Data Vanished

Drobo - End of Sale Drobo FS
1

Hi guys.

Using Transmission:
http://www.drobospace.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=1278
I realised a folder of DVD files I’d downloaded was located in:
/mnt/DroboFS/Shares/Drobo/Kids/
I should have originially saved this with my other childrens movies at:
/mnt/DroboFS/Shares/Drobo/Kidz/
Note the Z replacing the S.

So I used Transmissions “Set Data Location” option to move the folder.

When I browsed to the folder “Kidz” with Windows Explorer I noticed the folder “Kids” still existed but there was also a folder called “kidz”. 2 folders called kidz with different capitalisation. Because I edited the path from “Kids” to “Kidz” I am pretty sure that the lower case “kidz” folder has come from nowhere.

When I browsed the “Kidz” & “kidz” folders they had the same contents. The DVD was no longer in “Kids” but was not present in “Kidz” or “kidz” either.

I used Windows Explorer’s built-in Search functionality to find the DVD in one of the Kidz folders which it did.

But when I cancelled the search only that DVD remained in both Kidz folders. Hundreds of folders & files have vanished. I tried searching for them but there were no results. The filesize of the 2 Kidz folders is the size of just the DVD. I ran cmd.exe to check the contents of the 2 Kidz folders & they both only contain the DVD.

I’ve opened a support case.

2

Oh man, I don’t think you can solve this one from Windows.

Here is the problem: the native filesystem of the FS is case-sensitive. In other words, you can have a folder structure like this:

Drobo
|- Kidz
|- kidz
|- kidZ
|- KIDZ

And each one of those is a valid and different folder. Since Transmission is running on the FS, it is allowed to create these folders.

That would not be problem if Windows did the same. Unfortunately, the default behavior for Windows File Sharing (SMB) is to be case-insensitive. In other words, all those folders will appear to be the same.

Since Windows can’t tell those folders apart, I’m not quite sure which one gets picked by Windows. But at least it should always be the same.

The only way to fix this is to consolidate the content of all those “kidz” folders together, i.e., move all the files in one folder and remove all the empty ones. This could be done via SSH or FTP, but I’m pretty sure not with Windows Explorer.

3

Thanx 4 the explanation. I thought that was the problem but I wanted to share with others who might encounter the same thing.

I used a Mac to consolidate the relevant folders.