Massive mistake with Storage Spaces in Windows 8?

The_Abyss

The_Abyss

The_Abyss

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I recently upgraded my PC and installed Windows 8. The configuration is:

1 x 500gb SSD - Samsung 840 - OS, apps
3 x 1 TB HDDs

I used to keep all my pictures on one of the 1 TB HDDs, and use another as a backup. The remaining drive was spare.

I wanted to create a more resilient backup, and so merged the backup and spare HDDs as one storage space with 1 TB. All good so far.

At this point I then thought that it wouldn't make sense to back up my picture files to this new storage space - what would be better would be to create one storage space across the whole 3 drives, so I added the 3rd drive to the space - the drive with all my photos on.

I assumed that the process would keep the files, but instead it appears that all the files have been deleted, and now the drives won't even show up in Explorer. They're present in Disk Management, but when reassigning them with drive letters (not formatting as I go) they're all completely empty.

All my photos from the past 11 years were on my drive, and they appear to be completely gone. Have I lost them completely?

Help!
 
Do not write anything to the drives.

Everything (or near enough) will be recoverable with the right software.

I personally use "Get Data Back for NTFS".

You will need another HDD to recover the data too, as you can't write anything to the drive as it could replace/overwrite the existing data.
 
Thank you very much - I'll look into that.

Without questioning the answer, does anyone else have ideas? I just want to be sure that I can select the best means of recovering my photos. I've diligently backed them up for years, but this time combined with updating the OS I've really come unstuck. They're all my professional photos, but more importantly they're also all my own personal photos dating back to when my son was born and all the years since then. I'm feeling more than a little nauseous to think I may have lost them all.
 
opethdisciple said:
Shot in the dark would be try a linux live cd and see if it can see the data on the disk?
Click to expand...

The data will still be there, that's just how hard disks work.

So he doesn't really need to dry a linux live disc. To recover data is fairly straight forward, and the methods are pretty much all the same.
 
Yes, answer definitely post 2. Step back from it for a bit and get the spare drive. I've also used Getdataback NTFS. It will take a while to scan the drive, it could take the whole day or longer but at the end you will get a dir tree of files that you can restore.

You'll need to do the process on each drive until you've recovered all your photos.

For the future, you'll no doubt be looking at some sort of backup. I use Carbonite which backs up to the cloud and is install and forget.
 
Thanks but I was looking for advice, not judgement. If you read what I posted then you'll see that I do back up, and this situation came about out from looking to create a more robust backup.
 
It's not judgment and it is advice.
You should back up things to another medium, especially when attempting to do such things.
 
All my photos from the past 11 years were on my drive, and they appear to be completely gone. Have I lost them completely?
Click to expand...
That was your only copy of all your photos over the last 11 year..? Unless you have baked up already....

The above advice seems sound and what I do, for backup, is to have two portable USB 3 1 TB HD's. First of all my photos are on my main PC and then copied to my server (in the loft). They are then backed up to one of the portable HD's which is kept inside a fire safe. The other portable HD is then stored at my daughters.

AFAIK - Drive Spaces always deletes the data on the drive before it is added to the pool. You can get software like "FlexRAID" which offers storage pooling with parity data protection and is non destructive with the contents of existing drives, IIRC...

http://www.flexraid.com/

I keep thinking about the flexRAID solution for my server but have not got around to it as yet.


BTW - what put me off about the W8 solution was....

http://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/windows-8-storage-spaces-bugs-and-design-flaws/


...if you read the article you will note that down a tthe bottom it mentions FlexRAID and others, like Drivebender.

I have read some newer articles (can't find them at the mo) and they also note some issues with the way that MS have implemented drive pooling on W8.
 
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I hope you recover your files (and I think it's quite likely that you will), but once the file recovery is complete I think you need to reconsider your "backup" strategy.

A 3 disk storage space is NOT a backup, in the same way that RAID is not a backup. If you corrupt (or accidentally delete) a file in a storage space the corruption/deletion will be pushed to the other disks as well.

You need to use proper backup software to create multiple, incremental, backup images so that you can restore your files to a particular point in time.
 
Vimes said:
That was your only copy of all your photos over the last 11 year..? Unless you have baked up already....

The above advice seems sound and what I do, for backup, is to have two portable USB 3 1 TB HD's. First of all my photos are on my main PC and then copied to my server (in the loft). They are then backed up to one of the portable HD's which is kept inside a fire safe. The other portable HD is then stored at my daughters.

AFAIK - Drive Spaces always deletes the data on the drive before it is added to the pool. You can get software like "FlexRAID" which offers storage pooling with parity data protection and is non destructive with the contents of existing drives, IIRC...

http://www.flexraid.com/

I keep thinking about the flexRAID solution for my server but have not got around to it as yet.


BTW - what put me off about the W8 solution was....

http://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/windows-8-storage-spaces-bugs-and-design-flaws/


...if you read the article you will note that down a tthe bottom it mentions FlexRAID and others, like Drivebender.

I have read some newer articles (can't find them at the mo) and they also note some issues with the way that MS have implemented drive pooling on W8.
Click to expand...

This man speaks the truth. After a lot of Storage Spaces testing it just doesnt live up to its expectations in the slightest. The best solution right now is FlexRAID or FlexRAID LIVE! if you want drive pooling + parity. If you merely want to backup data having 2 hard drives and a robocopy/synctoy setup going is hard to beat. Back that up to an online service as well and you are golden :)
 
RAID is not a backup solution.

Go with the recovery route as per advice already given and make sure you ABSOLUTELY do not write data to the disks or even ATTEMPT to recover to them. Get a separate disk.
 
Yeah defo good ADVICE that messing with hard disks and attemping to do RAID activities will never end well, it's almost always the best way to start clean with RAID disks - also storage spaces is a little flakey right now, id not keep anything critical on it.

My backup solution is:

Main PC holds pictures on a 3TB hard drive.

I then use genie timeline to backup that to my server drive which is also a 3TB hard drive (I use that here the 3TB drive can write a lot faster than a RAID 5 array)

I then have some software which copies the server 3TB drive to my (hardware) 8 x 2TB 'main data drive' on the server.

This then backs up to another 4 drive raid array on the same server.

This then backsup to an entirely physically seperate server running freenas and ZFS Raid 5.

The main server also sends the pics to crashplan - but this will take 1-2 years to finish.


Ergo my data is duplicated 5 times accross 3 different PC's and also sent off site to crash plan - in theory unless im a tool and don't mess around with the system, it should be safe enough *fingers crossed*
 
My backup solution is using a QNAP NAS - I don't even bother with RAID any more, the internal disc in it is backed up in realtime to an external USB2 NTFS format disc so if the NAS fails in any way I can plug the external drive straight into another PC and go and then I do incremental backups to the SD card on my phone of anything really important using the USB copy function of the NAS. So then even if the data on the internal disc somehow becomes corrupt and gets mirrored to the external the incremental backup on the phone should still have an unaffected copy.
 
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