Did I just lose everything???

Heinrich · October 2012

My HP495 main drive is failing. I have un-duplicated over there, and the concept is to pull out one drive at a time.

Over on the WHS2011 side, I experimented using a Media Center Digital Cable card tuner but decided against it. I had 1 2TB drive that I had forgotten about that was attached to the server but it was empty. The name of that drive was "REMOVED." I added it back in, along with the empty drive from the HP495 server.

I'm missing about 10 TB of data. All my backups are missing.

The only other "problem" may be that I did knock 1 SATA cable out of the motherboard. I think I plugged it into the same spot but I may be guessing here.

While my computer backups are missing - the folder lists "missing." Not sure if "recreate current folder" would work or not. But worse, is the totally missing data out of the DATA folder which doesn't even display at all. This data is what I truly care about.

I don't think I made any truly egregious error but I must be missing something ...... any ideas on attempted recovery?

The free space and used space is accurate in aggregate on the Stable Drivepool tab.

This is Drivepool v

Heinrich · October 2012

I can't tell what version of Drivepool, it was installed this year.

I'm afraid to try to reset everything back to the way it was :

I just threw up in my trash can by the desk. This is awful.

Heinrich · October 2012

I found a message that may help me. It's kind of short hand so I don't know exactly what these steps are:

"For Giggles, I changed the drive letter of my pool, My original letter was G as well, I changed it to P, for Pool clever,right, anyway, and your correct all my folders went missing, rebooted, went into the dash board, reconnected the default WHS share folders, went into the drive pool using windows explorer, turned on sharing under the properties, check access for everyone under permissions, when back to the dashboard, and had stable bit re-measured the drive pool on the stablebit tab., and vola, all the share folders are back, did a reboot, and everything is still there. I'm still in the testing phase, I'm running with a boot drive, and then 2 2tb drives in the pool with about 2tb's of total data in the pool. Everything seems to be running fine."

Shane · October 2012

Hi, what was the drive letter of your pool before adding the drives and what is it now?

Heinrich · October 2012

I'm not sure. I know that G was a drive I added, and I'm pretty sure I was the second drive I added. Should I remove G?

Heinrich · October 2012

its L: now

Shane · October 2012

Windows will, in certain circumstances (involving adding/removing physical drives, but I am unsure of exactly what triggers it), bump drive letters around. If this results in changing your pool's drive letter, then WHS's libraries and shares will no longer be able to see your pool's content (because it's looking for the old letter).

Start a Command Prompt on your server, and enter the command "net share". You should see a list of your server's shares and their locations on your server's drives. If the current pool's drive letter does not match up with the drive letter pointed to by the shares that you know were on the pool, you will need to change it back to that drive letter.

You can do this using Disk Management (right-click Computer, left-click Manage, find Disk Management under Storage); right-click a volume and choose "Change drive letter..."). You should reboot afterwards and check if your data is available again. Note: if another volume has that letter, you will need to change that volume first (e.g. if E and F got swapped around).

If this is not the issue, we will need to investigate further.

dbailey75 · October 2012

shane, does it really matter what the drive letters are or even if drive letters are assigned? Would it be simple enough to uninstall drive pool, reinstall and then use the Wss.Troubleshoot_1.0.0.159.exe utility to reconnect the shares to the pool. I did something stupid over the weekend, removed the drive pool drive letter so that I could install mymoives, seems MS extracts slq express to the largest drive, anyway, I rebooted before adding back the driver letter, and all my shares were missing, hum, now what, well, I changed the drive back to P, then ran the wss tool mentioned and all is well.

accidenlty uplugging drives seems no different than doing a new OS install.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Utilities

Shane · October 2012

Yes, you might use the "Restore DrivePool Shares" function of the troubleshooting tool to point the shares to the new drive letter rather than put the pool back to its old drive letter. And that would almost certainly work - if that is the (only) problem.

