Member Avatar for Casey_1

I had purchased a Netgear Stora for back up and after a year the fan went out so now the device won't start. I took out the HDD (Seagate 1TB 3") and purchased a Dynex enclosure so that I am able to access the disk.

Win7 installs the driver and says it's ready for use but is not listed under my computer.

I went to disk management to assign a drive letter and I don't have an option to do it. I see the drive but no letter and no option to assign, change, delete, format drive.

I went to device manager and I can see a USB storage device with 1TB. I uninstalled, installed, updated driver.

I have a lot of data that I need to access.

Please help.

Thanks,

Casey

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rubberman

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Short, practical guidance and a safety-first checklist for (and anyone who finds a NAS disk behaving the same way). Do NOT initialize, format, or let Windows write to the disk — the Disk Management “Initialize Disk” or “Format” actions will overwrite the partition table and can destroy recoverable data. Because many consumer NAS boxes use Linux filesystems (and sometimes LVM or software RAID), Windows will often see the physical disk but not offer a drive letter.

Quick inspection (no changes)

  • In Disk Management: click the disk number (left column) → Properties → Volumes → Populate to see partition types.
  • From an elevated command prompt use DiskPart to enumerate without writing:
diskpart
list disk
select disk N    (replace N with the disk number)
list partition
list volume
exit

If you see partitions but no NTFS/FAT type, Windows simply can’t mount them.

Safe ways to get files off

  • Read-only Linux method (recommended, minimal risk): boot a Linux live USB (Ubuntu or another distro), identify the drive (sudo fdisk -l), then mount the partition read-only and copy files to a separate NTFS-formatted USB/drive:
sudo mkdir /mnt/stora
sudo mount -o ro /dev/sdXN /mnt/stora   (replace sdXN with correct partition)
cp -a /mnt/stora/path/to/data /media/your-ntfs-drive/
  • Windows alternatives: use a read-only tool such as DiskInternals Linux Reader or a commercial extfs driver. Avoid enabling Windows write access (Ext2Fsd has risky write support).

Other important notes

  • Confirm the Dynex enclosure supplies the correct power for a 3.5" drive (3.5" drives often need an external adapter; USB-only enclosures can appear but not power a 3.5" properly).
  • If the drive clicks, reports SMART errors, or behaves intermittently, stop and consider imaging the disk first (ddrescue) or a professional recovery service — continued attempts can make recovery much harder.

Do not initialize or format the disk in Windows; use read-only mounting or imaging first so the original data stays intact.

Member Avatar for rubberman

A lot of these storage devices use an embedded Linux OS to provide access to your data. It may not be directly accessible from Windows. I would suggest that you download/burn a Live Linux CD/DVD, boot that, mount the external drive as well as your Windows drive, and copy the data to the standard Windows partition(s). If you don't have enough space, then you will need to get another drive, format it for Windows (NTFS - NOT FAT), and then copy the data from the Netgear drive to that.

Alternatively, if it IS using a Linux partition, then you can find Linux disc drivers for Windows on the web. Google is your friend! :-)

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