I have a 2 Tb Western Digital NAS drive. The disk has it's own Unix operating system and fakes an NTFS style so Windows can readily use it.
I can't empty the recycle bin, or reset permissions on it. Nor can I create directories. All data looks and appears to read OK.
None of the tools I have (including Windows 7) have any kind of disk check for network drives, even if they are mapped as a local drive.
I suspect it really needs formatting and reloading but last time around that took over a week, and I have to find somewhere to back up the near 2Tb to before I can wipe it.
Anyone know of any (free) tools which I can use to fiddle with it?
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Does the NAS not have its own tools for managing the disk - probably via a web page. You'll not fix this by mapping shares to it. It is not likely to be NTFS either - it is offering up the shares as SMB (SAMBA) shares for the use over the network.
My guess is it's some kind of Unix filesystems like ext3. But my NAS uses a proprietary filesystem that allows it to grow when you switch in larger disks.
Time to possibly get a 2Tb drive to backup the NAS I would think. As you have found putting 2Tb anywhere without a backup is a bit risky.
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Thanks Rob
The 2Tb is essentially a backup of other live data so it isn't critical in itself. All computers are backed up to it, then I back up portions of it once in a while, using SYNC program so I don't copy everything every time.
Yes, it's ext3 (I couldn't remember but you've reminded me).
I have custom firmware on it which I haven't yet investigated for tools - good point.
I think it has gone "read only" so it could be Unix permissions (CHMOD isn't it?) but it wouldn't have done that unless there was a problem, so even if I could CHMOD it back I don't think I'd trust it.
I spent weeks down and dirty with the drive when I upgraded the NAS from 1Tb to 2Tb but will need to search around again to remind myself how it works....and what I put on it, and how!! I even had some guy from France log into the drive to do some fault finding for me when I was having problems. From what I recall, I copied the original OS then had to hack it to tell it that it had a bigger drive. It was a pain at the time but I enjoyed doing it and now have time so might do it all over again...
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What you could do this slave the drive (assuming it has a standard SATA interface) and then run some hard drive checking tools on that. It does like a software/firmware related issue rather than hardware there.
I find any drivers larger than 1TB are always a gamble.
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It's standard SATA but not NTFS file system (natively) so I think I'd have to mess with the computer to get it working right wouldn't I?
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If someone has logged into it before then you can do the same. If it's Linux based (almost certainly will be) then ssh into it and run fsck. If you can ssh into it you can also test if it's possible to write to the disk locally.
It could be that it has recognised problems and mounting the disks as read only. Or maybe the shares have got messed up and become readonly?
My NAS runs Linux too and I have rooted it to allow root login. I've not done anything much with root access but the plan is to add a VPN server.
I don't know much about this NAS of smokies, but mine has USB connections but these are for plugging in printers and drives to the NAS. They are not for connecting it to a PC. If that was possible you could run up a copy of Linux in a VM and connect the drive to that for checking. But because it's a NAS I doubt that would be possible.
I'll try googling your NAS later.
I'm paranoid enough to have a third 2Tb drive that periodically I backup the mirrored NAS' 2Tb to. I also use rsync to only copy what has changed. Copying 900Gb took a while the first time!
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Thanks Rob - mine is a Western Digital My Book World Edition. In the past I['ve been logged into mine and trampled all over it when Iw as setting it up. That was over a year ago, and it's been fine since, except for it seems slow but I think that's just a "feature".
Haven't much time this week to look at it but once everyone (except me!!) is back to work time becomes a bit freer....
Last edited by: smokie on Mon 27 Dec 10 at 01:59
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Forgotten my Admin password for the driver. Ho hum. Maybe I recorded it somewhere. The more I think about it, the more it is a permissions issue and I found a couple of reports of similar issues with the drivers when copying large amounts of data to them.
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I have read there are known issues with these drives mounting the volumes as readonly. You'll find out if you login.
If you can ssh to it (you said someone had connected remotely) then running the mount command should list the mounted file systems. If one is mounted readonly then it will show up in the options alongside the mounted filesystem, e.g. my NAS shows:
/dev/hdc1 on / type ext2 (rw,noatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
tmpfs on /ramfs type ramfs (rw)
tmpfs on /USB type tmpfs (rw,size=16k)
/dev/c/c on /c type ext2 (rw,noatime,acl,user_xattr,usrquota,grpquota)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
All are read-write (rw).
I also read that even though most of these WD enclosures are single drive, the default is to create a RAID volume on the disk.
Time to remember the password for the root user. This may be different to the user for the web interface.
P.S. Filesystem may be XFS on these drives.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Wed 29 Dec 10 at 12:02
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This is now fixed - but I think it still may be a bit dodgy so with time I am going to clear it down, reformat and rebuild.
I went into Properties and started resetting the Owner to my NT account. This failed after some considerable hours (as it was propagating to all sub folders, and the drive is always slow) but has re-enabled the ability to write to the drive. I suspect there are some folders which didn't get changed which are still protected but that is not causing a problem at the moment.
I will also have a hunt around for my logon as I remember that there were two places to set them up and it is likely to be one of a limited combination of username and password.
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Don't want to hi-jack your thread smokie but what is your opinion overall of the 2TB NAS ?
I was thinking about sticking an extra drive in my PC, as that is used as our central disk and print server, but the more I think about it NAS is the way to go.
Rattle made a comment about 1TB being OK but anything bigger can be a gamble. Is this your finding too ?
Last edited by: gmac on Sun 2 Jan 11 at 19:47
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Network drive issues - error fixing tools? - rtj70
