OK, i'm in the process of trying to do this so help me if you can my EX487 had 2 of the bad 750gb Seagate Hard Drives, and of course 1 of them got 100% killed by the firmware bug. hooray me.

so since last night, i've been trying to do a Servery Recovery but can't get far. Here's my steps:

-> Initiate the recovery
-> When the server reboots, the Activity light goes to a solid purple (like it does in recovery mode)
-> No hard drive lights

Any idea what i'm doing wrong?

Did you replace the system drive with a new drive or one used before on either WHS or another PC? If not brand new and previously used, you need to re-format that drive by hooking it up to a PC and reformating; then initiate server recovery.

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HP MSS EX490 with Intel E6300
4 GB RAM
7 TB Drive Storage

MediaSmartServer.net Wiki, it's loaded with helpful information about WHS and the HP MediaSmart Server.

ok, i replaced the drive and made sure it was formatted NTFS, and at least hte light's not purple. but for the past 15 minutes it's been blinking blue health light and not showing up on the network. thoughts?!?!

how long does this bit of the recovery normally take?

Dumb question on my part but you are using the Server Recovery CD in a client PC? If so, is it finding the server on the network?

_________________
HP MSS EX490 with Intel E6300
4 GB RAM
7 TB Drive Storage

MediaSmartServer.net Wiki, it's loaded with helpful information about WHS and the HP MediaSmart Server.

I myself had a very simular thing happen to me, tried as I might to no avail. figuered that my 475 was down for the count. Than after a week and ordering a M$ OEM, I got to thinking I had been trying the recovery from my Vista machine, well I went upstairs to the wife's XP system and was able successfuly do a complete recovery.

What OS are you trying the recovery from?

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MSS HP475 + 8TB , 2 GB m, PP2
PC1 Win 7 Ult Quad QX9775 w/6gb m,2x500 GB WD RD-1,2x8800gtx Sli mode
PC2 XP Pro/64 SP3 AMD 3300 w/2gb m 2x120GB Rd 0
PC3 XP Pro/32 SP3 AMD 2400 w/1.5bg m 2x72GB
PC4 LapTop
PC5 XP Pro/32 SP3 P4 1gb m
4TB NAS Raid 10