Ok, so I own two WD Mybook WE II (2x500) systems. My first system bricked on it's own, I did nothing that I know of, except copy files to it. It was out of box RAID 0. I have (had?) data on there that I really don't want to loose.
The second system I purchased in the hope that something had gone wrong with the motherboard. Alas that is not the case. I have verified that both of my systems will boot using the disks that came with the second system. The only thing I have done to the second system is to RAID 1 it, and to add an empty folder and one txt file.
So I found my way to this site, in the hopes that I might recover my system without loosing the raid 0 4th data partition. However, from what I have read about here… the Recovery process, it is unlikely to work for these dual harddrive systems with the given files. I have successfully mounted drive 'A' on my linux machine, and I can read from the first 3 partitions. the last partition, which will at least mount read-only will not support any other activities that I know how to accomplish.
Any chance I can somehow use the combination of these two systems to mount the raid 0 array once again? I debated replacing the first three partitions information with the rescue operations described on this wiki, but it looks like that process really does only work for the single drive configuration. I can presumably provide images of the raid 1 system…but still not clear on how to capture them. VERY curious to whether replacing partions 1, 2 and 3, but not 4 on both my drives would result in the desired outcome.
thoughts?
update .. new steps taken
Alright, so new steps that I've taken.
First, I've mis-spoken above. I've only been able to mount sda1, sda3 and sda4*. sda2 fails with the message saying something along the lines of no valid superblock or whatever. I'm not certain whether this is due to it being a swap partition or perhaps the root cause of my bricked nas.
Second, I've taken, using dd, images of sda1, sda2, sda3 and am in the process of sda4. I'm not sure how sda4 is going to turn out, as when I mount that partition, nothing is readable below public, even public says it's not a directory, which is must be…but I digress… anyway it reports itself about 910 gig, which is not too surprising as it is in theory node 0 of the two node raid 0 system. SO, the dd process has been running for about 4 hours…and it's only at 18gig. I only have a 500 gig drive I'm copying it too, so I'm hoping it cuts out before then…we'll see.
In the mean time, I've used the new nas, to build 1 new drive image, and am currently working on the second drive…so I will have two 'new' WD raid 1 drives with the almost out of box settings. Once it completes, I'm hoping to put this second set back in the linear mode (raid 0). At which point, I'm hoping I can put just image sda4 on this new drive(s) and get a boot from the nas, and maybe, just maybe get my raid 0 data back. I think it all depends on two things.
1. dd's ability to get the sda4 raid 0 data EXACTLY right, which is the point of dd, but I'm not sure when it comes to raid 0.
2. the hope the WD didn't do anything to sda1, 2 and 3 that sda4 will be depedent upon beyond booting…otherwise, it's been the waste of a bunch of $$ and a LOT of time.
Sorry for the strategy, but I put it here, because I'm working in the dark a bit, and hoping someone else has more experience or better suggestions.
