Added the wrong disk to array and need to recover contents (NTFS)

[monorail]

Well, I was about to begin building my 2nd UNRAID array with some 8TB white label hard drives that I had been using in Windows machines (NTFS).

 

I had the new white and the old white in my hands at the same time, the new one was supposed to go into new array. The old one was supposed to be copied over the network. I unfortunately labelled them wrong and added the one full of 8TBs of NTFS data into the array rather than the new blank one.

 

Luckily I did not preclear or start writing anything to the data disk yet. Out of habit I looked at the smart report first and noticed it was at about 2000 hours old an then realized what I had done.

 

Would expect most of the data to be recoverable? Not sure what method and program to use... my only experience is with 'recuva' in Windows. Any help, greatly appreciated.

[trurl]

28 minutes ago, monorail said:

Luckily I did not preclear

 

If you added the disk to a new data slot in an array that already had valid parity, then Unraid clears the disk so parity is maintained. This will usually take several hours. After clearing, Unraid will let you format the disk.

 

So, in light of what I just said, do you have anything to add to your description?

[monorail]

18 minutes ago, trurl said:

 

If you added the disk to a new data slot in an array that already had valid parity, then Unraid clears the disk so parity is maintained. This will usually take several hours. After clearing, Unraid will let you format the disk.

 

So, in light of what I just said, do you have anything to add to your description?

 

There is no parity drive on the new array yet, this was the first drive going into the new array it was xfs formatted as a data disk.

[trurl]

UFS Explorer is often recommended on this forum because it can recover many different filesystems including those used by Unraid. But in your case there are probably more choices for NTFS recovery.

[JorgeB]

You can try testdisk, it might be able to recover the deleted partition.

[monorail]

On 10/11/2020 at 5:31 PM, trurl said:

UFS Explorer is often recommended on this forum because it can recover many different filesystems including those used by Unraid. But in your case there are probably more choices for NTFS recovery.

 

Thank-you that is great software, even on a windows system. The virtual file system list of all files it makes is quite useful. Many other choices in the windows world but few are well suited to "lost partitions",

 

18 hours ago, JorgeB said:

You can try testdisk, it might be able to recover the deleted partition.

 

Thanks, it certainly can but I don't know if I'm going to try other recovery methods first before playing with it.

Edited October 13, 2020 by monorail