volume help

[rottindog]

I had to reinstall freenas after a crash. I didn't save my config. When I reinstalled freenas and mounted my volume instead of importing it. Now i only have the new volume that shows 0% used. Can I go back somehow and reinstall the original volume or at least get into the files somehow. Nothing should have been over written.

Thx

 

[William Grzybowski]

What you mean mounted your volume instead of importing?

Mounted how? More info about your old volume would be very helpful.

 

[rottindog]

Core 2 Duo
Gigabyte GA-G41MT-DV3
8 gigs Ram
2-2TB hard Drives in a zfs Raid
Freenas 8.2 rc1 x64 on an 8 gig usb stick

Thx for the repy

I had a zfs raid set up originally (listed above). It was crashing my freenas so I installed a 2.0tb drive and configured it as a zfs. I managed to ztp into my raid and transfer everything to another computer and then transfer back to my new drive. All worked very well and I had no problems with this drive and freenas was working just fine. I wanted to erase my original raid and try it again because the hard drives tested ok and I though it wasn't a hardware issue. When trying to dismount the disks or erase them freenas would crash so instead I thought I would reinstall a fresh copy of freenas on my usb and import the new hard drive with the files and then redo my raid. Instead of "auto importing" the new 2.0tb drive(volume) (with my files) i created a volume instead. Now freenas see's my it as 1.8tb drive with 0% used and there are no files.

What I want to know is if there is a way of going back because I don't think any files were over written. Or if that's not possible are there any tools that can go through the drive and find files at a lower level.

Thx again for the help. I'm new to freenas and am very worried that my files are lost. I have about 1tb worth of files on that hard drive and they are very important to me.

 

[William Grzybowski]

You've create a new volume over a disk that had your files?

I don't think you can recover that.

 

[rottindog]

I know there are recovery tools for windows disks that are overwritten. Do you know if there is anything like that for zfs?

 

[Stephens]

There are no tools available as far as we know. Do a google search on ZFS file recovery. Others have been in your situation, but there are no reports of recovery that I've read. I think one of the problems with Windows users coming to FreeNAS (and ZFS in general) is the subtle expectation that we can continue taking certain kinds of risks because there's so much software in Windows to help us if we screw up. Heck, we can even sometimes recover from deleting a partition in Windows. ZFS just doesn't have those types of tools.

 

[rottindog]

Thank you for the reply.

I have sadly come to the realization that my data is gone. The disk I screwed up was my backup and I usually am good at keeping a backup of a backup so I think I have some of my data on other systems. It will take me a while to figure out how much I have lost.

You are correct in the fact that I assumed more than I actually knew. But every time I researched a reliable nas solution freenas and in particular zfs kept coming up as a superior way to go. My next step is to read more and spend a lot more money on hard drives so I can backup my backups. I'm still going to try freenas out for a while hopefully ill have better luck