Reinstallation of WHS 2011 Pointers

muaddib · March 2012

I am thinking about reinstalling WHS 2011. I have shares (music, pictures, etc...) moved to my pool so if I do an re-installation will I have to move the shares again? Is there a procedure for reinstalling and maintaining the drive pool integrity?

On an unrelated note, what's up with all of the spam being posted?

Shane · March 2012

In theory, you shouldn't need to move the shares again; in practice, anecdotally it seems this doesn't always work.

It is a good idea to make sure the pool does not include the physical disk used by WHS 2011 for the system partition before you do a clean reinstall (since WHS formats that disk). And reinstall with only that physical disk connected, then add the rest, then reinstall drivepool.

I wish I had the time to map out a safe step-by-step for reinstalls, but lately work's just been eating up my life.

As for the spam, I've gone through and deleted what I could find, but sadly they're persistent little wretches.

dbailey75 · March 2012

check out my post under this thread. http://forum.covecube.com/discussion/501/how-do-i-recover-after-a-system-drive-failures, I did a fresh install, and left all the data on the pooled drives. After reinstalling whs and drivepool add in, the folders did not show up in the dashboard (except for the newly created shares), which I deleted manually, via windows explore that were on the d partition, and used the dashboard to recreate (re-map) the default shares that were already in the pool, Then for the shares I created, I went into the pool via windows explorer clicked on the properties for each share, clicked on sharing, advanced share, and set the persmissions to everyone. Did that for each share, then I went into the dashbaoard, the folders are now showing up, and then I did a remeasure with drivepool, and all the shares, size of shares, etc. are now showing.

Since then i've done a PC backup, and added two more PC's to the WHS 2011, the client backup folders is in the pool, it all works. This may not be the correct way, but it does seem to work.

muaddib · March 2012

check out my post under this thread. http://forum.covecube.com/discussion/501/how-do-i-recover-after-a-system-drive-failures, I did a fresh install, and left all the data on the pooled drives. After reinstalling whs and drivepool add in, the folders did not show up in the dashboard (except for the newly created shares), which I deleted manually, via windows explore that were on the d partition, and used the dashboard to recreate (re-map) the default shares that were already in the pool, Then for the shares I created, I went into the pool via windows explorer clicked on the properties for each share, clicked on sharing, advanced share, and set the persmissions to everyone. Did that for each share, then I went into the dashbaoard, the folders are now showing up, and then I did a remeasure with drivepool, and all the shares, size of shares, etc. are now showing.
Since then i've done a PC backup, and added two more PC's to the WHS 2011, the client backup folders is in the pool, it all works. This may not be the correct way, but it does seem to work.

Thanks, that sounds like a lot of work. However, I might have to do it nonetheless.

dbailey75 · March 2012

Forgot to mention, if your doing fresh install, pull your data drives to ensure they are not over written by the WHS installer.

Unless you have hundreds of shares it will take you 15 minutes to complete, but I would a agree, a wizard of sorts would be the perferred option, but it's going to take you a lot longer to load the WHS updates, then it will to remap your shares.

kcjack · April 2012

OK,No luck at all.

I had a mother board go out now my system disk.

I read this thread and the one dbaily75 referred to. I have more than the normal shared folders and my client pc backups are on a non-pooled drive.

Any suggestions.

I am going to put in a new system drive and disconnect all of my data drives. Then I will delete all the system shares the whs 2011 fresh install. After that I will recreate shares for the pool in dashboard. Will that work??

dvdluvver · April 2012

I just went through this process. As of right now, all my data disks (all 20 of them) have been found and the Pool has been recreated successfully. Problem is, though, that none of the shared have been recreated (nor the default shares redirected to the pool). Will this just take some time?

muaddib · April 2012

The above complaints is what I am afraid of. Shane, a step-by-step guide will be great or at least have a couple of options to go along with dbailey75's impromptu guide.

dvdluvver · April 2012

I was able to get it fixed with a little help from Alex (though I am still being denied access to the shares from my clients). It involves "unsharing" the original folders ("D:/ServerFolders/etc..") and then granting full access to the new folders. Then going to "Indexing Options" and adding the new shares to the index. This gets everything looking good on the Dashboard. Now I just have to fix the access denied problem.

