Desperate help needed, HDs accidentally added to pool but not formatted

[Dailen]

I started setting up unRAID on my desktop, thinking I could setup an OS to run Windows and passthru my GTX570Ti and run some containers for some other stuff like. What I failed to realize was that selecting hard drives to use, didn't just make them available to use but it was prepping them to be part of the array. I was explicitly making sure nothing said "format" but didn't know that it was going to alter the hard drive even before I mount or format them. I had two sets of hard drives that were mirrored for redundancy using Microsoft's Disk Management.

 

The drives were immediately blank, I assumed it hadn't formatted them since it didn't say "format" or present any sort of warning. So I began my recovery efforts and it's been absolute hell. I've recovered data off hard drives before but this is by far the least yield for my efforts in all my experiences. I first attempted using partition recovery tool but it could only recover PART of the file structure and all the video files I had (and only video files) were completely lost from one set. The other set it recovered more or less 80% but that last 20% turned out to be the only stuff I had stored nowhere else. The video files are no big deal, I can just suck it up and get over that. The second set that lost about 20% has turned out to be pretty detrimental. I didn't format the drives. I didn't "repair" the drives. I didn't reuse the drives or store anything else on them. It should have been a best case scenario for recovery. 

 

To get to the point, I'm wondering what exactly unRAID did to the drives to prepare them for the array? Maybe knowing what it did would help my recovery efforts. I'm just at a complete loss here, I've had some close calls and spent endless hours recovering files but never had a bunch of files just disappear. Corrupted maybe, bad headers, incomplete files. But nothing? This is unreal.

 

Any information you can provide is EXTREMELY appreciated!

[JonathanM]

 

[Dailen]

Partition changes I can generally handle, got a program for that to "undo" partition changes. Now when this happens though it usually leaves files intact though albeit hidden. What I don't get it why there was so much "damage". So I guess this is when it would partition it for XFS?

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, Dailen said:

Partition changes I can generally handle, got a program for that to "undo" partition changes. Now when this happens though it usually leaves files intact though albeit hidden. What I don't get it why there was so much "damage". So I guess this is when it would partition it for XFS?

The only change unRAID makes when you add them to the array (but do not format them) is to rewrite the partition table to the standard unRAID expects.   Others in similar circumstances to what you describe have succcessfully recovered the partitions (and thus all the files).    There was obviously some other factor at play in your case but it is not obvious what it was.

[Dailen]

That's actually kind of helpful. it does clarify what COULDN'T have happened! Thanks! 

 

You know the irony of all this is that losing this data is exactly why I need unRAID lol