Recovering data from dead Lacie EDMini v2 drive

You can use something like that VANTEC CB-ISATAU2 SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter. If you take the hard drive out of it's enclosure the hard drive with be IDE or SATA...with adapter has both...then you'll connect to USB...or you can take the drive out of the enclosure and put it into your computer as slave...depending your computer is ide or slave.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

Here's some software to try...

    1. R-Studio
http://www.r-studio.com/

    2. EASEUS
http://www.easeus.com/

    3. GetDataBack
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

    4. DiskInternals
http://www.diskinternals.com/

netstarukltd - please ignore that software...there mean't for Windows...but of course if you have or find a Windows machine...it could work. I try to find something else for you.

Hi Jeremy

There's a good chance the actual disk in the box may be intact and not damaged at all which I don't know yet. In this case, no recovery software should be required. The disk will just need mounting in an OS so data can be copied off.

Any idea what the file system is and if it can be mounted in Windows and if not, easiest way to do this in Linux. I've found this tool that could be relevant.
http://www.ufsexplorer.com/rdr_xfs.php

<Any idea what the file system is>
Well..if the LACIE drive turned on...in Windows you can just right the drive...select properties...under file system...it would tell you what file system it is.

In your question you say <I've tried connecting the drive to the PC using USB but the PC is unable to detect the drive. The lights on the drive do turn on and the network LED also lights up on the switch when the Lacie is plugged into the switch.> It's possbile that the hard drive is fine...it's just the enclosure that the hard drive is in...that could be faulity.

<There's a good chance the actual disk in the box may be intact and not damaged> that's the enclosure...the box.

The software won't find the hard drive because the enclosure "box" might be faulity. That's why it may be best to take the hard drive out the enclosure "box" and plug it in USB and see if you can access your data...or you can try putting it into another Windows machine PC as slave.

Documentation on the drive states that the drive is pre-formatted in the FAT 32 File system.  The connector is a SATA connector.  If you have a SATA connection available inside your PC you should be able to install it, boot up Windows, and the drive should start to install automatically.

The device does have the functionality for supporting other filesystems such as EXT3, HFS/HFS+, and NTFS.  As I understand it though this would have been done after factory and you most likely would remember reformatting it.

If you have issues installing the device in Windows I'd be happy to provide a way to mount the drive in Linux.

For more information a link to the manual for this product is provided below.

http://www.lacie.com/download/manual/ethernetdiskmini_en.pdf

Thanks guys

Yes, Jeremy, the plan is to plug the drive into a PC and see if I can read data off that. That's why I wanted to know the file system which I cannot tell until the drive is plugged in.

Aschuete, the documentation is for EDMini; what I have is EDMini v2. Unofficial information on the internet suggests the file system on this is XFS and it boots into linux from the disk itself. I've downloaded an Ubuntu Virtual Machine which I'll try to connect the drive to and move data off to a regular FAT32 or NTFS disk.

What are you suggestions regarding mounting the drive in Linux as it's unlikely it'll work in Windows (unless there's a way to read XFS in Windows).

Thanks again.

i would not be surprised you can't read the disk(s)
in some cases, 2 disks are joined with an overlay software, so taking them apart makes them unreadable..
you may be lucky if it's just 1 drive though..
good luck !

btw, if you NEED the data, i suggest these guys (not free)  : http://www.gillware.com/      

Thanks nobus.

EDMini's are normally single disk, I think.

I'd like to avoid data recovery companies and do it myself. Ta.

post back the results...then we can offer more help

Hi Aschuette

I've had a fair bit of success with my plan but I'll award you 200 points anyway for relentless attempts to help.

The VM idea worked. It was quite simple. I tore apart the Lacie and took out the SATA drive inside it, which I put in a USB caddie and connected to my XP machine where I'm running VMWare Workstation. VMs can connect to USB devices connected to the host so my Ubuntu running in a VM picked up the hard drive. I didn't even bother installing Ubuntu and downloaded a preinstalled VM which saved a lot of time. Then I plugged in another USB drive and made my Ubuntu VM pick it up. Mounting the drives didn't require the use of any commands as Ubuntu picks up USB removable disks automatically and mounts them for you. Then I could easily copy data from the XFS drive to my own FAT32 drive which I can use in Windows.

I've had only one problem with this and if you can explain that and help me fix it, I'll award full points to you. If anyone else can explain this or help, they get partial points too.

The problem is that Ubuntu seems to get *tired* after copying some (fair amount) data. The copy process then just sits there and doesn't move on till you restart the Ubuntu VM. It kept getting from good to bad to worse and eventually my Ubuntu VM wouldn't even start copying or do just a very small amount before getting stuck. I then deleted the VM and started over with a new VM which started copying data again. Now this new VM again is stuck at copying a 4.6GB file and gets stuck everytime at 1.2GB. Okay, I admit I overlooked and was trying to copy 4.6GB onto FAT32 which won't support this big file size but that's irrelevant cause it's getting stuck at 1.2. My VM has 4GB of memory, by the way. Could someone explain this and help fix it?

Also, any ideas why the native "Create Archive" utility in Ubuntu won't let me split this file into smaller size .zip files which I could then join after copying to an NTFS drive? (FAT32 being interim, of course) The split option is grayed out.

Appreciate all help Linux folks.

Thanks.

Do you have a 64Bit version of Windows XP with more than 4GB of RAM?

By default the program that does file compression for zips doesn't support splitting.  If you want a easy way of doing it you can install rar in the ubuntu machine

sudo apt-get installl rar

Then try and archive using rar as the format and split it into volumes.
A program to use on the XP client would be Winrar to undo the operation.

Yes, I am running XP pro X64 with 8GB RAM. Why is this required?

I'll run this command you told me on my Ubuntu VM to install rar and let you know what the results are. Thanks.

I was trying to find reason as to why the vm was freezing on you earlier.  It's not very common place that I run into somebody running XP Pro X64 with more than 4 GB of RAM, so I asked instead of assuming either way.  If somebody had a 32bit OS and tried using 4 GB of RAM dedicated to their vm they would have problems, which isn't the case here.

Partial solution, as recovery in Ubuntu was tiring and painful, would stop every now and then. No solution found to that.