If you are experiencing problems with your Windows Home Server, it is likely that you have a missing external hard drive database. This problem can be difficult to diagnose, but fortunately there are a few steps that you can take to try and fix it. ..


If an external drive that is included in your drive pool becomes unplugged or loses power, you might see the following error under Home Network Health when opening the WHS Console. To fix the issue verify the drive has power and is plugged in correctly and click Repair.

The wizard launches and you’ll need to agree that you may lose data during the repair of the backup database.

In this example it was a simple problem where an external drive became unplugged from the server…so you can close out of the wizard.

If you look under Server Storage you can see the drive is missing…To fix the issue verify the drive has power and is plugged in correctly.

WHS will add the drive back into the pool and when finished you’ll see it listed as healthy and good to go.

Using external drives that are part of your storage pool may not be the best way to have your home built WHS setup, but if you do, expect occasional errors such as this.