RE: EMERGENCY! Offline Files Disappearing / Vanishing
- From: drywild <drywild@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 12:11:02 -0800
Dear Macker,
it is good to read about your problem because I faced the same for many
years on different systems. Since I am my own network administrator I am
quite sure that no wrong user actions are the cause of the problem. I also
observed the disappearing of offline files, and - just as you described it -
it always happend when being OFFLINE, so it does not seem to have anything to
do with the server.
When the problem occurred first (maybe three years ago) both the server and
the laptop were running on Windows 2000 Professional in one workgroup (no
domain). The size of all offline files was about approx. 20 GB at that time.
Since I also faced the problem that the synchronisation was incomplete I
already wrote a program that scanned the drive to be synchronized when being
ONLINE, logging the names of all files in a text file, in order to compare
this list of files with the OFFLINE available files after synchronisation.
This is why I am absolutely sure that I had all the files available offline
at least once after synchronization.
Then started the disappearing of files. They disappreared when being
offline, and when being online again the little blue mark on the file icons
that show that they are available offline was gone.
I increased the harddisk of the laptop because it only had about 10 GB free
space left.
I changed the laptop.
I changed the OS from W2KPro to WinXPPro on the server and the laptop.
I changed the server.
I changed the laptop again.
I deinstalled all antivirus software which I suspected at one point.
It all was not successful. The only observation that I have made is that the
problem occurred more often with increasing size of offline files. Today I
try to synchronize about 60 GB of offline files or about 100,000 files, and
it is very unreliable.
I will now try to find another solution. Anyhow, I would be happy if anyone
had more ideas how to solve the problem.
Yours
drywild
"Macker" wrote:
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"). 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.
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