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Hyper-V VM restore browse displays duplicate drive letters

  • 8 March 2022
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When I browse a VM for “guest Files and Folders” (file and print server) from Hyper-V backups I see duplicate drive letters. The VM has 14 drives. This changed after a certain date and only occurs for 1 specific client. The other 2 VMs (also FnP servers) are okay. Drive letters are as they should be.

Drive letters are C, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, P, Q, R, S, T, but when I browse for recover, I see C, C, F, F, G, G, H, H, I, I, J, J, L, L. The contents also do not match. E.g. when I browse both Cs display contents for the actual F drive.

If I browse the “Virtual Machine Files” I can see the correct drives (vhdx files) listed.

I have tried from different copies, but all are the same.

1st copy is a snap, 2nd is backup copy and 3rd off-site copy.

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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Best answer by Mike Struening RETIRED 14 April 2022, 20:02

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7 replies

MichaelCapon
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Hi @Kobus_Strydom,

In the past have seen “Automount” on the Windows VSA/MA cause similar behaviour here. - I’d suggest checking it is disabled and scrubbed, then checking the results.
Automount docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-r2-and-2012/cc753703(v=ws.11)

 

If that does not help, I’d suggest raising a support case.

Let us know how you get on.

 

Best Regards,

Michael

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Hi @MichaelCapon 

 

I have checked, the automount is disabled.

I will raise a support case and provide feedback once I have a resolution.

 

Regards

Kobus

Mike Struening RETIRED
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@Kobus_Strydom , please share the case number once created!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-struening
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@Mike Struening 

220308-221

 

 

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After having a session with support, the engineer asked when “Collect File Details” under “Backup Options” of the subclient properties was turned on. As this might be the cause.

This was turned on late last year because a browse for one of the Hyper-V clients only displayed drive letters and no content.

After I removed the setting yesterday the backup for last night now displays the correct drive letters.

What is the purpose of this option, as it works fine for all clients except the one that had issues displaying correct drive letters after Feb 06? Even the other clients in the same subclient are working as expected.

 

Please can someone share info on the actual purpose of this option.

Mike Struening RETIRED
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@Kobus_Strydom , we have a KB that covers this, though the option is collecting metadeta details and it might not be supported for your Hypervisor:

https://kb.commvault.com/article/63536

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-struening
Mike Struening RETIRED
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Sharing case closure:

Finding Details:

Collect File Details option is used with V1 indexing VM's to collect the indexes and directory structure of the VM's during the backup job itself. When a job was run with the option selected, browsing a VM for Guest Files and Folders will present the data after fetching the same from the Indexes residing either on the MA or the storage media which were collected during the backup job.
This option however obviously increases the backup time for the VM.

When a job is run without the Collect File Details option selected and if a Guest File and Folders browse is requested, we basically mount the disks from our backups to a temp location and present the data in a readable format. This is called Live Browse and hence to read Linux VM disks we need FRE and similarly to read windows VM's disks we need windows VSA proxy since cross-OS proxies cannot read the directory structures from the VMs of other types.

Solution:

Customer unchecked Collect File Details option and now drive is showing correct browse

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-struening
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