XRS File System, Ubuntu, and VirtualBox - My nightmare has come to life

JustinSane07

So I have a 250gb Hard Drive here using the XRS file system. It was in a SNAPServer 1100 that went and died. The HDD appears to be fine but due to it's file system, Windows can't recognize it. The solution around the net seems to be install VirtualBox from Oracle then a virtual Ubuntu installation. From there, you make the Ubuntu installation read the drive.

This is where I get lost. See, my drive is attached through an external USB adapter to my Windows 7 laptop. I have the Virtual Ubuntu up and running through VirtualBox. What the hell do I do to make it see the USB adapter and the HDD plugged into it?

Joe K

JustinSane07 wrote:

So I have a 250gb Hard Drive here using the XRS file system. It was in a SNAPServer 1100 that went and died. The HDD appears to be fine but due to it's file system, Windows can't recognize it. The solution around the net seems to be install VirtualBox from Oracle then a virtual Ubuntu installation. From there, you make the Ubuntu installation read the drive.

This is where I get lost. See, my drive is attached through an external USB adapter to my Windows 7 laptop. I have the Virtual Ubuntu up and running through VirtualBox. What the hell do I do to make it see the USB adapter and the HDD plugged into it?

instgall the virtual box extras onto the guest, then you should have usb passthrough.

JustinSane07

I tried that. I noticed that when I told VirtualBox to take control of the USB adapter it took control away from windows.

But nothing ever popped up in Ubuntu. Is there something special I need to do?

Quantux

Why not boot from a live CD? You should be able to read/write to/from SNAP disk, windows disk, usb disk, ram disk, whatever. Boot the live CD, copy contents of drive to windows disk, done. Or if you don't need the data, skip all that and use diskpart to blow away the current part and make it a NTFS or Fat32 drive.

Seeks

Seconding the live cd recommendation.

JustinSane07

I was thinking of doing that next. The virtualbox just seemed...safer? I dunno. I have two laptops here that are unassigned to any users so I might try the liveCD thing with one of those.

Edit: And yeah, I need to save the data. It's crucial shit that apparently hasn't been backed up in a few weeks.

JustinSane07

Well I tried the live CD (well, USB actually) and it found the drive but couldn't mount it properly. It was throwing errors about the FAT table. Turns out the drive isn't XRS but rather FAT16 and probably corrupted. I'm trying to use a Data Recovery tool to get the data.

Joe K

JustinSane07 wrote:

Well I tried the live CD (well, USB actually) and it found the drive but couldn't mount it properly. It was throwing errors about the FAT table. Turns out the drive isn't XRS but rather FAT16 and probably corrupted. I'm trying to use a Data Recovery tool to get the data.

FAT tables are redundant (there's two physical copies of them), so unless you have a failing disk, you should be able to fsck/windows equivalent the problems away.

Quantux

Crazy thought, throw it in an open slot (if you have one) in a working snap (also if you have one), maybe you can mount it on that and copy the data to the existing FS on that appliance's array. Not sure what options you have on your particular model, I only have experience with the 4200 series and their awful implementation of busybox...