EXTREMELY URGENT HELP NEEDED!

[pritchardavid]

It seem somehow users documents are deleting themselves I belive...

 

I moved the home folders to a temp server while i reloaded our server to server 2008r2

 

Now I moved them back to the server (including deleteding the folder on the temp server, so dont have backups - woops)

 

I think its deleting user documents because I went to example the year 9 folder and there a few few empty folders

 

 

Can anyone thing what is happing here?

[danrhodes]

Do you not have tape backup or backup to NAS etc?

[witch]

First thing - can you retrieve the deleted folder on the temp server so at least you have all the files. There are lots of tools for this - most mentioned on Edugeek

 

Is this a similar problem? Some fixes are suggested:

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/53531-windows-7-deleting-users-home-directories.html

 

*doesnt look like the fix is obvious - so the most important thing, IMHO, is to try and retrieve the docs on the temp server so at least nothing more gets deleted

Edited May 17, 2010 by witch

[vikpaw]

Ditto the above, especially about having a backup.

just thinking, if you didnt move folders in the correct way, permissions may have gone awry, and if everybody suddenly got full control over everything, anyone could just decided to 'tidy' the folder structure up!!

[special_k]

Volume copy any help to you on your temp server?

[pritchardavid]

Do you not have tape backup or backup to NAS etc?

 

We do have tapes, but havent been used for months due to our backup server goings worng, so if we did restore anything there be lots of work missing still

 

 

volume copy?

 

do you mean file version feature?, just enabled that incase more gets deleted

[special_k]

What Is Volume Shadow Copy Service?: Data Recovery

[pritchardavid]

nope aint got that

[witch]

So..look for free recovery software - Recuva is the best one I have found

[bossman]

@p-dave:

 

As witch has identified in a previous post, I would be tempted to stop anyone writing to the server where you have deleted the users data and then use a recovery tool to get that work recovered on that server.

 

Then I would restore from backup tapes the user data onto the new server and then finally copy across the recovered data from the other server and any data then would be up to date with hopefully the appropriate permissions.

 

Then I would concentrate on getting the backups working correctly before pushing ahead with any more upgrades to the O/S.

[pritchardavid]

yer thats was I decided to do is use recura, last bit is to use the tape drive, need to swap scsi card from another server to connect the tape drive, has the one on the backup server has gone wrong (aint used in this other server)

[soveryapt]

Curious, do you have DFS setup on the server? Also, is the server the same name as it was before you reconfigured it?

 

I had an issue with a 2003R2 Server where I had introduced a new server to the domain to take on some of the workload, but the machines were all talking to the old server still and as such, work was being lost on a regular basis (ie whole folders being deleted).

 

I had DFS running at one point to try and solve the issue, but this made it worse (I had planned that if something was saved to the old server, DFS would make sure it was available on the new server, turned out that it wasn't working like that).

 

Just a couple of things to check though. DFS set up (if you have it running) and make sure it's setup right. Whether the machines are correctly seeing the new server name and, if you use them, that you've changed any references in any scripts you have.

[IanT]

Good old Volume Shadow copy does the trick, saved my life many times.

 

I've set my shadow copy to run @ 8AM > 12PM > 3PM > 5PM

[pritchardavid]

yer its on a DFS setup, im sure its on the right share and security settings

 

Does it matter if the folder is the in the dfs root folder? cause its not, it was working fine when I moved it to the temp location on a different server, while I upgraded the server. That was in the dfs root folder, now its now, back on the normal server that hosts the files.

 

Redirection is correctlly set on the users, hense users get there work (those ones that still have there work)

[danrhodes]

We do have tapes, but havent been used for months due to our backup server goings worng, so if we did restore anything there be lots of work missing still

 

In this situation you should have removed the Tape Drive from the broken backup server and installed it into another as taking backups is very important incase these situations arise. If that wasnt an option then I would have bought a small NAS Box, put it in a different building and ran NTBackup just to do a simple copy over night, I really am paranoid about backups, you can never be too safe, I can't get that through to you enough!

 

Also when you do get back on your feet get Volume Shadow Copy running it really is a life saver, saved mine a few times!

[soveryapt]

yer its on a DFS setup, im sure its on the right share and security settings

 

Does it matter if the folder is the in the dfs root folder? cause its not, it was working fine when I moved it to the temp location on a different server, while I upgraded the server. That was in the dfs root folder, now its now, back on the normal server that hosts the files.

 

Redirection is correctlly set on the users, hense users get there work (those ones that still have there work)

 

So long as the permissions are all set correctly and the same across the various DFS shares, it shouldn't be an issue. Obviously, the DFS Root will have the right shares in place, but if people aren't able to write / read correctly, then when their files try to synchronise across they might not happen. In my head, this should mean that they just stay in one place and aren't available for load balancing purposes, however, it would appear the default is to take the folder with the lesser share permission and use that as the one that it synchronises, therefore, if the folder is empty ...

 

Just worth checking permissions across them all to make sure that the security and shares are as you want and need them to be.