Morphed Folders

FRS has detected that two or more identically named folders on different servers were added to the replica tree. FRS identifies the conflict during replication, and the receiving member protects the original copy of the folder and renames (morphs) the later inbound copy of the folder. The morphed folder names have a suffix of "_NTFRS_xxxxxxxx," where "xxxxxxxx" represents eight random hexadecimal digits.

There are two common causes of this condition:

• A folder with the same name is created on multiple computers in the replica set before the folder has been able to replicate. This could be due to the administrator or application creating duplicate folders on multiple FRS members, perhaps in an effort by the administrator to make data consistent among all members with a manual copy.
• You initiated an authoritative restore (D4) on one server and either:
  • Did not stop the service on all other members of the reinitialized replica set prior to restarting the NTFRS service following the authoritative restore
  • Did not set the D2 registry key on all other members of the reinitialized replica set prior to such a server replicating outbound changes to reinitialized members of the replica set.

Note

• If you are running Ultrasound and see alerts for Morphed change order created, these could be false alerts. Use the steps in Resolution below to determine whether morphed folders exist.

Resolution

Locate the morphed folders in the replica tree. (To see which folders are morphed in Ultrasound, use the Files in replica set view on the Advanced tab. Sort the view by the MorphedDirectory column. You may need to collect data from the reference replica member first.)

To recover from this condition, the best practice is to rename the original folders and the morphed folders and wait for the renamed folders to propagate to all replica members. This will ensure that the folders have a common name throughout the replica set and have file GUIDS that match on all members. Note that you cannot just delete the unwanted folder and rename the other one as this could lead to even more naming conflicts.

After the rename has propagated, choose the one you want to keep, and rename it back to the original name, and then you can safely delete the remaining morphed folders.

For more information about cleaning up morphed folders, see article 328492, "Folder Name Is Changed to FolderName_NTFRS_<xxxxxxxx>" at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=328492.

Important

• Before deleting any of the folders, it is a best practice to ensure you have a backup of the original (and complete) folder.