Word docs missing from Server
This is a CRAZY missing file situation that I have no answer for at all! Maybe someone else does, in which case I tip my cap to you!
On June 22 at 2pm a client of mine saved a Wod doc to their "Client" folder on their Windows 2008 R2 server. Immediately after this, she opened the folder on her laptop (same machine where she had edited it), right-clicked the Word doc to rename it, and accidentally deleted it instead. File was created in early May. She says she last modified it on June 22, so the file in question had been on the server for at least a month.
Short story is when I go to recover it from the Windows Server Backup (of the previous day) it is not there. Any random search of dates back to the creation date shows that the file she says she has been working on is simply not there on the Windows Server backup.
I have two other backups. One is a Robocopy backup from the server's data drive to the C drive that occurs at midnight every night (no one has network access to the server's C drive). The Robocopy backup is a copy of files from the data folder to the destination. It's not a mirror copy. This means that a file deleted on the data drive does NOT result in a deletion from the backup on the C drive.
The other is a Carbonite backup that is running continuously. When I log onto their Carbonite account, the file is not there. The folders are there, and many documents. Just not the document she is looking for.
A search of those three backups (Server backup, Robocopy, Carbonite) fails to turn up any mention of the document at all. It's as if the document in question never existed.
I also backed up the folder in question, and did a "restore previous versions" on the folder containing the file, picking 7am on June 22. I got 3 errors on this relating to unimportant documents which Windows said contained filenames that were too long to restore. Upon restoration, the folder looked the same - the file she swears was there was not.
I ran the "Everything" utility which lists every file on the server, and can be used with wildcards etc. The file is not there. In using every conceivable misspelling etc., I also confirmed that the file is not there. I did an "everything" search of *.docx and then exported it to a .csv, searching for every conceivable variation on the title, sorted by date. Not there.
I've searched every computer on site including her own of course. Not there.
Strangely, the document she SWEARS she was editing on the 22nd is not in her Word "Recent" list.
My thoughts: If 4 different backup/restore methods do not contain the file, my thoughts go to, she thought she was saving on the server but actually saving elsewhere. But checking the other computers turned up nothing. Did she save it on a USB stick? She says she's used one for other things, but not for several months, and definitely hasn't had it on site recently.
The fact that Carbonite doesn't have it suggests strongly to me that it was simply not on the server.
I honestly don't know what to think. The second part to this bizarre story is that this apparently happened with another file several months ago: a file that was worked on reportedly for a couple of years suddenly went missing. But when I check every backup for any night's backup back to the creation date, there is nothing on the backup. It's as if the file never existed.
Can anyone fathom what's going on here?
Thanks very much.
Dave
On June 22 at 2pm a client of mine saved a Wod doc to their "Client" folder on their Windows 2008 R2 server. Immediately after this, she opened the folder on her laptop (same machine where she had edited it), right-clicked the Word doc to rename it, and accidentally deleted it instead. File was created in early May. She says she last modified it on June 22, so the file in question had been on the server for at least a month.
Short story is when I go to recover it from the Windows Server Backup (of the previous day) it is not there. Any random search of dates back to the creation date shows that the file she says she has been working on is simply not there on the Windows Server backup.
I have two other backups. One is a Robocopy backup from the server's data drive to the C drive that occurs at midnight every night (no one has network access to the server's C drive). The Robocopy backup is a copy of files from the data folder to the destination. It's not a mirror copy. This means that a file deleted on the data drive does NOT result in a deletion from the backup on the C drive.
The other is a Carbonite backup that is running continuously. When I log onto their Carbonite account, the file is not there. The folders are there, and many documents. Just not the document she is looking for.
A search of those three backups (Server backup, Robocopy, Carbonite) fails to turn up any mention of the document at all. It's as if the document in question never existed.
I also backed up the folder in question, and did a "restore previous versions" on the folder containing the file, picking 7am on June 22. I got 3 errors on this relating to unimportant documents which Windows said contained filenames that were too long to restore. Upon restoration, the folder looked the same - the file she swears was there was not.
I ran the "Everything" utility which lists every file on the server, and can be used with wildcards etc. The file is not there. In using every conceivable misspelling etc., I also confirmed that the file is not there. I did an "everything" search of *.docx and then exported it to a .csv, searching for every conceivable variation on the title, sorted by date. Not there.
I've searched every computer on site including her own of course. Not there.
Strangely, the document she SWEARS she was editing on the 22nd is not in her Word "Recent" list.
My thoughts: If 4 different backup/restore methods do not contain the file, my thoughts go to, she thought she was saving on the server but actually saving elsewhere. But checking the other computers turned up nothing. Did she save it on a USB stick? She says she's used one for other things, but not for several months, and definitely hasn't had it on site recently.
The fact that Carbonite doesn't have it suggests strongly to me that it was simply not on the server.
I honestly don't know what to think. The second part to this bizarre story is that this apparently happened with another file several months ago: a file that was worked on reportedly for a couple of years suddenly went missing. But when I check every backup for any night's backup back to the creation date, there is nothing on the backup. It's as if the file never existed.
Can anyone fathom what's going on here?
Thanks very much.
Dave
Lee W, MVP
Perhaps her computer and the server have offline files enabled. I've seen instances where offline files has the user working offline and doesn't reconnect to resync with the server. From the user's perspective, they are working on the server, but in reality, they are working locally. Offline files are stored in C:\windows\csc but don't use the same file name - they have hex based names if I remember correctly and are nearly impossible to identify without guessing at type, renaming, and opening. Since they are stored in the windows\csc folder, Carbonite may well NOT backup that folder.
ASKER
Thanks Lee. Her CSC folder did contain some files from her Documents folder, which are sync'd with the server, but nothing from the folder in question. The folder in question is simply a shared folder on the data drive of the server, accessed via a desktop shortcut to \\Server\Data\<ClientName>
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Nobus, I checked for every variation of filename. I also checked the backups and the actual data folder for every document sorted by date. Also checked the documents created around the time of last mod in case she simply edited the wrong document. The crazy thing is that she says the document has existed on the server since early May, and a check of many days of the Windows Server backup shows that the document she claims existed is just not there, and according to the daily backups, was never there. I've also run a search program that searches inside .doc and .docx for the client name and it comes up empty.
The user's level of computer savvy is fairly rudimentary, and I would say that it is very likely that the document simply never existed on the server. She says the reason why it was missing from her Word recent docs list is because she is opening and closing many documents per hour, and by the time I saw her recent docs list, she had already opened over a dozen files.
The user's level of computer savvy is fairly rudimentary, and I would say that it is very likely that the document simply never existed on the server. She says the reason why it was missing from her Word recent docs list is because she is opening and closing many documents per hour, and by the time I saw her recent docs list, she had already opened over a dozen files.
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ASKER
Yes, that's pretty much how I see it. Given that she says the doc was created on May 2 and edited since then, it's got to be somewhere else, but it certainly isn't (and never was apparently) on the server.
could it be on other pc's? just thinking with you, you know
ASKER
I've checked every PC on site (there are only 3 other PCs there these days). Not there at all. I'm suspecting significant user trouble. :-)
it seems the only option left, if it's nowhere to be found
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ASKER
This was never resolved, but based on how I have observed the person using the computers, I would say it is likely that the file is misnamed and/or never stored on the server in the first place. I did restores of the folder using various methods (Windows Server Backup, Carbonite, Xcopy of data folders, Restore Previous Versions, etc. and it's simply not there, and never was. Thanks for all of the suggestions.