I tried a couple of different work arounds and nothing seems to work. Now I have two issues. I moved and can't seem to find recover/restore CD. I called HP to get a new one and they said because it is out of warranty they can't even sell me one. What do I do now. It seems questionable that because my server is 30 days past warranty I now have an expensice boat anchor.
Any help would be appreciated.

I'd suggest adding your location to your profile, perhaps you live near another forum member who might let you borrow their Server Recovery disk? I do not know of a source to download the image, but I see this happening often enough that I wish HP would make the image available.

Just changed it, thank you very much. For easy access, I am in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

As an MS MVP can you "put in a word" on the subject? It is becoming very common....

And it is NOT a good sign that there is not a path to assist a user out of warranty. This will quickly become a major issue for HP as the word gets around that there is no way to pay for a fix, especially a simple CD, once warranty has expired.

I can definitely put in a request, and will post back with what I hear.

Gotta love HP support, I heard back this morning. I'll write a blog post on this with the full feedback from HP, but I'll first address your issue here with a couple important points:

- The first MediaSmart Servers arrived to customers the week of and the week after Thanksgiving last year. I don't believe there really is any way you could be 30 days past your warranty, as you state.

- HP responded that they are sending free replacement media to customers, even if they are outside their warranties. If you had a support person tell you otherwise, I recommend you call back and ask for replacement media.

- HP also told me that they are working on a process for the future to provide out-of-warranty support and media to customers at some nominal charge, but that process is not yet in place.

I hope this helps!

THANK-YOU ALEX! And thanks to HP!

I am very pleased that HP is taking this step.

As promised, a little more info about warranty issues in my blog post.

Is HP still providing free replacement for server recovery media? My 2-year-old son had a disc shredding party this morning with many of my essential system discs (my paper shredder has a disc slot...)

Call and ask.... SO FAR HP seems to have been VERY reasonable about this.

Just an update... I called HP support and had a generally nice conversation with somebody named 'David'. They are still willing to ship out the media free of charge - but were not willing to do so for me because my server was not in immediate need of the disc. He would have shipped out the disc if I needed to perform the restore now. Unfortunately - this means I need to do one of 2 things:

1) Wait until there is a problem and go through the process again - waiting at least a few days for the media to come in the mail and possibly pay for the media if their policy changes between now and then.
2) Wait a few weeks and make up an 'incident'

My conscionce will not allow me to go through with #2, so I hope I never have a server issue... if you ask me, the policy is flawed and/or not thought through very well. Oh well - I tried!

I understand that their supply is limited at the moment which may be why they are doing it that way right now.

I would make a record of your incident report (number, date, time, "David", etc.) so you can remind them that this ws promised today should the policy change in the future.