Screwed up my drive letters, lost all shared folders & backups

[wonderrx]

Was working on an SSD for another machine and dropped it in my WHS with DrivePool.

 

Something happened while it was in there and when I rebooted the WHS it said it couldn't find any of the standard shared folders (including system backups) or the shared folders I built.

 

My assumption is like this thread discusses: http://forum.covecube.com/discussion/456/lost-all-my-shared-folders/p1

 

that it changed the drive letters for everything with the SSD and that has thrown the whole drive pool off. I don't know what letters my drives were before either, but assume it isn't different by much.

 

The files/folders are on the drivepool when you explore it in win explorer, but it's not shared. I was able to relink/point through the console using the relink feature for a few shared folders, took a few minutes but looks like the data is there.

 

I am most concerned about getting the backups all pointed back at the right spot, have a lot of older system backups I would like to have access too.

 

Any suggestions? I am copying the entire 2.5 TB backup folder right now in hopes that it could be pushed back in case it gets wiped if I do a manual linking to the folder.

 

Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Unfortunately, sometimes when you add a new drive, Windows gets stupid, and can bump the drive letters. That sounds like EXACTLY what has happened here.

 

The easy way to fix this is with the "WSS Troubleshooter" utility. DOwnload it, and run the "rebuild DrivePool Shares" option. This will change the shared folders to match the new drive letter.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Utilities

 

 

Alternatively, if you know what letter the pool was, you can use Disk Management to reassign the letters.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q6811286

And to clarify, once this has been done, you may need to restart the system. 

And the client backups and everything should come back properly. As if nothing happened, basically.

[wonderrx]

Awesome, awesome, awesome, thanks so much for your help!

 

I ran the WSS Troubleshooter and it restored my shared folders super quick.

 

However it did NOT restore my Client Backup folder and after reboot WHS is still alarming about that.

 

Should I try to manually re-link the backup folder? 

 

Anything less aggressive to try first?

 

Thanks again! I love the DrivePool product, appreciate the help!

 

Unfortunately, sometimes when you add a new drive, Windows gets stupid, and can bump the drive letters. That sounds like EXACTLY what has happened here.

 

The easy way to fix this is with the "WSS Troubleshooter" utility. DOwnload it, and run the "rebuild DrivePool Shares" option. This will change the shared folders to match the new drive letter.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Utilities

 

 

Alternatively, if you know what letter the pool was, you can use Disk Management to reassign the letters.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q6811286

And to clarify, once this has been done, you may need to restart the system. 

And the client backups and everything should come back properly. As if nothing happened, basically.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Unfortunately that can happen. To fix it... it's a registry hack....

 

 

You may be able to do it from the dashboard (create teh "missing" folder), and you should try that first.

But if you can't:

 

It's in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Server\StorageService". The key is "ClientBackupsPath"

And "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Server\Backup". The key is "DatabaseName"

 

Change both to the new path, reboot, and it should have all your backups back.

[wonderrx]

Awesome, just made the change and appears to have fixed the issue.

 

Should I have 100% confidence that my backups are there?

[wonderrx]

The sever seems to be running slower after fixing the backup reg key. After the first reboot my computer didn't load up in the console/computers and backup, restarted server again.

 

Computers were back after 2nd reboot, still running slow, started some machine backups. Getting warnings in the alert viewer that one computers Computer Monitoring Error (windows update missing). And it has a server was unexpectedly restarted (never saw that before)

[Christopher (Drashna)]

That's ... not a good thing. And it can be hard to tell what exactly caused the issue here.

 

 

However, could you upload the memory dump from the system?

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_System_Crashes#Submit_a_crash_dump

 

 

 

Otherwise, yes, you should have all of the drives back. I've done this .... more than a few times, and it definitely should work.

[wonderrx]

I am running manual backups, will see how it goes and how it works tomorrow, thanks again for all of your help!

[wonderrx]

Wanted to post an update that my WHS appears to have to stabilized and improved.

 

Ran backups and updates on all machines and the errors that were showing up on WHS have generally stopped showing up about backups and unable to monitor computer health.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, I'm glad to hear that. And hopefully, no more issues!

[wonderrx]

Thanks again for all of your help! MUCH APPRECIATED!