Temporary Storage for Recovered Data

[Arokan]

Hey guys,

 

Here's what happened: The logical volume that I created on my RaspberryPi4 consisting of 2x3TB HDD drives crashed. Somehow, and I don't know what happened to this day, the second drive got formatted to mirror the structure of the pi, means /boot and / with the same partition-sizes (256M/57.7G) were put out by lsblk. I suspect a crashed mSD-card (I've learned my lesson), but actually, I have no clue.

 

After trying out about 10 different recovery programs, most of which only found RAW-Data, I stumbled across R-Studio which worked like a charm. Most of my files can be recovered and it provides the correct folder-structure.

 

Anyway, here I am with about 4-5TB of potentially recovered data with a single question: Where can I store it?

 

The HDDs work fine according to several pieces of testing software, so I plan to create a logical volume again and restore everything to how it was (now with an additional small backup for the most crucial data at least).

I could not recreate it from lvm's backup file so this appears to be the only solution left.

 

I've looked around for services with unlimited storage and stumbled across Backblaze. However, it only allows complete drives to be backed up and I would need to upload my data rather piece by piece as I don't have the necessary storage to temporarily store the data plus an image of them. Other cloud services are simply too expensive for the amount of storage and alas, I've already used my free cloud.google trial.

 

I'm looking forward to read your ideas about that.

Thanks for reading,

Arokan 

[AbydosOne]

8 minutes ago, Arokan said:

I'm looking forward to read your ideas about that.

The slightly-less-than-ethical answer is to buy a large enough external (or two, for redundancy), move the files, recreate the array, copy the files off, and return the drives (or keep them for backups ).

[Archer42]

Yes, buying external hdd for future backups seems like the best idea. You'll need the storage anyway, nothing can be done about it.

Online/cloud is going to be painfully slow and not really cheap for such volume, even for temporary storage.

 

Also do not assume that because you have correct directory structure data is not corrupted. Do not do anything with source disks until you are absolutely sure you've got all you need.

[Arokan]

Thanks for your advice!

 

I'm hesitant to buy a new drive because actually, I have all the storage I need. I was just not prepared for a crash (learned the lesson).

When it comes to the "slightly-less-than-ethical"-Solution, I can't do it locally because they are not obliged to take the drive back. Different story if I'd order online, but I've heard that amazon is a bit bitchy when it comes to refunding hard drives too.

[Archer42]

1 minute ago, Arokan said:

I'm hesitant to buy a new drive because actually, I have all the storage I need. I was just not prepared for a crash (learned the lesson).

That's strange.

You either have enough storage for full backup and then you can just use it now, no issues.

Or you do not, and buying it will be useful then.

 

Also what kind of configuration it was? Mirror? stripe? jbod?

[Arokan]

 

19 minutes ago, Archer42 said:

That's strange.

You either have enough storage for full backup and then you can just use it now, no issues.

Or you do not, and buying it will be useful then.

Oh yeah, I should clarify that.
I've got another 256GB external drive to backup the most important data. Then won't be that f-d-up when this happens again. However, I just plainly want the rest of it back as well. It's not the most important stuff, but still. And if I or someone comes up with a solution, why not.

[Archer42]

3 minutes ago, Arokan said:

And if I or someone comes up with a solution, why not.

Well, a solution that will allow storing data without storage device would be interesting indeed :)

 

If you want online you can take a look at this.

Rent a machine for a month, setup some kind of storage server there, use it to temporary store data.

 

But then... it is going to cost you a good chunk of money you could have used to buy external hdd, which you would also get to keep, unlike rented server.