I really messed up and formatted a disk in the array. How to I protect whats left on the array?


wtfcr0w

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Having a rough morning. Sorry if I leave any details out. My anxiety is through the roof.

 

Yesterday I started having issues with unRAID, got a message from my mac saying one of my shares were full even though I had more than 4TB available. Checked unRAID and saw an error that the parity was disabled due to errors. Diagnosed it to be a bad drive (brand new 5 months ago), disconnected it and packed it for warranty replacement.

 

This morning, I totally forgot I packed it (sleep depravation) and went to format the disk in unRAID. Well, I have a second disk that is the same model and it is part of the array which is only two disks. I formatted a disk that was part of the array. Rebooted and now it is showing the disk as disabled and I don't want to move unless I can get files I desperately need.

 

I kept only shares for movies and TV on the one that I formatted, so I am not too worried about that. I am worried about my personal photos and files on the other disk that was not formatted, this disk had shares only for things like this.

 

How should I go about, if at all possible, getting those files backed up? Can I just use the new config tool and add that one disk to the array and it will have the files? Or is there a better/safer way of doing this?

 

I am very desperate to get these files back as they are files/photos over the last decade+ of my daughter being born, family, financial docs, etc...

 

Thank you for any help. 

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I was not trying to rebuild. The parity drive was bad so I pulled it so I can have it replaced. This morning I forgot that I pulled the defective parity disk and went to wipe it, but since it is the same model/brand as another disk in my array I wiped a disk in my array by mistake. I wanted to try to wipe the parity before sending it back to the manufacturer.

 

I simply wiped a 4TB disk in the array containing movies/TV in a 2 disk array by using fdisk/mkfs.ext4 etc...

 

I do not have access to the files I want to keep because I have not attempted to restart the array as the disk that I wiped by mistake is showing as disabled and I do not want to lose any of my personal data I keep in the shares on the disk that is still in tact. I wanted to make sure I got any advice from the pros here before making any move.

 

Thank you for any help. You have no idea how grateful I am.

 

Diagnostics:

 

io-diagnostics-20210925-1110.zip

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You were lucky in that if is disk is disabled then Unraid stops writing to the physical drive.    Hopefully the disabled drive had not completely failed and if that is the case then as suggested going the New Config route will result in UnRaid treating it as though it is good and will try to mount it.   If this turns out not to be the case then come back  detailing exactly what happens when you try this.   Whatever you do, do NOT try to format a drive.

 

BTW:  there was no need to do what you tried to wipe the parity disk.   The parity disk contains no file system, and the sectors on it are meaningless unless one has access to the ‘good’ disks in the array so no chance of anyone working out your data.

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