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    OK... I'm pretty tech savvy. I've had my WHS up for way over a year. Started getting some weird problems here and there (not material to this post). So I decided I'd reinstall the server and just start fresh. Yesterday, I backed up my WHS shared folders (pics, music, docs) on an external HDD, verified good on another PC and reinstalled WHS using the blow it completely off, kill all my data install option.

    I was planning to reinstall the docs tonight... but today my backpack was stolen including my laptop and the drive with all my kids photos, etc on it. Now I'm 2 hours into the whole whyinthehell did I take that drive out of the house discussion with myself. But it's gone. Period. Can't go back, have to go forward.

    So I'm left with what I hope is still recoverable data on the WHS. The WHS has blank drives other than the system install. I haven't done any backups yet of my computers on the system.

    Can someone please give me a glimmer of hope that the data is recoverable and a clue as to the easiest way to do it. I haven't told my wife yet that all our kids photos and 3 years of her school work may be gone forever. I really don't want to have that conversation...

    Again, what's in question are documents that were shared files from the server - music, pics, user docs (not part of the backup set from an individual pc).

    Help? Anyone?

    - Nathan
    Sunday, May 24, 2009 2:52 AM

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    Your options are limited. You can either go for professional data recovery, which is typically pretty expensive, or you can go for using some sort of data recovery software and a DIY approach. Usually, I would recommend against a DIY approach if the data is truly crucial, because amateur data recovery efforts on a damaged hard drive can destroy more data. But in this case you don't have a damaged drive, just one that's been formatted, so a DIY approach is not as risky a solution as it could be. It's still risky; most data recovery software is perfectly capable of destroying the very data you're trying to recover, if used incorrectly. Actual use of such software is really beyond the scope of these forums, though; for that I would look to the author of whatever software you choose. I don't have specific data recovery software I would recommend, however I wil observe that frequently the cost of such software is a good indicator of it's quality, at least in the lower end.

    I will warn you that, if all your drives were installed in your server when you reinstalled, you may well have lost some data anyway. When Windows Home Server is installed, it puts some files in the shares automatically, and those files may have overwritten locations that used to have files previously.

    I wish you luck; unfortunately you're likely to need it.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Sunday, May 24, 2009 4:00 AM
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    Your options are limited. You can either go for professional data recovery, which is typically pretty expensive, or you can go for using some sort of data recovery software and a DIY approach. Usually, I would recommend against a DIY approach if the data is truly crucial, because amateur data recovery efforts on a damaged hard drive can destroy more data. But in this case you don't have a damaged drive, just one that's been formatted, so a DIY approach is not as risky a solution as it could be. It's still risky; most data recovery software is perfectly capable of destroying the very data you're trying to recover, if used incorrectly. Actual use of such software is really beyond the scope of these forums, though; for that I would look to the author of whatever software you choose. I don't have specific data recovery software I would recommend, however I wil observe that frequently the cost of such software is a good indicator of it's quality, at least in the lower end.

    I will warn you that, if all your drives were installed in your server when you reinstalled, you may well have lost some data anyway. When Windows Home Server is installed, it puts some files in the shares automatically, and those files may have overwritten locations that used to have files previously.

    I wish you luck; unfortunately you're likely to need it.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Sunday, May 24, 2009 4:00 AM
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    ***UPDATE***

    A friend recommended that I try a little program called Data Recovery Wizard by EASEUS. It was $69, but it found my previous partition, recovered the entire directory structure and copied the erased data to my main hard drive. I had to run it on all 5 drives in the WHS to get the data that was spread throughout the array, but it worked!!! It took about 2 hours per drive, but all my data is back, safe and sound.

    Highly recommended for anyone who happens to lose data!

    - Nathan
    Tuesday, May 26, 2009 4:31 AM
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    Not trying to hijack the thread, but I guess this is a question.  Because this is not a RAID solution, the files are stored entirely on one drive, correct?  They aren't stored across drives, are they?  And what is the format of these drives?  NTFS?

    So, conceviably, if something like this were to happen to me, I could remove each drive in turn, connect it to a computer with data recovery software, and pull files off, correct?  Nathan, is that how you did it?  Or did you install this software on WHS?

    (Nathan I'm really glad you recovered your data!  I always shudder when I hear of such problems...)

    Tuesday, May 26, 2009 5:20 AM
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    Hi Matt,
    usually you will only need external software for recovery, if the file structure on the disk is destroyed.
    Files can be stored on one or more drives, this depends from the total space of files and disks and duplication settings.
    Check the FAQ How to recover data after server failure for more details how to access data in case of a disaster.
    Best greetings from Germany
    Olaf
    Tuesday, May 26, 2009 1:05 PM
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    WHS stores files on multiple drives in its system. As best I understand it, each file, is stored at least twice so that if one hard drive in your WHS fails, the file exists elsewhere and will be recopied once storage is balanced. My process was to pull each drive separately, and connect it to my desktop Vista PC and run recovery on it, copy the recovered files to my PC, merge all the folders together, and copy back to the WHS once it was back up. And yes, the drives were formatted NTFS.

    Now, an import note here is that the files in question for me were those in the SHARED FOLDERS (Pics, Music, Video, Users, etc). These files are not part of the computer backups, but live on the server itself. The files from backups are not so neatly stored but are in a hellish folder system that WHS apparently makes sense of. I'd HATE to try to recover data from what I saw in the WHS backup folders.

    The good news in my situation was that I never had to tell my wife until the crisis was over and solved that all our family pics were at risk! Afterward, I made a bunch of DVD backups and dropped them off at the safe deposit box!

    - Nathan
    Tuesday, May 26, 2009 6:52 PM
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    WHS stores files on multiple drives in its system. As best I understand it, each file, is stored at least twice

    Each file is stored on exactly 2 different physical hard drives, and that's only true if Folder Duplication is active (otherwise it's only one 1 hard drive).

    so that if one hard drive in your WHS fails, the file exists elsewhere and will be recopied once storage is balanced. My process was to pull each drive separately, and connect it to my desktop Vista PC and run recovery on it, copy the recovered files to my PC, merge all the folders together, and copy back to the WHS once it was back up. And yes, the drives were formatted NTFS.

    Now, an import note here is that the files in question for me were those in the SHARED FOLDERS (Pics, Music, Video, Users, etc). These files are not part of the computer backups, but live on the server itself. The files from backups are not so neatly stored but are in a hellish folder system that WHS apparently makes sense of. I'd HATE to try to recover data from what I saw in the WHS backup folders.

    The folder system itself for the backup database is no different than for the shares.  The only difference is you can't recover individual files from the backup database unless you go through the Console (and, if you are missing any one piece of the backup database, chances are the entire database is worthless).

    The good news in my situation was that I never had to tell my wife until the crisis was over and solved that all our family pics were at risk! Afterward, I made a bunch of DVD backups and dropped them off at the safe deposit box!

    - Nathan

    Wednesday, May 27, 2009 11:02 PM
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    Nathan, I'm in exactly the same situation you were.  Would you mind posting the steps you took for partition recovery using Data Recovery Wizard?     I'm seeing some 30-odd partion recovery solutions using the wizard, did you pick the top one and it worked, or did you need to sift through the other solutions to find the DE folders which contained your share files?  Hopefully this information would be helpful to other WHS users in similar circumstances.

    I'm asking because I believe WHS deleted and redefined partitions on my secondary drives during a Server Restore.  When I look at the 'best guess' from Easeus, it is the current, default DE directory, as one would expect if the Factory Reset option were run.   Other partion suggestions contain some files which I recognize, but not the directory tree.

    Wednesday, September 8, 2010 6:08 AM