Honestly, though, the fact that DrivePool could instantly reassemble a 20 drive 18TB pool (with USB, eSata, and internal drives) with no hiccups at all is pretty impressive. The data is all there and accessible, it's just how to get it back to being shared on the network.

DP just needs to have some way of walking a user through this scenario, and it'll be just that much better!!!

muaddib · April 2012

Good news dvdluvver. I haven't rebuilt my server yet but I hope all goes well when that times come.

dvdluvver · April 2012

Well, the permissions are killing me. Seems that no matter what I do, I can't get things to share properly. Homegroup won't show the shares. They show up from the network node, but all give me access denied. Attempting to share gives me "your folder cannot be shared". Any ideas?

Shane · April 2012

Personally I wouldn't "unshare" the default WHS shares. I suspect those waters have dragons.

Shane's Step By Step Guide To Keeping A Happy Pool During A WHS Reinstall:

(guide version 0.1 beta for drivepool build 1.0.0.5933 beta)

This version of the Guide assumes that you do NOT trust the default WHS shares to successfully migrate to a reinstalled whs+pool. It also assumes the Client Computer Backups folder is NOT in the pool.

Scenario: you wish to perform a clean WHS reinstall while keeping your pooled data, you have the standard system (C:) and data (D:) partitions on the first disk, version 1.0.0.5933 (or earlier) of DrivePool, and your pool's safety is far more important to you than speed.

Step 1... If

is in the pool, remove it from the pool via the DrivePool tab. If you do not have enough space remaining in the pool to do this, you will have to choose between deleting data, moving data to an external non-pooled disk, or adding another disk to the pool (or whatever else gets the job done).

Step 2... Move the contents of your default WHS shares (Documents, Music, Pictures, Recorded TV, Videos) to temporary folders on your pooled drive, even if these shares are already on the pooled drive (use Explorer on the WHS machine itself to move them, e.g. from P:\ServerFolders\Pictures to P:\Temp\Pictures). Note: move the contents, not the shares themselves. You may use TeraCopy or similar if you have it.

Step 3... Move your (now empty) default WHS shares back to their default location in

\ServerFolders. THIS IS IMPORTANT. We do NOT want these in the pool when we reinstall.

Step 4... Move any other data on C: or

that you want to keep to somewhere other than C: or

Step 5... Shutdown WHS, then pull all disks except the one you intend to have as the main WHS disk. Warning: anything on this disk will be lost.

Step 6... Perform a clean install of WHS, then connect the rest of your disks.

Step 7... Install DrivePool. Reboot. It should recreate your pool and its shares.

Step 8... Move the default WHS shares back to the pool, and move their contents back from the temporary folders. This assumes you use the default WHS shares and want them in the pool.

Step 9... Using the dashboard, set your share permissions for all shares, then force a consistency check (Pool tab). That should be it.

Please note, this version of the guide is from memory as right now I simply don't have the time to walk through it myself. Speaking of time - it's way past time for bed.

dvdluvver · April 2012

Comment deleted, see full text below!

MikeWI · April 2012

So If I'm understanding this correctly, we can't have anything assigned to one of the default shares, so we're moving the entire contents of the pooled shares to temp folders. These would be outside the WHS share system, but since they are still on the pool wouldn't they be duplicated if you have auto-duplication turned on?

If so, you need a lot of room in your pool to do this kind of shuffling, and the transfer times could be daunting as well. At that point, it would seem better to start from scratch and restore from backup or other copy. As the transfer times would be comparable, but with less complexity.

Could this be avoided if we used custom shares instead of the default ones? You say in step 7 that DP will recreate the poos and the "shares", but I'm not sure what you mean by that. Unless WHS can detect those custom shares in their "correct" location when the pool is restored, it seems that you would still have to recreate those shares in WHS, default or not, and that this in turn would mean transferring files again.