However, since we're talking about 10TB of data important enough to make the owner lose their lunch at seeing it vanished into thin air, and I don't know for certain what the problem is (even if I'm pretty sure), and I don't know what else Heinrich might have running on his system, then I'd rather try a fix that is both (a) relatively simple - it's not that hard to check a share's path and change a drive letter yourself - and (b) is something instantly reversible if it doesn't fix things.

As the old physician's credo goes, first do no harm.

Heinrich · October 2012

C - I all say Default Share

IPC$ Remote IPC

J K L Default Share

Music Pictures Recorded TV say D

I says Server FOlders Videogames. That must've been the drive that I was playing around with Alcohol a few months back and moved into the pool (I gave up on Alcohol, didn't work with my games / too much effort. Back to shuffling DVDs.)

I'm not having any AHA moment or seeing what stands out much here.

Thanks for your time!!!

Heinrich · October 2012

Drivepool in the dashboard says L:

The net shares command makes L: look just like any other Default Share

Heinrich · October 2012

I really don't know what changed as I didn't keep that documented. I surely will from now on. I know that G: was added FOR SURE. I'm 85 percent sure that I was the second drive I added.

Can I just totally remove them and see if everything goes back?

I agree with the safest approach.

Shane · October 2012

If you explore L: drive, are any of your folders/data there?

I'm inclined to suggest a remote support session, as we seem to have a 24 hour lag in our back-and-forth. A bit like having a radio conversation with someone at a distance over twice as far away as Pluto is from the Sun.

Heinrich · October 2012

I finally just ran the utility that was suggested earlier because I started hearing the failing hard drive get louder on the HP server. It found everything.

Fortunately I got everything OFF that was critical to me off the failing server (personal photos, purchased downloaded software on the internet such as Windock or snagit where they force you to buy a new version I don't need and remove the old download link for the version you bought) etc. Ironically, if I had just WAITED longer, I wouldn't have turned off "folder duplication" in order to be able to swap out hard drives, and everything would be intact as the culprit drive (incorrectly identified in the WHS v1 control panel) died just a few hours ago and I turned off folder duplication late yesterday afternoon. Talk about TIMING!!

It's going to be several months of re-ripping everything. I shudder at the memory of plugging all 5 seasons of LOST again. And that's just the start! There's a silver lining there though, I always wanted to set up XBMC and do away with Windows Media, and XBMC needs .iso while mine were all ripped as folders.

Yeah, I know I'm rambling...

To Dos:

1 - figure out the best way to backup all this data for good. Folder / Drive duplication is great until you get hit with a very odd event with very bad timing like what has happened to me here.

2 - I just added another new drive to WHS2011 and the same thing happened. Pool L turned into Pool M and is LOST. I know how to fix it, heck, I'll just unplug M for now, but I don't know the correct process to add a drive any more. I also need to update DRIVEPOOL, not sure if this is fixed or not. It doesn't upgrade cleanly, I guess I have to uninstall and reinstall?

Shane · October 2012

Glad to hear you found your files.

Since the tool works for you, perhaps change the drive letter of your pool to Z or similar now (and run the tool again) so that it's well away from other potential drive letters?

Correct process to add a drive is to plug in the new drive (shutting down first if necessary), then add it to the pool via the Dashboard (formatting it to NTFS first if necessary).

What version of DrivePool do you have?

Shane · October 2012

C - I all say Default Share
I says Server FOlders Videogames. That must've been the drive that I was playing around with Alcohol a few months back and moved into the pool (I gave up on Alcohol, didn't work with my games / too much effort. Back to shuffling DVDs.)

Is Alcohol still installed on your server?

Heinrich · November 2012

Alcohol wasn't actually installed on the server; it was installed on a desktop, just using one of the drives as storage space.

I have 1.0.1.6008 installed.

Shane · November 2012

There's a newer stable release of DrivePool, 1.1.0.6326, with several improvements and fixes; you might wish to upgrade to it now that your pool is working.

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Did I just lose everything???

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