The files stored in the backup will only be accessible to another Server 2008 computer. Have you tried that?
Regards,
Ady
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Browse All TopicsHey folks, thanks in advance for your wizardry.
We've been running a Dell PowerEdge server with SBS 2003 for 3 years. No problems. RAID 5, 3 drives. Backing up daily to a USB hard drive. Swapping that drive out every week. Two drives in rotation. Seemed like a bullet proof setup to me.
Last week the server failed. Won't turn on. Don't know why. Maybe power supply. That's a different topic. In the meantime, we're trying to access the data that was stored on the server. I figured it would be no problem.
However, without the server, there seems to be no way to access the data on the RAID drives. They sort of become worthless in a situation like this!
We turned to the backups. For some unknown reason the most recent backup was 3 weeks before the failure. We can live with that. Tried restoring via Backup Utility on a XP Pro machine. Receive "The backup file contains unrecognized data and cannot be used" error.
Went ahead and used a third party recovery tool. It kind of worked. But it left 20,000 files homeless without directories. Not good.
So here I am with data everywhere, and no good way to access any of it.
Solutions? Recommendations?
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by: leewPosted on 2009-11-05 at 06:48:52ID: 25749980
Most of this (if not all) is recommendations for preventing this in the future - the way I see it, you're pretty much stuck until you get the server working.
1. get the SBS server working. It sounds much like a power supply issue. Don't know what model, but it may well use a standard power supply CONNECTOR. It may be possible to rig up a standard power supply to the Dell mainboard for the purposes of getting the server working.
2. implement a new procedure - TEST YOUR BACKUPS on a regular basis.
3. Don't use RAID 5. Yes, it allows for less wasted space, but it makes data more difficult to access in an emergency. If this were a RAID 1, you could likely pull a server drive, attach it to a workstation as a slave drive, and go from there.
4. NEVER let the server out of warranty. ALWAYS get a 24x7x365 warranty on the server with 4 hour response. Such a warranty/policy would have had you running within a day.