Thursday, December 27, 2007

Recovering data from a HP Media Vault

I had a customer bring in a drive from a HP Media Vault that had failed (or flaked out or something, we're really not sure yet). It was kind of interesting trying to find data on the drive, so I thought I'd share...

First, the drive obviously didn't have a standard PC partition table.
# fdisk -l /dev/hdi

Disk /dev/hdi: 300.0 GB, 300069052416 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/hdi doesn't contain a valid partition table

I should note that I tried testdisk at this point too, but it didn't find anything. Next, I checked for anything recognizable at the beginning of the disk.
# dd if=/dev/hdi count=8 | strings
Broadcom NAS Version 1.1 MBR Tag
SYSTEM
8+0 records in
8+0 records out
4096 bytes (4.1 kB) copied, 0.00013262 s, 30.9 MB/s

After a little Googling for "broadcom nas", "hp media vault", and a few other things, I figured out there was a reiserfs filesystem on the thing somewhere. (Note: As pointed out in the first comment to this post, there is some great technical documentation on this thing online. Rather than follow it, I chose to cheat and do this the (relatively) easy way.) Google found me this nice document describing the on-disk structure of reiserfs. That's how I figured out that I was looking for a magic string "ReIsEr2Fs" (or "ReIsErFs" for version 1, or "ReIsEr3Fs" for version 3, according to some other search results). I used hexedit to find the offset of the magic string by doing hexedit /dev/hdi, hitting tab, hitting /, then typing in ReIsEr.
2685A020   84 03 00 00  1E 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 10 CC 03  06 00 01 00  52 65 49 73  ....................ReIs
2685A038 45 72 32 46 73 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 05 00 B7 08 02 00 00 00 CC A3 00 00 Er2Fs...................

In this case, the magic string was at hex location 2685A034, which means the beginning of the superblock was at 2685A000, or (decimal) 646291456 bytes. The beginning of the superblock is 64k bytes before that, so I set up a loop device there:
# losetup -o $[ 646291456 - 65536 ] /dev/loop0 /dev/hdi
# mkdir /mnt/tmp
# mount -r -t reiserfs /dev/loop0 /mnt/tmp

The files my customer needed were in /mnt/tmp/FileShare/.

37 comments:

Lee Devlin said...

Hi Steve,

Nice work! I was the Systems Architect for that product and this topic comes up periodically. I also maintain a FAQ and Yahoo Group for the Media Vault. The superblock is unique but the file system is plain Reiserfs. I have the complete documentation for the disk layout here:

http://www.k0lee.com/hpmediavault/diskformat/index.html

Good job on recovering the data with a standard Linux system.

Joe Mc Vety said...

Steve, wonder if you feel like being a hero? I recently had the same thing happen to my MV2010 media vault. I am desperately trying to duplicate what you did using knoppix. I found the ReIsEr string and tried to mount it, the drive reads for along time, then it says "cant read superblock". I searched for the next instance, calculated the new offset, same message. Any ideas?

PoliticAl2008 said...

Excellent Job.

Here is how I used your instructions with my MV drive in a USB housing connected to a laptop booted from Ubuntu CD:


1. Get an Ubuntu boot CD (I'm using 8.04 beta)
2. Boot from CD into Ubuntu, making sure the MV drive is in a USB housing and already connected to the system
3. System -> Administration -> Software Sources
* Check Community-Maintained Open Source software (universe)
* Click Close
* Click Reload
4. Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
* Type: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hexedit
5. Get into hexedit for /dev/sdb
* Type: hexedit /dev/sdb
6. In HexEdit, search for ReIsEr
* Hit the Tab key (Toggles to the ASCII column)
* Hit Ctrl-S (puts you in search mode)
* Type: ReIsEr
* Hit ENTER
7. When you find the line (ex. 1E859830), change the last two digits of the line number to 00 (ex. 1E859800).
8. Convert Hex to Decimal (ex. 512071680)
9. Mount it up (loop0 was already taken on my system, so I moved to loop1)
* Type: sudo losetup -o $[ 512071680 - 65536 ] /dev/loop1 /dev/sdb
* Type: sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp1
* Type: sudo mount -r -t reiserfs /dev/loop1 /mnt/tmp1


You should now be able to see contents on /mnt/tmp1

Apex said...

