How to Recover Seagate Central Data

Few weeks ago I purchased Seagate Central 4TB. My first intention was to store my movie collection so I can watch it wirelessly on my iOS devices and AppleTV. Since my movie collection only consume around 800GB of space, it still has a lot of room to store anything. So I decided to move all of my data from my conventional hard disk to Seagate Central.

It worked perfectly, until several days ago I can not locate this device on my Mac. I just realize that the led indicator kept blinking all the time. On my router, the led indicator for the device is turned off. So it means, the device was not connected to my local network.


My mistake was I moved almost of my data to this device. So the original data was removed from my previous storage. I have tried to recover the data using data recovery tools, but after taking several hours just to scan one partition and the result was nothing, I realize that recovering the data will be very difficult near to impossible.

I store my data on NTFS partition. And so far my data recovery tool was never failed when I mistakenly delete some content and want to recover it. I suspect the issue come from my Mac. NTFS partition is not supported natively by Mac OS X. It need third party driver to make it able to write and make some changes on the partition. I use Paragon NTFS, and perhaps this software use different approach when deleting some content compared with Windows which support NTFS partition natively.

OK, that’s another things. So right now, my problem is how I can get my data back? As you know, the device only has ethernet port as an interface to external system. So, I thought the only option to recover is how to read the hard disk directly by mounting it elsewhere. Actually, I could return the unit and got the replacement. But the problem is, I was not sure I would get by data back. I prefer to lose the warranty than loosing my data. So I decided to diassemble the unit, take the hard disk out, and trying to recover the data on my own way. To diassemble the unit, you can follow the instruction found on You Tube. (Warning, your warranty will be void if you diassemble the unit).

After some research on internet, I found a way to recover my data. As of this writing, I’m still copying my data back to my old hard disk.

Here it is. You will need:

• An usable USB flash disk with at least 2GB in size.
• Latest Ubuntu iso (in this tutorial, I’m using 14.04.1 32 bit version). You can download it here 
• A PC with free SATA port for the Seagate Central hard disk
• Another hard disk to recover the data

Update:
Based on several comments on this article, you can also use Paragon ExtFS for Windows which can be downloaded free here. This tools can read Linux partition including LVM. For those who are not familiar with Linux platform can use this tool.

So the plan is we will use Ubuntu Linux to recover the data. For your information, the Seagate Central hard disk is partitioned using ext filesystem which is supported natively by Linux. Why Ubuntu? Actually you can use any Linux distro, but in my opinion Ubuntu is easier and more friendly. Moreover, you can just boot Ubuntu using your USB flash disk without installing it on the hard drive.

Here we are:

1. After you have prepared all the things we need, the first step is to create a bootable Ubuntu Installer on your USB flash disk. You can found the tutorial for creating Ubuntu bootable flash disk here (Windows) and here (Mac).
2. Plug your Seagate Central hard disk and your secondary hard disk to your PC.
3. Plug your USB flash disk containing USB installer to your PC and boot from it.
4. Choose “Try Ubuntu” on the screen. For this recovery purpose, you don’t need to install the complete OS.
5. Download fuseext2 package here. If you use 64bit version of Ubuntu, download the appropriate package. Let say you you have downloaded the deb package on your downloads folder.
   
   Why we need this package? Seagate Central hard disk presumably use lvm and has 64KB of block size which is not supported natively by most Linux distro. Common block size used on most Linux Distro is 4KB. So you need other package which can read the partition. (Actually I’m not Unix or Ubuntu expert, so my explanation could be incorrect. Yeah, if you don’t feel satisfied, just try to do some research on internet. Let see if we have same conclusion).
6. Open Terminal application. Install fuseext2 package using following command (assume the deb package is on your Downloads folder):
   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/fuseext2_0.4-1.1_i386.deb
   Selecting previously unselected package fuseext2.
   (Reading database ... 174162 files and directories currently installed.)
   Preparing to unpack .../fuseext2_0.4-1.1_i386.deb ...
   Unpacking fuseext2 (0.4-1.1) ...
   Setting up fuseext2 (0.4-1.1) ...
   Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1) ...
7. After installing fuseext2 package, run sudo parted -l command to display all partitions:
   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo parted -l
   
   Model: ATA WDC WD10EADS-11M (scsi)
   Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
   Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
   Partition Table: gpt
   
   Number  Start   End     Size   File system  Name  Flags
    1      1049kB  524GB   524GB  ntfs               msftdata
    2      524GB   1000GB  476GB  ntfs               msftdata
   
   
   Model: ATA ST4000DM000-1F21 (scsi)
   Disk /dev/sdb: 4001GB
   Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
   Partition Table: gpt
   
   Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                Flags
    1      1049kB  22.0MB  21.0MB  ext2         Kernel_1            msftdata
    2      22.0MB  43.0MB  21.0MB  ext2         Kernel_2            msftdata
    3      43.0MB  1117MB  1074MB  ext4         Root_File_System_1  msftdata
    4      1117MB  2190MB  1074MB  ext4         Root_File_System_2  msftdata
    5      2190MB  3264MB  1074MB  ext4         Config              msftdata
    6      3264MB  4338MB  1074MB               Swap
    7      4338MB  5412MB  1074MB  ext4         Update              msftdata
    8      5412MB  4001GB  3995GB               Data                lvm
   
   Model: Sony Storage Media (scsi)
   Disk /dev/sdc: 3906MB
   Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
   Partition Table: msdos
   
   Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
    1      32.8kB  1035MB  1035MB  primary               boot, hidden
   
   Model: Linux device-mapper (linear) (dm)
   Disk /dev/mapper/vg1-lv1: 3995GB
   Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
   Partition Table: loop
   
   Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Flags
    1      0.00B  3995GB  3995GB  ext4
   
   You see that the Seagate Central data partition is stored on /dev/mapper/vg1-lv1. This information will be used on step 9 later
8. Create a new folder as a mount point for your Seagate Central data partition:
   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /mnt/seagate
9. Mount the data partition into mount point above:
   ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fuseext2 -o ro -o allow_other /dev/mapper/vg1-lv1 /mnt/seagate
10. Now you have mounted Seagate Central data partition to /mnt/seagate. Congratulations. Now you can begin copying your data to your secondary hard disk.

Note:
You will need root access to copy the data on your Seagate Central private folder. Therefore, you can not use your default Nautilus to discover content on the private folder. In my case, I perform copying content using terminal (using root), instead of using Nautilus.

Some references:

• Recovering data from a WD Mybook Live 2TB / 3TB (or similar)
• Trouble mounting Seagate Central 3TB Data partition (LVM)