DX4000 Recovery after Startup Failure

I recently got a startup failure 0xD9 on my Sentinel DX4000 (2x2TB drives). I tried a recovery using the .ISO recovery image but the result wouldn’t boot (storage bad). Following technical support advice, I used the .ISO to zero out the drives, restore the Sentinel to factory condition, and restore the D drive from an external backup I had previously made. All of this worked – although one of the drives is now flagged as bad (I am waiting for a replacement to arrive). So I have a working Sentinel and all of the client backup files are on the D drive but Dashboard doesn’t show any of my previous users or client backups. I don’t want to lose those client backups. How can I recover them? I have a full backup of the Sentinel made with Windows Server Backup.

Check this out WHS 2011 is the same. Do you have archived below the server in the computers tab?

Once completed, restart the server. This will restart all of the Windows Home Server services responsible for running the Dashboard and the Client Computer Backups. Once the restart has completed, open the Dashboard and select the Computers tab where you normally view the computer health states and backups. On first inspection, it looks as though you have no clients and no backups, but look more closely and you will se a collapsed group called Archived Computers. Expand this group and you will see all of your clients listed and all of their associated backups will be listed if you select the Restore Files option for a computer.

The thing to point out here is that these backups will remain disassociated from the clients. Once you re-add a client to the server and commence a backup, it will be listed as a normal computer and the Archived Computer object for it will also remain listed. This is because the server generates GUIDs for the backup files based on a combination of the client identity and the server identity and because the reinstallation of the operating system will cause a new GUID to be generated, they are different. This isn’t a problem for me, but I’ve read a number of posts on the TechNet forums at Microsoft where people have had trouble locating the Archived Computers group in the Dashboard interface and think that they’ve lost everything which clearly isn’t the case.

Thanks Gramps! I had done all of that but I don’t see any archive backups. The dashboard display for computers shows only one line – the server itself. I had restored the Client Computer Backups folder with a large amount of content onto the D drive and rebooted – should be exactly the way it was before the crash.

Not sure how I can get it to recognize those backups.

Richard

If it is collapsed you might miss it and it may actually be above the server. Only other thing is to dbl check and make sure the folder location for client backups is set to d: it should be by default. When you restored the files did you empty the folder first?

also make sure that window jpg I posted above is large enough to show archived computers. If not there should be a scroll bar on the right

Ok, great, it’s working! Just as you advised, I double-checked how I had restored the client computer backups folder on the D drive and compared it with another Sentinel I have. I had restored it at the wrong level on the D drive. Once I corrected its location and rebooted – voila! all of the prior backups are listed in the archives section.

Thank you Gramps!

You go dude !!
Glad you had that backup :slight_smile: