January 25, 201016 yr Author Awesome, thanks again. Ok will let it run, I assume it will spit out some text when it finishes. So once the copy finishes running, what command lines do I run on the new drive copy to see what can be recovered?
January 25, 201016 yr Now, we really don't have any way to know how long it will take. But those are 1.5TB drives, so I expect it will be 6 or 8 hours or more. We are not writing to a parity protected array drive, so I'd expect write speeds somewhere near 50MB/s. Perhaps you'll get as high as 100MB/s. 50MB/s would be a bit over 8 hours, 100MB/s would be a bit over 4 hours, and that is probably as good as you'll get. You can open a second telnet session and type: killall -USR1 dd It will send a signal to the running "dd" process to request it print its progress so far. (You'll see the output in the first session with the running "dd" process) You can send the "killall -USR1 dd" every once in a while to see how it is doing. Joe L.
January 25, 201016 yr Awesome, thanks again. Ok will let it run, I assume it will spit out some text when it finishes. It will spit out some text. Don't get alarmed if it complains about reaching the end-of-file. It is just that it got to the end of the disk. we are not copying files, but each byte in turn on the disk. Therefore, every byte will be copied as an exact mirror image of the failed drive. The goal is to never touch the failed drive again. (Either we'll recover the files you need, or you'll send it to a service that might be able to recover the files, but in either case we do not need it once we have the copy you are now making to perform our attempt at recovery.) So once the copy finishes running, what command lines do I run on the new drive copy to see what can be recovered? It was good that the file-system check last night recommended a rebuild-tree. It is exactly what we will do, but will will add one more argument to the command to have it scan the entire disk, not just the things it currently thinks are invalid. This will have the side effect of creating a lost+found folder at the root of the drive and putting in it all the files, directories, and pieces of files it finds... even those deleted that were not subsequently overwritten. Those files will not have their correct names, as frequently it is the directory entries that were clobbered. You'll need to browse through whatever it recovers to find and identify your files. You may need to rename them to allow a specific program to open them. The byte level copy we are doing also has the side effect of copying the partition table and file-formatting present on the original disk, therefore, we'll run the new reiserfsck on /dev/sdd1 The command will be: reiserfsck -–scan-whole-partition -–rebuild-tree /dev/sdd1 When done, we can mount the new (hopefully fixed) partition using a mount command similar to the one I described earlier in this thread, but this time use mkdir /tmp/good_drive mount -r -t reiserfs /dev/sdd1 /tmp/good_drive I see you're proceeding at 85MB/s. Sounds good. Since you just started, it will be 6 or 7 hours when finished. (The outer cylinders on the disk hold more sectors than inner, therefore, it tends to slow down a bit later in the process. At least you can monitor how it is doing) I'll be at a class with my wife around that time (ballroom dancing, believe it or not ), but I'll be home about 9:30-10EST. let's hope the disk has some data you can recover. Do not touch or mount the original corrupted disk in the unRAID array. If this process recovers your files you'll need to assign the new drive to your array and will probably have to press "restore" to set a new initial configuration and start the process of calculating parity on the entire set of disks. If it fails, you might need to find a data recovery service. Joe L.
January 25, 201016 yr Author Assuming I mount the repaired drive and find some of my files recovered: Hitting the restore button sounds scary. It won't over-write the recovered files with what UnRaid thinks is parity and wipe out my files again? Any way to manually copy the recovered files to one of my other UnRaid disks with empty space before trying to bring the new disk into the array?
January 25, 201016 yr Assuming I mount the repaired drive and find some of my files recovered: Hitting the restore button sounds scary. It won't over-write the recovered files with what UnRaid thinks is parity and wipe out my files again? Any way to manually copy the recovered files to one of my other UnRaid disks with empty space before trying to bring the new disk into the array? Pressing "restore" immediately invalidates parity. It is as if you never had calculated it previously. Your issue earlier was you canceled the parity calc, then switched disks (or made it think you did) and you then restored with parity that did not correspond to your data disks. Unless you type a very special command line "command" between pressing "restore" and "start" the array will begin the process of creating an initial parity calculation when the array is started. No data drive will be clobbered or overwritten.
January 25, 201016 yr Author Ok, I understand better now thank you. 1.67 hours in with 498gigs copied. It has only slowed to 83.1 MB/s so it should be done in say 3.5 hours from now if it only slows a bit more. So when I assign the drive to the array, should I assign it to the same slot as the drive that I clobbered? And it won't ask to format it or anything?
January 25, 201016 yr Ok, I understand better now thank you. 1.67 hours in with 498gigs copied. It has only slowed to 83.1 MB/s so it should be done in say 3.5 hours from now if it only slows a bit more. So when I assign the drive to the array, should I assign it to the same slot as the drive that I clobbered? And it won't ask to format it or anything? You can put it in any slot you desire... (other than the parity slot) It should not ask you to format the drive. The process we are going through is copying the formatting from the old drive to the new along with the data.
January 25, 201016 yr Author If it does not recover anything, then should I just assign the new drive to the array and let it calculate parity? Then decide whether to send the old drive to a company or not. Ok, will update once I have attempted recovery.
