TRUENAS has Formatted=deleted 1 auxiliary backup data disk 3rd disk with backup data that TRUENAS "has taken over"

TrueNAS General
1

Good afternoon everyone!!
I would like to comment on a disaster I have had with TRUENAS and see if I have a solution or I can only cry (and a lot)

This week I decided to set up a “super nas” with TRUENAS, and the truth is that everything went great, I set up 2 raid type 1, with 2 WD NAS of 4tb each, without problems! It works perfectly on the network and I can access them on the internet without any problem.

Yesterday… (in my innocence or clumsiness) I put in a 5th Seagate disk (1TB) with data from job backups, hoping that TRUENAS would detect it and leave it as “one more disk drive” at my disposal, but the “sly guy” even though there was only 1 disk, he took it as his own, but not before later… indicating that it was not a good idea to leave a disk alone…

SURPRISE!!
Now I have the empty disk, with 2 partitions. one with 2GB and another with 929GB

After the shock!.. I stopped the TN and took out the disk so that NOTHING ELSE would be written to it, and here I am…

I would appreciate some advice to recover the partition prior to the TN ironing, that is, recover the entire disk WITHOUT CHANGES in the data structure… as if nothing had happened…

I have read that testdisk is useful for this, but I am not an expert in computing and I am afraid of “doing more damage” to the disk.

I ask:
TRUENAS, is there any option for “dummies” like me to solve this?

What options or programs do you recommend for restoring the original partition table?

In advance, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR TIME.
Joan

2

What do you mean?

What did you intend TrueNAS to do with the disk?

What did you click to do that?

2 Likes
3

What was this 1-TB disk? Was it used in a ZFS pool?

As far as TrueNAS goes, it doesn’t just format and add a disk to a new or existing ZFS pool when it is detected. You have to instruct it to do this yourself.

I have a feeling you inserted the disk, then you created a new pool with it, or added it as a new vdev to your existing pool.

4

Thanks for answering,
I’ll try to explain myself better:
After setting up 2 RAID1, with 2+2 disks everything is ok, no problems.
I turn off TrueNas
Then I put in a 1TB Seagate disk full of data (which I don’t want to lose).
I turn on TrueNas (without doing anything else).
TrueNas detected the disk and without asking it formats it “for itself”.
I get a warning (when the damage is already done) that says it’s not good to leave a single disk if I want to redundant data.

I intended that when TrueNas detected this new disk it would ask me “what I wanted to do with it” to which my answer would have been to do NOTHING and leave it as is so that it could be seen as a disk drive on a PC. and above all WITHOUT TOUCHING THE DATA

Now the problem is that I have lost 800GB of data because I only see 2 partitions (the ones created by TrueNas) and I would like to be able to undo that formatting.

I don’t know if I have explained myself well
Regards
Joan

5

Thank you very much for answering

What did you click to do that?
After mounting 2 RAID1, with 2+2 disks everything is ok, no problems.
Then I turn off TrueNas
Then I put a 1TB Seagate disk full of data (that I don’t want to lose) in the 5th SATA of the board
I turn on TrueNas (without doing anything else).
TrueNas detected the disk and without asking it formatted it “for it”.
Then I get a warning (when the damage is already done) that says that it is not good to leave a single disk if I want to redundant data.

What do you mean? What did I expect TrueNAS to do with the disk?

I expected that when TrueNas detected that new disk it would ask me “what I wanted to do with it” to which my answer would have been to do NOTHING and leave it as is so that it could be seen as a disk drive on a PC. and above all WITHOUT TOUCHING THE DATA

Now the problem is that I have lost 800GB of data because I only see 2 partitions (the ones created by TrueNas) and I would like to be able to undo that formatting.

I don’t know if I have explained myself well
Regards
Joan

6

Thank you very much for your answer

What was this 1-TB disk? Was it used in a ZFS pool?
that disk was my data disk on my win10 pc D:MyDocuments
it had never been anywhere else

As far as TrueNAS goes, it doesn’t just format and add a disk to a new or existing ZFS pool when it is detected. You have to instruct it to do this yourself.
It may be that I touched something, but I don’t remember what… (I’m not a computer expert)
It may be that I pressed create POOL?

in that case: can I go back?
or do I have to use secondary programs like RECUVA to recover the files

thanks for your help
Joan

7

Honestly, things not should works like you experienced and reporting.
Just for say, in my backup system i use nor TN and Windows on different disks, from months, without any interference from each other. TN just list the Windows disk, and not doing anything with it, never.
Where that warning appear?
Where you remove that disk, did you receive some warning on the existing pool? Or something about a pool missing?

8

No such thing ever happens without a request from the administrator.
If the disk is still in the TrueNAS system, you may type this command into the web terminal (I assume you use SCALE):
lsblk -bo NAME,MODEL,ROTA,PTTYPE,TYPE,START,SIZE,PARTTYPENAME,PARTUUID
and post the output here. Please use formatted text (</> button).

Most likely. Take back the drive to Windows and use whatever recovery program you have.

9

That’s very bad, ZFS is not compatibile with hardware raid: are you perhaps using a RAID card? It could explain the issues you are experiencing.

Please post your full hardware list.

Suggested readings:

10

TrueNAS doesn’t format anything automatically.
It never happens.

Any wiping happens at the user’s specific request. For example when installing TrueNAS, or when adding disks to a new or existing pool.

What makes you think any formatting happened? TrueNAS doesn’t expose partitions in the UI for the most part, it shows you disks, pools and datasets. TrueNAS also can’t read non ZFS disks, so if you connected a non-ZFS disk to it expecting to see the data, that’s not going to work.

What buttons did you actually press in the UI? Be specific. What are the buttons you pressed labeled and in what order did you press them?

Also, post screenshots of your UI so we can better judge what the actual status is.