Recovering data from Lacie Big Disk | Snorri Páll
I’ve had a Lacie Big Disk Ethernet 1TB for some time now. I used it as a mediaserver but since it’s not built to handle so many files (20.000 + mp3) the boot disk got filled up and didnt have any space left leaving it unable to boot, leaving me fucked and unable to access 700GB of data and backups.
Since Lacie didn’t have a solution I decided to find my own to recover my data. And here it is.
How to recover your data
Few facts about the Lacie Big Disk Ethernet (1TB)
- It is Using a custom built Linux to run
- It uses JBOD (linear / span) to build a 1TB disk out of two 500GB.
You need Ubuntu for this since the Lacie Big Disk Ethernet runs on Linux. I’m running mine on VMware Fusion on Mac.
1. Get a dual SATA casing (I’m using NexStax MX)
2. Put your disk inside the casing. DO NOT SET IT TO JBOD MODE! Just standalone disks.
3. When you turn it on DO NOT INITIALIZE THE DISKS. You will damage your data.
4. Open Ubuntu and connect the disks.
5. Open up Terminal and Install mdadm => sudo apt-get -install mdadm
6. Connect your device.
7. Three drives should mount up
8. Open terminal and type => sudo fdisk -l <= You should get alist of devices.
9. Find the correct paths to your disks.
- The first disk in my case was=> /dev/sdb2 487379970 (blocks)
- The second one was a 500GB disk => /dev/sdc <= Note: This one returns a “doesn’t contain a valid partition table” error.
10. Open up /etc/mdadm.conf under the 130mb mount.
11. Open up Terminal and type => sudo nano /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
12. Copy the settings from the Lacie config in step 10 to the config file in step 11. Change the paths to match your current setup. The smaller mount goes first and the bigger one (without the partition ) second. Like so:
- DEVICE /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc
- ARRAY /dev/md0 level=linear num-devices=2 UUID=163218f3:299b9ccc:3c666c38:6053
13. Hit CTRL-X and press Y to save the changes.
14. Now in terminal type => sudo mdadm—assemble /dev/md0
15. Whualla! Your data, safe and ready to be copied to a nother drive!
Note that if your config has a different /dev/mdx path then mount that one up.
Hope this helps someone to get their data back!