Script duplicate onto wrong drive detroying data

[buildmedia]

I was using retrospects duplicate function.

 

I accidentally grabbed the wrong drive from home today and plugged it into the machine running retrospect. The drive letters are the same but the names of the drives are different. When you set up the script you select the drive letter and name. I guess the script only keeps track of the letter.

 

Retrospect began duplicating my internal raid onto the external drive blowing away a terabyte of data.

 

The impact of the data loss hasn't hit me yet. This will no doubt cost me a couple thousand dollars from a data recovery specialist to fix.

 

I don't see how this could happen. Any advice would be appreciated.

Edited December 2, 2008 by Guest

[Mayoff]

Actually Retrospect does use more then just the path to identify the disk.

 

If you do a dir command from the command line, do the disks have an identical serial number?

 

When a drive company creates disks, they may all appear identical to Windows until they are reformatted. If Windows thinks they are identical, Retrospect will think they are identical also. I have seen 2 disks look the same when they are of an identical size and brand. If all drive properties are identical expect for the label, Retrospect may believe the disk is a renamed version of the same item.

[buildmedia]

Ah, they are the same make and model drive enclosure. I will check the serial number on the drive at home tonight.

 

So, the solution is to reformat your drives when you get them because windows then assigns unique serial numbers?

 

And just so I'm clear, it checks drive letter and serial number but not drive name?

 

Where can I see which drive serial number is identified within the script?

 

[Mayoff]

A lot of criteria is considered and translated into a mathematical hash value. If one criteria changes, like volume label then we assume it is still the same disk.

 

I believe Retrospect also looks at disk size, block allocation and creation dates (if they have it)

[buildmedia]

Robin,

 

Thanks for the quick response. I guess I'm asking if there are ways I can ensure that this doesn't happen again.

 

I am confused by your last post. It doesn't seem to directly answer my questions.

 

- Brian

[Mayoff]

Retrospect does not show the drive serial number. It is used for internal tracking by Windows.

[buildmedia]

So there is no way a user can assign a destination for duplicate without there being the possiblility of conflict with drives of a similar size and make.

[Mayoff]

Just reformat each new drive and it shouldn't be a problem.

[buildmedia]

Serial number was the same. I am reformatting now. I found an app called undelete plus that is allowing me to recover the data that wasn't overwritten. I'm going to try that prior to calling in the big guns. This is the perfect storm of errors.

[buildmedia]

And thanks for the insight.