I've got my first unRAID server up and running, and I'm about to start pre clearing my first set of disks. But I got cold feet just before I started and wanted to double check that I don't have any data left on those drives.

 

These drives were removed from the drive pool of a WHS, and the only way they might have any data is if for some reason they were in different slots in my case than I thought they were. Unfortunately, I had to disassemble my WHS to build my unRAID server, so I can't just plug them back into my WHS to check.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

EDIT: I should add that I tried to mount the drive by following the "Copy files from a NTFS drive" wiki article, but I got this error

 

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda,

      missing codepage or helper program, or other error

      In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try

      dmesg | tail  or so

 

Should I take that to mean the drive is empty?

I tried to mount a disk that I know has data on it with no luck either. Any suggestions?

I tried to mount a disk that I know has data on it with no luck either. Any suggestions?

no, it means you did not mount a "partition"  Typically, the partition would be /dev/hda1 or /dev/hda2

 

(the first and second partition of the disk)

THANKS! I didn't append the 1 to my drive ID. I missed that in the WIKI article.

 

I'm glad I checked because apparently I got one of my drives mixed up 

 

This is going to be a mess.

 

False alarm. Looks like WHS just left some extra directories after removing the drives from the pool. Looks like their ready for a pre clear.

 

Thanks again.

False alarm. Looks like WHS just left some extra directories after removing the drives from the pool. Looks like their ready for a pre clear.

 

Thanks again.

make sure you check for a second partition... Windows does things like that...

Thanks for the tip. I'll remember that in the future. I probably ready, fire, aimed this time through, but I did at least check to make sure the size of the drive matched what I expected, and aside from the space used by the empty directories, they appeared to be empty.

 

If there were other partitions unraid would report the size of the active partition, correct? Not the entire drive (I hope) 

Thanks for the tip. I'll remember that in the future. I probably ready, fire, aimed this time through, but I did at least check to make sure the size of the drive matched what I expected, and aside from the space used by the empty directories, they appeared to be empty.

 

If there were other partitions unraid would report the size of the active partition, correct? Not the entire drive (I hope) 

depends on which command you used that reported the size.

fdisk -lu /dev/sdX

is one way to see the partitioning and the full size.

I used

 

df -h

 

and the free space seemed correct for the entire drive.

 

fdisk commands make me nervous. I'm always a little concerned I'll use the wrong switch and repartition my drive by mistake 

I used

 

df -h

 

and the free space seemed correct for the entire drive.

 

fdisk commands make me nervous. I'm always a little concerned I'll use the wrong switch and repartition my drive by mistake 

fdisk -lu

is always safe.

Other fdisk commands require you to issue a "w" command to actually "write" the new partitioning info the disk, so are relatively safe if you just quit out of them.