Archive for Backup – Page 3

Storagecraft offer due to Hurricane Sandy

Storagecraft is the maker of the popular backup software for servers and workstations, ShadowProtect.

Due to the events caused by Hurricane Sandy, StorageCraft is offering a free three day use of their ShadowProtect IT Edition software to people in areas affected by the storm.

Read more here:

http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/affected-by-sandy-wed-like-to-help/

Storagecraft

The IT Edition allows you to backup and restore an entire server or workstation without installing any software on the computers. I have relied on the IT Edition of ShadowProtect for years, and is one of my primary “go-to” I.T. solutions in my tool bag!

Hyper-V Replica for Small Businesses

Boon Tee, my good friend and fellow MVP’er from Australia, has posted several articles recently on his blog site addressing how to install and use Hyper-V core, and implement a Hyper-V replica environment for disaster recovery. These are well written articles with step-by-step instructions. Thanks, Boon!

 

Disaster Recovery with Hyper-V Replica for Small Business on a Budget

How to set up Hyper-V Replica for Small Businesses

image

GetDataBack True Story

This is a true story that happened recently to me. I was taking my daily evening walk around our neighborhood a few days ago, and a man working in his yard stopped me and said, “you’re Kevin, the computer guy. right?”

image

Long story short – he had a disk drive that had crashed, and wanted to know if there was anything I could do to recover some documents and pictures from it. He then tells me that he had two other computer people check out the drive, and they both said that the data was unrecoverable. One person, that he describes as a “computer expert”, told him that he has a lot of expensive tools and utilities at his disposal, and that the disk is trash.

I asked if I could give it a try. I took the disk back home, hooked it up to my computer, and ran GetDataBack (from Runtime Software). It took several hours for it to complete, but once it was done, I was able to locate and retrieve over 400 documents, 343 pictures, and 62 music files.

image

Then I suggested that he get a backup drive or back it up to the cloud!

Get Data Back from Crashed Drive

You know the drill – someone calls you in a panic because their computer won’t reboot. You ask if they’ve been experiencing problems recently. And they go on to tell you how the computer had been crashing more frequently of late, and that sometimes they have to reboot it several times, etc, etc, etc!

I had a neighbor who stopped me and said “You’re the computer guy, aren’t you?”. Long story short, his computer had been acting up and finally would not boot. He had two different people/places take a look at the drive and declared that the drive was dead and the data was not recoverable. One of those people said that he had a vast array of expensive tools at his disposal, and could not do anything with the drive.

I asked if I could take a look at it. I brought the drive back to my workbench, hooked it up to a computer, and ran my trusty GetDataBack utility from Runtime Software. Sure, it took 4 hours to run, but once it did, it located over 800 documents, photos and music files!

image

Don’t let the $79 price scare you away. Unlike a lot of software, this is a one time $79 price with free lifetime updates! If you’re an I.T. technician, you should have this in your I,.T. toolkit!

Yes, I have also heard of the trick of putting the drive in a sealed air-tight bag and put it in the freezer for 15 minutes. I’ve tried that several times, without success.

Finally, my good MVP buddy Mick from Down Under suggested looking at some of the freeware offered by MiniTool. I’ll write more about those in another blog post.

WHS Restore, 64 bit workstations and Realtek

I have Microsoft Windows Home Server (WHS) installed in the majority of my customers, both business and residential. WHS is great as a full image backup solution for these environments. Restoring a computer whose disk has crashed, or has been overrun with malware/viruses, is usually a piece of cake.

But there are certain steps required, especially if the workstation you are restoring is running a 64 bit version of Windows O/S (Win 7/64, Vista/64)

Pre-Requisites:

  • Windows WHS Restore Computer Wizard CD
    • Note: make sure you have the Computer Restore CD and not the Server Restore CD!
    • If you cannot find your CD, you can download the latest here, and burn it to a CD.
  • USB 2.0 Thumb Drive
    • I suggest having two thumb drives, one for the WHS Restore Folder, and one for the vendor-specific NIC card driver
  • Access to another workstation on the network that is also connected to the WHS server
  • Knowledge of the make/model of the installed NIC card on the workstation, and access to the NIC card vendor’s website.
    You can find out your NIC card device by accessing Device Manager.

    • Click Start –> Run –> and type in: mmc devmgmt.msc
    • Click Device Manager, then drill down Network adapters
      image

Process (Summary):

  • Download the WHS Home Server Drivers for Restore to a USB thumb drive from a  working computer
  • If workstation is running Win 7/64 or Vista/64, download appropriate 32-bit NIC driver from vendor site onto a USB thumb drive
  • Replace hard drive in the computer, if required
  • Boot from the WHS Restore CD
  • At the Detect Hardware screen, load in drivers from USB stick
  • Follow the prompts to restore the computer

Process (Details):

Download Restore Folder to USB thumb drive:

  • From another workstation, right click on the WHS icon on the lower right of the task bar, then click Windows Home Server Console.
  • Click on Computers & Backup, locate the computer to be restored, right click on it and then click View Backups.
  • Select the backup you want to restore from, and click Open from the ‘Restore or View Files from:’ section.
  • Now copy or drag the entire contents of the folder named Windows Home Server Drivers for Restore to your USB thumb drive.
  • We will call this USB Thumb Drive #1.

