Azure Import/Export Service Error: The provided file doesn’t contain valid drive information

The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amount of data in or out of your Microsoft Azure storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Microsoft Azure datacenters. Once we receive the drives we’ll transfer the data to or from your Microsoft Azure Storage account.

For more information on Windows Azure Import/Export Service please refer to this article: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-import-export-service/

For each hard drive that you prepare with the Azure Import/Export tool, the tool will create a single journal file. You will need the journal files from all of your drives to create the import job. The journal file can also be used to resume drive preparation if the tool is interrupted.

You might come across the following error when you are adding a journal file while creating a new import job using the Azure Management Portal.

“Error: The provided file doesn’t contain valid drive information”.

This issue is caused due to incorrect date format in the journal file. When the .jrn file is opened in a text editor, you will find the date format is different from the expected format. The date format in the journal file will be “2014.07.06 11:52:53.704” but the expected date format is “2014/07/06 11:52:53.704”. The date format by default on Windows machine has “/” for the separator but this could be changed in the Regional Settings. If you have made changes in the regional settings to the date format then you may see this error.

We are aware of this issue and are working towards a fix. As a workaround edit the journal file using a text editor to find and replace all the dates in incorrect format from 2014.07.06 to 2014/07/06 format.