What's the proper way to reinstall storj node service after Windows 10 format?

I have been running a node for months now on a local 5TB drive. ~1TB is consumed by the storj node. I just formatted Windows (and kept my files) but looks like the storj node service got removed. My storj node Hard Drive is still untouched and I’d like to restart the storj node service running again pointing to this existing storj node drive.

What is the proper way to do this?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Hello @mynamedougie ,
Welcome to the forum!

You should backup your identity folder (%AppData%\Storj\Identity\storagenode by default) before the format. After the format replace the owner of the folder with node’s data to the SYSTEM user and give it full rights.
I would recommend to move your identity to the data location: the identity without its data is useless and the data without its identity is useless too.
Then install the storagenode and point to the identity and data. I would assume that the network configuration is remained the same, so specify your external address with port during setup and check your dashboard after setup is finished - it should show the previous stat.

Hello Alexey,
Thanks for the quick response.

I think I have my Storj drive setup correctly. I attached some snippets below. Does that look right?

Now the next step is to install storagenode again and point it to the same drive (H: drive for my case)?

There is no identity folder. It was in the %AppData%\Storj\Identity\storagenode, if you did not move it.
The identity binary and storagenode installer are expendable, you can always download them.
But the identity folder contains keys for your storagenode. If you did not backup it - your node is lost and you can start from scratch, with a new generated identity, new authorization token and clean storage.

Luckily, Windows 10 backs up your “C:/Windows” directory when you format so I was able to find the identity folder and recover and rerun my storj node!

Thanks for the help

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II would recommend to move the identity to the data location and change paths in your config.yaml, it can help if you would decide to migrate to other device physically by moving the disk. All needed will be on one disk.