11 replies to this topic

[Davers]

Hi everyone. I have Windows XP Pro 32 bit. My backups seem to be completeing just fine and have been for quite a few months. I find that I need to restore a few files on my computer, and I'm unable to open any of my backups. I get the error "Cannot mount the backup." I do not have any drives mapped. No Z or any other..just my C drive and my DVD which is D. I've done a search, and everything points at Windows 7 or mapping to Z...but I have neither of those. I've also tried restoring my computer using System restore to 5 weeks ago..just in case it was some update. That didn't help either. Does anyone have any idea what may be wrong?

Thanks for any help!

Dave

[mform]

Davers, on 18 July 2010 - 10:45 PM, said:

Hi everyone. I have Windows XP Pro 32 bit. My backups seem to be completeing just fine and have been for quite a few months. I find that I need to restore a few files on my computer, and I'm unable to open any of my backups. I get the error "Cannot mount the backup." I do not have any drives mapped. No Z or any other..just my C drive and my DVD which is D. I've done a search, and everything points at Windows 7 or mapping to Z...but I have neither of those. I've also tried restoring my computer using System restore to 5 weeks ago..just in case it was some update. That didn't help either. Does anyone have any idea what may be wrong?

Thanks for any help!

Dave

Dave:
I hate to be pessimistic, but I had the same problem a few months ago and after trying all of the suggestions for a couple of weeks, gave up and wiped WHS from my backup machine. As you can see from all of the posts on this site and others concerned with WHS, there are many users with this problem but no real solution. In my case, I was running a multi-boot client booting into XP or Win7. The former worked fine while booting into Win7 gave me the "Cannot mount the backup" at 81%. So it doesn't seem to likely be the hardware or the server or database or network, it is how the client interacts with WHS. Like you, all of my test backups completed fine with no errors. It was only when I tried to view/restore files that this error popped up. To put it lightly, I would have been extremely disappointed if I were actually using this product for backups and it was unable to restore. The bug has been logged many times in Connect but it doesn't even show up in Microsoft's WHS "Known Issues" in their FAQ.

I have no idea what percentage of WHS users have encountered this problem but I guess that it is small enough so that MS doesn't think it necessary to fix the problem or have stopped bug fixes for WHS vs. work on Vail. By the way the beta version of Vail seems to work properly on my machines. The thing that scares me is that people have reported that WHS was working fine for a while, including restores, but then they encountered this problem. This points out, that as another poster has stated, that this product is perhaps too fragile to be used for real backups. The one thing that a backup/restore program needs to be is reliable and not let you down when you need it. I am looking at alternative backup solutions and may evaluate Vail whenever it comes out.

Good luck.

Mike

[Davers]

Oh my gosh no. I can't believe all my backups are just...gone? There's nothing I can do to get all of my data back? Anyone....

This can't be true...I have over a year and a half of backups....and it's all for nothing? I mean...then what's the point? So..I don't even know what else to say...I can't believe that it's unreachable! I can't get my data back?

Dave

[Evaders99]

Have you run all your disks through "chkdsk /r" ?

[Davers]

Hi Evaders99, not yet. I found this advice on another forum:

1.Launch the Console from the home computer having the problem > go to Computers & Backup
2.Select any home computer from the list that has backups > click View Backups
3.On the home computer, click Start > Right-click My Computer > select Manage > click Device Manager > expand the System Devices tree
4.From the Console, select a backup from the list and click Open > if there are multiple volumes select one and click Open
5.The System Devices tree will refresh during this process > identify a listing for 'Home Server Restore Driver' or 'Home Server Restore Driver 2' > right-click the instance of the Restore Driver and select Uninstall > click OK on the Confirm Device Removal dialogue that will appear
6.An 'Open Backup' dialogue will appear that states 'Cannot connect to the backup service on the server. Verify that all services are running.' > click OK
7.NOTE: If you are prompted to restart your home computer, click Do Not Restart.
8.In the home Server Console, click the Open button again > the process will relaunch and reinstall the home Server Restore Driver
9.Opening backups should now be successful

It didn't work. I attempt to uninstall the driver, I say no to the reboot question, but never get the dialogue "Cannot connect to the backup service on the server..." It would appear the Driver isn't uninstalling, despite my attempt to uninstall it. I never get past number 6.

I'm at a loss...everyone just seems to say give up and re-install the software. But why? What's the point if it isn't doing it's core function? If it turns out that I am unable to recover my backups, I won't waste 1 more bead of sweat on WHS. I'll switch to FreeNAS or something where if it doesn't work, it's my fault.

Dave

[Davers]

Just repaired my backups. Said everything is great, but I still can't open any backups....

Trying chkdsk /r now..

[Davers]

chkdsk /r ran and there are no errors. I've just verified none of my computers are able to access the backups. I have 3, Windows Vista, and 2 Windows XP Pro 32 bit. That's over 18 months of backups for 3 computers....just gone.

For fun, I removed a drive from the pool that in the past I thought might have been giving me problems. That didn't help either.

I'm at my wits end.

Ubuntu, FreeBSD, with a free program like Bacula is starting to look REAL good....

Dave

[Davers]

Ok...it seems there's a tool that can recover your backups for you. It can be found here:

http://blog.whssafeb...ild-2-beta.html

I tried it...and it actually worked. For the most part. Once I figured out how to get the thing to run... I had to read up on how to run an exe from the command prompt...and how to add a directory to PATH environment variables...but it was worth it.

I may have to rethink my giving up on WHS...I can't seem to find anything out there that comes close to it in functionality

Dave

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

well, glad that you got it working!

Davers, on 20 July 2010 - 10:11 PM, said:

I may have to rethink my giving up on WHS...I can't seem to find anything out there that comes close to it in functionality

Seriously! I would have switched over to Server 2008R2 a while ago, but the backups, and DE, and some of the other features keeps me using it!

[Davers]

It actually makes me mad! I want to switch! But really? I have Sql server databases, a custom book .asp page that I created in a text editor...which you can check out here since I'm so proud of it! My Books I have plans for a blog, I created an IM web page...I have about 200 DVD's ripped to it I stream over the network..sigh...I don't know if it's because I'm comfortable in a Windows environment, but the few other "home server" solutions that are out there don't seem quite as robust.

Dave

[jayhawkfan]

Finally found the solution. I've been struggling with this for a year. just go into your device manager on your client and expand the system devices tree and uninstall any Home Server Restore Driver you see. Reboot if necessary then you should be able to mount your backup.

[Zhorgon]

Didn't work for me - I am SO mad about this......

jayhawkfan, on 19 August 2010 - 08:24 PM, said:

Finally found the solution. I've been struggling with this for a year. just go into your device manager on your client and expand the system devices tree and uninstall any Home Server Restore Driver you see. Reboot if necessary then you should be able to mount your backup.