I hope I'm missing something here, because it really doesn't sound like anything is gained by this process.

muaddib · April 2012

Awesome thread! This should be a sticky, I am sure we are not the only ones with this issue.

dvdluvver · April 2012

OK, I have the DEFINITIVE method for doing this. I've just done this twice in the last three days, and learned a lot from my first try. This is 20 disks, 18TB pool, 12 shares, etc., so if it works here, it'll be the way to do it. I'm going to copy from above, but give you the EXACT method that works here... If you try to set permissions any other way (I've tried!) it'll get messed up. See below for the exact way that this all works:

dvdluvver · April 2012

This took a little doing on my part, but this worked for me eventually (Alex, I hope it's OK that I'm sharing your instructions you sent me here).

This was Alex's guide to getting things back on track:

(This is easier if you do it BEFORE you join the Homegroup on your server)

To re-share all your folders.

1. Log into the server using remote desktop as Administrator.

2. Open Windows explorer. Navigate to where the default shares are (e.g.

\ServerFolders).

3. Unshare those folders using Windows Explorer using THIS method:

a - on each share, right click "Properties"

b - Select "Sharing" tab

c - Click "Advanced Sharing"

d - UNCHECK the "Share this folder" checkbox

e - "OK", "Close"

4. Navigate to your pool drive.

5. Re-share all the folders there as follows:

a - on each share, right click "Properties"

b - Select "Sharing" tab

c - Click "Advanced Sharing"

d - CHECK the "Share this folder" checkbox

e - DO NOT Click "OK" yet, click "Permissions" below

f - For "Everyone" already populated, select "Full Control"

g - "OK", "OK", "Close"

6. Now you need to add everything to the index.

7. Click Start -> Type "Indexing Options".

8. Click Modify, and add all the folders on the pool to the index.

9. Then you can join the homegroup and assign each permission using the wizard as usual.

That's it!

dvdluvver · April 2012

As a further comment on above - I found that I did not have to complete steps 6-8 in my most recent reinstall (I did step 9 first, which perhaps takes care of this?).

muaddib · April 2012

Thank you dvdluvver!

Shane · April 2012

@MikeWI: What *should* happen when you use explorer to move content from (P as in the Pool's drive) P:\ServerFolders\Pictures to P:\Temp\Pictures is a pure move, not a move-via-copy. So it *should* be very quick. If it's not, yes, that will suck (and really needs to be fixed). And yes, if you use custom shares and ignore the default WHS shares, you don't have to do this.

Shane · April 2012

(also, version 0.1 guide should perhaps be called shane's _paranoid_ guide to keeping your pool happy

)

MikeWI · April 2012

Thanks Shane. I've been having drives fail on me left and right since Xmas, so you never know when I'm going to need this. At least I only have about 2TB of files.

kcjack · April 2012

I just completed the install of my system drive after a system drive drive failure.

I have done the following:

1. pulled all hard drives except new system drive.

2. Installed a smaller system drive. New is 160G vs Old 320G.

3. Did a fresh install of WHS 2011.

4. Updated WHS 2011 and activated.

5. Setup remote access from the dashboard on a client pc.

6. This is where I see things get murky in this thread and others. Right now all my data is on the disconnected pool drives and 1 non pooled client backup drive.

Before I go forward I am trying to understand what to do with the WHS default shares before reinstalling drivepool and connecting the pulled drives.

Right now I have the default shares on drive / partition d: with nothing in them and also default shares in the pool along with my other added shares. Two default share locations with same names. One with data(pool) and one without (Drive

system drive)

Before plowing forward what is next?

Do I unshare defaults on drive d:? Do I just reinstall drivepool and let drivepool find the shares and then delete the default shares on drive d:?

Looking at Shanes info dbaily75 and dvd luvvers info it appears contradictory what to do next. After this step everything between all seems to be pretty close and understandable.

Thanks for any help.

KCJACK

dvdluvver · April 2012

If I were in your situation, I would install DrivePool next. Have the new location of the default shares in place before removing them from their original location. If all is well (and this is the part that has NEVER been an issue) once you install DrivePool, then reconnect your pooled drives, the pool will magically reappear (if you want to specify your drive letter, change that before you reconnect your drives - just the way I did it so I know it works).

Once you have the pool in place, follow the steps I've outlined and you should be good to go!

Ron

Shane · April 2012

I think the contradictory advice might be because lately I've been taking a rather paranoid approach to the default WHS shares; this is more because I don't trust Windows, not so much DrivePool.

