Networkspace 2 not working - understand what fvdw-sl can do

Hi there,
thanks so much for all the hard work put in place in this website and in the forum.
I have a NWS2 from Lacie, and one day it just stopped working. The disk was less reachable during the day, then I tried to do a factory reset, and then it was even less reachable, I tried a second time the factory reset and then it stopped being reachable at all.
I took the HDD out, put it in a case. I tried Ubuntu, Knoppix, and recovery softwares. Sometimes I cannot see anything, sometimes I was able to see all the partition, in particular sdc2, the xfs one with all the data. In that case, when mounted, I often saw a big part of the data if not all, but the PC was not doing anything when I was trying to simply copy paste the files in that partition. Worse, the "photos" folder in "my share" was not even readable, "permission denied". When launching testdisk or photorec, no way I could access the partition, the terminal window will stay without activity when enter any command. Same thing after I use the command proposed in that thread: mdadm --assemble --scan
http://forum.nas-central.org/viewtopic.php?f=242&t=6025
When I use recovery software, more or less the same thing, it is able to access the partition, it can list all the folders, I see that the files are present, but I get a message error when I try to copy /recover the files.
the HDD does not emit any clicking sound, which makes the situation even more frustrating.
So here are the questions:
1. Do you guys see any other thing I could do to recover my data ? shall I wait for let's say several hours when I launch the terminal commands I am quoting above, or if the HDD led is not blinking for several minutes, shall I consider that, for some reason the HDD froze and the terminal windows will not return anything?
2. If my last solution is this firmware and in the event I am able to install the firmware (not sure the console will work and see the hard drive), what does it do? replace the first partitions with Lacie's OS? does it touch the xfs partition ?
3. does it resize / format any partition ? or does it overwrite Lacie's firmware?
4. Will it allow me to access the xfs partition ?
5. Will I need permission and how could I get them to access my past "My Share" ? or will I only be able to access my old "Openshare" ?
Apologies if the questions 2-4 are answered in some topics of the forum, I tried to search as much as I could. Please post URLs in that case and I will look for the answers.
Cheers.
thanks so much for all the hard work put in place in this website and in the forum.
I have a NWS2 from Lacie, and one day it just stopped working. The disk was less reachable during the day, then I tried to do a factory reset, and then it was even less reachable, I tried a second time the factory reset and then it stopped being reachable at all.
I took the HDD out, put it in a case. I tried Ubuntu, Knoppix, and recovery softwares. Sometimes I cannot see anything, sometimes I was able to see all the partition, in particular sdc2, the xfs one with all the data. In that case, when mounted, I often saw a big part of the data if not all, but the PC was not doing anything when I was trying to simply copy paste the files in that partition. Worse, the "photos" folder in "my share" was not even readable, "permission denied". When launching testdisk or photorec, no way I could access the partition, the terminal window will stay without activity when enter any command. Same thing after I use the command proposed in that thread: mdadm --assemble --scan
http://forum.nas-central.org/viewtopic.php?f=242&t=6025
It took me some time and lots of researching, but I finally managed to restore all the files from my destroyed Iomega Network drive. It turns out Iomega uses XFS system in their drives, but it also creates some logical drives. God knows why. It's kind of messy. If you connect the disk to your PC it will not recognize anything. Even Linux will not recognize right away and if you play around you might get the impression the data on your disk is corrupt. Actually it is not. It is just organized in a bit more complicated way then necessary.
So here is the solution in few simple steps.
1. Prepare Knoppix CD and start your computer with Linux instead of Windows.
2. Go to shell, type "su" to become a super user, and then type those magic words: "mdadm --assemble --scan". It will turn all that XFS/Raid Iomega mess into pretty logical volumes.
3. However, they are still not ready to use. The logical volumes are not active. To turn them on type this: "vgchange -a y".
4. It's almost over! The logical volume with your data should be somewhere in /dev/something location now. You can use command "lvdisplay" to find out where is what exactly. Now you just need to mount it. Do it with something like "mount /dev/something/virtualblahblab /mnt/real_folder_with_real_files" - and that's it!
5. Copy all your files from /mnt/real_folder_with_real_files (or wherever you mounted it) to some safer place.
When I use recovery software, more or less the same thing, it is able to access the partition, it can list all the folders, I see that the files are present, but I get a message error when I try to copy /recover the files.
the HDD does not emit any clicking sound, which makes the situation even more frustrating.
So here are the questions:
1. Do you guys see any other thing I could do to recover my data ? shall I wait for let's say several hours when I launch the terminal commands I am quoting above, or if the HDD led is not blinking for several minutes, shall I consider that, for some reason the HDD froze and the terminal windows will not return anything?
2. If my last solution is this firmware and in the event I am able to install the firmware (not sure the console will work and see the hard drive), what does it do? replace the first partitions with Lacie's OS? does it touch the xfs partition ?
3. does it resize / format any partition ? or does it overwrite Lacie's firmware?
4. Will it allow me to access the xfs partition ?
5. Will I need permission and how could I get them to access my past "My Share" ? or will I only be able to access my old "Openshare" ?
Apologies if the questions 2-4 are answered in some topics of the forum, I tried to search as much as I could. Please post URLs in that case and I will look for the answers.
Cheers.