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The HP Mediavault is a fairly common RAID system.  It is more common for the RAID controller to fail than the disks.  Thus the user ends upm with a pair of good disks, but no means to read them.

With CnW RAID option, it is often possible to recover all of the files from the Reiser FS disk drives.  To enable the RAID option on the demo program, please contact CnW at  info@cnwrecovery.com

How to recognise the disks?

HP Media vault disks have a non standard boot sector, ie sector 0.  A typical sector is boot sector is shown below.

00000000   42 72 6F 61 64 63 6F 6D - 20 4E 41 53 20 56 65 72    Broadcom NAS Ver

00000010   73 69 6F 6E 20 31 2E 31 - 20 4D 42 52 20 54 61 67    sion 1.1 MBR Tag

00000020   00 00 00 10 18 01 10 31 - 53 59 53 54 45 4D 00 00       
1SYSTEM 

00000030   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00                   

00000040   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00                   

00000050   00 00 00 00 DA C6 87 74 - 21 EB 1C D0 D8 E0 A6 74        ÚƇt!ëÐØà¦t

00000060   95 58 19 0D 00 00 00 00 - F2 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    •X     ò      

The important part of the boot sector is the string 'Broadcom NAS Version 1.1 MBR tag'.  However, it is quite common for boot sectors to be overwritten by well meaning people trying to create a valid boot sector.  Thus sector 1 can also be examined and is quite distintive. Examples of sector 1 are shown below

Disk 1

00000000   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0A - 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00                  

00000010   00 00 00 00 00 02 00 0C - 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00                 

00000020   00 00 00 00 00 13 42 50 - 00 00 00 00 22 DB 7E E0         BP    "Û~à

00000030   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00                   

Disk 2

00000000   00 00 00 00 00 0F 42 4C - 00 00 00 00 01 2A 05 F2         BL   
*ò

00000010   00 00 00 00 3A 44 6B 92 - 00 00 00 00 1D 0F FB 5E        :Dk’    û^

00000020   00 00 00 00 01 39 48 40 - 00 00 00 00 39 09 D0 D4       
9H@    9 ÐÔ

The secotors above have two pieces of information, the start of a section, and the length.  The numbers are big endian, 64 bit numbers.  Disk 1 typically starts with 2 control sections, followed by data section(s).

Configurations

The Broadcom is meant to come in various configurations, including RAID 1 and JBOD.  For RAID 1, both disks should be identical and so can be read without the RAID option.  For RAID 1, the total capacity will be the same as a single drive.  Both drives will need to be the same capacity

JBOD is when disks are added, maybe separately and the total capacity is nearly the same as the two drives added together.  Drives can be different capacities.  To read this type of drive, RAID JBOD option is required.

The final configuration is as two serparate drives.  For this the RAID option is not required and CnW will read each disk as a Reiser drive

To recovery HP MediaVault JBOD

The first stage is to create a new RAID configuration and give it a name (such as Broadcom, or HPVault). Enter the drives being used - or drive images, along with the number of drives.  Also set the configuration to be JBOD

Select the JBOD configuration screen and select Analyse.  This should fill in the location boxes and lengths.

The configuration is now complete, so select 2: - RAID as the drive type

Select Recover, and if all OK, the Resiser FS format should be seen, and the Unix options screen will be displayed.  Select the location for the data to be recovered to, and press OK.