HELP!! An important folder on my server has gone missing ... sort of

StewartR · 31 Jul 2014

HELP!! An important folder on my server has gone missing ... sort of.

I need to access a file in a folder called \\Server\Docs\Important.

When I use Windows Explorer to navigate to \\Server\Docs, I can see all sorts of other folders - \\Server\Docs\Irrelevant, \\Server\Docs\Trivial, etc - but not \\Server\Docs\Important. I have no idea why. It used to be there, and I haven't knowingly moved it. (But it has been a while since I needed to access it.)

However, if I use the search facility in Windows Explorer to search \\Server\Docs for folders and documents containing 'important', I get a whole long list of them:
\\Server\Docs\Important
\\Server\Docs\Important\FirstImportantDocument.pdf
\\Server\Docs\Important\SecondImportantDocument.pdf
\\Server\Docs\Important\ThirdImportantDocument.pdf
and so on. To me that seems to imply that the folder **does** exist.

But if I double-click on the folder \\Server\Docs\Important, I get an error message which says something like this:

\\Server\Docs\Important refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the internet or your network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location.

If I try to open one of the files by double-clicking on it, I get an error message telling me that the file cannot be found.

So ... where are they all? How is it that Windows Search is finding them, but I can't access them? How can I fix this?

Background info: I'm running Windows 7. The server is running Windows Home Server. The issue is repeatable from other Windows 7 PCs on the network.

Any help welcome. Thanks!

neil_g · 31 Jul 2014

have you tried to access them on the server itself?

do you have a backup copy you can use as a stop gap?

StewartR · 31 Jul 2014

neil_g said:
have you tried to access them on the server itself?

Yes, I tried, but no success. I connected to the server via Remote Desktop Connection - logged on as Administrator - but the folder wasn't visible.

neil_g said:
do you have a backup copy you can use as a stop gap?

Let's say I've learned a lesson about backups here. The Windows Home Server runs a RAID-like technology so everything on there is duplicated and proof against a disk failure ... but I've just discovered that's not the same as having an offline backup.

redsnappa · 31 Jul 2014

The search you did has located documents in that folder therefore your lost folder obviously exists
Type \\Server\Docs\Important into the address bar of windows explorer and and you will be taken to the folder you thought was missing. (providing you have been allocated permissions to view that folder.

If you had been given a fully qualified path name eg \\[URL='http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/file://\\svrname']svrname\d$\docs\important[/URL] instead of a UNC path you probably would have found the folder without issue.

Keith W · 31 Jul 2014

The folder may have been hidden by accident, try going into your folder options, view, and click show hidden files and folders, click apply and then OK

Now see t it shows up

StewartR · 31 Jul 2014

redsnappa said:
The search you did has located documents in that folder therefore your lost folder obviously exists
Type \\Server\Docs\Important into the address bar of windows explorer and and you will be taken to the folder you thought was missing. (providing you have been allocated permissions to view that folder.

Thanks, but unfortunately that's not it.

I typed \\Server\Docs\Important into the address bar of Windows Explorer and I got the following error message:

Windows cannot access \\Server\Docs\Important
Check the spelling of your name. Otherwise, there may be a problem with your network. To try to identify and resolve network problems, click Diagnose.

So I clicked the Diagnose button, and after a few seconds I saw this:

Verify that you typed the name correctly, and then try again
Windows can't find "\\Server\Docs\Important". The name might be misspelled.

However, I can be very confident that it isn't misspelled. As I start typing the folder name into the address bar, it offers me a list of folders which match what I'm typing (eg when I've got as far as \\Server\Docs\I it offers me \\Server\Docs\Irrelevant) but the folder I want never appears.

Any other suggestions?

StewartR · 31 Jul 2014

Keith W said:
The folder may have been hidden by accident, try going into your folder options, view, and click show hidden files and folders, click apply and then OK

Thanks, but unfortunately that's not it. I have Show hidden files, folders and drives selected.

Any other suggestions?

