I am in desperate need of information on the "recovery" of photographs I accidentally erased.

I have an Iomega StorCenter ix2 4TB system, configured as 2x2TB HDD's in a RAID 1 configuration. It is connected to my router and is serving as network attached storage for my home network. I believe the native OS is Linux and the file system on the drives to be ext2. I think I just today understand the difference in the term recovery: My drive is not broken, it is working fine. I do not need to recover existing files from a broken drive, I need to recover files I accidentally deleted from a fully functional set.

OK, so I deserve all the appropriate admonishments and criticisms that come with the combination of pulling such a stupid stunt AND having no other backup of the files, but that is what I did. These are family photos all the way back to 2006... I throw myself upon the mercy of this forum

Is there any product I can use to do this myself, or is my only hope sending it out to a professional service and paying upwards of $2,000?

R-Studio can do this job for you, assuming that after deletion of the files no other action has been made to the drive.

UFS Explorer also handles ext* partitions.

Both these programs are not free, but you can download a trial, see what they can do, and then buy the license.

PS. This is a RAID 1, yes? Not a RAID 0. Because you mention it as 4TB, whereas used capacity should be 2TB.
If it was configured as RAID 0, then that's another story.

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http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Thank you for the info, I will check these two out. Yes, it is a RAID 1 config. It has two 2TB drives, mirrored.

Iomega, i think uses most Ext Part. (most)
not a big deal really

the issue after re-constructing it back (with proper config values) is scanning time for 4TB will take a hell of time to get your deleted files
more or less for 4TB direct sata connection 12-17h

good luck

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

As disks continue to increase in size, some sort of parallel scanning is going to be needed. Something where the image is broken down into several parts and each part scanned simultaneously.

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Sorry for the delay, but I want to share with all that I was successfull in recovering all the photos from the drive using R-Studio. R-Undelete would have likely worked, but RTT tech support suggested I try R-Studio. The process was fairly straightforward:

1) I purchased a Sabrent 3.5" SATA Dard Drive enclosure, removed drive 2 from the Iomega NAS and installed it into the HD enclosure
2) Downloaded and installed the R-Studio software
3) Connected the Sabrent to the desktop via USB. The drive showed up.
4) Launched the R-Studio App and it saw the drive. As it was ex2 format it did not see the files, so I had to run the scan feature. Be forwarned, on my 2TB drive, this took 20 hours!!!! This was after selecting the search for photo,video,image files...
5) Upon completion I was able to click on the drive in the left window, and all the files (4300+) showed up on the right side! No RAID reconstruction required!
6) After I previewed a few to see that they we OK, I paid the $80 and activated the license. I then was able to mark and save them to my desktop!
6) Disconnected the Sabrent and reassembled the Iomega. Everything is back up and running!
7) Files are back on the Iomega, AND now backed up on several DVD's!

I feel for everyone else out there that is dealing with this, and I hope they find this topic and it helps them. Not sure why this was such an ordeal to find the answer, but once I did the solution (while timeconsuming) was fairly simple to execute. The professional shops quoted me up to $2500, and for a really trashed drive it may be the only way. But if you are simply someone with working hardware that pulled a stupid stunt like mine, this $80 solution worked just fine. Hats off to RTT!!! Northwind, I owe you bigtime. If you are ever in southern California, the beers are on me!

Great job and glad to see a happy ending.

Just one comment for other that see the "...up to $2300" comment. These type of prices are quoted often as such based on unknown variables and happenings with the drive(s) without an evaluation it seems. So, it does not necessarily mean it would have costed that much.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

You're most welcome, but if you keep your promise then you might end up paying approx. the amount the shops offered you
Kidding, thanks for the offer.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners