USB Drive issues after Harmony rebrand

[Andrew_Scott]

Just wondering if anyone else is seeing this issue. I have a ticket open with support already.

Issue:
If you're running a version of HarmonyEndpoint from after the rebrand (E85.30, E85.40) and plugin a USB drive, it will fail to mount the file system.

The drive shows up in device manager but the file system will not mount and blades will start to crash.


Background:
After the rebrand, the Anti-Ransomware folder created by Check Point was renamed from X:\SandBlastBackup to X:\HarmonyBackup. Plugging in a drive where the folder hasn't been renamed causes the failure. The actual content and access rights to the folder don't make a difference. Manually creating a folder names SandBlastBackup on a freshly formatted drive results in the same issue.


Deleting or renaming the folder fixes the drive so it works again.

[kbleb]

My organization ran across the same issue. In our case we went from E85.00.0007 to E86.00.0007 with dynamic upgrade package.

The same workaround worked for us. In some cases, we had to remove anti-ransomware/forensics/anti-bot blades so the folder could be deleted, then add the blades back. Unfortunately, the issue didn't come up during our smaller test groups, only once released org-wide and of course there is no downgrading using deployment rules.

Apparently CheckPoint has a driver fix that they are testing. We opted not to test it since it is more involved to disable self-protection so the driver can be updated than to follow one of the work arounds.

When I expressed our displeasure at external drives not working and systems hanging for a purely re-branding reason, the CP engineer said

"Thanks for the updates; we understand how this can cause inconvenient for the users but this was known issue which sometimes happens."

I didn't find this known issue in any release notes anywhere. I only found this thread once I had the right keyword "SandblastBackup".

So, we're not happy Check Point for the egg-on-face moment so that you can rebrand a hidden folder that no one even knows exists and would otherwise never see. Upper management losing their external disks for no valid reason whatsoever does not reflect well on your product.

[Kobie_Bendalak]

@kbleb / @Andrew_Scott Sorry for your inconvenience.

I am Harmony Endpoint Product Manager and I'd like to help, can you pass me your ticket number? My email is kobieb@checkpoint.com

[kbleb]

Have replied on email

[Karl-Hermann]

Hi,

Is this problem solved in E86.01 or E86.10? 

[Chris_Atkinson]

Not directly, there are fixed versions and workarounds available from TAC ahead of a future release.