I was wanting to move my movie library from one share to another for hardlinking purposes. I asked as to the best way to achieve that. Most suggested using Krusader. I decided to go that route. I basically navigated to the old directory in one panel and then opened the target directory in the other panel. I highlighted all of my movies and right clicked and then selected "move to other panel" assuming this would take the entire hightlighted contents and move them to the other panel on the screen. they all just disappeared. Now, if I navigate to the original directory (either via windows explorer or within raid), both folders are now empty. Ironically, the array is still showing that the space is still occupied from the movies. Did I just delete everything or is there a way to recover?

First thing (and most important), do not panic.   If you are moving a lot of files, I suspect that everything is happening in the background.  Just wait for a few hours.  (Hard, I know...) 

i'm watching this one cos i intended (not now) to do this soon ... wish you luck.

Edited April 9, 20224 yr by superloopy1

Ok, whew, that was scary. Not sure what happened, but I found the "undo" in Krusader. I clicked that and all the files are back in the source directory again. I'm not certain what happened, but it scared the poo out of me. I'll start a new post inquiring as how to properly move files between shares. Thanks for the replies guys.

sounds like it had done someting though if you could undo it so maybe not that bad. Maybe try with a smaller 'sample' next time ...

I would try moving them in small blocks/numbers-of-files.  I am not sure how Krusader works but I know that Windows Explorer sets the whole thing up first.  (I can see it going through and tabulating all of the files...)  Then it does the move. 

 

Another issue.  Does the directory you are moving to exists on every disk where the original directory exists?  What you are wanting to do is change the file pointer from one directory to another directory.  That is a very quick operation requiring only writing a few bytes in the file table.  Otherwise, you have to do a copy-then-delete operation.  That could take days with 2000 movie-size files!!!

 

This may be one of those cases where you want to be operating in a   Disk Share    mode rather than in a   User Share    mode.