Restore Guest files does not mount D:\ drive

[Ace T]

We have a VM that has backed up successfully but when trying to restore guest files then the mount fails for the drive D:\ I think because the Veeam server already has D:\. How do you overcome this issue so I can see the drive I want to restore from ?

[Gostev]

This is not because of Veeam Server having D:\ drive, but due to unsupported disk drive configuration (like Windows 2008 dynamic disks, GRT partition table etc. - see Release Notes for more information about built-in FLR). As a workaround, you may try using Multi-OS FLR wizard instead, it supports more disk configurations including dynamic disks. Thanks!

[Ace T]

So is this not supported for Windows 2003 dynamic disks ?

Also, what is Multi-OS FLR ? I haven't read this before.

[Gostev]

Yes, most Windows 2003 dynamic disk and all Windows 2008 dynamic disk configurations are not supported by built-in FLR.

Refer to page 82 of the User Guide for information regarding multi-OS FLR.

[Ace T]

I tried installing VMWare Player on my Backup Server (Physical IBM Server) but it stopped the Broadcom NIC teaming on the server so the server could not see the network. I uninstalled it and the server was fine again. Have you seen this at all ?

[Gostev]

No, I have not seen this before (but it does update networking during the installation). Make sure you are installing VMware Player 2.5, and not the latest version - 2.5 does not have issues like that for sure.

Also, you can always install Veeam and VMware Player on any other computer, perform Import Backup on the required backup, and then perform the file restore.

[Ace T]

Thanks Gostev. VMWare Player worked very well. I can now see the data I was after. Only 1 small issue that I hope is easily rectified.

Some of the folders we store have user data backups in (Word or Excel docs). Some folders have backed up fine and I see the data but other folders are empty although they should be populated with files so somehow Veeam is not capturing everything. Any ideas or should I log a support ticket ?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Amit,

Could you please tell us whether you had snapshots on the VM you're trying to do FLR? Also what backup job mode have you used to backup this VM?

[Ace T]

There were no snapshots on this VM and we used the standard SAN mode vStorage API backup process.

[Vitaliy S.]

Amit,

Since you've used vStorage API mode that consolidates all the changes from the snapshots and since Veeam backup is an image level backup solution, whole disk image is being backed up, there's no way that some files will not be backed up. So please log a support ticket with us.

As a workaround for now, you may get the files you need by restoring the whole VM on the different host/network, start it up and copy the files from there manually.

Thank you!