Veeam Backup 4.1 Windows 2008R2 - missing drives

[planktonian]

Hi there,

My customer is using the latest build of Veeam but has noticed a strange issue.

When we back up a Windows 2008R2 x64 VM the backup completes OK but when we try a file level restore the drive letters have been shifted as follows:

Original VM has C: & E: drives, there is also a Microsoft created "system reserved" partition of 100Mb that has no drive letter.

When we try a file level restore the "system reserved" partition displays as the C: drive, the real C: drive displays as D: and the real E: drive does not appear.

If we try a full restore of the VM this works correctly and both drives appear as they should (the system reserved partition is also restored but not given a drive letter).

It is only for file level restores that we find this issue but as my customer is evaluating the software it would be good to get your help on this matter.

MAny thanks

Andy

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Andrew,

Yes, that's correct for file level restores Backup Browser may show different drive letters than in the actual VM. But it shouldn't cause you any troubles in restore process, as all files are restored correctly. This is also documented in our release notes.

Thank you!

[planktonian]

Ok - maybe I didnt explain properly.

The VM has c & E drives & system partiton

When you try a file level restore it is not possible to restore any files from the VM E: drive as this does not appear at all (not even with a different drive letter)

So if my VM has files on the E: drive, how do I restore these at file level if they cannot be viewed?

Thanks

Andy

[tsightler]

I think you missed an important part of his post where he stated that the E: drive does not appear at all. That would be a little bit of a problem.

Andrew, did you try both the FLR within the Veeam Backup console as well as the FLR Virtual Appliance? Since the FLR Virtual Appliance is based on Linux, it can sometimes give different results that may be better or worse, but I've had success restoring from it when they wouldn't show up directly within Veeam, although I haven't had this problem with the 4.x releases. Might be worth a try.

[Gostev]

Andrew, are you using dynamic disks on this VM by any chance? Built-in file level restore has limited support for such disks, for example only first partition on dynamic disk is visible during file level restore. This is documented in the System Requirements and Known Issue sections of the Release Notes document.

But Tom is right, our Multi-OS FLR wizard will help here as it has full support for Windows 2008 dynamic disks since version 4, and it will show you all VM volumes.

[planktonian]

hi all, thanks for your replies

We are not using dynamic disks & are currently testing the FLR appliance.

I will let you know the results soon!

Regards

Andy

[barket]

Hi!
I have had similar problems at a customer. I found that the problem was exactly same names on the .vmdk files.
i had two disks
VMWAREdisk.vmdk
and
VMWAREDISK.vmdk

this i fine in VMWARE but not in Windows/veeam....

sollution, rename one of the vmdk's or simply do a storage vmotion and it will rename it automatic.

hope it helps