No not watch the game (although wasn't that 100 yard interception at the close of the half sweet!). I did a Server Recovery on my production Home Server!
Just because I am a Windows Home Server MVP does not mean that I am impervious to WHS disasters. Somehow I managed to mess up my HP EX470 so badly that it would not load the WHS Console. So I set out to do a System Restore. No big deal, right? Just grab the HP System Restore DVD and away we go.
One problem. I bought my MediaSmart Server almost the day it came out back in November 2007 and I have no idea where the DVDs are. Sure, I found the original box and you would think that maybe I would keep the DVDs in the box, but noooooooo!
No problem, I thought. I have one of those shiny new HP EX480s on load from HP. And it came with a System Recovery DVD. Now I know that the old units were AMD based and the new ones are Intel based, but that shouldn't matter, right? WRONG!
The restore client went just fine. It said that it would take an hour to restore but it was done in maybe 15 minutes. Cool. It said press Finish to reboot your server and that it would reboot several times before completion. I pressed Finish and help my breath.
Well it wasn't long before I knew something was wrong. The server went into an endless reboot cycle. Not the "several times" that I was warned about. I got out my trusty MediaSmart Server VGA cable to see what was happening and I say a BDOD (blue screen of death) flash just before each reboot. It obviously didn't appreciate the Intel build.
I looked around my office but still no DVDs. I thought about "borrowing" the DVD from a friend (a remote friend), but there is a 50MB limit on Skydrive files. Finally, after going through what seemed like the one hundredth box of computer crap in my basement, I found them (along with my original HP manuals)!
I ran the DVD on my laptop, rebooted my HP WHS and pressed the little recessed button on the HP with a paperclip. It took me through the same steps as I had gone through before, but when it said that the server would reboot "several times", it actually did. I was back on track. Here are some pictures that I took along the way.
Now I waited, clicking and occasional OK or Next button, to see if the system could recover my production data (spread out over six 500GB and 750GB drives). I would not know my data's fate for nearly an hour as WHS insisted on "installing important updates". Finally, everything was up-to-date and when I checked, my data was in tact!
The moral of the story is: 1) Don't misplace your WHS DVDs. 2) Even when you mess it up yourself, Windows Home Server rocks!
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6 comments:
Sounds like using the new recovery CD caused problems similar to the whole Windows XP SP3 fiasco. Ironically, HP was the only big OEM I read mentioned in any of the articles.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9084418
I'm glad you were able to get your server going again. It let's me know when ever I screw my home made server up I should be able to recover it without too much hassle.
I also had a failure this weekend. One of my computers had a hard drive failure. This was my first experience with doing a restoration with WHS, and it was not exactly painless. I expected it would "just work", but I was sorely mistaken. I was getting an "unknown network error"... terrific.
I read some suggestions to download the latest network card drivers to a flash drive, so I tried that but it didn't make a difference. I read another suggestion to isolate the WHS and the computer you want to restore on a dedicated router without Internet access. I'm relieved to say that this worked, but the amount of hassle I had to go through was excessive.
This reminds me I need to make my Restore disc yet! I just upgraded from the free trail a week ago and haven't got this done yet. I know you can do a server reinstall from the install DVD but having a restore disc would eliminate having to install all of the customizations I've done to my WHS.
Got to wonder what you did to mess your WHS so bad though. Why couldn't you restore it from one of the back ups of the server or do you not use this feature?
fasthair
Just another example of the fact that WHS cannot do a great job if the systems disk dies.
I was able to get my server recovered from a C:/D: drive failure and I have a VGA and DVD drive connection. I would hare to think of doing such on a headless+diskless server.
I am curious about the WHS back up also (as per fasthair). Why didn't you do it that way?
WHS Backup only works on shares, not the boot volume.
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