I’m posting this article in hope that it helps others who have a failing (WD Elements 4TB) HDD. I spent over a week trying out different solutions that all failed. First, the situation:
My legacy Tablo kept loosing connectivity. After several reboots and all the support recommended approaches, the Tablo would either connect without finding the HDD or loose connection while trying to playback recordings. Support recommended I replace the HDD but offered no way to rescue my 3.5 TB of saved recordings. I purchased a 20TB Seagate expansion HDD. When I plugged it in and formatted it, the Tablo began working fine so it was certain the HDD had problems. Now I had to try to rescue the recordings.
With the help of Google, I discovered the Tablo uses a Linix EXT4 file structure (which is not natively readable on Windows). So I began testing a variety of free and trial apps to see if I could read the EXT4 files. Many of the apps (Ext2fsd, LinuxReader, LinuxRecovery, Grysnc, Paragon EXTFS for Windows, AOMEI Partition Assistant) allowed me to see what was on the disc but were unable to copy the disk to my new Seagate HDD. Most of the apps would not recognize the 20TB drive after they mounted the WD HDD.
I was not sure about the Tablo file structure so my initial attempts were to clone the disk. Since the disk was failing the clone procedure failed when the program tried to read the bad sectors. I was unable to find settings that would keep the clone going but skip the bad sectors. After 30 hours of recovery activity the cloning software just froze up. So I tried a different approach in hopes that the file structure was not a proprietary format. I opened the folders and copied a few files from the REC folder to my windows HDD and discovered that the folders contained segments of recorded videos which I could play on my Windows 10 computer. This gave me hope that I could copy all the files and the database to the new HDD and it might work. My dilemma was to find a software program that would mount the Linix partition and make it readable then copy to the new Seagate HDD. I finally found Disk Genius.
The free version of Disk Genius did everything I needed. It allowed me to mount both drives and then copy ALL FILES to the new EXT4 partition on the Seagate HDD. The copy process was clean and showed the status of the copy as it proceeded for 23 hours. When it was complete, I plugged the Seagate HDD into the Tablo which recognized the drive and made most of the recorded shows accessible. Some shows were missing (due to bad sectors on the old HDD) but most were fully copied and readable. Going through shows with multiple seasons (like 18 years of NCIS), I chose the option to DELETE FAILED which removed all the database entries where the files could not be copied. I recovered about 95% of all my recordings and expanded my HDD from 4TB to 20TB.
I wish everyone the best luck replacing your HDD and recovering your shows. Disk Genius does the job. Just be sure not to factory reset your Tablo which would remove all the shows from your recordings tab. I’m not sure if Tablo would rebuild them from the database in the file system. Tablo can be used to format your new HDD and make the entire drive available for storage (20TB in my case). Disk Genius can also be used to format the EXT4 partition on the new HDD but the Tablo makes it easy without needing to understand all the settings. Then copy all the files; you don’t need a disk image for the Tablo to recognize and connect to the recordings.
FYI, I have no connection to any of the product vendors in this post. I’m just a Tablo customer. Hope this helps.