Can't access my HDD

[discotom]

Hi

I have a QNAP TS-201 NAS device that has 2x500GB Seagate (Barracuda 7200.10) HDDs.

I tried moving the device and heard crackling from the power adaptor in the process and adaptor died.

When i got a new adaptor, I could access the server again but the file structure of the files and directories on the disk had changed. There were some directories there but others were totally missing/not visible.

I needed to recover the missing files and directories so i took the drives out of the NAS casing and attached to an 'EMINENT Portable 3.5" SATA HDD enclosure' and connected it via USB2.0 to my PC running Windows 7.

The drive never showed up in Windows Explorer. I went to Device Manager though and it was there. Device Manager said drive was fine. It was also visible in Computer Manager but no drive letter was associated to it. On right clicking the drive to assign a letter, all options were disabled so i couldn't add a drive letter. I noticed a caution sign on a USB port however and there was an Error 43 code there. I tried different ports but got same error. I also tried a different PC running Windows XP but same USB caution sign, non-appearance in Explorer but appearance in Device Manager and computer Manager existed.

I therefore got TestDisk from the web and ran this as i thought maybe the Partition Tables had been damaged with the power fluctuation. It analysed the disk fine and then just closed. I don't know if there was a partition table problem though.

Any ideas how I can get the disk structure and files to be back again?? Don't really know what my next step is or why i can't assign a drive letter to actually view it in Explorer which might give me more info on the data structure.

Any help is much appreciated

thx

Tom

[stroyal]

Welcome to TechIMO!

Most of what I found said you should be able to do what you did, but a few say you need the same RAID controller even for RAID1.

I would think it would work, but you don't know if the drive is bad yet, and errors would be mirrored, on the second drive as well.

I would test both drives, with the Seagate test disk first.

If they test OK then I would boot with a Linux live CD, and see if you can read and recover the data.

I would also try to do it withe the drive installed in the computer, but I don't have an external drive enclosures.

Sorry it took so long, but it is the weekend, and hopefully one of our members that knows more about RAID1 will post later.