Getting data off a dying Buffalo Linkstation Live (LS-CHL) NAS

I have a fairly old Linkstation Live (LS-CHL, 500GB, the one with BitTorrent) NAS device and it has started to lose its connection to the network. I'm pretty sure it's dying (it does a lot of weird flashing on the LEDs, both in red and blue, and won't turn off any more without pulling the power out) and have been trying to copy off the files I want to keep.

My process so far has been to copy the files off whilst it has a connection and then power it down, wait a while and turn it back on to get the next few files. This is taking forever and the device seems to be failing quicker and quicker with each restart.

Can I get the drive out and put it in a caddy? Will I be able to read the drive on my Windows 7 PC if I do this? Is there a better solution before I go taking things apart?

Solution 1:

OK after a fair amount of Googling and trail and error I found a solution. I've written up what I did below to help other people in the same situation.

Firstly you have to get the hard drive out of the device this is harder than it sounds as the device is full of clips keeping it shut. Fortunately there are some disassembly images here:

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

I removed the fan first using the screw on top, and sliding it out from the side. You need to reach inside and unplug it as you pull it out. Next, look in the gap where the fan came from and you will see a clip on the inside of the fan vent. Unclip this.

Looking down on the unit you will see three small holes, using a pin push through these undoing the clips on the inside.

On the underside of the unit there are some stickers, peel these off and you will find two more holes to access clips through. Once these are undone you should be able to pry the unit apart, it still takes a bit of force.

Once inside you should have a circuit board with a hard drive attached. The hard drive is attached through one side screw and two screws underneath. Remove all of them. You should then be able to slide the drive out.

The drive is a 3.5" SATA Samsung HD502IJ. You can put this into a SATA caddy to attach to a PC.

Once attached to a PC running Windows 7 the PC will install the drivers for the device but will not show the drive in My Computer. If you go to manage your computer and then disk management you will see it shows a number of partitions on the drive but shows them as blank. Don't despair. I found the reason this happened was that it is not using a standard Windows file system. You need to find some software to read SGI XFS file system.

I searched around and found UFS Explorer:

http://www.ufsexplorer.com/

You can get a shareware version and try it out on the drive (you do need to pay for it to transfer any files over 64kb off it though). I tested the drive with the shareware version and then bought the full version to get my files off.

I managed to copy off most of my files using this application. On the downside I did have one folder with lots of files in and UFS Explorer doesn't appear to be able to read them all. I'm not sure if this is a deficiency in the software or a weird way the LinkStation has stored it's data. Either way I've lost a few things but not everything.

I'm going to now buy a RAIDed NAS to avoid this in the future.

Solution 2:

Just as an aside, for an XFS partition, you should be able to get full access to the HDD with a Linux live CD. It's included with most Linux distros, and default for some. Just reboot from the live disk once you have the HDD in your PC.

Solution 3:

Having followed the dis-assembly instructions above (thank you!), when I came to re-assemble the case, I realised that it's best to un-clip and open the case first before removing the screw as it holds the drive/pcb tray in place as well as the fan!

The first clip is easily visible and accessible in the middle of the fan grill, the first of the 3 holes in the top is just above the 'OP' of FAN OPEN; the other 2 are equally spaced along the top of the case, hidden in the dimples.

Any Linux distro is rather tedious to use from a LiveCD (often actually a DVD!). I suggest Linux Mint (18.3) as the most user-friendly distro for a newbie to Linux, and it's worth the extra effort and cost of creating a bootable flash drive from the DVD (all the necessary tools are included on the Live DVD) because Linux runs much faster from a USB stick; 2Gb is more than enough, but you probably won't find a new one on sale under 16Gb.