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Best practice to access pool data under WinRE


Diodato

Question

What would be the most natural way to access pool data within a Recovery Environment?

 

I have a simple x2 file duplication pool (WHS2011) made of two identical GPT formatted disks. I save my client as well as the server backups to the pool.

Recently wanted to perform a bare metal recovery of the WHS2011 and was surprised it wasn't that straightforward. Using the WHS2011 recovery flash drive it was impossible simply because it just offers the system recovery wizard. Of course it's unable to locate the backup files automatically so it offers manual selection through a file open dialog box. I can see that both pool drives are recognized correctly (total and free spaces are correct) and as expected I can't see the hidden PoolPart.* folder so am unable to access the files stored in the pool.

Booting from the WHS2011 installation disk as well as using more recent WinRE versions I have access to a DOS shell so I can change the attributes - unhide the  PoolPart.* folder on any of the two disks and thus access the server backup files.

Now what would be the "correct" way to access server backup files from within a Recovery Environment?

If I unhide the PoolPart.* folders on (all) pool drives can I leave them unhidden? I actually have the physical drives that compose the pool hidden so in Explorer I see only the virtual Pool disk drive. Don't need to access the disks "outside" of the Pool.

Thanks in advance. Cheers.

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You wouldn't.  It's not supported.

WinRE is a modified WinPE environment.  And we have tried setting up a WinPE environment with just DrivePool.  It doesn't work. It doesn't like the drivers.

So you need a full installation to access the pool properly. 

 

So if you're backing up to the pool, then this won't work for a bare metal restore.

8 hours ago, Diodato said:

If I unhide the PoolPart.* folders on (all) pool drives can I leave them unhidden? I actually have the physical drives that compose the pool hidden so in Explorer I see only the virtual Pool disk drive. Don't need to access the disks "outside" of the Pool.

That's fine.  We hide them to make things easier (eg, harder to eff up)

But remember that the contents will be spread between the disks, so you may not have all of the data on one disk

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