Keith W · 31 Jul 2014

Go to the command prompt and enter:

Attrib -H -S foldername

Box Brownie · 1 Aug 2014

Hi Stewart

I ma not familiar with WHS but did a bit of Googling and came across someone else reporting the same sort of sudden loss of a folder here http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6684-whs-2011-lost-my-music-folder/ see post #12 where he reports a successful recovery. Hope that helps and if I find anymore pointers I will post them

Edit ~ related ??? http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2238762

Just a passing thought ~ as you have not accessed it for sometime and the fact that you can see the folder contents listed, the indexing seems to be working but could it be that the folder permissions have (somehow) been changed to stop the access???

arad85 · 1 Aug 2014

I suspect the directory has been lost. The search function will probably be reading the paths from either a history or from an indexed cache.

If you go onto the server, fire up a cmd prompt and go to the directory that houses the folder important and a dir command says it is not there, it probably isn't.

I think almost everyone learns about backups the hard way... I know I did.

neil_g · 1 Aug 2014

StewartR said:
Let's say I've learned a lesson about backups here. The Windows Home Server runs a RAID-like technology so everything on there is duplicated and proof against a disk failure ... but I've just discovered that's not the same as having an offline backup.

i guess you missed one of my many "RAID is not a backup" rants

seriously though, before you write any other data to the server try one of the data recover tools available (i think theres a thread here somewhere with a list of recommended ones?).

StewartR · 1 Aug 2014

Keith W said:
Go to the command prompt and enter:

Attrib -H -S foldername

@Keith W - Should I do this on my PC or on the server?

StewartR · 1 Aug 2014

arad85 said:
I suspect the directory has been lost. The search function will probably be reading the paths from either a history or from an indexed cache.

If you go onto the server, fire up a cmd prompt and go to the directory that houses the folder important and a dir command says it is not there, it probably isn't.

It says it's not there. I guess it probably isn't.

neil_g said:
seriously though, before you write any other data to the server try one of the data recover tools available (i think theres a thread here somewhere with a list of recommended ones?).

I will try.

Thanks guys.

Ian-Highlander · 1 Aug 2014

Keith W said:
Go to the command prompt and enter:

Attrib -H -S foldername

As Keith says, do this on the server, it sounds like a backup process has marked this directory with the hidden and system attributes. Robocopy has a habit of doing this if you ever use that in any scripts for example.

neil_g · 1 Aug 2014

even if the folder was hidden it should still be accessible by typing in the path manually.

StewartR · 1 Aug 2014

Box Brownie said:
I ma not familiar with WHS but did a bit of Googling and came across someone else reporting the same sort of sudden loss of a folder here http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6684-whs-2011-lost-my-music-folder/ see post #12 where he reports a successful recovery. Hope that helps and if I find anymore pointers I will post them

Thanks. I've downloaded Recuva and it's currently running.

StewartR · 1 Aug 2014

Keith W said:
Go to the command prompt and enter:

Attrib -H -S foldername

Ian-Highlander said:
As Keith says, do this on the server, it sounds like a backup process has marked this directory with the hidden and system attributes. Robocopy has a habit of doing this if you ever use that in any scripts for example.

Thanks guys, but this doesn't work.

On the server at the command prompt, I can enter dir /ah to show hidden files and folders, and dir /a-h to show unhidden files and folders. The folder I'm looking for doesn't show up in either list. I'm logged on as administrator so I don't think it can be a privileges thing. I think the folder just isn't there.

Box Brownie · 1 Aug 2014

StewartR said:
Thanks. I've downloaded Recuva and it's currently running.

Fingers crossed for you

Keith W · 1 Aug 2014

StewartR said:
Thanks guys, but this doesn't work.

On the server at the command prompt, I can enter dir /ah to show hidden files and folders, and dir /a-h to show unhidden files and folders. The folder I'm looking for doesn't show up in either list. I'm logged on as administrator so I don't think it can be a privileges thing. I think the folder just isn't there.

Stewart, never mind all of that, just log onto the server as administrator and run the command I gave you

Attrib -H -S foldername

Byker28i · 1 Aug 2014

Ian-Highlander said:
As Keith says, do this on the server, it sounds like a backup process has marked this directory with the hidden and system attributes. Robocopy has a habit of doing this if you ever use that in any scripts for example.

Never had that issue with robocopy.

Have you moved the folder under somewhere else accidentally. Do you have previous versions turned on. Right click the parent folder, select properties, do you have a tab with previous versions?

Ian-Highlander · 1 Aug 2014

Byker28i said:
Never had that issue with robocopy.

