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PANIC - PANIC - All my pooled files have vanished!
With the exception of a pooled folder of pictures (JPG), every other pooled folder has lost all its file content!
The folder structure still remains, but all files within the structure have vanished! These are essential files (mainly PDF and archival MP4s), but only accessed every few weeks.
I have been upgrading DrivePool as the new versions come out - currently on 1.0.5677.
I would appreciate any suggestions as to how to recover these files - looking at shadow volume copies over the last few days, there are no backups there either. Doing a server search for PDF files only brings back those in non-pooled drives.
Any suggestions would be gratefully received...
Comments
I have had a few of the upgrade issues like dropping shares loss of permissions but apart from those all has been fine.
I have to say drivepool is very fit for purpose and agreat program I for one have had my fair share of raid problems and rebuilding arrays is no easy task. I welcome drivepool's native ability to store data under ntfs for easy accesses should the unthinkable happen.
But also as a rule of thumb anything you don't want to lose should be backed up drivepool does offer a duplication service should a drive fail but nothing is safer than a few backups. I for one store my most precious data on cd, backup drives , and online
I tried to contact Alex, but the website crashed when I hit send!
I think I have identified what has been happening...
I have a couple of programs which download TV episodes, convert them to MP4 (for Android compatability) then move them to the relevant folders on my server for Plex to pick them up and stream them. When I looked at the deleted files using recuva, they were all marked as having been overwritten by these new files.
It would appear to me that somehow DrivePool is not showing the duplicated files to the normal WHS file system, which is then allowed to overwrite clusters as if they are empty space. DrivePool then appears to see this as "deletion" of the files and then duplicates this to the mirrored files.
Firstly, I don't think your deduction of what's happening is quite right. DrivePool provides an additional virtual filesystem layer over the top of the NTFS volumes on the physical drives. Alex has explained that the DrivePool code never bypasses the underlying NTFS APIs to access the physical drives directly (and it would take a very conscious decision to do so). This is driven by one of the fundamental principles behind the software, that all pool files are stored as real files on the underlying NTFS volumes so that they are recoverable without the DrivePool software. To me the most likely options are:
Secondly, I wouldn't consider Shadow Volume Copies to be backups, as they could be corrupted or lost along with the original files in some situations. As has been covered on other posts and in various warnings on the site, DrivePool is in BETA, so you need to ensure you have proper backups (i.e. logically independent of the source files, on an external drive or system) if you are using your server for anything important.
Anyway, good luck with recovering your data, and please do persist in submitting your logs, as if it is a problem with DrivePool then it's clearly critical that this gets resolved.