I'm sure this is probably covered somewhere in the forums but any help would be greatly appreciated. I was upgrading my hard drive in my server and switched an IDE drive out with a sata drive. When the server booted back up it didn't see the drive (I didn't realize I needed to go to devices and select it at the time). I click the wrong button and cleared everything. I then realized I had to go to devices and select the drive. I did that and began the parity sync. When it was done all the data was gone. I have the old drive with the data on it. I tried to recover it with knoppix and ubuntu but the files are locked and I can't copy them. If I plug the old drive back into the server will it see the data and not overwrite it? Or is there a better way of going about recovering the data? Keep in mind I am not very experienced with Linux.

Just so we don't make any mistakes in advising you, I'd like some clarifications first.  What was the 'wrong button' you clicked?  What do you mean exactly, by 'cleared everything'?

 

You should be able to re-install the old drive, mount it, and copy the files from it.  The easiest way is to use the UnMENU add on to mount and identify the drive.  The How-To's wiki page has several How To's that should be helpful, whether you use UnMENU or not.

I'm sure this is probably covered somewhere in the forums but any help would be greatly appreciated. I was upgrading my hard drive in my server and switched an IDE drive out with a sata drive. When the server booted back up it didn't see the drive (I didn't realize I needed to go to devices and select it at the time). I click the wrong button and cleared everything. I then realized I had to go to devices and select the drive. I did that and began the parity sync. When it was done all the data was gone. I have the old drive with the data on it. I tried to recover it with knoppix and ubuntu but the files are locked and I can't copy them. If I plug the old drive back into the server will it see the data and not overwrite it? Or is there a better way of going about recovering the data? Keep in mind I am not very experienced with Linux.

 

I'm going to try and translate.  Please confirm that this is what really happened.  This is a so incredibly easy mistake to make!  It is therefore so important for unRAID users to understand how to avoid making the mistake!!!

 

1.  Your array was working fine

2.  You powered down and replaced an IDE drive with a SATA drive

3.  When you booted back up, the IDE drive was missing.  (Normally when this happens, unRAID will put the new drive into the slot and give it a blue icon.  I've noticed this does not always happen).

4.  You pressed the dreaded "restore" button.

5.  unRAID turned all the drives blue

6.  You went to the devices page and assigned your new disk to the empty slot

7.  You started the array.

8.  You pressed the format button to format the new disk.

9.  unRAID rebuilt parity

 

So now, from your perspective, all of the data on the upsized disk is gone.

 

The fundamental flaw you made was pressing the restore.  DON'T EVER EVER PRESS THAT BUTTON unless you confirm here!  It is very poorly named and does not "restore" anything, except a base configuration in which no array exists.  Parity is lost.  The ability to rebuild a failed disk is lost.  The ability to upsize an existing disk is lost. All is lost until unRAID rebuilds parity with the disks that are in the array at that time.

 

That's exactly what happened.  You removed a disk from the array.  Reset the array to a base configuration.  Assigned the new disk to the array.  Started the array.  Parity was calculated with the contents of the disks in the server at that time.

 

I think you know that what you should have done is immediately gone to the devices page and assigned the new disk to the slot vacated by the IDE disk.  Back on the main page it should have said something about rebuilding the new disk.  You would then start the array and the contents of the old disk would have been rebuild onto the new disk.

 

You are lucky that you were upsizing a disk and not replacing a failed disk.  Had it been the latter, you'd have lost all of the data on that disk.  But in this situation, it will be easy (albeit a bit time consuming) to get your data copied over.  Follow RobJ's instructions.  Post back with any questions.

 

I would suggest you take some time to read the FAQ, troubleshooting, and "Best of the Forums" (see my sig and RobJ's sig for links to these three most important sources of information).  This topic is well covered, as well as many other topics to allow you to have a positive experience with unRAID.

 

Good luck!

Yes that is what happened and now for more tales of my idiocies.

I setup a new unraid server on a separate computer and plugged the old drive with the data on it in.

My plan was to mount the hard drive by itself as a data drive and try to copy the information. All went well until I added the drive under devices. I mistakenly added the drive as a parity drive and started the array. As soon as I hit the start button I knew something was wrong and I stopped it. Apparently that was all it needed to make the drive totally unreadable. So now I can't mount it or view any information. I installed SUSE and used a reiserfs recovery program to see if it would recovery anything and it couldn't. So I'm guessing I'm out of luck unless someone knows of something that may work.

