Comp1962 wrote:
WOW that's a good question. Let me ask you if you setup the OS Backup to run twice a day or did you happen to make a manual backup of the OS? I ask this because you can recover from the backup and its better if you had the backup automated where its done twice per day.
No we did not, here is the thread about why we need to recover the server.
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Were you storing your data on individual drives, using RAID or one of the 3rd party pooling software like Drive Bender or Stablebit Drive Pool?
Drive Bender, latest version.
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If the System Drive is functional and your just looking to replace it just image the drive onto a new drive and then you will be back in business if the original drive is readable.
We are trying to isolate what the problem is, software or hardware.
I am not personally aware of a good way to do a blind recovery with WHS2011 and that is not to say one does not exist, I know Acer did it with their RevoCenter using a Bootable USB Flash drive but what I do not know is how the full process worked and if they provided a way to recover from a backup at some point along the way. I do own one but have not played with it enough to know.
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The best way to achieve what your looking to do is to install a debug board and connect and external USB DVD Optical Drive to the bottom rear USB Port and then connect a keyboard, mouse and monitor to the server and run the server installation disk. This is best if you have an OS Backup you can use to recover from. If you do not have an OS Backup then you may want to reinstall the OS using one of the Blind Methods but in this case I am uncertain if you will be able to preserve your client backups or not even if they are located on another drive but I can look that up and see what I can find out for you because I have WHS2011 books here to look at.
I have a debug board, and this is how we installed the OS originally, just not sure how to recover the server without losing data. I would think you just put the bootable USB flash drive in with OS and see what it says?
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On thing I will mention about Stablebit Drive Pool is that even if you perform a new installation with the drives not connected then after the OS is installed you can connect your Storage Drives and install Stablebit Drive Pool and it will see the drive pool but you would have to add the shares back into the server to access the data. I believe but am not 100% certain that Drive Bender is the same way.
I really liked Stablebit, but had some incompatability issues between it and Newsleecher so we opted to use Drive Bender.
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If you current system drive is still functional and the data can be properly read you can simply just image the drive to a new one and be back in business quickly. I proved this out when I changed my Mechanical Drive to an SSD and it worked perfectly and I used Acronis True Image which you can get from any Drive OEM but you will need to have one of their drives in the computer your using and it matters not if your imaging the OEM's drives or not because the OEM version of Acronis True Image just checks to see if you have one of their drives in the computer and then the installation will take place and the software will be functional so long as you have that OEM's drive in your computer.
We have Acronis as well, but feel that perhaps there is some corruption in the OS as he did have to roll back some windows updates to resolve some other issues he was having.
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So just answer the questions above and tell me as much as you can about how you have your server setup so that I can fully understand your situation. I do have an EX49x here I can play with where I can do a WHS2011 installation on and play with it based on your setup. I do have a working WHS2011 server but its on an EX48x so its similar but not quite the same but I don't prefer to muck with that server because it's working perfectly but the EX49x I can experiment with and I actually have 2 of them to work with so one way or another I think we can find a workable solution to your problem and because I do have debug boards I can see what is going on when an issue pops up.
He has an upgraded EX495 with all bays full, WHS 2011 and latest version of Drive Bender...no server backups.