Buffalo recovery

There are two types of Buffalo NAS devices – Buffalo LinkStation and Buffalo TeraStation. The first is designed for home users due to relatively modest capacity range and number of drives allowed - one to four meaning that RAID levels are limited by RAID0/1/5/10. Although it is possible to use four disks in Buffalo LinkStation, RAID6 cannot be created. TeraStation devices (up to 12 drives) are aimed to business and offer a variety of RAID levels – from RAID0 to RAID60. Typically, Buffalo uses Linux md-raid driver to manage the RAID. If md-raid records are damaged, the driver can no longer provide access to the data stored on Buffalo that, from a user perspective, looks like data loss.

Problem

  • Buffalo turns on OK and you probably can open NASNavigator but the RAID status looks like failed:
  • Long waiting for "Discovering Tera/LinkStation on the network" and finally an error sign, red color, and "unformatted" label. Buffalo errors
  • NASNavigator complains that "A problem or communication error has occurred with LS-WXLC1a. Confirm NASNavigator2 main window." A problem or communication error has occured with...Confirm NASNavigator2 main window.
  • NAS doesn’t power on at all and so you are in need of Buffalo data recovery.

Buffalo data recovery

If your Buffalo NAS is working properly and all you need is to recover accidentally deleted data, try ReclaiMe NAS Recovery first: it can recover data from NAS devices directly, you do not need to get the disks out and the like. Refer here for the detailed instructions on how to recover deleted files from a Buffalo drive.

  1. To restore Buffalo NAS data you need to power the unit off, get the disks out of the Buffalo, and connect them to a PC running Windows. It is preferable to use SATA ports on the motherboard, but if there are no free ports you can use SATA to USB adapters along with power adapters (see the video below for an example).
  2. Download and launch ReclaiMe File Recovery software. ReclaiMe File Recovery is capable of reading damaged md-raid data which is the basic method of NAS data recovery.
  3. Let the software finish scanning the drives for data partitions. Look for your Buffalo partition under the Linux md-raid volumes section. Select the partition and click Start.
    4. Buffalo volume for recovery
  4. Buffalo devices typically use XFS filesystem to store the data. So the folder named XFS appears on the left containing all the data recovered from your Buffalo device. Expand the folder and check the folder tree.
  5. Preview the recovered data and save the files and folders you need.

All the steps on video

Still have questions?