**URGENT** UNDELETING FILES FROM NT4 SERVER
Discussion
Help!
Some kind hearted soul has just destroyed months of work by deleting a load of files off my deployment server.
I'm currently downloading Executive Software's Undelete utility, which I hope should get them back.
The server is NT4 Server, SP6a.
Any other ideas, apart from locking the thing down even further?
I've no idea exactly what I've lost, but all the main apps are now missing.
Thanks in advance,
Greg
Some kind hearted soul has just destroyed months of work by deleting a load of files off my deployment server.
I'm currently downloading Executive Software's Undelete utility, which I hope should get them back.
The server is NT4 Server, SP6a.
Any other ideas, apart from locking the thing down even further?
I've no idea exactly what I've lost, but all the main apps are now missing.
Thanks in advance,
Greg
Well, thanks for all your stirring efforts to help me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Yes, I am well aware the absence of a backup was indeed a risk. It was pointed out many times, but the customer has chosen to ignore it.
For the record, in case any poor sod suffers the same fate as I did yesterday, the following was performed:
I obtained a copy of Winsofts WinUndelete. This found about 5,000 files. These were recovered to a different partition then everything was carefully copied back. I have yet to test the integrity of the apps.
The same problem occurred last night, just as a particular application was being installed, making me think the install code is at fault.
This time, however Execsoft came to the rescue, the restore took minutes rather than hours.
Be careful out there.
Yes, I am well aware the absence of a backup was indeed a risk. It was pointed out many times, but the customer has chosen to ignore it.
For the record, in case any poor sod suffers the same fate as I did yesterday, the following was performed:
I obtained a copy of Winsofts WinUndelete. This found about 5,000 files. These were recovered to a different partition then everything was carefully copied back. I have yet to test the integrity of the apps.
The same problem occurred last night, just as a particular application was being installed, making me think the install code is at fault.
This time, however Execsoft came to the rescue, the restore took minutes rather than hours.
Be careful out there.
GregE240 said:It's not a risk, it's corporate suicide!
Yes, I am well aware the absence of a backup was indeed a risk. It was pointed out many times, but the customer has chosen to ignore it.
Having worked on the Veritas helpdesk for 3 years I've seen 1st hand the results of bad backup policies, and can't believe anyone would ever contemplate not having a safety net. Pure stupidity!
Apologies for rant...
May well be pure stupidity, but nonetheless my experience is that it is very common. Most IT depts are there to provide support to a business's day-to-day activity and are stretched to fix the issues that are coming up day-to-day and minute-to-minute. Short-termism rules as they are judged by the business on their short-term performance. Even if backup procedures are in place, I have never known any company that actually checks if they are really working properly. The number of times I've heard "*uck, server X is dead", "restore the backup", "backup is knackered/out of date" is depressing. As for a disaster recovery site ... how often do people actually check if it is useable? I've _never_ seen it.
Case in point: I'm working on a trading system project for an investment bank. We needed a test environemnt. To build this, we wanted to restore a production system's database back-up, just as a way of making a copy. So we took the most recent (daily) back-up files and found they were corrupt (too long for the tape that was being used), so we went to the disaster recovery site servers that are supposed to get a daily copy of the production system and discovered that their copy was corrupt as not all tables were being properly replicated. Long and short was that there was no back up of one of the bank's primary trading systems. Worse than that, the bank DIDN'T KNOW there wasn't a back up. They thought everything was fine. Clueless w*nkers. If the production system fell over and couldn't be repaired, they would have been up shit creek 4000 miles from the coast.
If you give somebody a tedious task, like checking that backups ran, they will get bored and complacent after a couple of days.
And another thing ... RAID arrays ... anyone know an IT dept that intentionally breaks one to see if they know how to rebuild it? I've never seen it. It's all well and good having RAID, but if no one knows what to do when one of the discs goes pop or the controller dies, then what is the f***king point?
My solution? A laptop with 120GB of discs. Each time I left the office at my last firm, I had a personal copy of our business-critical files and systems in my backpack. This was my personal insurance coz I didn't trust our IT outsource firm ... and it paid off when our fileserver died, its RAID array was not recoverable (quality DELL NAS), and the tape backups proved to be useless.
For a few hundred quid you can now get hundreds of gigs of USB hard disc. This is mind numbingly easy to use, and you can take it off-site in your lunch box.
Raid, tape, DR are all great (really) ... but particularly if you want to spend a load of money, waste a lot of time and end up with a big
-up on your hands.
I'd recommend walking off each night with a big disc. If you can't manage that, then you probably need help with your shoelaces and blowing your nose.
May well be pure stupidity, but nonetheless my experience is that it is very common. Most IT depts are there to provide support to a business's day-to-day activity and are stretched to fix the issues that are coming up day-to-day and minute-to-minute. Short-termism rules as they are judged by the business on their short-term performance. Even if backup procedures are in place, I have never known any company that actually checks if they are really working properly. The number of times I've heard "*uck, server X is dead", "restore the backup", "backup is knackered/out of date" is depressing. As for a disaster recovery site ... how often do people actually check if it is useable? I've _never_ seen it.
