44 replies to this topic

[geek-accountant]

OK, so I now need to do my first restore under 2011 and I am having nothing but trouble. This is a restore of a data drive so the OS drive on the workstation is still working fine. I connected to the Dashboard using the Launchpad and tried to start a restore. I get the "cannot initiate the restore process" error and the restore will not start. So I reboot both the workstation and the Server and try again. Now I can't even get the Launchpad to connect as it keeps saying the Server is offline. I can remote desktop into the server and launch the Dashboard and it is now showing all the computers as "offline". WTC!

I stopped and started the backup service and still nothing. It thinks all the computers it backs up are offline, which they are not. However, even if I can get this crazy thing to see the other computers as online, I am right back to the original problem of the system would not start the restore process.

I have already wasted too much time on something that should just work. If I can get the thing to connect, I will do a screen shot of the original problem and then maybe someone has an idea of what can be done.

[geek-accountant]

I can now load the dashboard, but note it says all the PC's are offline. Very funny, I am running the dashboard from one of those PC's so how can it be offline?

[geek-accountant]

OK, I might have found the solution. I uninstalled the connector software and then re-installed it. Of course this was complicated by the fact I also have Sharepoint on the server. After moving the Sharepoint website to 8085, I was then able to reinstall the connector software. Looks like I will need to do this on every PC since they are all listed as offline. Now I just need to install the two new drives and restore the data. Crossing fingers.

[yodafett]

The uninstall and reinstall was something I had to do on all of my PCs after the rollup one update. Had the same symptoms all the systems showing offline.

[geek-accountant]

I am trying to do the restore now. Dang thing has been running for over an hour and is still in the "preparing to copy" stage with something like 150,000 items found. I wonder why it can't just start the copy and do the item discovery at the same time.

[pcdoc]

Ran into that as well. Was forced to using the client restore wizard and restore it from another PC. Still too a long time.

[geek-accountant]

Yea, the thing has been going for nearly 5 hours and the coping has not even started. It must like how many photos I have backed up.

[pcdoc]

If I recall, it creates a VHD, then does the restore. Long process. Good luck and anxious to here how it goes. You might want to come up with a different backup philosophy. Small OS drive and all data to a separate drive so you only have to restore the OS drive which is much quicker. Just a thought.

[ikon]

If I recall, it creates a VHD, then does the restore. Long process. Good luck and anxious to here how it goes. You might want to come up with a different backup philosophy. Small OS drive and all data to a separate drive so you only have to restore the OS drive which is much quicker. Just a thought.

I believe he did say that it's a data drive he's restoring, that the OS drive is OK.

[krom]

I believe he did say that it's a data drive he's restoring, that the OS drive is OK.

Yeah not really going to help here but food for thought on PC backup strategy moving forward.

Personally I prefer that method. Only back up a small OS drive with apps but keep data either on server or backed up by some other method (if possible). That way if I have to do a PC restore it's much easier/faster getting the PC back up and running. That's just how I like to do it.

[ikon]

Yeah not really going to help here but food for thought on PC backup strategy moving forward.

Personally I prefer that method. Only back up a small OS drive with apps but keep data either on server or backed up by some other method (if possible). That way if I have to do a PC restore it's much easier/faster getting the PC back up and running. That's just how I like to do it.

I just use RoboCopy to backup local data to WHS.

[pcdoc]

I believe he did say that it's a data drive he's restoring, that the OS drive is OK.

Your are right, he did, but it is a RAID 0 with a bunch of data on it if I understood correctly. A basic OS usually has less that 150,000 items unless you are backing up temp file for some reason.

[geek-accountant]

Yes, OS drive is fine, it's the data drive that had problems. The restore process is taking a LONG time and it is only coming at about 5MB/sec. Right now it is less than 20% complete after starting about 24hrs ago and this is only part of the restore. I chose only the photo directory and a few others. So, I just started a copy of the other files to the second drive (when I put new drives into the system, I kept them as single drives rather than a RAID) from my unRAID server and it is sending the data at about 50MB/sec

So the question is, should I kill the WHS restore, copy everything I have from unRAID (which will include all the photos and some other data) and then use WHS to only fill in the holes? Will it be that smart as to only copy over what is missing or more up to date in the backup? It appears that while both systems are on a gig network and the WHS actually has beefier hardware, the unRAID server is going to copy files at a MUCH faster pace so I would like to limit how much restoring WHS needs to do.

[dvn]

Well, ain't this something. I had my own little WHS restore snafu just today. Wouldn't recognize the on-board NIC. I had to toss an Intel NIC in there to make it go. Oh, it did ask for drivers for the ob NIC and I had them on a USB stick, but it didn't find them. This brings to mind v1's NIC driver woes. Thought we were past this.

[ImTheTypeOfGuy]

The more I read about 2011 the more worthless it appears. At this point I will stay on v1 until it is no longer supported. Then I willl use w7 if nothing better is developed.

[jmwills]

I think we are seeing the flaws of a dedicated backup utility; or at least one that keeps files in a proprietary format. Several months ago I started mirroring document libraries to the server. At least that way, I would have a "flat file" on the server.

[geek-accountant]

So WHS has been running the restore (only 879GB of the total) for over 30 hours now and I would estimate it is about 30% complete. On the other hand, unRAID has brought back about 500GB in a little less than 3 hours. although I think some of that was waiting for me to say OK to overwrite. Looks like it will be re-evaluating my backup solutions once this is done. It's a shame, I like WHS so much and I was really hoping someone would say, "Yea, I ran into that problem of slooow recovery and here is how you solve it". Still hoping someone can tell me this is not how it should be and there is something I can do. But, at this point, WHS has failed me in that it has taken so long to restore that I missed my chance tonight to do my show prep for tomorrow night's show.

[ImTheTypeOfGuy]

So WHS has been running the restore (only 879GB of the total) for over 30 hours now and I would estimate it is about 30% complete. On the other hand, unRAID has brought back about 500GB in a little less than 3 hours. although I think some of that was waiting for me to say OK to overwrite. Looks like it will be re-evaluating my backup solutions once this is done. It's a shame, I like WHS so much and I was really hoping someone would say, "Yea, I ran into that problem of slooow recovery and here is how you solve it". Still hoping someone can tell me this is not how it should be and there is something I can do. But, at this point, WHS has failed me in that it has taken so long to restore that I missed my chance tonight to do my show prep for tomorrow night's show.

Not the answer you will want, but I believe the solution is WHS version 1.

[geek-accountant]

That isn't what I wanted to here. Now I am thinking that part 1 of the restore will not be complete before I have to stop it and reboot the computer for tonight's show. You would think that that giving the thing 48 hours to restore just 879GB would be more than enough time, but at this rate it will need more than twice that!

Is this the same basic performance everyone else is getting from a restore with WHS2011? Why on earth is it sending it so slow?

[pcdoc]

Wow. Quite a saga. I have had issues but not like this nor do I believe what you are going through is the norm. I do however believe as jmwills stated some sort of data redundancy much like you have with UnRaid is a good thing to do. It also reaffirms the need for a good internal storage solution using mirrors and RAID 5 configurations. My recent drive failure was remedied in 10 mins and did not appreciate that till I here what you are going through. There could be lots of reasons your restore did not work correctly but in either case I do not envy what you are going through. Good luck.