Data recovery

[Roland Smith]

On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 05:27:41PM -0400, Jean-Paul Natola wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm throwing this out to this list because our SNAP drive has a *nix kernel-
> One of the folders mysteriously lost a large portion of its data today,

Oops.

Am I correct in assuming that you have a NetApp appliance that is
managed with SnapDrive?

 Are there any indications of hardware failure?

> I immediately powered down the unit as to prevent further writing to the
> disks (raid 5)-

That is probably wise.
 
> Is there any tool or utlity you can recommend to try to get this data back?

It would probably be best to use the tools that come with the SnapDrive
software. According to the manufacturer's website it can e.g. do automated
backups and restores. 

First check if the storage appliance is working as it should, and have
it repaired if necessary. If it is a NetApp appliance, you'll have to
talk to the NetApp people, because they use a heavily modified FreeBSD.

If the hardware is OK, restore the data from backup. You do have
backups, right?

> If memory server  *nix does not erase the data , it merely marks as empty
> space that can be written to , I think I remember that from school

Yes. But that doesn't necessarily make piecing the data back together
easy! Restoring from backup is easier. If that isn't an option, use
dd(1) to make an exact copy of the partition, save that to another
machine and start piecing your data back together.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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