We had it with several of our backup scripts that use Robocopy on 2008 R2 (had a director panicking because multiple important directories "disappeared"), we now add

Code:

/A-:SH

to the end of all our Robocopy command lines in the scripts to ensure it doesn't happen.

Edit: to add it to a code tag as the forum software turned code into a smiley...

neil_g · 1 Aug 2014

if i remember rightly robocopy will copy the attributes as is by default so if they were set that way to start with then the backup set will be the same.

i may be wrong however.

although slightly irrelevant as the OP has said he does not have a backup in place

StewartR · 1 Aug 2014

Keith W said:
Stewart, never mind all of that, just log onto the server as administrator and run the command I gave you

Attrib -H -S foldername

I'm not sure I can. At least, I think I need some help first.

The folder names I gave earlier were actually a bit simplified for clarity. It isn't actually called \Docs\Important but it has a space in the folder name. Let's call it \Docs\Important Stuff. That's important because the attrib command doesn't like to work with folder names which include spaces. For example, if I try attrib -h -s Unimportant Stuff (where Unimportant Stuff is a folder which I know exists and which I can access OK) I get the error message:

Parameter format not correct -

It seems that the command prompt requires folder names to conform to the DOS 8-character spec. So for this command I would reference the folder not as Important Stuff, but as something like IMPORT~1. But the Docs folder already contains a couple of folders with similar patterns - \Docs\Imported is IMPORT~1, and \Docs\Important Stuff 2 (which i created yesterday) is IMPORT~2.

I have tried attrib -h -s IMPORT~3 and attrib -h -s IMPORT~4 and so on, and they all say File not found. But I think the syntax is OK because if I do attrib -h -s UNIMPO~1 it doesn't throw an error.

Am I doing something wrong? If so, what?

StewartR · 1 Aug 2014

Byker28i said:
Have you moved the folder under somewhere else accidentally.

I don't think so, because when I use the Search utility in Windows Explorer, surely it would be showing me the current location?

Byker28i said:
Do you have previous versions turned on. Right click the parent folder, select properties, do you have a tab with previous versions?

There are no previous versions available.

Ian-Highlander · 1 Aug 2014

Try putting the foldername in double quotes attrib -H -S "important stuff" obviously make sure you're in the correct root directory in the command prompt first or specify the full path in the command.

Ian-Highlander · 1 Aug 2014

neil_g said:
if i remember rightly robocopy will copy the attributes as is by default so if they were set that way to start with then the backup set will be the same.

i may be wrong however.

although slightly irrelevant as the OP has said he does not have a backup in place

Agreed not really relevant to this thread, however, just to show I'm not going insane... http://social.technet.microsoft.com...e5e638f5/robocopy-hides-destination-directory (first link on a quick Google search)

onomatopoeia · 1 Aug 2014

dir /x will show the 8.3 equivalent / short name for all files and directories it lists that don't fit in the traditional 8.3 format.
attrib /s will list all files and directories and recurse into subdirectories, including hidden, system, read-only files and directories (it can therefore produce a lot of output so it might be best to pipe it to a file.)

neil_g said:
i guess you missed one of my many "RAID is not a backup" rants

Have you mentioned that before? :exit:

Byker28i · 1 Aug 2014

Ian-Highlander said:
Agreed not really relevant to this thread, however, just to show I'm not going insane... http://social.technet.microsoft.com...e5e638f5/robocopy-hides-destination-directory (first link on a quick Google search)

Well there you go, you learn something new everyday on TP

Sharky · 1 Aug 2014

@StewartR have you tried to find the actual folder, not the share but the folder path directly e.g. d:\data\important.

ancient_mariner · 1 Aug 2014

Something from el Reg that may provide a little amusement, and hopefully a grin for the OP: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/01/bofh_2014_episode_7/

Neilc28 · 2 Aug 2014

Doesn't WHS have Shadow-Copies (Previous Versions) enabled by default? If you're not familiar with this then right-click on the parent folder, goto properties and see if you have a previous versions or shadow copies tab, you may well then see a version of the folder from a couple of weeks back, at which point you can explore it and copy the relevant data back.

http://www.howtogeek.com/56891/use-...sions-to-go-back-in-time-and-save-your-files/

If you don't see the options from your client computer, try it directly on the server, this method has saved quite a few headaches previously lol :runaway:

neil_g · 2 Aug 2014

Neilc28 said:
Doesn't WHS have Shadow-Copies (Previous Versions) enabled by default? If you're not familiar with this then right-click on the parent folder, goto properties and see if you have a previous versions or shadow copies tab, you may well then see a version of the folder from a couple of weeks back, at which point you can explore it and copy the relevant data back.

http://www.howtogeek.com/56891/use-...sions-to-go-back-in-time-and-save-your-files/

If you don't see the options from your client computer, try it directly on the server, this method has saved quite a few headaches previously lol

StewartR said:
There are no previous versions available.