The step with the loop device can be skipped:
mount -t reiserfs -o ro,loop,offset=512006144 /dev/sdb /mnt/tmp1

With that trick one could even put it in the /etc/fstab

Anonymous said...

I tried following the examples given, but keep getting a "permission denied" message.

Any ideas?

Tre said...

I just lost all my data from my HP MV2040. I just decided to send it to a data recovery specialist and they are also having a little difficulty retrieving the data while keeping the file directory structure intact.

Brief history: mv2040 setup in raid 1 config with two 500gb sata drives. I purchased a new 1tb internal drive for my desktop to have an additional backup to the backup.

I first tried to copy the data from the media vault to the 1tb drive on my pc, but kept receiving errors. This is when the nightmare began...........

I took it upon myself to take the mirrored drive out of the vault and connect it to my xp pro desktop to perform a ghost. Windows recognized the drive and tried to initialize it. I cancelled it and return the drive back into the vault. I guess the vault tried to rebuild the mirror or something. In any case I am now not able to access my data. I reset the vault and also reloaded the source drive with the vaults OS (nasloader)

The vault can now boot and all is well except I cannot find my 270GB's of data.

Just imagine losing your entire company's data :(

This is the boat we are in.

The data recovery team reported to me today and said they can see the data but the directory structure seems to be lost or overwritten. It is just a ton of files without their original filenames and directories. I will spend at least a year opening up all the files we had just to rename them and place them in a new directory.

Any ideas for me to tell the data recovery team?

Tre
2404321252
tparks@comptroub.com
www.ctbowie.com

Unknown said...

Thank you sooo much... you saved my life. I managed to get my entire company's data back plus all my music.

Unknown said...

Thank you sooo much for this blogpost.

Unknown said...

Steve,

I am trying to recover data from my mv5140 and at this step I am getting this error:

sudo mount -r -t reiserfs /dev/loop3 /mnt/tmp

error is:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop3,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so


Can you point me in right direction, of what I need to do? Thanks
Sunny

--David said...

I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but I have a question about upgrading my 2120... It has 500gb single drive. I do not care to save anything. I want to replace single 500gb with two 1tb drives. If I do this, how do I install the OS onto the new 1tb drive? Thanks!

--David said...

(this is for follow-up emails, sorry I was not logged in initially)

Unknown said...

Hi, great information here.

I've run into a little snag trying to mount my MV drive within KNOPPIX. I was able to find the hex location of the ReIsEr, but when I try to mount the drive I get the following message :

mount: cannot mount block device /dev/loop0 read-only

My unix skills are pretty poor, so I am confused which drive it thinks is read-only. Am I somehow trying to mount that drive to my CD or DVD drive?

Please help.

Also David, you might want to check this website to replace the drives : http://www.k0lee.com/hpmediavault/mv2upgrade.htm

I went thru the steps for the 1st generation MV and it worked great. This is for the one for yours I believe.

mizzoni said...

HELP

I am in a REAL pickle trying to recover data on disk volume that will no longer mount and desperate to find someone/some place/ some way to pull off files from a lost or broken volume (volume 1). This is the original 300GB drive and volume. Things went bad after I went to add a new drive to Volume 1 (concatenated) and I got a some system error about insufficient memory blocks (???) to complete the task. I then removed the new drive from Volume 1 however after a restart of the NAS drive is there but Volume 1 is gone.

I can't seem to find any way to mount the original Volume 1 (ahh)

Looking for anyone who might be able to help me. I really have not training on Linux...



Randy Mizzoni
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

mizzoni said...

I am in a REAL pickle trying to recover data on disk volume that will no longer mount and desperate to find someone/some place/ some way to pull off files from a lost or broken volume (volume 1).