Case in point: I'm working on a trading system project for an investment bank. We needed a test environemnt. To build this, we wanted to restore a production system's database back-up, just as a way of making a copy. So we took the most recent (daily) back-up files and found they were corrupt (too long for the tape that was being used), so we went to the disaster recovery site servers that are supposed to get a daily copy of the production system and discovered that their copy was corrupt as not all tables were being properly replicated. Long and short was that there was no back up of one of the bank's primary trading systems. Worse than that, the bank DIDN'T KNOW there wasn't a back up. They thought everything was fine. Clueless w*nkers. If the production system fell over and couldn't be repaired, they would have been up shit creek 4000 miles from the coast.
If you give somebody a tedious task, like checking that backups ran, they will get bored and complacent after a couple of days.
And another thing ... RAID arrays ... anyone know an IT dept that intentionally breaks one to see if they know how to rebuild it? I've never seen it. It's all well and good having RAID, but if no one knows what to do when one of the discs goes pop or the controller dies, then what is the f***king point?
My solution? A laptop with 120GB of discs. Each time I left the office at my last firm, I had a personal copy of our business-critical files and systems in my backpack. This was my personal insurance coz I didn't trust our IT outsource firm ... and it paid off when our fileserver died, its RAID array was not recoverable (quality DELL NAS), and the tape backups proved to be useless.
For a few hundred quid you can now get hundreds of gigs of USB hard disc. This is mind numbingly easy to use, and you can take it off-site in your lunch box.
Raid, tape, DR are all great (really) ... but particularly if you want to spend a load of money, waste a lot of time and end up with a big
-up on your hands. I'd recommend walking off each night with a big disc. If you can't manage that, then you probably need help with your shoelaces and blowing your nose.
Good post ATG and very true.
In my experience though, there are some other good eggs out there who DO test their DR sites (those that have them!!) and do intentionally break things in order to test processes.
The reason I know is because these people were serious pains in the ass and would test our software to breaking point. But fair enough... that's their job and they were doing it right.
BUT - the number of companies who just employ what we called 'tape monkeys' to deal with backups was terrifying. Some of our customers, who were system admins needed help even finding Windows Explorer!!
I'm off to start work at a big storage firm soon, luckily only dealing with internal customers!
In my experience though, there are some other good eggs out there who DO test their DR sites (those that have them!!) and do intentionally break things in order to test processes.
The reason I know is because these people were serious pains in the ass and would test our software to breaking point. But fair enough... that's their job and they were doing it right.
BUT - the number of companies who just employ what we called 'tape monkeys' to deal with backups was terrifying. Some of our customers, who were system admins needed help even finding Windows Explorer!!
I'm off to start work at a big storage firm soon, luckily only dealing with internal customers!
Backups?
Company I work for has a call centre arm.
They were running every single account (of which there are hundreds), all the source, DNS, all the users and god knows what else off one box
Which died.
They then realised that as no one had been checking the logs that the tape drive hadnt been working for about 3 months.
Customers were really pleased about that.
So there you go, backups arent viewed by the business with the same veracity they are viewed by the technical team. (Though in my case its a company thats run almost exclusively by the mostwitted people you could ever wish to not stumble accross)
In this case our hero has been caught by shite decision making from the business side.
Glad you got it sorted Greg...
Company I work for has a call centre arm.
They were running every single account (of which there are hundreds), all the source, DNS, all the users and god knows what else off one box
Which died.
They then realised that as no one had been checking the logs that the tape drive hadnt been working for about 3 months.
Customers were really pleased about that.
So there you go, backups arent viewed by the business with the same veracity they are viewed by the technical team. (Though in my case its a company thats run almost exclusively by the most
witted people you could ever wish to not stumble accross) In this case our hero has been caught by shite decision making from the business side.
Glad you got it sorted Greg...
Thanks Matt.
As an IT consultant with over 6 years of system design under my belt, I'm well aware of backup strategies and the fact they are worthless unless checked regularly.
The point I was making is that it IS possible to dig yourself out of a hole and recover from catastrophic failure.
Although I wouldn't recommend systematic file / folder recovery to an additional partition. Its worse than eating your own ear wax.
Going to a meeting now where I'm sure the project manager will get a good kicking for dismissing a backup of the server in question because he considered it to be "only a temporary repository".
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I rarely look back or waste time thinking about what could (or should) have been done. I'd much rather roll my sleeves up and sort the damn problem - leave the pontificators to themselves.
Greg
As an IT consultant with over 6 years of system design under my belt, I'm well aware of backup strategies and the fact they are worthless unless checked regularly.
The point I was making is that it IS possible to dig yourself out of a hole and recover from catastrophic failure.
Although I wouldn't recommend systematic file / folder recovery to an additional partition. Its worse than eating your own ear wax.
Going to a meeting now where I'm sure the project manager will get a good kicking for dismissing a backup of the server in question because he considered it to be "only a temporary repository".
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I rarely look back or waste time thinking about what could (or should) have been done. I'd much rather roll my sleeves up and sort the damn problem - leave the pontificators to themselves.
Greg
"RAID arrays ... anyone know an IT dept that intentionally breaks one to see if they know how to rebuild it? I've never seen it. It's all well and good having RAID, but if no one knows what to do when one of the discs goes pop or the controller dies"
Yep, we do it all the time, we have about 4 disk failures a week and the odd controller failure, not lost an array for years.
Yep, we do it all the time, we have about 4 disk failures a week and the odd controller failure, not lost an array for years.
Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff