How to mount disk used by ReadyNAS

MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2013
How to mount disk used by ReadyNAS
The following steps are useful if we want to salvage data stored in the drive in ReadyNAS.
I am not sure if the steps below are going to work on other ReadyNAS models, but it works on my ReadyNAS Duo (Sparc CPU).

Basically, what we need is a SATA-to-USB cable (can be bought on the Internet for couple of bucks).
NETGEAR ReadyNAS partitions the drive into 4 partitions. In my case, it is detected as /dev/sdc:

[root@r3000 media]# fdisk -l /dev/sdc

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 2 4096001 2048000 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 4096002 4608001 256000 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc3 4608002 1953092233 974242116 5 Extended
/dev/sdc5 4608003 1953092233 974242115+ 8e Linux LVM
[root@r3000 media]#

There are couple of issues if we try to mount the partitions directly:

ReadyNAS uses non-standard ext3 block-size, which in my case is 16384 bytes (use command "lvsc" to check)
The home directory is partitioned as LV group, so conventional mount command is not gonna work
Here's the steps:
Scan the usb for LVM volumes and identify in the output the volume group name that has your READYNAS volume (mine proved to be c):
# vgscan
[root@r3000 media]# vgscan
Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...
Found volume group "c" using metadata type lvm2
Found volume group "vg_r3000" using metadata type lvm2
Found volume group "VolGroup" using metadata type lvm2

Activate the group for ReadyNAS (in this case, the group name is "C")
# vgchange -ay c
Find the logical volume that (mine proved to be 'c'):
# lvs
root@r3000:/home/root# lvs
LV VG Attr LSize Pool Origin Data% Move Log Copy% Convert
c c -wi-ao--- 929.09g
To display the logical name of the partition, use command "lvdisplay":
# lvdisplay /dev/c
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name /dev/c/c
VG Name c
LV UUID 7HUOrf-B5bL-ur6r-ULsd-yl4m-gCrA-zQc4s9
LV Write Access read/write
LV Status available
# open 0
LV Size 929.09 GiB
Current LE 29731
Segments 1
Allocation inherit
Read ahead sectors auto
- currently set to 256
Block device 253:5

We cannot use regular command "mount" to mount the non-standard blocksize ext3 partition. Fortunately, there is a tool called "fuse-ext3" running in userspace that can help us. The tool can be downloaded here.

Here's an example how to mount my ReadyNAS's LV volume:

fuse-ext2 -o sync_read,allow_other,rw+ /dev/c/c /media/readynas2

And here is the command to mount the system (root) partition which has the Linux software (I will post later about how to reset root password without resetting the ReadyNAS to factory default etc.)

fuse-ext2 -o sync_read,allow_other,rw+ /dev/c/c /media/readynas2

Note: don't forget to unmount the partitions once your'de done.

Posted by L.M. Lutfi Sh. at 8:54 AM
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Labels: Linux, NAS
5 comments:

Eric Lefevre2/05/2015 5:42 AM
Hello,

Thanks for your job ! I successfully mount my partitions on Lubuntu LiveCD with this useful help.

Regards

Reply

Eric Lefevre2/05/2015 5:46 AM
Hello,

Thanks for your job ! I successfully mount my partitions on Lubuntu LiveCD with this useful help.

Regards

Reply

Unknown4/14/2017 3:30 PM
My ReadyNAS Duo chassis died but the drives were still good. With this article I can attach the drive and copy my stuff to the new one. Thanks!

Reply

Unknown4/27/2017 8:49 PM
For completeness the command to unmount when you're done is

fusermount -u /media/readynas2

Reply
Replies

Lutfi Shihab4/27/2017 11:10 PM
thank you

Reply

http://technostuff.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-to-mount-disk-used-by-ready…
melhor este - https://www.drashsmith.com/post/recovering-files-from-a-netgear-readyna…
https://kb.netgear.com/24546/Add-ons-for-RAIDiator-4-1-3-Sparc
https://kb.netgear.com/24557/RAIDiator-Third-Party-Add-ons
http://netgear.nas-central.org/wiki/Category:ReadyNasDUO
https://github.com/mfe-/ReadyNASDuoSparc