Things went bad after I went to add a drive to the unit (concatenated) and I got a system alert (on the MediaVault Admin screen ) about insufficient memory blocks (???) to complete the task - afterwich the original 300GB Volume 1 on System Drive would not longer mount. Yikes. Cant find it at all... and I have 300GB of family pictures on this drive (ahhh).

Can anyone suggest anything here? I really am not a computer scientist and know little about linux.

Unknown said...

Hi Steve, I'm not sure if you're still live on this but here goes. I'm working on behalf of a friend with a mv2020 that is no longer functioning and accessible. All I'm trying to do is get his data off to another device (very important!) and then I plan to fit this unit with concrete shoes and send it off over the Tobin Bridge!

I've referenced this blog and Lee Devlin's and have a Linux host to use. Obviously, I'm unable to directly mount the secondary 500GB drive in Linux but using the automated script from Gerard Robinson I receive the following output:

woodman@snotter:~$ ./mntmv1 /dev/sdb

ReiserFS superblock found at 512006144.
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

When I run reiserfsck on this drive it terminates immediately telling me to run reiserfsck --rebuild-sb. With the non-standard location of the superblock in this implementation of reiserfs the prospect of doing this scares me. What do you all think?

Also, I removed the primary 500GB drive and did these same steps after slotting it in my Linux host, same exact result in trying to mount or running reiserfsck. The NAS unit itself may have taken a power hit, when I power it up I don't get any LEDs such as "OK" or the network light. The power button light does come on. I can't power it off using the switch, no response. It doesn't get on the network and the 10 sec press of the reset yields no visible result. The power supply outputs the expected 5 and 12 VDC. Do you think the drives might come up in a known good NAS?

Thanks so much in advance, you guys rock and far exceed HP's ability to provide sage advice!

-Jeff

Unknown said...

Hi Steve, I'm not sure if you're still live on this but here goes. I'm working on behalf of a friend with a mv2020 that is no longer functioning and accessible. All I'm trying to do is get his data off to another device (very important!) and then I plan to fit this unit with concrete shoes and send it off over the Tobin Bridge!

I've referenced this blog and Lee Devlin's and have a Linux host to use. Obviously, I'm unable to directly mount the secondary 500GB drive in Linux but using the automated script from Gerard Robinson I receive the following output:

woodman@snotter:~$ ./mntmv1 /dev/sdb

ReiserFS superblock found at 512006144.
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

When I run reiserfsck on this drive it terminates immediately telling me to run reiserfsck --rebuild-sb. With the non-standard location of the superblock in this implementation of reiserfs the prospect of doing this scares me. What do you all think?

Also, I removed the primary 500GB drive and did these same steps after slotting it in my Linux host, same exact result in trying to mount or running reiserfsck. The NAS unit itself may have taken a power hit, when I power it up I don't get any LEDs such as "OK" or the network light. The power button light does come on. I can't power it off using the switch, no response. It doesn't get on the network and the 10 sec press of the reset yields no visible result. The power supply outputs the expected 5 and 12 VDC. Do you think the drives might come up in a known good NAS?

Thanks so much in advance, you guys rock and far exceed HP's ability to provide sage advice!

-Jeff

Unknown said...

Hi Steve --

Excellent job!
Big THANKS for helping me saving (read 'recovering') my butt, i.e. the collection of family pictures and documents.

TomB

--David said...

Excellent resource for the help with upgrading!! That is *exactly* what I needed!! Thanks a bunch!

neilcooper33 said...

Thanks PoliticAl2008 for this!!!! so chuffed that i'm over half way to getting all my data back!!! this worked on the 1st drive in the NAS

i had to change point 5. to get it to work for me... (added 'sudo')

5. Get into hexedit for /dev/sdb
* Type: sudo hexedit /dev/sdb

I have now got a real nightmare, i had a 2nd drive in my MV2010 and when i thought it was wrecked, i took out the 2nd drive and put it in a Netgear NAS, which started to 'initialise'!!! i quickly stopped it but i think it may have started to format the drive as when i look at the hex code on the drive... everything as far as i can see is 00000000.... does anyone know anything i can do in this case? not sure where to go on this now.... cheers.... N

Unknown said...