Might I suggest that you locate a local computer geek to help you out in setting this up?  No offense, but it would seem that you are prone to doing things without enough forethought.  You may gain a good friend in the process.

 

Ok reading the forums I found the Data Recovery Experience were someone did about the same thing as me. Here's a link to it if your  not sure of the one I'm refering too.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1483.0

In it he says he ran “reiserfsck /dev/md1” I'm assuming the command would be the same for me if I assign the disk to disk 1?

Also, it asks him what version of the reiserfs he is running. How do I find that out? It has been a while since I setup the orignal unraid server and I'm not sure what version it is.

Might I suggest that you locate a local computer geek to help you out in setting this up?  No offense, but it would seem that you are prone to doing things without enough forethought.  You may gain a good friend in the process.

 

 

Actually I followed the manual.  Replace a single disk with a bigger one

 

This is the case where you are replacing a single small disk with a bigger one:

 

  1. Stop the array.

  2. Power down the unit.

  3. Replace smaller disk with new bigger disk.

  4. Power up the unit.

  5. Start the array.

 

When you start the array, the system will reconstruct the contents of the original smaller disk onto the new disk. Upon completion, the disk's file system will be expanded to reflect the new size. You can only expand one disk at a time.

 

If you are replacing your existing Parity disk with a bigger one, then when you Start the array, the system will simply start a parity sync onto the new Parity disk.

 

A special case exists when the new bigger disk is also bigger than the existing parity disk. In this case you must use your new disk to first replace parity, and then replace your small disk with your old parity disk:

 

 

Besides the excellent thread you found, and the advice above, the FAQ has 3 entries of interest to you, with important links.

• What if I accidentally assign a data drive to the parity slot?
  
• How do I recover data from an unRAID disk?
  
• How can I undelete files from an unRAID disk?
  

Yes that is what happened and now for more tales of my idiocies.

I setup a new unraid server on a separate computer and plugged the old drive with the data on it in.

My plan was to mount the hard drive by itself as a data drive and try to copy the information. All went well until I added the drive under devices. I mistakenly added the drive as a parity drive and started the array. As soon as I hit the start button I knew something was wrong and I stopped it. Apparently that was all it needed to make the drive totally unreadable. So now I can't mount it or view any information. I installed SUSE and used a reiserfs recovery program to see if it would recovery anything and it couldn't. So I'm guessing I'm out of luck unless someone knows of something that may work.

 

Not sure if you noticed, but that data recovery experience was me when I was a newbie!

 

How long did your drive stay in the parity slot getting slaughtered?  The longer the worse it is.  Mine was in there maybe 30 seconds before I pulled the plug.

 

The recovery process is quite lengthy, but ultimately I got back the lion's share of what I had lost.  Hopefullly you will also.

 

The revsion of ReiserFS has not changed (3.6).  If you have any questions as you go through the process, feel free to ask.

 

BTW - putting a data disk in the parity slot is the quickest way I know to reset a disk so that it will be reformatted.  I recently tried that trick with 4.2.2 (I think) and found that unRAID would not start the array with only one disk assigned to the parity slot.  Just when you find a use for a bug - the bug is fixed. 

 

Good luck to you!

The drive was only in the parity slot a few seconds since I clicked the start button and then the light bulb went on that I screwed up. I don't think it got past more than 1 or 2 %.

However

I ran the reiserfsck with the rebuild tree switch it did its thing and stopped and restarted the server and voila my files are back. There was nothing in the lost and found folder so I'm guessing it recovered everything. I am copying them back to my main server now and will follow with a parity sync and a giant sigh of relief. Thanks alot everyone for your help I greatly appreciate it!!

 

Guess my next step is to try and learn some Linux on my newly created Linux box and see how bad I can fubar that!!

1-2% in a few seconds?  Seems too fast.  I'll bet it was more like .1% or less.  It also recovered very fast - mine took all night.  You must have stopped it quicker than I did.

 

The good news is that you've learned a lot and not lost any data.  Next time you'll know what to do and won't have these problems.