Help accessing old files from a SimpleTech SimpleShare NAS
July 4, 2017 2:09 PM   Subscribe

Having severe difficulty trying to access old files to get them off the device. When using the device's own prompts, it shows shared folders as empty - but its disk management suggests there's still 499GB hiding out somewhere. Please help me figure this out.

Details: running Windows 10. Simpleshare itself is 7 years old, as is its software.

Initial problemsolving: realized it wouldn't work with Edge and opened up its own nonsense in Internet Explorer so ActiveX could be used. It now shows up in network and I can create share files, etc, but the old folders still show up as empty.
posted by corb to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)
 
I know how I would approach this, but it might not be helpful for you, depending on the equipment you have available and your comfort with taking stuff apart and putting it back together:

Part 1:

- Remove the hard drives from the SimpleShare enclosure.
- Install them as secondary drives in a desktop machine that has the appropriate controllers (SATA/PATA).

Part 2, option 1:

- Boot up with something like the Ubuntu Live CD (or any one of the many other live Linux CDs).
- If you see your files, yay! Plug in a USB drive and copy them to there.
- If you don't see your files, think about how much of your time they're worth. If they're worth a lot, try Part 2, option 2.

Part 2, option 2:

- Boot up with a Linux live system rescue cd (e.g. SystemRescueCD or clonezilla live).
- Find the partitions and clone them using ddrescue or partimage.
- Mount the cloned partitions and try to copy data from them.

Part 2, option 2 is not simple, and I despair at figuring out how to convert it into a step-by-step procedure that someone who's unfamiliar with Linux could follow. It's also a procedure wherein typing "a" instead of "b" at the wrong place will destroy all your data instead of rescuing it. So if your data really is worth a lot to you, you might consider calling a professional data recovery service at that point.

The SimpleShare is almost certainly running either Linux or FreeBSD as its own operating system - according to their manual, you can even email their support and ask for the source code of the GPL/LGPL software that they're running - so you've got a decent chance with Part 2, option 1.
posted by clawsoon at 6:10 PM on July 4, 2017


I basically agree with clawsoon - it sounds like the right move at this point is to just skip their system and recover the data directly, but that's a job for someone with at least basic Linux sysad skills. One possible (cheaper) alternative to professional data recovery is if you know someone with the right skills. When I was in uni this is the kind of thing I'd have done for beers or a bottle of gin or whatever.
posted by russm at 8:02 PM on July 4, 2017


Am I reading it right that you can now create new folders, put files in them, and see the new files; and only the old folders show up as empty? That sounds like a permissions issue on the device. Given a 7yo device + Windows 10, presumably the last time it worked was with you using a different PC for access? (note that recent anti-ransomware security patches have blocked very old flavors of Windows file sharing exploited by the leaked NSA cyberweapon they incorporate.) Is there more than one login configured for the device? Many similar NAS' have predefined folders for "public" access (using the built-in guest account in Windows file sharing) and "private" access tied to a local account on the device, so maybe the files you can't see are in a folder that has become "private"? Also, "List folder contents" is a separate permission from "Read" - if you know an exact file name (preferably one without spaces), try adding it (including file extension) directly to the address bar once you navigate to the "empty" folder; that won't help you get the rest, but it will at least help confirm the nature of the problem.

If you go the route of pulling the hard drive, you may be able to skip the Linux boot CD by installing an appropriate file-system driver in Windows. See www.fs-driver.org or www.ext2fsd.com for more info. Windows 10 has some native Linux support, but it basically involves a complete virtualized install of Ubuntu, which is more than you want. https://www.linux.org/threads/linux-in-windows-10.4571/

If you don't want to crack open your PC to connect the drive, this gadget is worth more than the $15 it costs:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156102
posted by CyberSlug Labs at 3:37 PM on July 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


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