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inspirednetworksFlag for Canada

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Windows Server 2008 R2 Backup - Restore Issue

Hi there,

I've got a bit of an issue here:

 - There was a power failure, and 2 drives in my RAID5 array died last night
 - I have a clean backup from a few hours before the power failure, completed via Windows Server Backup to a Network Location

I've booted up to the Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD and chosen to restore my server from a backup, then point it at the network folder where the backup lives, it connects but doesn't list any backups.

I also tried copying the WindowsImageBackup folder to an external hard drive and connecting it directly to the server, it doesn't detect anything.

I'm at the point where I'm considering a clean rebuild and manual restoration of files from the VHDs and Client Outlook Caches but really don't want to go that route if I don't need to.

 - In investigating that as an option, I mounted the VHD files as Read-Only via Disk Management, but Windows 7 saw them as unknown disks (scary)

The last option is I was wondering if it would be possible to mount the Backup VHDs as Hyper-V or something like that and run the crashed server as a VM then setup the hardware with new drives as a new server and migrate the data off of the VM.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated, freaking out a bit over here.

Thanks in advance. Scott.
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Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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although this is SBS2011, the Restore Prcocess is the same, and you could use the Backup to restore to a VM

Video Tutorial - Bare Metal Recovery of Microsoft Small Business Server 2011: Part 2 How to Restore Microsoft Small Business Server 2011
http://andysworld.org.uk/2011/10/30/new-hd-video-bare-metal-recovery-of-microsoft-small-business-server-2011-part-2-how-to-restore-microsoft-small-business-server-2011/

Video Tutorial -  Bare Metal Recovery of Microsoft Small Business Server 2011: Part 1 How to Backup Microsoft Small Business Server 2011
http://andysworld.org.uk/2011/10/30/new-hd-video-bare-metal-recovery-of-microsoft-small-business-server-2011-part-1-how-to-backup-microsoft-small-business-server-2011/
Was this your DC, obviously most important thing to start with is restoring your SYS State, AD, etc.  Do you have the Server 2008 disk?  If you boot from the Disk, select the repair option and in the next menu, select complete PC restore...recovery will find your last full backup using windows backup...for more info, scroll down to about halfway down this link...

http://forums.techarena.in/guides-tutorials/1286900.htm
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ASKER

This is all great, but I am aware of the restoration process. The issue I'm dealing with is that I can't get the restore to give me an option of when to restore from, whether booting from startup recovery (the raid sometimes works for a few minutes) or from the installation media. It just won't find the backup (two vhd files, about 80gb and 200gb)

Yes this is the domain controller, and the only one as I was in the middle of a migration. The company is about 10 users so not the end of the world if I need to rebuild AD, but certainly a pain in the rear.

My backup is located at \\userpc4\c$

I was getting an "Access Denied" when trying to log onto that via the restore wizard, so I shared out the C drive as \\userpc4\c and have been pointing it to that.
If anyone has ideas on extracting data from the VHD files that would be really helpful as well, as then I could at least get the Share drive up and running right away on another server.
access denied is username and password issues.
extraction from the vhd, can be performed using VHD Mount in the Virtual Server 2005 download
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PaulD77
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When I try to Attach the VHD I get this (attachment)

Just says Not Initialized, Unallocated
Screen-Shot-2012-03-30-at-11.27..png
do you have any previous backups?  was this backup a full backup?  Its looking more and more that the backup itself isnt good
Unfortunately Not this was the only backup, I just tried mounting the vhd from another customers backup as well, where server backup says it completed successfully and it did the same thing, so i'm thinking that the vhds for server backup are different than standard vhds?
I just realized that this question was still open. Ended up being able to extract data from the VHD but not boot it. Had to rebuild active directory and a new server from scratch then restore data. Took the opportunity to move Exchange to Office 365 cloud.