Hi,
I just realized basically all files on my NAS (more specifically, my data disk) are gone. Let me put my questions first before I go into detail. I want to know:
- Why did this happen? (So I can avoid this scenario in the future.)
- Is there a way to rescue my data, and if so, how?
To explain what happened, let me give you a brief overview of my file structure:
- Backups
- Data*
- eBooks*
- ownCloud
- plexmediaserver*
The directories marked with a '*' have either disappeared or, in case of my Data directory, are empty. Backups, Data and eBooks are also Shares that I'm using for backing up my personal notebook, storing large files/file collections (e.g. pictures, movies,...) or for use with calibre, respectively.
So, let me point out to you what I have done since I last checked that my files are still existent (i.e., what might have caused the loss of data):
- I uninstalled the calibre server (that I installed using the OMV-extras repo). It was set up to use the eBooks folder (configured as a share) for data storage.
- I played around a bit with couchpotato (that I installed using the OMV-extras repo) and configured it to move new movies to the Data directory, more precisely Data/Movies. That folder still existed after the data loss.
- I shutdown the server, plugged in a new harddisk containing some old backups of mine and copied the data onto my NAS them using rsync. For what it's worth, the exact command was:
- I uninstalled Plex media server (that I installed using the OMV-extras repo). When doing so I encountered an error that the plexmediaserver directory was nonexistent, which might be a hint that the data loss occurred before this step.
All of this happened in a time span of about 30 minutes and some of these steps were executed simultaneously, that is, doing the backup and uninstalling stuff in the web GUI.
This is my setup: I run the latest version of OMV 1.0.* on a HP N54L using a SSD as system disk and 2 mirrored 2TB disks as data disk(s). As I said, I also plugged a new disk in in order to copy some old files to my NAS. The data disk(s) use XFS as file system, the disk that I plugged in uses ext4.
I tried to find those missing files with testdisk, but it didn't show anything on that disk. Admittedly, I'm not an expert using this software though.
So, I have been running both my new NAS and OMV for a week or two have been very happy so far. Thank you everyone for contributing and creating this awesome piece of software. I still think it's a great piece of software, however, I now need your help to avoid this scenario in the future and, hopefully, get my data back.
Thank you very much,
Daniel