So first of all, thanks for all the info posted. I have been following this site and others like it for years and the shared knowledge is invaluable.
On to my problem...I have 3 WHS v1 boxes--2 hp MSS 470's and a home built one that is not headless.

I had a lightning strike that blew past my whole house surge and individual UPS's and damaged 1 MSS and the home built box. It just so happens that the home built box had duplicate files from the damaged MSS box. I had to replace the system drive on the home built box and several of the other drives had damage, so I just rebuilt the whole thing...no problem, I still had my main MSS with all of my info intact...

Well the MSS started having issues, at first with the console opening remotely and remote access, and then with booting up without errrs. I had to do database and drive repairs and things seemed ok for a day, and then the issues started again (I think I got a bad add in install) and I decided to do a recovery. After the recovery, the console will not come up. ( I have done the recovery via network, but have the dongle that allows kvm connection to the MSS, so I am working directly on the the server. I have had issues previously and have changed drives, added storage, done recoveries, updated ram, etc--with the help of sites like this one.

After several attempts at recovery and much reading, I think I have figured out the problem, but don't know how to solve it. I am hoping editing the registry will fix. In the meanwhile, I am copying all of the info from the 8 disks onto one of the other servers.

So the backup service won't start, which prevents the console from opening. On occasion, I can trick the console into opening, but I get messages about the shares not being created--which is correct. Looking at the C: drive, there is no C:\fs folder. Also, on the rare occasion I can get the console to open, it sees all of the drives, but none are installed--so the computer doesn't see any storage, and can't start the backup service. After looking at the logs, they mention in one log that the drives are unmounted. I saved the logs, but they are quite long and I didn't want to paste here until requested to do so.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated...i'm trying to save 700G of music and 400G of my photography.

I hate seeing a post that has not been replied to.
My 2 cents:
You have your data, that is the main thing. What I would suggest, after lighting in the house is starting from scratch.
Find your best drive or buy a new drive, put it in what you think is the best server you have left and do a factory reset, get all the updates, set all your stuff and start adding drives.
If all goes well then you can copy your data back.
Otherwise, you may need to hit ebay and try to pickup a ex-490 or x-510 something a little newer.
Good Luck

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