Good Morning Everyone,
I had to replace the system drive in my EX490 as it went bad. Device was not booting at all. So I hooked it up to my computer and ran a test on it and it has bad sectors.
I did a server recovery on the new hard drive I put in. I could not do the server recovery with the 2nd hard drive plugged into the unit. But unit is back up and running........without all my data.
I put the 2nd hard drive in my computer and I heard a few "clicks" but eventually it got detected. (Yes I am thinking that I have another bad hard drive!!!!)
When it was hooked up to another PC I could see that there was about 500G of data being detected and I saw a couple of folders too. But when i tried to access them it said I had to be an admin but could not open them. They appeared to be hidden. Also could not just copy/paste them from hard drive to desktop.
So my next question is, if I just pop this HD, or even the old system hard drive into slots 2 and 3 of my media server will I be able to see the data to get it off these? Or will they be formatted and all hope lost of data recovery?

Thanks,
CaptK

The second drive going bad as well, make sense you could not do a recovery. Recovery can be tricky with good drives.
Yes, when you plug a drive into the server it will ask what you want to do with it, it will format it if you add to the pool.

Your best bet is to try and recover what data you can, but sounds like the drive is to bad. Sorry to hear. Losing data gives me that Ill feeling.
Pooling drives is nice but it does not replace the need for some kind of a backup.
Some use the cloud.
Some use a non-pooled drive (you can add a drive and NOT add it to the pool) then it shows up as a server share backup drive.
Some use a second server. (I have a second server that wakes/syncs/sleeps). Plus I have non-pooled drives I update once or twice a year.
Some use an external drive or NAS. But always have to have a backup.

Good luck, I hope you don't lose the important stuff.

Data recovery is very expensive, but depends on the data, if it's the only copy of the kids or a wedding, Might be worth it.

I also don't trust the pc backups, I make images of them and updates those yearly, I also have my girls keep all the data they can on the server where it can be backed up.

P.S. It's always a good idea to keep a couple of spare 1-2 tb drives around, just in case.
P.S.S. The free SMART addin would let you know a drive is going bad while you can still work with it, IMHO it is a must have.
http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net/dl/InstallHomeServerSMARTClassic.zip

_________________
[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud

If you have the original OS drive, you can clone the drive if it's not to badly corrupted by following some posts on this site. That will keep your data that was on the D:\ partition of the system drive. It should still work with your second drive.

Chances are you added your 2nd drive to the server after you installed the connector on the PC. This is why it is not part of the pool. It is a messy process to add the files to the new disk. If this is the case then you can do a Server Recovery again, Not Factory Reset, with the 2nd drive in the server and once you reinstall the connector on the PC, since the 2nd drive is in the server, it will be added to the pool. So you will now have that data.

The issue is that you still don't have the data from the original OS drive unless you had Folder Duplication on for all the Shared Folders.

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HP MediaSmart EX495 E8600 3.2Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, 8TB storage including 3TB drives in pool. WHS with Active Directory, WDS, Media Center Master, Logitech server. Office 2010 server with client add-ins.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

Thanks for the replies!
Yes ill feelings beyond belief, and many a sleepless night.

With my possible 2 bad hard drives should I be able to just toss them in another PC, or hard drive caddy, and be able to see what is on them? Or does the ex490 format or secure the data in a way that it is only readable from the ex490?

I am certain that I had folder duplication turned on.

And if I put one of the two back in the ex490 that is up and running with a new HD will I be prompted to NOT format it and see if I can get data off of it?

The drives are not encrypted. You can put them in a PC. Show hidden files because there is a hidden DE folder.

You can put them back in the server and they will be assigned drive letters. If you go to the Server Storage tab, you will see them. Just don't add them to the pool or they will be deleted. You will have to access your server through a RDC so you can copy files around. It gets messy if you had Folder Duplication on because you will notice the files appear in 2 different location.

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HP MediaSmart EX495 E8600 3.2Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, 8TB storage including 3TB drives in pool. WHS with Active Directory, WDS, Media Center Master, Logitech server. Office 2010 server with client add-ins.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

That is one of the best things about Windows Home Server, is you can pull a drive at anytime and see/access the data on it.
NAS'es and other systems keep the data in some format that can not be read just by plugging it into another computer.

I have 2 usb/sata docks so I can access drives and I use them for cloning drives, they come in handy.

I would try to get that data off by attaching them to another pc with a usb dock or cable.
I think plugging them in a media server is just asking them to get formatted.

I would get a usb/sata dock and attach them and go for the most important data first. Because coping data off the drive is going to be putting more ware on it.
Sometimes, you can grab some data then when the drive warms up it will stop. Then you wait, undock it, let it cool down and maybe grab some more later.
It just depends on how bad the drive is.

Thankin good thoughts for you!!!! Good Luck

I wouldn't clone, it's to much work, but that's just me. DieHard has a point, if you could clone the main drive and get it working you might be able to do a recovery with the second drive in, but it depends on how bad the drives are. I think you said you tried a recovery with the second drive in and it failed, That makes me thing that second drive has problems also. That is why I would go straight to the data on another pc so you can see what your doing. Hopefully you have room somewhere to copy it to.

_________________
[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud