Lost Array Drives - trying to recover data from retired drives


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Maybe the answer to my problem is somewhere, but I don't even know what to search for...

 

During my cross country move the case that contained all 4 of my array drives was "lost" (along with 3 laptops and a tablet). I have my unRAID box, the cache drive, and a handful of drives that I pulled from my array over the past several years. I plugged one of the old drives into my unRAID box, started it up, and I was able to copy all the data off that drive. However, when I plugged in the next old drive and started up the unRAID box I'm seeing the exact same files on the second drive. Trying a third drive had the same result, so I powered down the box and thought I would post here to see what might be causing this. 

 

Thanks in advance for any advice on what might be going on,

Brian

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Are you POSITIVE it's the exact same files? It's quite common for all the drives to have pretty much all the same FOLDERS, but each drive will have different files in those folders. That's how the user share file system works, it aggregates all the folders on all the drives into a single view, and if you had it set to most free with no split level or drive restrictions, I'd expect each drive to have pretty much an identical set of folders.

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Had a busy weekend, but was able to recheck things today. 

 

Each of the two smaller drives (2TB) have have exactly the same content, which is a subset of the larger drive. Hopefully, the attached image explains what is on the drives. The music and videos folders are the ones I am most interested in recovering.

 

To best of my recollection, here are the steps I took. Since I don't have any of the drives that unRAID is looking for I got lots of errors when I first started up the box. I assigned the first retired drive to a disk # that wasn't previously in use, #5 I think. I've done the same thing, more or less for the other two drives I've tried, assigning them to an unassigned disk #.The first, and largest/newest drive, I put into the unRAID has several subfolders. Once I copied all the files I wanted to another machine, I pulled that drive out and added the next newest drive, only to discover that the music and videos folders have the exact number of folders and files and total file size as the first drive. I thought was was very suspicious, so I tried a third drive, it too has the exact number of folders and files and total file size as the first drive. It seemed very strange that the two drives had the exact same information on them, and that info was a subset of the info on the larger drive. 

 

I have one retired drive left that I have not tried, but I am wary to install it for fear that I might be writing over the data on the drive. Probably a misplaced fear, but I lost a lot of data and want to recover as much as possible.

 

 

 

Capture.JPG

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Can you outline in more specific steps the sequence you used to do this?

44 minutes ago, brianblank said:

I assigned the first retired drive to a disk # that wasn't previously in use, #5 I think. I've done the same thing, more or less for the other two drives I've tried, assigning them to an unassigned disk #.

Normally unraid will not allow you to assign and unassign disks without some extra steps, especially if you want to preserve the data on them and not clear them.

 

Also, your screenshot is unclear. What share are you accessing across the network to see these numbers?

 

A screenshot of the main page of the unraid GUI would be nice as well.

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32 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Can you outline in more specific steps the sequence you used to do this?

Normally unraid will not allow you to assign and unassign disks without some extra steps, especially if you want to preserve the data on them and not clear them.

  1. Attach drive
  2. Start machine
  3. Go to the Array tab on the Main screen
  4. Select the drive from the pull down for one of the disks that is unassigned (Disk 2 in the attached screenshot)
  5. Start the array from the Array Operation tab

Capture.JPG.e5065814fab2ef13b6cc0c76f2a7a83a.JPG

32 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Also, your screenshot is unclear. What share are you accessing across the network to see these numbers?

 

A screenshot of the main page of the unraid GUI would be nice as well.

I don't see any shares on the Shares screen. I am access unRAID from a windows machine on my network. 

 

Capture.JPG.f82e5c496e3052cb1128abc27aabee85.JPG

 

Thank you for your help, I know just enough to get unRAID up and running. 

 

 

29 minutes ago, FreeMan said:

Might be better off mounting each drive in a non-unRAID box.

Is there a way to mount the drives to a windows machine? The unRAID drives don't show up when I attach them to my Win10 laptop.

 

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7 hours ago, brianblank said:

I don't see any shares on the Shares screen.

That's because you have an ad blocker active on the unraid web page.

 

In this specific instance, I would enable disk shares on the settings, global share settings page. Physically attach all drives in question to the machine, then before starting the array, go to tools, new config, and apply, without preserving any assignments. Then go back to the main page, and add each attached drive to a data slot, doesn't matter which one goes where, just start at Disk 1 and continue down.

 

Then when you start the array, you should be able to browse to \\kipple\diskX, where X is the slot number for each assigned drive.

 

As long as you don't assign any disks to either parity slot, nothing will be erased.

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The only thing about your screenshots that clears anything up is the fact that you don't have any parity drives. I think in that case you can assign disks to new slots without unRAID clearing them.

 

All of the rest of it is still very confusing. If you don't have disk shares enabled, how are you showing us any disk contents over the network?

 

Disable any adblockers.

 

Instead of looking at these over the network, you should be able to drill down into each disk contents in the unRAID webUI by clicking the folder icon at the far right of each disk on the MAIN page.

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8 hours ago, jonathanm said:

That's because you have an ad blocker active on the unraid web page.

Shares are visible now that I disabled my ad blocker, thanks.

 

8 hours ago, jonathanm said:

In this specific instance, I would enable disk shares on the settings, global share settings page. Physically attach all drives in question to the machine, then before starting the array, go to tools, new config, and apply, without preserving any assignments. Then go back to the main page, and add each attached drive to a data slot, doesn't matter which one goes where, just start at Disk 1 and continue down.

 

Then when you start the array, you should be able to browse to \\kipple\diskX, where X is the slot number for each assigned drive.

I followed these steps. The 3TB drive is showing up, the two 2TB drives are "unmountable." The diagnostics file is attached. kipple-diagnostics-20180717-1306.zip

 

8 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Then when you start the array, you should be able to browse to \\kipple\diskX, where X is the slot number for each assigned drive.

Windows Explorer gives me a network error when I try to access the 3TB drive in disk1 slot, Chrome says the file isn't available.

 

4 hours ago, trurl said:

Instead of looking at these over the network, you should be able to drill down into each disk contents in the unRAID webUI by clicking the folder icon at the far right of each disk on the MAIN page.

Thanks for the tip, this is much easier. 

Edited by brianblank
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