Hey there, i'm completely new to unraid - and have likely done something stupid.

 

I was setting up unraid for the first time last night. I have three disks, 2 of which had data.

 

I added all three disks to the array (blank disk as parity; and other two as normal disks), and started up the array.

 

The array failed to start up, as the disks (containing data) were not formatted correctly.

 

I did not format the disks.

 

After that point of "starting" the array for the first time, i'm no longer able to read from the drives that previously had data. I've re-attached them to the ubuntu system they were previously mounted to, but can't mount them in that system.

 

I'm guessing i'm completely out of luck here and have lost my data, but thought i'd check in case there's something i can do to save it.

 

Thanks

What was the filesystem of the drives?

When you add a disk to unRAID if it does not contain the exact partition structure that unRAID expects then the partition table is rewritten.  This means that in effect all existing data on a drive partitioned outside unRAID is lost on adding the disk to unRAID.

 

Since you did not press the format button then it might be possible to recover the data by reconstructing the partition table back to what it used to be.    However this relies on you having that information available.  It is also possible depending on what file system was in use for the appropriate recovery tool to recover the data anyway.

 

Having said that the easiest way to proceed would be to recover the data from your backups (I assume you have backups?).

What was the filesystem of the drives?

ext4

 

Thanks for the clarification @itimpi. In my infinite wisdom, i attached both the primary disk and the backup disk to unraid (i know, i can't believe it either). So effectively both are currently lost. Thankfully, the data isn't irreplaceable just a huge pain in the ass to reassemble.

 

Can you point me in the direction of how i would reconstruct the partition table? I'm about ready to move forward and consider the data lost, but figure it's worth spending a little more time if there's any hope.

 

Thanks

I would grab a copy of Testdisk, make the live CD with it and use it to recover (on an appropriate machine with a CD drive, or use a bootable USB drive).  It should be able to 'fix' the drives fairly quickly.

Just wanted to give an update, using Testdisk i was able to recover my data. Thanks for the help all. Painful (time-consuming) lesson, but thankfully it worked out in the end.