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HP EX470 Hard drive failure, did I just lose everything? RRS feed

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    I have an HP EX470 with one additional 500GB hard drive installed.  For the past few weeks, I hadn't been able to connect via the remote service but I had figured that it wasn't a huge deal and that I would fix it when I got back into town.  We got hit by the recent tornados in Alabama and lost power for about a week and ever since power came back on, the server had been getting file missing errors and damaged database errors.  Then the back up service stopped working and I wasn't even able to log in via Remote Desktop.  I tried backing up the server by using the supplied tools in WHS, but it kept erroring saying that it couldn't find certain files.

    At this point I'm panicking because the server has all of my kids photos we've taken of them since birth, videos of their birthdays, and almost everything else that would mean something to a parent as their kids are growing up.  So after reading a post by some others, I pull the drives (total of 2) and plug them into another computer and the system drive seems to be fine.  I can see the folder structure, but there is no data in the files.  I had duplication for every folder in the server turned on, so I don't understand why there is no data there.  I put the second drive in and see the folder structure as well, there is some data in some folders, but most are empty.  I looked in [driveletter]:\DE as well as [driveletter]:\shares and [driveletter]:\folders.

    Have I lost everything or is there some method to regain the data?  I could care less about the backups as I can redo those.  The shares are my primary concern.

    Friday, May 20, 2011 3:14 PM

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    If you had duplication on for all folders then you will have your lost files on both disks so don't worry - yet! You may be seeing the toombstone folder structure on the system disk which points to data elsewhere (a feature of Drive Extender). As long as you can read the disks then the data will be there somewhere - you just need to find it! Do you know how much data you had and is that amount showing up as used space on both disks? I am not sure of a mechanism which could have deleted the data from both disks - good luck.
    Friday, May 20, 2011 3:49 PM
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    Both HDDs are showing the exact same amount of space usage.  They are very close to capacity (476 GB of 500 GB), so I'm assuming the files are saved somewhere.  A colleague of mind mentioned that the .dat files are backup databases with the possibiltiy of the actual files being stored within.

    I'm pretty desperate here... that server housed all of my important, un-replaceable memories.  I thought, with the Drive Duplication turned on, I was protected but its not looking that way.  If I remove the drive from the pool, will it rebuild the shares from the data stored in the .dat files?

    Friday, May 20, 2011 4:30 PM
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    I do not believe that the .dat files store your files within. If the drives are showing up as almost full your files must be there somewhere! I would not remove a drive from the pool and rebuild as you will be in danger of loosing something as the system seems to be screwed up. If you can't find the files manually then I wouldn't rely on the system doing so. When you say you want to remove a drive from the pool, does that imply your server boots up correctly and you can use the dashboard to remove a drive or were you just planning to physically remove a drive?
    Friday, May 20, 2011 5:04 PM
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    Yes, the server will boot but shows nothing in the shares and no backups are seen either.  The drive with issues (drive 2 of 2) shows up as either "missing" or "unhealthy".  When I try and use the WHS tools to fix the drive, it runs the chkDsk, but not the functions to allow me access to the files on the shares.

    Friday, May 20, 2011 5:53 PM