HP Mediavault Tutorial

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The HP Media Vault comes in a few flavours. This page is to assist any user with either the demo or licenced copy to recover data from the disks. (For the demo, all process are the same as rtghe licenced version, but no data will actually be stored).

Stage 1 Configure hardware

The first stage is to configure CnW to read the disks and also determine if it is a RAID-1 or JBOD or separate disks. The easiest way to physically read the disk is in a USB caddy, or for multiple disks, 2 caddies.

The question of RAID-1 or JBOD can normally be determined by the capacity of the Media Vault. If the capacity is the same as one of the disks, then RAID-1 is the most likely answer. If the capacity is twice the size of the disk , then JBOD was used. Apparently, RAID-0 was considered, but never implemented.

For RAID-1, only one disk needs to be considered, and so only a single USB interface required.

There is also a configuration of two single drives where the second drive is not logically related to the first drive. In this case the RAID option is not required.

Stage 2 Set up RAID if a JBOD

If it is thought that the disk is a JBOD, then the RAID option must be used. This is a chargeable option, so please contact CnW for details if not already purchased. For the demo system, just enter 'RAID' as the registration code. The registration screen is part of Configure in the Recovery functions and other options function. Please read the section in the RAID setup on HP Media Vault for details of setting up the JBOD. Hopefully, it will be done automatically with the analyse tool. A typical configuration is shown the screen below.

Stage 3 Confirming setup

This stage is optional, but often worth while to make sure that the disks are the correct format, and if relevant that the RAID is correctly configured. Using the Recovery functions and other options feature, the main menu will be displayed (ie this is not the starting wizard). The drive or the RAID must be selected at the top of the screen and the View function selected. This will display sector 0, the first of the disk.

For a RAID-1 disk, it should display the hex

00000000 42 72 6F 61 64 63 6F 6D - 20 4E 41 53 20 56 65 72 Broadcom NAS Ver

00000010 73 69 6F 6E 20 31 2E 31 - 20 4D 42 52 20 54 61 67 sion 1.1 MBR Tag

For a JBOD, viewed with 2: - RAID, the first sector will display

00000000 42 72 63 6D 53 65 4D 61 - 67 69 63 53 74 72 00 00 BrcmSeMagicStr

and in sector 0x80 of a JBOD, the data will start - this is the super block

00000000 50 A9 1E 0F B8 3E 89 00 - 83 5A A6 01 12 00 00 00 P©¸>‰ ƒZ¦

00000010 00 00 00 00 00 20 00 00 - 00 04 00 00 90 82 2C 39 ‚,9

00000020 84 03 00 00 1E 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 10 CC 03 „ Ì

00000030 4E 00 02 00 52 65 49 73 - 45 72 32 46 73 00 00 00 N ReIsEr2Fs

00000040 03 00 00 00 05 00 3E 1E - 02 00 00 00 31 4A 01 00 > 1J

An example of a stand along disk 1 - note the size at offset 0x28 0x3A251DE0 is roughly that of the size in sectors of the total disk, 500GB

Sector 1

00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0A - 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00

00000010 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 0C - 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00

00000020 00 00 00 00 00 13 42 50 - 00 00 00 00 3A 25 1D E0 BP :%à

00000030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

An example of a stand alone disk 2- - note the size at offset 0x28 0x5743D224 is roughly that of the size in sectors of the total disk, 750GB

Sector 1

00000000 00 00 00 00 00 0F 42 4C - 00 00 00 00 57 43 D2 24 BL WCÒ$

00000010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

00000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Stage 4 Doing a recover

The final stage is actually recovering the data. For this stage, use the Recover function (in the main part of the program). On some configurations, the program may bring up the Partition screen with several partitions. In this case, select the line with Reiser FS. If Reiser FS is not shown, select Analyse partitions... and then select Search for existing partitions. Within a few minutes, a Reiser partition should be displayed, and at this point, the scan can be cancelled. Select the Reiser FS partition. Press OK

The next menu is the Unix Options menu. This allows for different types of recovery to be made, and the location where the files are to be saved (not relevant in demo mode). There are three main recovery modes

Full recovery, this will try and read the file system in a conventional way, and recover files and directories. It is tolerant of file system errors, but will not find orphanded directories etc. This the fastest recovery function
Scan directory stubs. This mode will scan all known iNodes for directory stubs. Hence it will find orphaned files from damaged or corrupted disks.
Raw iNodes. This node is the slowest, but can be extremely effective. The complete disk will be scanned, sector by sector to try and find any iNodes. This will then be noted, and the Scan directory stubs function called. This mode will find any lost files, and can also detect many deleted files. However, it should be noted that the directory structure may not be fully intact, though file names will be correct.

Once the mode has been selected, press Recover All or Select files.

Files will be saved in the output directory specified, and will retain the original directory structure.

Stage 5 Verifying files

The easiest way to verify files is with the log. A very good infication that a file is correct is to check the signature. For many common files these are known, and so should match, or at least match the family. For instance, .exe, .dll and other similar files all have the same signature. If no signatures match, there is likely to be a problem.

The demo does not actually save any files, so the log is the best guide as to what may be recovered. The display will show all files and directories as they are scanned. For more confidence, double click on a log line and the selected file will be displayed as a hex dump. (This does require the original disk to still be selected).