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wideef's avatar
wideef
Aspirant
Apr 03, 2017

Restoring deleted files on OS 6.6.1.

Hi,

 

In one of our Parent Share Folders (PF) we experienced a loss of child/sub-folders (SF) due to a mistake we made where it appeared that a duplicate folder (DF) had been created during our copy/restore/upgrade to OS 6 process. i.e. we had a SF called 'oxy'* but this we could only access in Windows by navigating to PS > oxy > oxy (and not PS > oxy).

After moving* the oxy folder up one level (now accessed at PS > oxy) and having checked the content was all there we then deleted the duplicate ‘oxy’ folder via Windows. However now when we access the PF via Frontview there are no SF in the PF at all.

Two things make us question this. In Frontview;

1.    The available free space (11.73 TB) despite the SF items 'being deleted' and not showing up in the PF is still the same as it was when the files were accessible and online

2.    In Frontview when browsing the shares, if we double click the PF or use the tree on the left hand side to browse, all the deleted sub-folders flash up for about a second and then show an empty folder.

There's nothing in the logs that show anything unusual and having looked online for Recycle Bin tweaks we were wondering if these deleted files were still accessible somehow? If not it just means we'll have to copy over (from a backup) everything from the SFs again.

 

The issue with this is although it would mean our files are back online, we then may run into an issue with available space as the currently deleted SFs are still somehow in occupation and gobbling gigabytes.

 

We also don't have snapshots activated so there are none of these to restore.

Any help would be most appreciated

 

*the oxy folder has a considerably longer name and moving the SF up one level means we avoid getting 'filename too long' copy errors

14 Replies

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  • StephenB's avatar
    StephenB
    Guru - Experienced User

    I think it'd be safest to delete that PF and restore it again.

    • wideef's avatar
      wideef
      Aspirant

      thank you stephenb. and by doing this would it clear the space currently occupied by these 'ghost folders' (roughly 6TB) so that we'd regain our 17TB ish of free space?

      • StephenB's avatar
        StephenB
        Guru - Experienced User

        wideef wrote:

        thank you stephenb. and by doing this would it clear the space currently occupied by these 'ghost folders' (roughly 6TB) so that we'd regain our 17TB ish of free space?


        That is hard to say, since there aren't supposed to be any snapshots.

         

        You try try running a balance after you delete the PF (and before you re-create it), and see if that reclaims the free space.

  • I have a similar problem. I wanted to delete a folder and it was highlighted. I had to type in the word DESTROY and because I thought it just applied to the one folder I went ahead. Now to my horror I find that I have deleted everything right back to the root folder. I am working remotely. Cannot find any button to say Restore Files (or the like). Can I get these folders and files back? They were set up by someone else and now there's nothing there. Any help appreciated. Where's the Undo button? (joke).

    I should add that I haven't created any snapshots either.

    • mdgm-ntgr's avatar
      mdgm-ntgr
      NETGEAR Employee Retired

      Accidental file deletion is just one reason why backups are important.

       

      I've sent you a PM.

    • wideef's avatar
      wideef
      Aspirant

      LynG: We too went through the DESTROY process so we feel your pain. The balancing failed to restore the used space which seriously makes us think that the data (and perhaps yours too?) was/is still present on the drives. Did you have much luck with this? We'd be very interested to learn if it was somehow possible to either restore the deleted files or reclaim the ghost space.

       

      As for what caused our issue in the first place having spent days restoring from a backup to fix our destroy issue we noticed that an extra 'data' folder is automatically appended to each of our shares. We're not quite sure why this happens (anyone know?) but we won't be deleting this again!

       

      The other issue we faced was one of locking up (under Windows OS) which now having switched over to using 2.1 via SMB Plus this seems to have addressed our problem. The issue did persist at bios level for one user when trying to access the unit to restore from an image using an old 2013 bootable version of Acronis but this problem doesn't appear to exist in the newer versions.

       

      Again we'd like to thank everyone for their comments and help with fixing our issues.

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