[SOLVED]Yet ANOTHER...'Replacing Drives' Question

[JonathanM]

1 minute ago, CDLehner said:

Oh, wow; that was quicker than I thought it would be.

Yes, formatting is a quick operation, it just sets up a blank filesystem, it doesn't actually overwrite the storage area of the disk. That's why formatting to XFS may, possibly, hopefully, be somewhat recoverable, since the actual data wasn't overwritten, just the table of contents. We just have to sort through all the raw data that doesn't have any references to tell which file is what and where the files start and end. ReiserFS is actually pretty robust at being able to recover from this sort of thing, we just have to convince it to try.

 

All file recovery software does roughly the same thing, walks the entire surface of the disk to try and piece together files from a mess of bits with no valid table of contents. Some files have distinct markers that make it easier to figure out, but it all comes down to how well it can make good guesses as to what went where.

[JonathanM]

9 minutes ago, CDLehner said:

Oh, wow; that was quicker than I thought it would be.

BTW, the scan whole partition rebuild tree could take a LONG time.

[CDLehner]

Oh snap; obviously I am not used to TelNet/PuTTY. So I was thinking “replaying journal: no transactions found” was an end and bad news.

 

Of course, it’s running something…or I’d be back to my [email protected] prompt.

[JonathanM]

1 minute ago, CDLehner said:

Oh snap; obviously I am not used to TelNet/PuTTY. So I was thinking “replaying journal: no transactions found” was an end and bad news.

 

Of course, it’s running something…or I’d be back to my [email protected] prompt.

Yep. no transactions found is expected, you just wrote a healthy blank ReiserFS filesystem to the device. Now it's digging across the entire partition to see what it can find.

[CDLehner]

Cool. Now comes the holding of breath, and praying.

 

Listen...no matter the outcome; you guys have been awesome, to hold my hand through this.

 

Thanks 

[JonathanM]

Don't hold your breath, it'll kill you before the command returns. (I know, figure of speech, but just wanted to adjust your expectations)

I've literally waited DAYS for reiserfs commands, but they always had a good outcome for me.

Seriously, stop checking on it every few minutes. Check every couple hours or so.

[CDLehner]

Oh, I know. I'm around 50% unless there's a next step. Which...if it's days, not hours; there must be.

 

No hurries; no worries.

[JonathanM]

1 hour ago, CDLehner said:

Which...if it's days, not hours; there must be.

Depends, I've had commands run for various lengths of time. I suspect it has to do with the number of files and directories it has to sort through.

[CDLehner]

[CDLehner]

OK; it's done...with a whole laundry-list of "stuff".

 

What now?

[trurl]

5 minutes ago, CDLehner said:

with a whole laundry-list of "stuff"

Could you provide more details?

[CDLehner]

^ There’s probably 200 lines of “stuff”.

[JonathanM]

Start the array and see if the drive is mountable in Unassigned Devices.

[CDLehner]

OK. Give me about an hour.

 

Thanks

[CDLehner]

Try to mount?

 

 

 

[JonathanM]

Yep. Then browse it and see what you see.

[CDLehner]

^ FWIW; it does show this...

 

 

Space used. Sorry; how do I view contents of (an unassigned) unR drives?

Edited February 13 by CDLehner

[trurl]

9 hours ago, CDLehner said:

view contents of (an unassigned)

In its settings, you can share it on the network.

 

At the command line, it will appear under /mnt/disks

[itimpi]

9 hours ago, CDLehner said:

^ FWIW; it does show this...

 

 

Space used. Sorry; how do I view contents of (an unassigned) unR drives?

You can also click on the blue text against partition 1 to browse its contents from the GUI. 

 

Ideally you want the Dynamix File Manager plugin installed to to get the best file management experience from the GUI.

[CDLehner]

Start with this?

 

[trurl]

What is in lost+found?

[CDLehner]

Miles and miles...of this kind of thing

 

[trurl]

That's all the stuff repair couldn't figure out. Linux 'file' command might be able to tell you what kind of data is in a file so you can maybe open it to see what it is. Maybe not worth the trouble.

 

I doubt some other file recovery application is going to do much better, but I guess you could try.

[CDLehner]

^ No; I'm about ready to stop flogging this thing.

 

I guess my only question is; it would be cool to know, how big these dirs...other than 'lost+found...are.

 

If I've 2.83T on that drive; and 2T of it is L+F...I'll know not to expect much. Is there a way, to get these dir sizes?

 

 

 

[itimpi]

The entries in List+Found always tend to have cryptic names.    However in the case of folders appearing there the contents of the folder often have their correct names so you can work out what the folder name should be.