Paul_F

Can anyone recommend a data recovery company that they have experience of?

My Buffalo Linkstation has broken down after only 11 months and I don't have all of the data backed up (yes - i know everything should be backed up all over the place! ).

After my initial talks with Buffalo technical support, they have said they will only replace the drive and won't repair it. So pending further discussions with them I need to consider getting someone else to have a look at it (which ironically will void the warranty...).

Any suggestions?

clyde

Try www.iss-l.com
I've used them a few times, and they retreived virtually all the data every time.
Not cheap, but worth it not to lose everything.

desquinn

Market leaders are Ontrack especially after they bought out Vogon but again they are not cheap but if anyone can get the data then they will be able to.

I have heard good things about Data Clinic and with nationwide coverage they will be worth a try.

Nutter

Do U know what type of drive is inside it? How its formatted etc?

I take it the unit is dead or reporting some kind of drive error when you attempt to access it...

I've used a company called Fileds Data Recovery before, when I can't get any data off a customer's drive, but goes without saying that they're expensive...

Keep meaning to setup a RAID array in a server for safe backup / storage - one of those things you never get round to till it's too late I guess...

Paul_F

When I switch it on the fan comes on, the green lights come on, then after about a second it shuts down and the red DIAG light starts flashing (5 flash sequence). From what i've found on the net, the 5 flashes mean flash rom error. It doesn't make any nasty scraping noises which is reassuring?

I emailed Fields and Ontrack yesterday, and got quick responses. Fields give a free diagnosis. I'm most disappointed with Buffalo, they have reaffirmed that they do not repair, they will only replace.

I'm not too worried about cost, the drive has some very important stuff on it including the only (full-res) copies of my wedding photos!

MrBen

Most of these NAS type boxes just contain regular IDE drives, so you could take it out and try connecting it directly to your computer - that also depends on how the drive has been formatted too.

If it's the flash rom that's at fault it might not even be a problem with the hard drive itself. Just the mini-OS that runs on top so you can access it over the network etc.

Ben

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Andy

Just had a bit of a google search to see if i could help point you in the right direction for DIY data recovery.

Here's the little trail of information i found:

After a little digging i stumbled on http://forums.sonos.com/showthread.php?t=2857&page=6#55 - which describes how someone else has managed to recover data from the drive by extracting the hard drive inside and hooking upto PC and then using UFS Explorer (can buy it from ufsexplorer.com for around $30)

The same guy provides a link in the thread to http://www.natfairbanks.com/ showing how to get the hard drive out. There's a link at the bottom to http://mywebpages.comcast.net/jstewa...sassembly.html - another disassembly page. Goto that page and follow the link to :

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/jstewa...linklinks.html

Then follow the link to "The new Linkstation Wiki" which will take you to:

http://linkstationwiki.net/index.php?title=Main_Page

...and here you will find a treasure trove of more information than you'll ever need!

Looking under "All articles" I found:

http://linkstationwiki.net/index.php...22_Linkstation

and

http://linkstationwiki.net/index.php...ged_hard_drive

...but those use knoppix (version of linux ) and a USB-IDE cable to do the recovery.

Anyways the wiki site there looks like a very good place to go!

Good luck!

Andy

Andy

Just noticed this bit in the instructions for "Recover a non working "bricked" Linkstation"

Looks a bit simpler than downloading a whole CD for knoppix and explore2fs is a free download. You shouldn't need a USB-IDE cable either..just open your pc up and plug the linkstation hard drive in with an IDE cable.

Andy

Nutter

Where are you based Paul?

I regularly work on hardware for my customers in London...

If you're not too far away and don't fancy pullnig the kit apart yourslef then I could take it on...

Provided the drive isn't shot and your problem lies with the linkstation it should be possible to extract all the data safe and sound. In any case, good luck...

Paul_F

Thanks for all your research Andy, makes interesting reading. I used to build my own computers so I am tempted to take it apart myself.

Have a good Christmas everyone, I'll let you know what happens in the New Year!

joystickjunkies

can anyone recommend working with fields data recovery? they seem very cheap in comparison to others in the UK for data recovery

maxilo

Cimaware Software is a privately held firm based in Madrid, Spain that develops data recovery utilities for businesses and individuals. You can find products to recover deleted items in outlook and others to word file repair.