mongodb recovery removed records

Question

I have a two-member replica set, I accidentally removed all documents in an collection, I am not sure how I did this, but it's gone. Is it possible to get all the data back?

Answer 1

Unless you have a backup (always recommended for just this type of thing), or one of the replicas is using slavedelay, then I am afraid the removal of the records is final. You might have been able to force a shutdown in time to save the data on-disk if you killed the process before the next fsync to disk (similarly if you broke replication before the removal was replicated), but even then it would be tricky.