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Raid 1 format recovery
- Thread starter SDAVE
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The tape backup is for the server, these 2 internal drives I have in the Mac Pro are for more personal backups that aren't related to work. About 1 million files.
Probably a good idea to put one more disk inside the computer and turn on Time Machine.
Very true.
What's sad about it is I was going to make an offsite backup this morning. I plugged in a new USB drive and went to disk utility to format it and accidentally formatted the raid. :'(
YES YES YES YES! Data Rescue 4 found structures and file names using Deep Scan! I stopped it early just to see what it came up with and it found a bunch of folders and structures.
Going to let this run for 14 hours. Will report back and hope this post helps someone in the future if it's successful.
Going to let this run for 14 hours. Will report back and hope this post helps someone in the future if it's successful.
Backups would have protected you from a user error.
Parity RAID or mirroring does not protect you from a user error.
Like I said above and in many posts in this thread, I know that and you are right. Don't have to rub it in my face.
These things happen, it's life. As much as I try to be my own IT here, I'm low on staff and have to do a lot of things myself and don't have time to do backups for certain things sometimes.
I'm hoping this thread helps someone else. I'm looking for a solution not a life lesson. That lesson is already learned.
If you've just quick-erased the drive, all you'll have done is killed the header, you should be able to get most of your stuff back.
If this was an SSD with TRIM enabled though, you'd be stuffed
Can't recommend OpenZFS enough at this point. If you need a local RAID setup, it really is the most resilient solution.
Problem is when you lose the partition table. You can recover the files but most of the structure and file names can't come back.
I'm currently looking at a solution from this free app and trying to recover the partition table. Im making a copy of the RAID 3TB drive at the moment just to be safe.
Data Rescue 4 wasn't able to bring back every folder for me...
ZFS doesn't completely protect you from Operator errors either. If issue a ZFS command to destroy a volume/pool/etc it gets nuked. Actually probably in worse shape because little to no "scan and recover from unorganized low level blocks" tools out there.
If you accidentally delete a file/subdirectory ... sure you can get it back with a snapshot. But if if start nuking large chunks of the meta data at the top level container abstraction level, you aren't getting it back.
With ZFS those kinds of commands are uusally issued less often. Typically put together a detailed plan in advance of how the disks are organized and then perhaps incrementally add disks but operationally don't "nuke" whole pools or top level organization after it is deployed. ( or have to start over again with a another set of disks to reorganize).
Sorry to hear about your misfortune atm SDAVE!
When I started with a Mac Pro 3.1 in 2008 (Professional Photographer) I thought it wise to get myself an Apple Raid Card Pro for it and create a RAID5 on it, as my (newbie) level of techie would have thought to be my safe-heaven for user/hardware failures. MAN was I wrong in that assumption, but as you stated: "lessons learned"!
I had a failure of HHDs and lost my total
system. Goodbye ARC and Hello Backups!
I realy DO HOPE you will be able to restore your 90k files back were you want them to be, back under your own control.
I wish you good luck restoring your files and some beers that comes aside!
Cheers
Data Rescue 4 was able to see folders and structures and file names for about 50% of the data. The rest were just recovered as "rebuilt" files.
Going to give Disk Warrior and TechTool Pro a shot.
So apparently it is now a Core Storage device so it is harder to recover the partition table
Apparently they want to charge me more than 1k and I have to ship the drives in. And they don't guarantee recovery. But they seem super intelligent.
So it seems like I'm pretty much screwed. God, why does HFS+ have to be so complicated. I remember this same thing happened on an NTFS partition many moons ago and I was able to recover without a hitch.
I might have to spend thousands of dollars and even they can't guarantee it.
I might have to spend thousands of dollars and even they can't guarantee it.
hay i do photography, I back up on to external drives in pairs of two, one a live drive to use and one a pure backup of the live drive. I keep the contents of the drives identical.
that's a simple way to backup, if there's a power serge or something only one drive will get fried.
I only use the drives for storage all live projects are coped on to my internal drives then worked on with the external discontented.
RAID is not a backup, it's to keep files live 24/7 in a professional environment where non interrupted use of data is the priority (& speed).
your better of with two (not raided drives) that just have the same files on at the same time inside your mac pro so you cant bork them both at the same time with user error
good luck with your files iv had to do HD recovery's on bad drives not fun.
was easier years ago when drives where smaller as we tended to have less files so less problem to manualy sort them all out.
(im thinking about getting a blue ray to have a mixed media backup system ie file on HD A, B + blue ray disc)
that's a simple way to backup, if there's a power serge or something only one drive will get fried.
I only use the drives for storage all live projects are coped on to my internal drives then worked on with the external discontented.
RAID is not a backup, it's to keep files live 24/7 in a professional environment where non interrupted use of data is the priority (& speed).
your better of with two (not raided drives) that just have the same files on at the same time inside your mac pro so you cant bork them both at the same time with user error
good luck with your files iv had to do HD recovery's on bad drives not fun.
was easier years ago when drives where smaller as we tended to have less files so less problem to manualy sort them all out.
(im thinking about getting a blue ray to have a mixed media backup system ie file on HD A, B + blue ray disc)
You should look at Tape drive backups (LTO). You can set automated backups and tapes are 1.6TB nowadays with LTO5. Initial cost of set up is a bit expensive but totally worth it.
I'm just ashamed that I didn't back this RAID 1 that I have. I rarely access it.
That's why I backup to a FreeNAS box running RAIDZ2
What's the difference between RAIDZ2 and a nice battery backed RAID controller with a RAID 5 or 6?
Sorry to hear about your problem. Even a backup drive can fail. I know this first hand as I lost my time machine backup drive due to the hard failing. Now I do double time machine backups. I use RAID1 for my ripped DVD/Blu-Ray movies, I own, which are on (4) 4-TB hard drives configured as 2 separate RAID 1. The reason I use RAID 1, using SoftRaid, is because I had an issue where some of the hard drives would fail and I needed to re-rip a large amount of the DVD/Blu-Ray movies I owned when I had to replace the hard drives that failed. These are tough lessons to learn and I know them all too well.
If you mean the Apple Raid Card for Mac Pro, rethink your other options! I have never had such a terrible Apple experience as with that WAY OVERPRICED piece of computer hardware! Waste of money and time...
Now a very happy soft-raider RAID0 and 1 on Mac Pro with a very tight back-up scheme on RAID1 external CCC backups and a 24 TB Synology NAS for files etc. Of course I run an offsite backup too!
Cheers