Obtain 32-bit NIC card drivers:

  • Question: if I’m restoring a 64-bit workstation, why do I need to download a 32-bit driver for the NIC card.
  • Answer: The WHS Restore CD itself is running in 32-bit mode. The 64-bit driver stored within the Windows Home Server Drivers for Restore folder is the 64 bit driver, and won’t work when doing the restore process.

Example:

  • In my case, the workstation that needs to be restore has a Realtek PCIe Gigabit Family Controller network card installed.
  • Go to the Realtek website, click on Downloads
  • Click on Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller Series Drivers from the Quick Links section on the right.
  • Locate and download the WinXP/Win Server 2003 Driver to your computer. I created a folder called Realtek Drivers for this purpose.
    image
  • Unzip the download file and copy it to a second USB thumb drive.
  • We will call this USB Thumb Drive #2.
    image

Perform the WHS Restore:

Boot from WHS Restore CD:

  • Boot up the computer using the WHS Restore CD.
  • You will be prompted to select the appropriate memory configuration.
  • It will take a few minutes for the Restore CD to load and run.
  • You will eventually be asked to confirm time format and keyboard.
  • Click Continue.

Detect Hardware:

  • Now we come to the all-important Detect Hardware screen.
  • Click Details.
  • Plug in USB Thumb Drive #1 into the computer, click Install Drivers and then click Scan.
  • Once that is completed, repeat the process with USB Thumb Drive #2.
  • Once drivers have been installed click OK.

Proceed with Restore:

  • At this point, we should be ready to rock-n-rill.
  • You will get the Welcome to the Restore Computer wizard.
  • You will be prompted for the WHS server password.
  • You will confirm which computer you are restoring, and which backup to use.
  • If restoring because of virus or malware, you will want to select a backup dated prior to the infection.

Good luck!

Here’s a link to another web site showing the step-by-step screenshots of restoring a computer using WHS:
http://www.howtogeek.com/?post_type=post&p=12642

Windows Server Essential 2012 Beta

Yes, the public beta for Windows Server Essential 2012 is now available for download here!

image
Beta released on July 11, 2012

Windows Server Essential (WSE) 2012 is the the follow on product to the  Small Business Server (SBS) Essentials 2011 product. Some features of this release includes:

  • Based on Windows Server 2012
  • Supports up to 25 users and 50 devices
  • Complete system backup of the server and up to 25 workstations with bare metal restore
  • Supports disk volumes larger than 2 Terabytes (TB)
  • Offers the new Storage Spaces technology supporting disk drives of various sizes
  • Health monitoring of Windows 7/8 and Mac OS X 10.5 and greater
  • Supports all of the 3rd party add-ins developed for SBS 2011 Essentials and Windows Home Server 2011
  • Enhanced Remote Web Access
  • Update Windows Phone App
  • Full image backup for 25 workstations
  • And more!

For more information, benefits, FAQ and datasheet, please visit:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server-essentials/default.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/07/11/download-the-beta-release-of-windows-server-2012-essentials-today.aspx

Microsoft has not indicated how long the beta is scheduled to run, but I would suggest submitting any issues or bugs in a timely (quick) manner.

WHS Errors: Cqsvc.exe and MediaSmart Server Software Update

I have had a WHS server at one site for nearly three years. They use it just for backups, and that’s all I ever really check on a quarterly basis for them.

Today, while reviewing this server, I opened up Event Viewer and noticed a slew of warning messages related to “cqsvc.exe” and error events related to “MediaSmart Server Software Update”.

image

I quickly located a solution from Kelvyn Taylor’s website which workedbeautifully for me. Simply remote into the WHS server, and from a command line prompt, run:

winmgmt /resyncperf

No rebooting of the server required. When you go back into Event Log you will find that things are nice and quiet!

image

WHS System Drive Freezing Up

I have a Windows Home Server (WHS) unit installed at nearly every onee of my customers. I’ve also installed Windows Storage Server Essentials 2011 (WSSE) at two larger sites. The WHS units are working wonderfully, but as they get older, the chances of a drive failure increases.

I had a customer earlier this week whose WHS unit kept freezing up every day.

image

I checked memory and it was OK. I then ran chkdsk on each of the three installed drives. Turns out that the Data partition on the first (system) drive was the culprit.

To resolve the issue I followed the excellent steps to Successfully Clone and Upgrade a WHS System Drive from Alex Kuretz. I used Storagecraft’s ShadowProtect IT Edition to make an exact duplicate of the drive.