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Disk recovery of backup device

Question
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I had two drives fail in my HP DL380 running Microsoft SBS 2008 R2. I replaced the drives and reloaded Windows 2008 disk 1. I've been backing up the server daily to an external hard drive however, when I booted from the first disk from SBS 2008 and went to "repair" and then chose to restore, the backup system could not find any of my restore points.
Someone on the SBS forum recommended downloading a tool “MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.8” which allowed me to see my backup files. I was given an option to recover the files to another drive which I did. Now I have a group of files about 2GB each under WindowsImageBackup directory labeled like:
Windows backup doesn't seem to recognize these files when I attempt to get the restore application to find them. It was recommended that I rename one of the files “Backup.vsd” and place it on a standard NTFS or FAT partition in a subdirectory “<drive>:\WindowsImageBackup\<server name>\” which I did however Windows 2008 backup does not see the file.
I'm sure that each of these files is a backup file due to the date and time stamp as well as the size of the file however Microsoft is being very mysterious as to the file structure of the drive. Disk Manager states that it is a NTFS partition however you have to mount it to view it. When I mount the drive, I see no files however the space is missing so I know the files are there. Is there a tool that would “undelete” the files on a backup partition?
Daniel
Thursday, September 25, 2014 1:55 AM
Answers
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Hi,
Was the WindowsImageBackup directory empty before you using “MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.8” to recover the backup files? Please also check if there is any error message in the Event Log.
You said that you replaced the two failed drives on the windows SBS 2008 server. By default we should restore BMR to the original device or a device with same hardware. Restore BMR to a different device will cause BSOD or system not boot issue.
For more detailed information, please refer to the article below:
How to: Bare Metal Restore of SBS2008 to different hardware with a different RAID controller?
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/019a504e-c109-4d18-a85f-4f03944ada05/how-to-bare-metal-restore-of-sbs2008-to-different-hardware-with-a-different-raid-controller?forum=windowsbackup
Best Regards,
Mandy- Marked as answer by Mandy Ye Tuesday, September 30, 2014 7:07 AM
Friday, September 26, 2014 9:13 AM
All replies
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As you can see from this image, the Recovery Wizard can see my backup device (note there is only 432.39GB available on my 1.82TB drive - in other words, my backups are there).
However, when I click "Next", the Recovery Wizard can find no backup files.
I've taken the backup device off line and am hoping that someone at Microsoft can tell me how to recover the backups that are still on the backup drive but not accessible by the SBS 2008 backup/restore software. How dependent on the Catalog is this backup solution? Since the backup/restore solution formatted the backup device in a NTFS file format that is not accessible through standard tools (it has to be mounted using Disk Manger), I'm not sure the standard tools for doing a file recovery will work.
Daniel
Thursday, September 25, 2014 1:56 AM -
Hi,
Was the WindowsImageBackup directory empty before you using “MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.8” to recover the backup files? Please also check if there is any error message in the Event Log.
You said that you replaced the two failed drives on the windows SBS 2008 server. By default we should restore BMR to the original device or a device with same hardware. Restore BMR to a different device will cause BSOD or system not boot issue.
For more detailed information, please refer to the article below:
How to: Bare Metal Restore of SBS2008 to different hardware with a different RAID controller?
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/019a504e-c109-4d18-a85f-4f03944ada05/how-to-bare-metal-restore-of-sbs2008-to-different-hardware-with-a-different-raid-controller?forum=windowsbackup
Best Regards,
Mandy- Marked as answer by Mandy Ye Tuesday, September 30, 2014 7:07 AM
Friday, September 26, 2014 9:13 AM