Duplication Warning - System Volume Information Issue

[Otagolad]

For some reason my server (WHS 2011) shut down last night and when I started it up again this morning DrivePool checked the duplication and it showed a warning, which when I go into it says:

 

"Duplication Warnings

 

There were problems checking, duplicating or cleaning up one or more files on the pool.  You can have DrivePool automatically delete the older file part in order to resolve this conflict. One or more duplicated files have mismatching file parts. one reason why this can happen is if something changed the duplicated file's parts directly on the pooled disk and not through the pool.  This can happen if a disk was altered while it was missing from the pool. [i disn't alter anything].  You can resolve the conflicts manually by deleting the incorrect file part from the pooled disks.

 

Files:

 

\System Volume Information\storageconfiguration.xml

File parts different"

 

So I check the "Automatically resolve the file duplication mismatches by deleting the older file parts" check-box and click "Duplicate now" and the duplication gets to 100% and the same error comes up - I've run the fix a number of times and still the same error message.

 

Does anyone know how to resolve this?  Do I go into the System Volume Information folder on each drive and delete that .xml file [not sure that is easily achieveable according to some other googled info I've read]? 

 

Any help most appreciated.

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Otagolad,

 

It sounds like the server shut down unexpectedly. If that is the case, I would recommend following that up. But it could definitely cause this issue.

 

As for this folder, it would be on the pooled drive. Delete it there. Better yet, right click on the Pooled drive, select "Properties", open the "Shadow Copies" page, find and select the pooled drive's letter, and hit the "Disable" button. It will ask if you want to delete the shadow copies, hit "OK", and it should fix the issue.  

[Otagolad]

Hi Drashna,

 

Haven't got to the bottom of the unexpected shutdown, however I do have issues with the fix you describe.  Nothing I do allows me to delete the "storageconfiguration.xml" file and when I went to the shawdow copies page all of the pooled drives were already disabled.

 

Any further hints?

 

Cheers

[Otagolad]

Hi Drashna,

 

After closing down the Server for the third or fourth time it seems to have corrected itself and I'm not getting any further warning messages, but thanks for your help anyway  .

 

Cheers

 

.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Sorry, I meant that you should disable shadow copies on the Pool drive, not the drives in the pool.

Worst case, you'd have to take ownership of the folder, change the permissions, and then delete the file (for the future, if this happens again).

 

But if it's resolved, that is good.

[Otagolad]

Thanks Drashna,

 

Couple of points - first, shadow copies on the pooled drive (z in my case) isn't/wasn't enabled and second, even if you take ownership, which I did, it is still not possible to delete the "storageconfiguration.xml" file. 

 

Anyway, everything is still working so thanks for the help.

 

Cheers

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Yes, taking ownership may not be enough. You may also need to add users and administrators groups to the permissions. And if the file is in use, you'd need to temporarily stop the Volume Shadow Copy service to delete the file. Sorry. 

[RJGNOW]

I ran into this error today. Should we restart Shadow Copy for the pool drive?  If so, I keep running into a error when trying to restart SC for the pool drive.

 

Log Name:      System
Source:        volsnap
Date:          3/7/2014 11:31:47 PM
Description:
The shadow copy of volume R: could not be created because volume R:, which is specified as the location for shadow copy storage, is not an NTFS volume or an error was encountered while trying to determine the file system type of this volume.
Event Xml:

[Christopher (Drashna)]

That's expected. the Volume Shadow copy service (VSS) doesn't work on the pool. 

Specifically there is next to no documentation on how to support VSS on the file system level, which is what we need to support it.

 

So until we're able to add it.... You will get snapshot errors for the DrivePool disk.