Confusion Reigns Over Fujitsu-Siemens SCALEO Server Restore

The following guest post by reader BuckDanny highlights the confusion caused to owners of the original FSC SCALEO 1500 and 1900 home servers when attempting to perform a server recovery. Confused labelling within the restore wizard means that users are not sure whether their data will be deleted during the restore. Read on to learn more, and continue the discussion over at WGS Forums.

This post is intended as a warning / reassurance (depending on the circumstances) for users of Scaleo models 1500 and 1900. It probably does not apply to users of newer Scaleo models (2105, 2205, etc.), but may be interesting for them nonetheless.

In a nutshell, the problem is the following: with these models, Fujitsu-Siemens (as the company was called when these models were manufactured) provided a Server Recovery CD (“Nr. 3”) that will give you a seriously confusing (or even wrong) warning message that you will lose all the data on your server, even if you chose the “Server Repair” option (which is supposed to only re-install the WHS operating system, and leave all data intact).

I’ve written a description that walks you through the Scaleo server repair process, including where you encounter this unexpected warning, why it is there and what the consequences are for proceeding with a server repair. It ends with a brief mention of what I believe Fujitsu has changed in the Server Recovery CD that ships with the newer models 2105 / 2205.

First, some context around my own experience. I performed  a Server Repair almost three months ago. I could still access the home server, so I made a full backup of my data in advance. I also checked there were no files on my D-partition. Because of those precautions, and because I thought I remembered reading about this issue “somewhere”, I decided to ignore the warning about data loss.

Server re-installation went OK, although I didn’t understand why the “WHS is recovering your data” phase took almost 4 hours, and why all the folder “date created”/”date modified” values were reset to the repair date. Contrary to what I had read, all my add-in settings were gone (e.g. my Disk Management wireframe). All files were still there though, and the PC Backup database was intact. After a few days, I started experiencing empty files and folders in several places. I plugged in my backup disk and did a full restore (obviously only of files missing from the WHS shares). Observing the restore process (from the backup disk to the WHS shares) confirmed my suspicion: a lot of empty files and folders needed to be restored, but no physical data at all, so the restore was finished very soon. Overall, although there were some minor annoyances, I didn’t lose any data because of the Server Repair.

Why is a Walkthrough Required?

I’ve started writing this in response to questions by a new WGS Forums member in this thread. That discussion caused me to re-think my own recent experience restoring my Scaleo 1900. In addition, I consulted the following sources: this thread on the official Fujitsu support forum (in German), this blog post (in German) and this thread here at WGS, which seems in line with my findings. I’ve gone trough the entire Fujitsu support forum, as well as the Scaleo section here at WGS, but found surprisingly little on this subject. My guess is that relatively few people have already done a Server Repair and noticed the problem. However, as the WHS installations on these Scaleo’s age, I suspect more and more people are going to encounter this.

Contribute Your Experience

IMPORTANT: I highly encourage any corrections or comments. Especially if you are / were a Scaleo 1500 / 1900 user, and already have done a Server Repair, please reply and let us know whether your experience fits my write-up. If it doesn’t, contrast your experience with mine so that we can find out why they would be different. On the other hand, if you recognize what I have written, please confirm this, as this will help others make an informed decision about how to proceed with a Server Repair. Finally, I’d like to thank WGS member Tourniquet for getting me to re-think this issue and for providing some of the links.

What do you see when running the Server Recovery disc (Nr. 3) from a Scaleo 1500 / 1900 ?

1. You have to choose between a “Home Server Repair” (comment on mouse-over: “Your data will be available again”) and a “Restoration of the delivery mode” (comment on mouse-over: “Deletes all data on your WHS”), as illustrated in the screenshot below.

2. Assuming you want to keep the data you have, you choose the “Home Server Repair”
3. The following window is displayed for several minutes:

4. Then you get the following window, with a VERY unexpected warning!

5. Assuming you ignore the warning, you click “Next” and proceed.

6. The actual Server Repair starts now.
Important detail: during this time (about 15 min.), the client PC on which the CD is run will not be usable for any other task.

7. When the repair is done, the server reboots itself. From here, the sequence is the same as during the initial installation: first the installation on the client-side (Scaleo WakeUp, WHS Connector), then the server-side WHS Setup (including a “Recovering your data” phase).