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Help! I can't find my Lacie NAS

By mmjdawson ·
I have had a Lacie Ethernet Disk Mini NAS for almost a year now and it houses all the music I own. It worked perfectly up until recently when it seems to have droppped off the network completely.

I have tried connecting directly to my laptop via USB but Windows is not recognising it at all. I contacted Lacie who told me to do a factory reset (this involved just pressing the buton on the front in various combinations) which would retain all my data, which worked fine. When I rebooted the drive Windows still did not recognise it and now I cannot turn the drive off unless I physically unplug it. The light on the front is on permanently. This I told to Lacie who said they could fix the drive under warranty but I will lose all the data on it. They then helpfully told me of two data recovery companies I could use but that if I did so my warranty would be void!

I am at my wits end as I have loads of music and photos on the drive, has anyone got any ideas how to find the drive initially as I find it hard to believe (don't want to believe!)it is knackered, or failing this, some data recovery software.

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Request for Clarification

by johan sa In reply to Clarifications

It seems like you have not been around, would truly like to know the outcome of the problem you had discribed. Have the same and don't know which way to turn. How can I get in touch with you?

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You can try some data recovery software..

by Peconet Tietokoneet-217038187993258194678069903632 In reply to Help! I can't find my Lac ...

But you may do more harm than good. If you want i can try it out on my computers. i have everything in place for your kind of problem. The only cost for you is postage/packaging and insurance plus a fiver for the trouble. I will place everything on separate disks for you.
Contact me through my e-mail. If you are interested.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

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Thanks

by mmjdawson In reply to You can try some data rec ...

Thanks for the kind offer but I may have found the root of the problem. After a few emails to Lacie, it seems it could be a problem with the power supply. I have sent it back to them and am awaiting its return. If that doesn't solve it I might be in touch.

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A couple of thoughts...

by robo_dev In reply to Help! I can't find my Lac ...

By any chance does your device have two internal drives or a RAID array?

There are one of two problems: Either the LACIE device is failing, or the hard drive inside the LACIE is failing.

If it's just the device, then the hard drive inside (most likely a typicaly IDE drive) can be plugged into a working machine or into a USB enclosure.

The device may function properly if it's been given the chance to cool off completely.

Make sure that any cooling fans are running in the device.

If it's the hard drive,then this may be more difficult.

What I would try is to remove the hard drive from the unit, install it in a USB case (or another NAS enclosure) and grab the data that way.

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Thanks for advice

by mmjdawson In reply to A couple of thoughts...

It looks like Lacie are washing their hands of my problem, so I will try your suggestion, fingers crossed.

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With any form of Data Recovery you can do more harm that good

by OH Smeg Moderator In reply to Help! I can't find my Lac ...

Without realizing things have gone from bad to worse very quickly.

I'm surprised that the company doesn't honor their Warranty after the unit has been to a Data Recovery House all the HDD Makers support this option without a second thought but you do have to provide proof that the Recovery Company has worked on the drives.

Now to your problem if you left this unit running all the time then the most likely thing is that the Drive/s have failed these devices get hot when running and heat and vibration kills HDD very quickly. It is also possible that the electronics inside the enclosure have been damaged by Heat. So removing the drive/s and fitting to a USB Caddy will allow you to see if it is the drive/s or the Enclosure. But again only run the drive/s in the USB Enclosure when it's needed not all the time as this shortens the life of both the drive and enclosure.

External Drives are not permanent Backup devices they are just there for convenience so you need to treat them as such. If you want long term backup you need to treat them differently and only use them when they are needed.

As for Data Recovery Software there are many different applications available but they are not cheap some are well in excess of several thousand $ so you need to understand that things are like this and they are expensive either in initial purchase or Time to use the software.

There are two types of Data recovery software the first rebuilds Partition Information which has been corrupted with use and the second actually recovered Data off the Affected Drive. With the second type of software you need to save the output to a different drive that is blank well just formatted without any thing on it to prevent overwriting existing data on the drive that the recovery is being run on. You generally need a drive about 3 times the size of the affected drive to save data to as well so that you don't run out of room.

The following is a short list of the more popular Software available but by no means a full list of everything available.

http://tinyurl.com/273ay5

http://tinyurl.com/rmvrv

http://tinyurl.com/yvrsl

http://tinyurl.com/yyk8cm

http://tinyurl.com/382vm

http://tinyurl.com/ynwnel

http://tinyurl.com/nc4kx

http://tinyurl.com/2wox7l

http://tinyurl.com/374d8b

http://tinyurl.com/djw6u

http://tinyurl.com/f73se

http://tinyurl.com/8bd3f

http://tinyurl.com/afu2j

While the last 2 are from the same company they are very different products. Win Hex should only be considered foe use by someone who knows Hex Inside Out while Davory is a great cheap General Purpose Application.

Personally I prefer the On Track Option but it's anything but cheap. However because I use this type of software a lot it's paid for itself many times over by now, for a cheaper option Spin Rite from Gibson Research or Stella have both very good reputations by other TR members.

Col

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Same same

by alikimpton In reply to Help! I can't find my Lac ...

Hello mate, I have been trawling the internet for some advice on this
and was quite surprised to see the problem with your disk is exactly
the same as mine... the light is constantly on unless i unplug it.
Turn it back on and the light just comes on permanently again.
Drive shows up on no networks.

I am really worried as I have no backup of the data on mine and it
would be a disaster if it was lost... I was hoping to find out how to
maybe take the drive from the case and attach them to a computer
directly to save the data.

Have you had any luck with retrieving your data or fixing the drive?

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Power supply

by mmjdawson In reply to Same same

After a few emails to Lacie, it seems it could be a problem with the power supply. I have sent it back to them and am awaiting its return. If that doesn't solve it I'm screwed too. Email them and they should send you a new one under warranty. I'll post again when I receive it. Fingers crossed its that simple. If you find any more info in the meantime I'd appreciate it if you could let me know, I struggled to find much about the problem myself.

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interesting...

by alikimpton In reply to Power supply

sounds like there might be some vague hope... I sent a couple of
emails to lacie myself, but still no response. Im gonna contact a
data recovery company to get a quote... hopefully they might be
able to shed some light on the situation. Ill let you know what they
say. If lacie do give you any more info on the problem, please keep
me updated. Thanks.

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???

by alikimpton In reply to interesting...

Ive just been in touch with a data recovery company in London and
they've said that if the problem IS with the power supply unit then
even if this was fixed they would still have to recover the data from
the drive, because a power failure (in 99.9% of cases) would wipe the
cache, which means to get the data off the drive a recovery would still
be necessary. (I dont understand this by the way... just what he told me
on the phone)

The bad news is that because the drive is build from two 500gb drives
connected by a RAID, the recovery would be fairly complex and cost
?850!! Which is far too much for me to spend!.... Im hoping I can find a
cheap way of fixing the power unit myself (or even get Lacie to do it
under warranty without reformatting the disk... and then use some
decent data recovery software to retrieve what I can at home... long
shot maybe.

Have you heard back from Lacie yet? I sent a support ticket 1 week ago
now with no response! I cant even find a number to call their support
team!! useless.

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