I recently had a disk go "missing" for a seemingly unknown reason.  So I shut everything down and checked all the connections in the box.  It seemed the sata connection of the offline drive was a little loose, so I secured it and turned the server back on.  It recognized the drive now and did a parity check.  The parity check finished with no errors, but now a bunch of recent files are missing.  What happened to them?  I assume they were stored on the problem disk since that was basically the only disk that had available space.

 

Unfortunately I don't know exactly when the drive went "missing", but it seems the last files saved on the problem disk are from about a month ago, so I'm fearing I lost a month's worth of data (though most should be recoverable via backups).

 

It is a 3 disk array + parity + cache.  Version 4.5.

 

Any ideas what happened to the data and if I can get it back?

I recently had a disk go "missing" for a seemingly unknown reason.  So I shut everything down and checked all the connections in the box.  It seemed the sata connection of the offline drive was a little loose, so I secured it and turned the server back on.  It recognized the drive now and did a parity check.

If the drive was "missing" and the drive indicator "red" then it would not have restored the drive to service unless you either:

  A. initialized the array configuration  (initconfig command OR pressing button labeled as "restore")

 The parity check finished with no errors, but now a bunch of recent files are missing.  What happened to them?  I assume they were stored on the problem disk since that was basically the only disk that had available space.

It the drive was missing, then "writes" to is were not made.  The "writes" to parity were made however, and it would have had the calculations to use in combination with all your other data drives to re-create the written files.  

Unfortunately I don't know exactly when the drive went "missing", but it seems the last files saved on the problem disk are from about a month ago, so I'm fearing I lost a month's worth of data (though most should be recoverable via backups).

If you had simply re-connected the drive and then let the array re-construct the contents back onto it, the files you thought you had written to it would be there.   You apparently reset the array configuration either by typing "initconfig" on a newer version of unRAID, or by pressing the button labeled as "restore" on the older versions.  (it does not restore data, but sets a new initial disk configuration and immediately invalidates parity calculations from any prior configuration)

 

When you then did a parity "check" it actually had to have been an initial calculation, not a check.   That would have erased any trace of the parity calculations affiliated with those files you had written in the month the disk was off-line.

It is a 3 disk array + parity + cache.  Version 4.5.

 

Any ideas what happened to the data and if I can get it back?

It appears you erased it from the parity calculations and it was never written to the disk that was off-line.  if they are not there, they are gone.

 

Hope you have backups...  

 

Joe L.

Thanks Joe.

 

You know, I did hit 'Restore' by mistake before I did the parity check.  I do nightly backups so it's not a huge deal.

Thanks Joe.

 

You know, I did hit 'Restore' by mistake before I did the parity check.  I do nightly backups so it's not a huge deal.