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Thank you,


How to recreate a pool?

rubenhakrubenhak
edited September 2011 in DrivePool
Hi,

I've just reformatted my WHS 2011 server (after a hardware upgrade). Now its time to make recover my pool.
Can anybody provide guideline of recovery process? I have 4 HDDs, full of data. Previously using latest version of DrivePool.

Thank you,
Ruben

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Comments

  • ArthurHawkinsArthurHawkins
    Member

    Before I started working with your pool.. I would make sure you have all of the latest .NET updates, probably any other updates off Microsoft Update installed.. Then install the add-in, go into the dashboard.. the pool will "auto-recover" and be listed.. at that point all you should have to do is "validate" the drives as they will be recognized as foreign disks..

    If you have any issues with "Permission Denied" errors, doubtful - I think Alex has straightened most of that out - just go into the share properties and reapply your user permissions and it should correct any/all permissions issues..

     

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  • rubenhakrubenhak
    Member
    you mean just install the software, then plug in all the drives and wait for DrivePool to do its job? 

    Should I add all drives at once, or just one bye one?

    Previously I already had some troubles with permissions, I think those are already sorted out. If it happens again I know how to resolve them/
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  • ShaneShane
    Resident Guru
    Plug in all the drives (you may wish to turn them on one-by-one if you're hot-plugging). That way DrivePool won't complain about missing drives from the pool.
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  • rubenhakrubenhak
    Member
    Wow, that worked like a charm. However I had to reset some permissions, which was painful...
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  • edaeda
    Member
    As a follow up to this thread, I am about to rebuild my server for a reason unrelated to DrivePool (I changed the name of the server, which apparently corrupts the Certificate Authority--don't try this at home!).

    I'm assuming I can remove the data drives, rebuild on the original drive, install DrivePool, and then insert the data drives and it will just rebuild itself?

    Sounds too easy to be true.  Do I even need to remove the data drives?

    I do have all the data backed up, so I'm not concerned about losing data, but it's good to know that if I lose a system drive, it's easy to rebuild.
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  • ShaneShane
    Resident Guru
    That's it, yes; I remove the data drives just to avoid any chance of WHS installing itself on them.

    (caveat: I have not personally tried this with a pool that includes WHS's shared folders, only my own shared folders - if you have migrated WHS's folders into your pool and you try this, let us all know how it goes :p)
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  • edaeda
    Member
    Ah, yes, that might be the rub.  I have moved all of WHS's system files to the pool, so it sounds like I'll have a tale to tell.  Obviously, the new install will create new empty shared folders.  Just thinking this through, I'm guessing I can delete WHS's folders (which I believe creates an error), then rebuild the DrivePool, then point the system folders to the folders in the pool.  Has no one tried this yet?  If not, I guess I'm the guinea pig....
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  • edaeda
    Member
    Update.  As planned, I rebuilt my WHS2011 server from the ground up.  I first removed my two pooled data drives from the system just to make sure they didn't somehow get initialized.  Once the install was done (took a while), I installed DrivePool.  Once complete, I installed the two pooled data drives.  They both showed up as pooled drives, but were marked "Unhealthy."  It occurred to me that the drives would need to be validated.  I did that and the drives were set.  And, as promised, all the data were there just like before.

    This is the really amazing part to me.  In my previous install, I had moved the system shared folders to the pool.  I wasn't sure how that would affect the install.  It turns out it was perfect.  Once the drives were installed, the shared system folders were somehow already (automatically?) pointing to the pooled drive locations.  I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to delete the pools, I didn't have to move anything.  It just happened.  Sure gives me a lot of confidence in Alex's work.

    There was one exception.  The Client Computer Backups folder did not move like the others.  When I went to move it manually, I got an error that the folder name already existed.  I renamed the other folder and then executed the move.  I did lose all the previous client backups, I suppose, but I kind of expected that, having rebuilt the server.

    One other minor thing.  It appears that some of the pooled share description fields had gone away in the rebuild, but not others..  Not sure why, but I added them back in without incident.
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  • ShaneShane
    edited October 2011 Resident Guru
    Excellent news! (except for the computer backups folder, looks like that's a little bugbear :p)

    Thankyou very much for letting us know how it went. :)
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  • SDWolfSDWolf
    Member

    Wow.  Seriously, wow.

    I clicked this thread expecting to see instructions comprised of a wall of text, and perhaps a tale of woe or two, considering how painful reconstructing a RAID (or even a WHSv1 pool) can be.  Instead, this has been a really pleasant surprise.  Well done, Alex! 

    :)
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  • AlexAlex
    edited October 2011 Covecube
    The client computer backups folder is a little tricky. We handle it differently than any other folder, and it has to work with the backup service to tell it where it is... and this isn't implemented on re-install. I'm not even sure if this is possible. 

    I will tackle this one day, but for now I'm focusing on implementing that performance / reliability layer that I've been promising for M4. We're not talking about small tweaks in the code here. We're replacing whole blocks of existing I/O code with highly optimized (and hopefully more compatible) kernel code.
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  • schipp07schipp07
    Member
      Yeah, wish I found this before I tried.  Did get it to work.  Only question I have is the D; drive.  How did people get that back.  I had a back up and restored that volume with no problem. I have been running the server backup to back up all my disks.  I wiped all of them prior to reinstalling just to see what would happen.  Once WHS was reinstalled and I reattached all my drives I recovered all of my volumes except C:/  Then installed DrivePool and it autmatically picked them all up including D:  Everthing went smooth except when I went to Validate D: I did get that error.  But it seems to be working just fine.  THis is truly great news after losing half my data under old WHS.  Thanks Alex.
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