In an ideal world, what should happen now is you (1) connect all your drives, (2) install drivepool, and (3) the default WHS shares are auto-magically* re-pointed to your originals on the pool. You can do (1) and (2) the other way around, I'm not sure what (if any) difference it makes (if you're connecting them all at once).

The worst that should happen is DrivePool is unable to re-point the shares and you end up with unshared folders on your pool that happen to have the same names as the default WHS shares. In this case, you would rename those folders (e.g. P:\pictures becomes P:\pictures.old), use the dashboard to move the default WHS shared folders into the pool - should be quick because they're empty - and then use explorer on the WHS machine to move the contents of your old folders into the new shared ones (which should also be quick, I hope).

*(I say "auto-magically" because it's hard for DP to tell the difference between an empty share you want it to move and an empty share you don't want it to move)

Hopefully now that we're out of beta, Alex will have enough time to write up some kind of official FAQ re "how do I get my pool back the way it was, when I reinstall WHS?"

kcjack · April 2012

Thanks to both of you. I now understand. A couple of months ago my motherboard died and I rebuilt the entire server. This time with the system disk dead and me going to a smaller drive, I needed to do a fresh install of whs and I did not want to go back again and rebuild entire server.

I will connect all hard drives, then reinstall the same version of DP I last was using and see what comes of the duplicated folders and proceed from there. I will then rename shares and move data if needed.

Thanks

KCJACK

kcjack · April 2012

So,

I have drivepool reinstalled, but will not take my activation code. Any way around this. Only thing different is my system drive. Of course could not deactivate under lost system drive problem.

Maybe this step should be in the how-to also

KCJACK

Doug · April 2012

@kcjack

Quote from Alex (http://forum.covecube.com/discussion/504/are-you-having-trouble-with-licensing#Item_9)

I know that if you re-install WHS, and you didn't deactivate the prior license, then you will not be able to activate a new license, even if it's on the same hardware. I'm looking at addressing that for 1.0 final. If this is happening to you, just send me a note @ stablebit.com/contact and I'll help you out.

kcjack · April 2012

Thanks for the info Doug. Have not upgraded so will / did contact Alex.

KCJACK

dvdluvver · April 2012

Hopefully very few people would happen upon scenario where you would have to rename any pool shares. Even if Windows is unable to point the default shares to the ones on the pool. This is exactly what happened on my reinstalls (not only was it unable to repoint the default shares, but couldn't recreate the custom ones either). At the beginning all I had was an entire pool filled with nothing but unshared folders and a dashboard filled with nothing but empty default shares. The steps I outlined not only manually "reshares" your custom shares (and doing it this way makes them show up in the dashboard), but forces the repointing of the default shares from their default location in the pool. However, if this process for some reason did not result in the shares appearing in the dashboard, you would have to go through that process.

Perhaps it was the several day long process I went though originally getting all 8TB of data moved to my pool initially that makes me shudder at the very notion of having to rename and move shares!

I supposed this is all different approaches looking for the same result based on one's individual situation! Hopefully users wouldn't have to go through this process very often! My server is screaming right now, so don't plan to touch it for a long while! *knock on wood!*

Ron

kcjack · April 2012

Six words.

Did Not Work auto-magically, I Think!!!

I finally got the drivepool activation id to work and when everything came back up I did not see the pooled folders. I rebooted and then did a remeasure. I can see in the pie chart from the dashboard that data is there, but no where do the pooled folders show up in the dashboard.

Situation is this right now in Dashboard:

C: System drive working

All default share folders are currently on this drive with no data in them.

J:DB6 Non pooled computer backups

L: DB1-DB5 Pooled drives, shows no folders after a reboot of server and remeasure of pool.

Stablebit Tab: Shows pie chart and shows that Pool contains 9.1TB Total and 7.19TB free.

Situation in Remote Desktop is:

Can see all the drives and can see Drivepool L: and can see all the shared folders both default folders and the custom folders I added. All folders show no sharing in Drivepool in properties.

Is this where I change the name of the default folders (Do I do this for the custom folders also?) in Explorer and make / move new shares for all shares then move the data in explorer from *.old folders to the newly created/moved shares in drivepool?

I think this is it. Any holes in what I am doing? What's Next???????????

KCJACK

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