Source
r/selfhosted•
SimpleAce

[HELP] Deleted Folder on Nextcloud connected to Unraid External Share

Need Help

**CROSS POSTED**

I need some serious help...

I was clicking and trying to rename a folder and clicked delete... There was no prompt, no nothing it just started deleting... This folder was connected via a external share in nextcloud. I need these documents, it was about 5GB of PERSONAL data. I have looked in the trashcan in my nextcloud user but nothing. I have looked in my recycle bin for my unraid shares, nothing. It just seems like everything vanished. Any idea where to go, how to recover my data?

Any help would be appreciated!

Posted Feb 17, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

210
ssddanbrown•

I'm not familiar with nextcloud or unraid at all, but in these scenarios where it looks like files are gone, it's usually a good idea to power off & disconnect the relevant drives until you have a recovery plan. You can often recover deleted data from a drive but that becomes increasingly unlikely as new data becomes written. It can depend on exactly how the data is stored though and the systems in use.

2
SimpleAceOP•

Thank you. I am actually doing that now gonna take my drives out and see if I can recover the data…

1
tryingtosellpis•

You have a backup right?

2
InEnduringGrowStrong•

Say it with me:
RAID is not a backup.
Cloud file syncing is not a backup.
Nextcloud is NOT a backup. (Unless you backup that.)

Hell, even an untested backup is sometimes not a backup.

For my nextcloud stuff...

  • I backup everything, the whole LXC container, every other day to a different local drive in the same machine. I keep 5 of those.
  • I copy that every week to another PC in my home. I keep 5 of those.
  • Then every month to a cloud storage. Haven't deleted one yet, though I could to drop my bill a bit (still below $8).

My main drives are in a raid-like ZFS mirror, which, again, is not a backup.
Every 6 months or so, I take a drive out and put it in a safe.
Then I either re-install the previous drive that was in the safe (or sometimes a brand new drive) and resilver my data pool onto that one. There's also one of those drives that I rotate now and then at my parent's house.

Every 3 months or so, I restore one of those backups to a new container, check that it actually works, then kill it.

It's a bit involved, but it's still less work than losing everything.

1
InEnduringGrowStrong•

Also, read this:

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/user_manual/en/files/deleted_file_management.html

If they were shared files it gets a bit more involved.
If you were low on storage to begin with, it will start to delete older files.

Nextcloud is not a backup.
RAID is not a backup.

When this is over, think of your backup strategy.
I copy to another local drive every day, to another machine weekly and off-site every month.

2
SimpleAceOP•

I will be going over my backup plans after this. Planning on offsite backup solution for this. I am doing drive recovery at the moment and I can see files on there so I may have some luck. Keep everyone updated.

1
InEnduringGrowStrong•

Good luck.
I know firsthand how that can suck.
Then again it was a learning moment for me because I kept postponing things.
I've been with b2 backblaze for a while and it's pretty cheap.
I don't do lots of transfers though, mostly just a monthly dump.

2
SimpleAceOP•

Would it be better for a external hard drive backup (external of the server for important docs) or back-blaze cloud backup backup?

1
GrumpyCat79•

Always have an offsite backup if your data is important. A fire, a burglar, an electrical surge, etc could cause all disks and backups (at one location) to be destroyed/gone at the same time

Look at the 3-2-1 backup startegy as a start: Minimum 3 copies of your valuable data on at least 2 different media types, with 1 being offsite

2
InEnduringGrowStrong•

My nextcloud just has a trashbin...?
Recover from there.
If there's nothing, you might wanna enable that.

Otherwise, yea, disconnect everything, not a Linux Live iso and try to recover the data using whatever is suitable for your file system.

1