January 25, 201016 yr If it does not recover anything, then should I just assign the new drive to the array and let it calculate parity? Then decide whether to send the old drive to a company or not. Ok, will update once I have attempted recovery. Exactly correct. the button labeled "recover" does not recover anything, never did. It is probably better labeled as a "Set Disk Configuration" button. The only time you need it in 99% of circumstances is if you are removing a disk from the array and are not replacing it within a short time-frame. (Let's say I was going to remove a tiny drive since I had previously added a huge one. I would use the button labeled "restore" after un-assigning the small disk. When I then start the array it will do a full parity calc without the tiny drive. Pressing "restore" saves a new disk configuration in the config/super.dat file based on the currently assigned and working disks, it immediately invalidates any prior parity you might have calculated.
January 25, 201016 yr Just to recap... You are currently copying your old clobbered disk to your new. The new disk will then contain an exact image of the clobbered disk. Then... You will run reiserfsck on the new disk with the rebuild-tree option I described earlier. You might want to post the output of that process. It should, if you are lucky, not ask for any further "fix" options be run. Note, since the reiserfsck to rebuild the file tree will need to scan the entire disk, it too will take probably 4 to 6 hours to perform the rebuild-tree on the new drive. We both might be asleep before it completes that step. Then, after posting the results of the "rebuild-tree" process you can mount the disk and see if your files are there. As I said, the folders and file names may not be accurate, but you can look through lost+found using "mc". It might be possible to identify files by their size... or their contents. Then, un-mount the new repaired disk, assign it to the unRAID array, press "restore" and then "start" Once the array is started you can look at the files using windows-explorer. You must realize you overwrote 25 Gig of stuff. Hopefully those will be movies and media files you loaded on the disk before using it for your business files. If you are a religious person, saying a little prayer right now might be in order. If not, just keep your fingers crossed. Joe L.
January 26, 201016 yr Author Well the power kicked off and took out my server, (guess I need a UPS eh?) so I'm starting the copy process now, meaning I will start the repair process late tonight, and post my results in the morning! I'm not religious, but I might make an exception tonight! Talk to you tomorrow, Rory
January 26, 201016 yr Author Ok got the copy to work after 3 tries, my windows pc with the telnet session kept going to sleep and cutting power to the network connection so I adjusted the power settings and voila. The repair program is now running.
January 26, 201016 yr Ok got the copy to work after 3 tries, my windows pc with the telnet session kept going to sleep and cutting power to the network connection so I adjusted the power settings and voila. The repair program is now running. I didn't think of that... sorry... I'll try to remember to warn the next person I attempt to help to turn off their screen-saver/sleep timers. When you said you lost power I just thought it was the commercial power you lost. I was going to suggest a UPS some time in your future. Joe L.
January 26, 201016 yr Author Repair process complete, there are indeed some directories & files in the lost+found. Did a restore, calculating new parity now. Not the files I needed unfortunately, but oh well, learned a lot in this process. Thank you so much for your help and in walking me though it, greatly appreciated. Rory
January 27, 201016 yr Repair process complete, there are indeed some directories & files in the lost+found. I was hoping you'd find the files you needed there. Others have reported the files were deep in a lost+found directory and they did not think they were recovered at first. Did a restore, calculating new parity now. When parity calc is completed, you'll be protected from a disk failure once more. Not the files I needed unfortunately, but oh well, learned a lot in this process. Thank you so much for your help and in walking me though it, greatly appreciated. Rory You are welcome. There's always plan "B" (send original clobbered disk to recovery service) Joe L.
January 27, 201016 yr Author There are quite a few files with no name, and no file extension, so I don't know what they are! In the meantime I have recovered a few of the important files through e-mail sent items, other people, etc. The rest I will just have to re-create! Lesson learned. Rory
January 27, 201016 yr There are quite a few files with no name, and no file extension, so I don't know what they are! In the meantime I have recovered a few of the important files through e-mail sent items, other people, etc. The rest I will just have to re-create! Lesson learned. Rory Your experience is one of the reasons I use CrashPlan to backup my important stuff and the stuff that would be a pain in the arse to recreate. The files that do not have endings and names are ones that you will just need to experiment with. I had to go through the process of recovering some files in a similar manner you did and I had to go through and rename a lot of things. I would just randomly add extensions to the end of the files and see if you can figure out what the files are.
January 27, 201016 yr Author I'll have to try some random re-naming. But given the dates on the files, it is older stuff so likely not what I need. Will also have to look into crash plan. Been operating my business for 1 year, time to do better backups I guess. Thanks for the help everyone, Rory
January 27, 201016 yr Does unRAID have the "file" command installed? If so, run "file filenametoexamine". File examines the provided filename content for known signatures in an attempt to identify what it is. file tests each argument in an attempt to classify it. There are three sets of tests, performed in this order: filesystem tests, magic tests, and language tests. The first test that succeeds causes the file type to be printed.
January 27, 201016 yr ...no file extension, so I don't know what they are! You speak of file extension, you must be in windows. So, if you want to inspect inside the file, get Frhed: http://frhed.sourceforge.net/
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