Here is an interesting one. Client bought in an iOmega NAS set up as RAID 5 with 4 x 1TB drives. The NAS box said there was a drive failure so the client replaced the drive with a new one. Instead of just rebuilding the array, he reformatted the RAID.

So here is my problem:
1. If I use all 4 drives of the reformatted for recovery, then one drive does not contain his old data.
2. If I use the old drive, then we have one that's not been formatted and three that have been.
3. If I discount the swapped drive, then I have three reformatted RAID 5 drives which may not mount.

I currently have all 4 drives connected to UFS (1 old and three reformatted) and am doing a RAW scan of a 3TB lost partition (not the reformatted one), but any advice to point me in the right direction would be much appreciated.

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

I'd go with an option 3.

But depending on the firmware there's either XFS or ext file system.
If that's the latter, then chances for something beyond raw recovery are dim.

Anyway, should you decide you need an assistance with this NAS, we should be able to recover the data remotely. Feel free to contact me, diagnostics is free.

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• Remote RAID, NAS, SAN, VMware, DVR (CCTV), flash and tape recovery. Data recovery support.

i think neither of 3 would work.
this one requires analysis of each drive, to see what was overwritten or not, and to check is there's any old (slate) drive.
then, if it's still possible, you most likely would need a custom raid config.

how long did the format take? was it a minute or less or cconsiderably longer?

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Thanks for eveyones help on this. I have managed to get a RAW recovery of the clients data so at least we have that. I am working on getting some folder structure back, but as it was EXT I think there is little chance. Thanks again.

_________________
HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group