux cd like knoppix, ubuntu or linux mint should let you read it if the drive is setup in a standard way.


http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Yes. it was a single drive system.  I had found a link to Diskinternals before posting this, but it didn't list the XFS file system as one of those it supported, so I dismissed it.  I appreciate your input though, thanks.

I went ahead and downloaded Ubuntu onto a bootable DVD.  I was able to boot to Ubuntu and played around with it for about an hour and half before giving up.  I'm sure an experienced person could have found a way to mount this hard drive and copy the contents somewhere else, but I was at a loss for how to do it.  I watched a few YouTube videos about having to first find the device name of the drive I wanted, but it wasn't working.

I could get the DMESG command to work in the terminal window, but out of all the gibberish that was displayed nothing seemed like it related to this hard drive, so I couldn't find out what device it was.

I ended up trying the free, view only, version of Captain Nemo Pro from Runtime.org which runs inside Microsoft Windows, but still allows you to mount non-supported file systems like XFS.

I am not one to download unknown executables, but I was desperate to reclaim my backed up data, so I went against my better judgment and installed the software.  It instantly detected the external USB hard drive and displayed all my contents in seemingly unharmed condition.  Since it was hard for me to believe that someone would come up with a program that could accomplish something (view XFS files from within Windows) that practically no one else can do, just to implant a virus on my system I figured I was pretty safe in using their software.

I went back to Runtime.org and gave them all my personal and credit card information to purchase the license key for $90.  Seemed a bit steep for a program that I'll only use for one occasion, but the moment I reclaimed the first digital picture of my daughter as an infant it was well worth the expense.  I am happy to say that as of about an hour ago, I seemed to have reclaimed 100% of my backed up data from my Buffalo NAS system.

Lessons learned:
> No more NAS for me or any back up system that used proprietary hardware to control the hard drive
> I will only purchase hard drives that use the NTSF file system or some other file system native to Microsoft Windows
> I will purchase new back up hard drives at least every two years and transfer my data from the old drive to the new one

You likely could have found the drive with a simple "fdisk -l". Probably /dev/sdb. In any event, NTFS is properietary while XFS is not. When it comes to backups, two is one and one is none.

You will find most NAS drives will not be using NTFS or FAT to store data. However, you may find a NAS or device that allows you to plug in a USB drive that is formatted NTFS/FAT and share that over the network. Or just stick with a USB drives