Backup disaster

[CyberPete]

I've had a disaster recovering files from my FreeNAS backup server. Loads of files seem to have gone missing.

My FreeNAS setup is 2 servers, one with mirrored storage and a backup server, to which I back everything up, using replication. I wanted to reconfigure the disks on my main server, so I made sure my replication tasks were up to date, then I detached the relevant disks, reconfigured them using Volume Manager, then set up a replication task on the backup server to transfer the backed up files back.

I then discovered that half the backed up files were missing. About 3 years worth! I checked the snapshots on the backup server, but couldn't find the missing files there. Unfortunately the data and snapshots from the main server were deleted when I reconfigured the drives. Some other files, from another volume, were all there. I'm pretty sure I had recent backups of the missing files, because I did a minor data recovery from them last year.

Has anyone got any ideas? Is it possible to recover backed up files from the replicated files on the backup server, without the original snapshots from the main server?

Thanks

 

[rs225]

How far back are the snapshots on the backup system? Have you looked in any of those old snapshots to see if the files are there?

 

[Nick2253]

Do you have the replication configured with "Delete stale snapshots"?

Delete stale snapshots || checkbox || if checked, will delete any previous snapshots on PULL which are no longer stored on PUSH

 

[CyberPete]

How far back are the snapshots on the backup system? Have you looked in any of those old snapshots to see if the files are there?

The oldest is January 9, 2018. I checked and the files are not there.
The snapshots go all the way up to 8 February, just before it all happened.

 

[CyberPete]

Do you have the replication configured with "Delete stale snapshots"?

No, I don't have that checked.

 

[Apollo]

Is it possible your backup server as datasets set to readonly=on?
Which would prevent your backup server to show the datasets and the files within.

If it is the case, the dataset will not be mountable unless readonly was set to OFF after the first snapshot was replicated.

If the dataset is set as readlonly=ON and cannot be mounted, you will not be able to see the content of the dataset itself, so no file will be present.
You could set readonly=OFF, reboot the machine and see if you have access to the files.

 

[CyberPete]

Is it possible your backup server as datasets set to readonly=on?
Which would prevent your backup server to show the datasets and the files within.

If it is the case, the dataset will not be mountable unless readonly was set to OFF after the first snapshot was replicated.

If the dataset is set as readlonly=ON and cannot be mounted, you will not be able to see the content of the dataset itself, so no file will be present.
You could set readonly=OFF, reboot the machine and see if you have access to the files.

Thanks for the reply. I checked the readonly setting and it's OFF.