Data recovery following the loss of a volume manager is described, wherein a volume manager receives a command, and location information and credentials to access a distributed storage. The data to be recovered may include one or more data files stored as one or more discrete portions. Each portion includes metadata, including at least a file ID tag. The volume manager retrieves each portion of data from the distributed storage and records, in an index, the location that each portion of data was retrieved from. The volume manager reads and stores the file ID tag with the associated location of the attached portion of data in the distributed storage in the volume manager index.