USB Boot Drive is toast - No backup/screenshot

[caimakale]

Long story short, my USB drive is toast. It happens. It's over 10 years old. Can't read it, windows views it as a RAW disk and wants to format it. I've tried everything from moving it to a new USB slot, etc...all with no luck.

 

I have setup a new USB drive and transferred my key to it. Now I need to start the array. Herein lies the problem. I don't know what my array config was and don't have a backup (I don't think, anyway). I used to have a script back it up, but stopped using it a couple months ago. Problem is, it would be saved on my cache drive. Should I just load up all disks as disks to figure out which ones have data and which ones were parity? Then stop the array and reassign the parity drives (I run two) and rebuild the parity?

 

Or should I build the cache pool, assign those drives (I know which drives were my cache) as well as the 8TB and lower disks (also know those were all data drives) and see if my config is backed up on my cache?

[Lolight]

1 hour ago, caimakale said:

Long story short, my USB drive is toast. It happens. It's over 10 years old. Can't read it, windows views it as a RAW disk and wants to format it. I've tried everything from moving it to a new USB slot, etc...all with no luck.

Try to repair it with https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

[itimpi]

 

3 hours ago, caimakale said:

Should I just load up all disks as disks to figure out which ones have data and which ones were parity? Then stop the array and reassign the parity drives (I run two) and rebuild the parity?

 

You may find this section of the online documentation useful in sorting out your array drives.

[caimakale]

On 8/12/2023 at 10:51 PM, Lolight said:

Try to repair it with https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Tried this, it couldn't find anything. Appreciate the suggestion, I'm going to hold on to this program!

 

On 8/13/2023 at 1:06 AM, itimpi said:

 

 

You may find this section of the online documentation useful in sorting out your array drives.

Ultimately ended up using the Unassigned Devices plugin to find my parity drives. I wasn't sure of the order of the disks so after assigning my parity drives, I just assigned everything else to a slot (and created the cache pool with my two cache drives) and started the array. Parity is rebuilding but nothing was lost. My setup isn't that complex so rebuilding parity and reinstalling the Docker apps was the most challenging thing...and that is pretty simple stuff.

 

While the USB may not have been backed up anywhere, all of my important files are backed up to Crashplan so I wasn't up against a catastrophic data loss or anything. Even setting up the Docker containers again was a breeze because all of the data is saved on the cache drive. It recognized everything and I was back in business within minutes of starting the array.

 

Thanks for the help!

[itimpi]

16 minutes ago, caimakale said:

While the USB may not have been backed up anywhere, all of my important files are backed up to Crashplan so I wasn't up against a catastrophic data loss or anything.

 

You can get automatic backups of the flash drive if you have the MyServers or the Appdata Backup plugins installed.   In addition the Appdata Backup plugin would give you automated periodic backups of the appdata folder if it is on the cache.   There is also a VM backup plugin if you have VM vdisks on the cache.