Hi Steve,
Thanks for the info.

I fear I must be a tard because I'm following your steps but I get

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

No love here. I found what I believe to be the superblock in both drives but I receive he same error when trying to mount.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks
Charles

Feu-et-Glace said...

I must say thank you as well. A customer brought in this unit, and with your help and the tool provided I was able to return over 4300 files for the customer.

Now, if I can only get the customer to make backups...

Mavrick, I'm no expert, but make sure you have support for ReiserFS installed in your Linux with that error. I used the Gerarad Robinson tool at the bottom of this page:
http://k0lee.com/hpmediavault/diskformat/ to find mine. I hope this helps.

Thank You Everyone for your Time and Effort;

Billy

Randy said...

Hello, I am having the same problem as others in that it won't do the mount. When i do a "mount -t auto" it says: mount: unknown filesystem type 'linux_raid_member'

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I didn't see any response to the others so I am not sure if you are still following this thread.

Cesar M said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cesar M said...

Hi, I am also getting this error:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop2,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so


p.s. When I searched for ReIsEr in HexEdit, I found, in this order:
....ReIsErLB....
....ReIsEr2Fs...
....ReIsEr2Fs...

I tried all three locations, but no luck.

Cesar M said...

Would anyone here that has done this successfully want to get paid for working on recovering data from my drive?
I am about to send it to a data recovery center that charges between 200 - 800 (if they get the data recovered) and I'd be willing to pay up to 300 USD to get my data recovered.

Ken said...

Thank you for this post, it was extremely helpful. It worked "as is" for recovering a disk from an ASUS WL-700gE. The offset on the device was exactly the same. I found your post because I started out the same way you did and did a google search for "Broadcom NAS Version 1.1 MBR".

Thanks again, Ken.

Jan-Willem said...

Oh my! You sure saved my day. I had a broken board on my WD Netcenter (320GB), but the disk was fine, according to the SMART info. I had no idea how to retrieve the data, until I saw this post. I love you!

Unknown said...

Thanks a lot, you saved all of my website backup stored in my disk

Unknown said...

You don't know how you have helped me and my family.

All my photos, family video's, contracts, documents..... All of my "digital-live" was on my mv2010 (RAID-1) NAS Server.

HP said me this product was obsolete and they deny to help me in any way.

Following your step by step instructions and adding the notes from "PoliticAl2008"..... I have recovered all my information with an Ubuntu 10.10 "live-cd". No changes at the instructions from PoliticAl2008.

Great, great, great...

Congratulations and a lot of kind thanks.

Unknown said...

Just great guys! Thank you Thank you Thank You for helping me rescue my data from a died ASUS WL-700gE router.

Deri Herpandu said...

That's how I figured out that I was looking for a magic string "ReIsEr2Fs" (or "ReIsErFs" for version 1, or "ReIsEr3Fs" for version 3, according to some other search results).
database in recovery.com

Unknown said...

Thank you very much! That was exactly what I needed to save the data from my father's broken NAS. :-)

Marc Szewczyk said...

Absolutely fantastic! Worked like a charm. The motherboard on my MediaVault died. Fortunately, about a month prior, I had purchased a PC with 2TB of disk space. I had already split it into 1TB apiece for Windows and Ubuntu. So I had plenty of space on my PC hard disk to copy all the data from my MediaVault.

I'm in the process of recovering family photos, important records, movies, and music.

Thank you so much for sharing this! I can't properly communicate how important this information was.

blimpy said...

Thanks as well! I've got an MV2010 and was able to get it up and running with Ubuntu. 'preciate the post!

Michael Woffenden said...

Hi Steve,

I have an MV2020 that will not boot and I want to take the hard drive out and try CNW. What sort of physical hard drive tray do I need for this?

- Michael

Unknown said...

Did you have any luck with this?

tx

Richard Pike said...

Just wanted to say thank you for this amazing information, it's relevant even now!! I recovered family photos from an mv2010 drive.