Re: EMERGENCY! Offline Files Disappearing / Vanishing
- From: "Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]" <lanwench@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 23:38:47 -0400
In news:6FB6C2DE-471B-4EC4-8221-382D9724F8D4@xxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Macker <Macker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> typed:
I never believed the Offline Files horror stories I would read on
forums from other system admins - until now. (Apologies for not
taking "you" seriously). I may have lost a client today...
(Please excuse the length of this post, but I want to try and give as
much information as possible)
Here is the infrastructure/scenario:
- SBS 2003
- My Documents Redirection enabled
- My Documents made "Available Offline"
- Size Limit on server set to 5GB (rather than default 1GB limit)
- Client laptop: Dell Latitude, XP Pro SP2
Here is a basic overview of what is happening:
- STARTING POINT (before any problems):
- The client's My Documents are fully synched and available offline -
no problems.
- The client has no problems for two years - his My Documents are
always available offline.
- Everyone is happy.
- The size of his "My Documents" before the problems started, is
about 4.2GB
- PROBLEMS:
- One evening (6 months ago) I get a call: The client is offline, and
the most of the contents of his My Documents are GONE.
- I say "most", because about ten files (out of 2,000+) are
available. They are the files he most recently worked on. They are
available at the end of the tree, eg:
My Documents\School Files\School 2005\Science
Class\ScienceProject1.doc
AND
My Documents\School Files\School 2006\Civics Class\CivicsProject1.doc
However, in the "Science Class" or "Civics Class" folders, there
should be hundreds of files, not just the ScienceProject1.doc and
CivicsProject1.doc files. Additionally, there should be (lots of)
files in the folders above these. eg: the "School 2006" folder should
also have hundreds of files in it, as well as other folders. They are
all missing.
ATTEMPTED FIXES:
FIRST TIME:
The first time this happened (at 11PM at night, when he had a flight
at 6AM):
- I drove to his house, picked up his laptop, and drove to his office
where the server lives.
- I first of all looked on the server, and sure enough his "missing"
files were all there under his appropriate user folder on the server.
- Next, I hooked up the laptop, and logged onto the network as the
user.
- I DID NOT SYNCHRONIZE (YET)
- I opened up his My Documents, and sure enough, there were his files
- all WITHOUT the blue synchronization arrows next to them. The only
ones that DID have the arrows, were the ones mentioned above
(ScienceProject1.doc, CivicsProject1.doc, etc.)
- I then performed a full synchronization. This took about three
hours, over a 100mbps network. It appeared to have to rebuilt the
offline cache from scratch.
- Once the synchronization was complete, I did another
synchronization "just to be sure." This time it ran like a normal
sync, and took about a minute. - I then powered down the laptop,
disconnected the network cable, and rebooted in offline mode. All the
files were now there - everything seemed fine.
- I returned the laptop to the client (at about 4AM).
SECOND TIME:
My client worked away merrily for about a week, then disaster struck
again: Exact same symptoms - only about the most recent 7 to 10 files
he had been working on, were available. Again, the tree structure
above the 7 to 10 files was intact, but there was nothing else in the
folders.
This time (about 1PM in the afternoon), he was again about to leave
for the weekend at 8PM.
- I rendevouzed with him at his office.
- I synched up the laptop as before.
- THEN -
- I COPIED the contents of his My Documents onto his Desktop.
- I DELETED the contents of his My Documents
- I did another sync (of his now empty My Documents)
- I deleted his Offline Cache (Folder Options, on the Offline Files
tab, press CTRL+SHIFT, and then click Delete Files).
- I did another sync.
- THEN -
- I COPIED the (previously copied) My Documents contents, from his
desktop, back to his real My Documents.
- I performed another full sync.
- I then did another sync (just to be sure), and rebooted.
- Everything was still there. I synched again.
- I shut down, rebooted in offline mode.
- All the files were there. "This is fixed!" I thought.
THIRD TIME:
Everything was okay for about a month. Then lightning struck a third
time. Again, the exact same problem - only a few files available.
This time I really went overboard: It is a small office - three users
only. (I have a client with FIFTY users, and have never had these
problems).
His assistant (let's call her "Mary") has a workstation. She
sometimes needs access to his files, so sometimes she logs onto her
workstation as him (let's call him "Joe").
Why do you not simply grant Mary rights to this folder if Joe doesn't mind ?
