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HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

armybill
Aspirant

HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

So I am a mac user, but I recently bought a gaming PC to use just for games, 

 

I use my ReadyNAS to hold media that I watch on TVs with have mac minis which are HTPC

 

Anyways, my computer came with Windows 10, and as Ive seen in the forums its very difficult to get windows to see and access the files. 

 

I had 2 accounts on my ReadyNAS - admin and Server

 

Because Win 10 kept rejecting my username and password, I thought maybe if I deleted the user "Server" and add it back in it might accept the credentials. However when I did this, a huge amount of files disapeared. I was holding those files in \\ReadyNAS\home\Server

 

I hooked up my drives seperatly to a program thats used to recover files. I can see all the files Im missing, however I do not know how to hook up all 6 drives to my PC which I need to do in order to recover those files

 

The files are mostly pictures, my media was not in the same folder thankfully. However those pictures have the birth of my son and wedding, Im stressing!!!

 

How can I get access to these files back, I know theyre there I Can see them in Recaime (a program for windows that I used)

 

Surely there is something I can do to get those files back without losing them

Model: RN31661D|ReadyNAS 316 6-Bay
Message 1 of 12

Accepted Solutions
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

Recreating the user after deleting it was not good and doing a scrub wasn't helpful. Essentially the history has been wiped away.

Did you clone the disks before you put them back in the NAS?

 

Once you delete data it's important to stop making changes straight away to maximise chances of data recovery and if you do want to experiment clone the disks first.

 

BTRFS keeps transactional history in roots. When you delete files there may be some transactional history kept, but once that's gone there's not anything we can do.

 

You could try the ReclaiMe software again if you like.

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Message 4 of 12

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mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

So you have no backup of irreplaceable family photos?

 

We do warn when deleting a user that the private home share data will be destroyed.

 

Please see my PM.

Message 2 of 12
armybill
Aspirant

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

Ya it was a bonehead move, 

 

Ive been losing my mind for the last 3 days trying to get windows 10 to see my NAS that I wasn't thinking when I clicked it, I dont think I even read the message. It was literally the last thing I was going to try before downgrading to windows 8

Message 3 of 12
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

Recreating the user after deleting it was not good and doing a scrub wasn't helpful. Essentially the history has been wiped away.

Did you clone the disks before you put them back in the NAS?

 

Once you delete data it's important to stop making changes straight away to maximise chances of data recovery and if you do want to experiment clone the disks first.

 

BTRFS keeps transactional history in roots. When you delete files there may be some transactional history kept, but once that's gone there's not anything we can do.

 

You could try the ReclaiMe software again if you like.

Message 4 of 12
armybill
Aspirant

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

Im not sure what you mean by clone

 

I did see the exact files Im missing through that data recovery software on my PC, by hooking up one drive at a time from the NAS, however it would not allow me to actually extract that data without having all 6 attached

 

I think I might have to buy a hardrive enclosure maybe and then I can attach them all at once and hopefully get the Data off

Message 5 of 12
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

You could give that a try. No harm in trying. But it may be too late.

 

The disks may have become out of sync when you hooked them up one by one to your PC triggering a resync/scrub when the disks were put back in the NAS.

Cloning is when you copy the disk down at the block level over to another disk. It's as close to being an identical copy as you can get. There is software for Windows that would do this, but also free software for Linux.

 

Professional data recovery services will clone disks sometimes so that if one method of attempting to recover data doesn't work, there is a set of disks from before the failed attempt that can be used to try again. This can be particularly important before trying a data recovery method that may be destructive.
 

I do wish you'd come here and sought some advice before trying to fix things.

Message 6 of 12
armybill
Aspirant

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

Yeah I hear ya, I didnt even really think anything was wrong when I added the user back, after that is when I started to panic lol, 

 

but I really appreciate you taking a crack at it, for now were going through all the files we have on computers to see if we have any copies, and Im emailing my wedding photgrapher with my fingers crossed lol

 

Thanks man

Message 7 of 12
armybill
Aspirant

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

Also, I blame windows 10, 

 

I never had a problem with that NAS since I bought it almost 2 years ago, As soon as I get a PC, stupid thing couldn't see it, took me a day just to get it to show up, then I couldn't see any of the files, I was pulling my hair out

 

Its Bill Gates fault

Message 8 of 12
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

We do have several backup options e.g. with a USB disk plugged into the NAS you could have backed up all the data before trying to add the user back.

 

For irreplaceable data such as wedding photos, backup to USB disk, another NAS, the cloud (we have options to use Dropbox and Amazon Cloud Drive in our GUI) or some place else should have been done regardless.

As well as user error there are other problems such as multiple disk failures, fire, flood, theft etc. to name a few that can be run into. Whilst some of these are very unlikely you don't want to take chances with data of priceless sentimental value.

 

Hopefully the wedding photographer you used keeps a good archive. I would be surprised if you were the first to ask that photographer for another copy of wedding photos.

 

 

Are you aware that Bill Gates is no longer as involved in Microsoft as he used to be?

Message 9 of 12
StephenB
Guru

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!


@armybill wrote:

Also, I blame windows 10 ... Its Bill Gates fault

 

 


Its more trendy to blame cyber warfare and mass surveillance. Smiley Wink

 

I've had no trouble with any of my ReadyNAS and windows 10.

Message 10 of 12
armybill
Aspirant

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

Haha ya that's true

As luck would have it we actually found a complete backup of all our pictures on a external drive that I thought I had deleted

Ya I bought this NAS to back up data I had spread across many external drives and some where over 5 years old and we're starting to make scary noises haha

I figured a NAS would be the safest place for my data, but I forgot to factor in my own dumbassess when deciding how to use it,

We have lost about 5tb of data, but most of that was a huge collection of university lectures and software backups of programs I like, so now that we've found a backup of the pics I won't be murdered by wife

But now that I understand I'm gonna back up the important things on my NAS to an external drive

I appreciate the help!
Message 11 of 12
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: HELP!!! Deleted a User and I Lost my files!

Glad you found a copy of your photos!

Message 12 of 12
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