Neilc28 · 2 Aug 2014

Holy ****, how did I miss that!

Nice catch Neil lol, I will go to the corner and put my D hat on lol

StewartR · 8 Aug 2014

OK, a belated happy ending.

I downloaded Recuva and installed it on my PC, but it won't run on a networked drive.

So I installed Recuva on the server and set it running. No luck.

So then I set it running in 'deep scan' mode, which took... a very long while. Long enough for me to forget it was still running, anyway. (The server doesn't have its own monitor and us normally only accessed via a remote connection. My PC rebooted itself overnight to install some critical Windows update, and that closed the direct connection window, and the next morning I forgot it was still running!)

But anyway, eventually Recuva coughed up a list of about 10,000,000 files, and all the ones I wanted were there. It turned out that the folder had been moved, almost certainly by an accidental drag/drop in Windows Explorer, but it was otherwise totally intact.

Phew! Thanks for the help, everybody.

And thanks @neil_g for a simple mantra which I will now commit to memory: RAID is not a backup!

neil_g · 8 Aug 2014

Good news. Now get that backup sorted

StewartR · 8 Aug 2014

neil_g said:
Good news. Now get that backup sorted

You wrote that whilst I was editing my post to include your mantra!

Presumably all I need is an additional HDD and some sort of backup software. Any recommendations?

arad85 · 8 Aug 2014

Excellent news

Box Brownie · 8 Aug 2014

Hi Stewart

Glad you got it sorted ~ a real phew!!! moment.

As for backup software I let others chime in as to what is best for your setup but remember for mission critical business backups the ideal is to have 3 rolling backups (grandfather, father, son 'rotating' external tapes or HDDs) so that you never lose more than one days data if disaster happens. Oh, and do take it offsite because a building disaster if in the same location could destroy the backup as well as the primary........................I have also read of folk that add a backup to the cloud and/or an offsite server!

Ian-Highlander · 8 Aug 2014

Take my backups possibly a bit over the top, but I have a 16 drive RAID unit running RAID 6 with a hot spare (so I can lose three drives before total loss of data). Everything is backed up to USB drives twice a day automatically using Syncback Pro (you could use a schedule Robocopy batch file to do the same thing easily enough but the GUI on Syncback Pro makes it nice and easy), then mirrored to other USB drives again automatically and one USB drive is sent to parents house (encrypted) for them to store for me with the critical stuff on it every so often. Also have an LTO 4 tape drive in the server with the RAID unit but don't currently have any tapes for it as my old LTO2 tapes will read but not write in the unit, but as soon as I have tapes I will be also backing up on tape as a tertiary backup.

All my media for the media systems round the house are on two USB drives again mirrored to two others for backup.

Excessive? possibly, especially for a home setup, but I value my data.

Box Brownie · 8 Aug 2014

Ian-Highlander said:
Take my backups possibly a bit over the top, but I have a 16 drive RAID unit running RAID 6 with a hot spare (so I can lose three drives before total loss of data). Everything is backed up to USB drives twice a day automatically using Syncback Pro (you could use a schedule Robocopy batch file to do the same thing easily enough but the GUI on Syncback Pro makes it nice and easy), then mirrored to other USB drives again automatically and one USB drive is sent to parents house (encrypted) for them to store for me with the critical stuff on it every so often. Also have an LTO 4 tape drive in the server with the RAID unit but don't currently have any tapes for it as my old LTO2 tapes will read but not write in the unit, but as soon as I have tapes I will be also backing up on tape as a tertiary backup.

All my media for the media systems round the house are on two USB drives again mirrored to two others for backup.

Excessive? possibly, especially for a home setup, but I value my data.

But are you taking the last/most current USB drive out of the house every time you leave plus is it in the 'flee the house' grab bag if you need to leave the house in an emergency...............IMO all your precautions would be for nowt if the one off site is not a very current backup!