Nobody should ever log in as another user. There's no need.
There is also a laptop
which Mary uses, and sometimes she logs on as Joe on the laptop too.
I figured that perhaps there was some conflict between the three
machines. I therefore decided to re-image (wipe) ALL THE MACHINES and
start afresh.
- I first of all made a systemwide backup.
- For added backup, I then burned several DVDs with each user's My
Documents on them.
- I deleted the contents of the User's folders on the server.
- I re-imaged all the machines.
- I deleted the computer accounts of the old machines (using the
proper SBS tools).
- I joined the "newly minted" computers to the domain (using the
proper SBS wizards).
- I logged on each machine as Administrator on the domain, and added
a few extra apps that were not on the image.
- I then logged on as the respective user who would be using that
machine.
- I copied the contents of the User's My Docs DVD to their desktop
first...
- Then I COPIED the contents of the desktop folder to their My
Documents (thereby repropogating their empty/clean User folder on the
server).
- I then synched up each machine.
- THIS ALL TOOK A-G-E-S BY THE WAY!!!
- I then went offline with Joe's laptop, checked the files were
there, etc.
- Everything was fine.
- That was back in January.
FAST FORWARD SEVEN MONTHS...
FOURTH TIME:
I really thought that was the end of it. There have been no problems
since January. To my horror, I received a call from my client on
Monday of this week (today is Wednesday). MISSING FILES AGAIN!
Same problem - exactly.
I thought there may be some "salvation," as he said he had been
"moving a lot of files around." My guess was that he had just moved
some files around while in the office, and then forgot to synchronize
at the end. He had basically moved older folders into a new "Past
Years" folder in his My Documents. Nothing wrong with that - you
should be able to do that! I guessed he hadn't synchronized.
So, back over to his house, and back down to the office...
- Hooked up the laptop
- Logged onto the network as Joe.
- Synched files - took a good while (half-hour on his new 1000 mbps
network)
- Synched again (just to be sure)
- Shut down.
- Rebooted in offline mode.
- All the files were there.
- Returned the laptop to him.
FIFTH TIME (TODAY):
- I get a call from Joe at 6AM. I am asleep. He is at the airport in
San Francisco. (We are based in San Francisco).
- HIS FILES ARE GONE AGAIN!
- He is flying (via Chicago) to a small town in the East Coast for
business
- He needs his files.
- I may lose Joe as a client as a result of this.
SUMMARY / ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS (POSSIBLE OTHER REASONS):
This is clearly unacceptable. This is business "make or break" stuff.
I have a single rule for myself and my employees: I don't care if you
go out and get drunk every night. I don't care if you prefer to work
naked at your desk. I don't care if you masturbate for an hour each
day in the bathroom at work. I don't care if you lose your temper and
take a hammer and chisel to a computer (as long as it's backed up). I
really don't care what you do, as long as...
*** YOU NEVER EVER EVER E-V-E-R LOSE A CLIENT'S DATA - NEVER. ***
You will be fired immediately. We can work on your personal problems.
We can replace broken equipment. We can get you in a recovery
program. We can buy new computers. WE CANNOT BUY NEW DATA. Therefore
it must never happen.
POSSIBILITIES:
1) The one common thread in all of this, is that this ALWAYS seems to
happen when Joe is AWAY from the office: He has all of his files
offline and working fine. Then, suddenly, they disappear. There is no
VPN involved. He is not connecting to the network remotely (except
for Outlook via RPC over HTTPS).
2) THIS MAY BE IMPORTANT: There was a time, that Mary had direct
access to Joe's User folder on the server. He would ocassionally need
her to go in and modify a file. However, when I reimaged all the
machines (see "Third Time"), I explictly removed her permissions from
his folder and restored the folder to it's default state - and
replaced permissions with the proper ones. Maybe that has something
to do with it, but I don't see how? It has been working for seven
months without a hitch.
CAN ANYBODY HELP ME?!!! Thank you.
You've now seen why I use SecondCopy from www.centered.com and special OUs
& GPOs for folder redirection for laptops to a local path.
Sorry I can't help more specifically with the lost files, but this has
happened to me before and I won't use offline files again.
.
- References:
- EMERGENCY! Offline Files Disappearing / Vanishing
- From: Macker
- EMERGENCY! Offline Files Disappearing / Vanishing
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