Flash Drive Corrupt and No Backup

[dhy8386]

I posted in the 4.4 Section as well and i know there are several posts on this but I cannot find the exact answer. My wife slammed a bag into the USB drive I am using for my unRAID server. It was bent 90 degrees. When i took it out and examined, it looked ok and i carefully bent back into place. However, now unRAID will not load. When i place the USB into my win7 machine, it says device not formatted. Its showing as an untitled volume. I cant run a scandisk or chkdsk on it since its showing as unformatted. When i plug into my mac side, it mounts and i can open. I see the files but majority of them are named scrambled ascii characters and will not copy (i get a -36 error). These files are all listed as 0KB and as alias files. I tried to do a repair disk in disk utility but that seems to have done nothing.

 

I am assuming this drive is corrupt and unfixable. But my real problem is that i havent backed it up (stupid) in a safe place and instead the backup is on a user share on the unRAID server i call backups (another stupid thing i did). If i create a new unRAID flash drive, what will happen to my existing data in the RAID? Is there a way to salvage all of this even if it means recreating the shares (of which I only had 2 - one for movies and one for backups.

 

I am posting here only cause 4.4 was the latest version I had deployed. If i should post somewhere else please let me know.

 

Thanks and any help would be much appreciated.

[PeterB]

First of all, unRAID is not a RAID system ... each of the data drives can be used on its own, provided that your O/S supports reiserfs - data from individual files is not split across drives.  Your data will not be lost simply because you have to use an another USB drive.  I suspect that this is not simply 'corruption' on the USB drive - much more likely that there is physical damage - so you will have to replace the drive.

 

I'm guessing that you're using the free, two data drive, version of unRAID.  If so, there will be no issues with the USB key registration.

 

Simply use another USB drive, install unRAID onto it, and boot it up.  You will have to reconfigure your drive assignments.  If you cannot remember which drive is which, I suggest that you don't set a parity drive, but try each drive configured as a data drive and try accessing the data on it.  This will, hopefully, allow you to determine which drive is which and reinstate your original configuration.  Then, enable user shares, and all your data should be back and accessible, exactly as it was prior to 'the incident'!

 

Oh, as an aside, try to use the smallest (physically) USB drive you can find, and install it in a USB slot adjacent to other connectors, preferably at the rear of the computer - this will afford it the best possible protection.

[dhy8386]

Thanks!

 

I actually have a pro version license. I have 8 drives, a mix of 1TB and 500GB drives. Of the 4 1TB i know one is the parity drive and I will have to determine which one - but assuming i can figure that out...If i set the correct drive back to the parity slot, does it matter which disk assignment (disk 1 through disk 7) i give to the other 7 drives? Answering my own question, I think it does matter so if i cannot remember where each of the 7 HDs was originally assigned, its still ok to randomly assign them but I will then have to do a restore/initconfig? Or would just starting the array again cause the parity drive to rebuild and overwrite the .dat file where the disk assignments are stored?

 

Sorry i just want to make sure i do this correctly. I already wrote to Tom to try and get my new USB reassigned to my pro license.

 

Once i get that, i will need to attempt the above.

[Rob_Esc]

Simply use another USB drive, install unRAID onto it, and boot it up.  You will have to reconfigure your drive assignments.  If you cannot remember which drive is which, I suggest that you don't set a parity drive, but try each drive configured as a data drive and try accessing the data on it.  This will, hopefully, allow you to determine which drive is which and reinstate your original configuration.  

 

This.  Set up another (temporary) flash drive with unRaid basic on it.  Do not assign parity.  Assign only 1 data drive.    Examine the contents to try to find your original flash backup files.  Repeat until you find the backup.  Then you can copy it to the newly Pro-keyed flash and recreate your array.

[Rajahal]

the backup is on a user share on the unRAID server i call backups (another stupid thing i did)

 

Not to worry, I've done this too.  I also used the free version of unRAID to access my backup as the others are suggesting, it works fine, it is just a bit tedious.

 

If i set the correct drive back to the parity slot, does it matter which disk assignment (disk 1 through disk 7) i give to the other 7 drives?

 

It actually doesn't matter, the data drives can be in any configuration.  The only one that matters is the parity drive, since if you assign a data disk to the parity slot and start the array, you will lose all the data on that drive.  So be very careful with the parity drive.  The data drives can be in any order (as in plugged into any SATA port) and unRAID will figure it out and assign them to the correct disk slots.