whs 2011 hdd errors

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Gilco2

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#130631 22-Sep-2013 16:21

hi I built this about 6 months back and has been great. I have my boot drive and a backup drive then I have 4 2TB WD green drives with data. 2 are mirrored with documents and movies and then a separate mirror on the other 2 drives for tv recordings and music and photos.
Just happened to look into disk management today and found the one mirror had failed with errors. Info said failed redundancy.
Have run western digital diagnostics and smart passed and quick test passed. Now am running extended test which according to time estimation wont finish until 9pm tonight.
Used the greens as they were on hand at the time. Now I would replace with reds that reds are available.
As the tests so far are passing I dont know why it failed redundancy with errors and more importantly why no notification from WHS 2011 that there was a failure/problem with the disk.

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#900749 22-Sep-2013 17:18

WHS doesn't know anything about disk health, it will basically tell you the disks are fine until they have actually failed. It is odd that you didn't get any alerts about it when it did fail though. Perhaps WHS thinks it's fine because it can still use the it...

There are some good addins to monitor disk health. My preference is Stablebit Scanner (paid), I use it in conjunction with Stablebit DrivePool and the combo is definitely worth the fairly minimal cost IMO.

With DrivePool I have a pool that tolerates any size and type of disk, file duplication (or even triplication if I want it) on a folder by folder basis, and it'll evacuate disks if they are detected as failing. Scanner periodically does surface scans too, to help detect and fix errors early.

Out of curiosity, have you changed the head park time on the green drives?

edit: Also, if you want a solid answer, post on WeGotServed, odds are Drashna can probably tell you everything there is to know about the issue. (he'll also give DrivePool a plug)

Gilco2

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#900763 22-Sep-2013 18:00

thanks. I will look into stablebits.
No I never changed park head settings. Honestly I never thought about it at the time and did afterwards but wasnt sure if I could still do it now its set up. I have total backup of the server on another computer so no problem just the time to set it up again if I have to.

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gehenna

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#900764 22-Sep-2013 18:05

What does your Windows Event Log show? If there's problems with the drive you will generally see things in there. If there's a reference to Bad Blocks anywhere then the problem will generally only get worse over time.

Gilco2

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#900766 22-Sep-2013 18:17

just had a look and I cant copy as it wont let me. Filtermanager unable to attach hdd volume 51 event id 3.

The only other error was a customer experience improvement unable to send information. Cant remember exact message and it wont let me copy and paste the messages. apart from those 2 no other warnings

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

Gilco2

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#900984 23-Sep-2013 09:09

after thorough testing by Western Digital utility the drive passed all tests so not sure what went wrong. WHS wont let it be mirrored again now either. If I switch to Stablebit drive pool will I need to remove the other mirror and do you add all drives to the pool. Still new to this side of things.

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

andrewNZ

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#901028 23-Sep-2013 10:25

Not sure about the mirror... probably, there isn't really a reason to keep it.

You can add as few or as many drives to the pool as you like AND you can still use the drives to store non pooled data if you want to.

There's stacks to say about the StableBit products, so I'll quote myself from the wegotserved forums. (I'm only a happy user, they've never paid me

)
quote...
DrivePool is great because:
- Data is stored in standard NTFS folders, so if the proverbial hits the fan, almost any machine can access the data on those disks.
- It's really resilient. You can randomly pull disks, reinstall the OS and faff about all you like, and DrivePool just doesn't seem to care. I have had several OS reinstalls and restores, at least 1 drive failure, and untold ignorant drive removals. Nothing has gone wrong.
- Good data balancing. There are great included balancers, and optional downloadable ones too.
- Great read speeds. It uses read striping (reading from multiple disks depending on their capacity)
- Great support, seriously it's good. It helps that Drashna (a wegotserved mod) is the #1 support person, but the developer is great at fixing or implementing things.
- You can use pool disks for non pooled data as well.
- It's easy to migrate WHSv1 data disks to DrivePool if that's the path you want to take.
- You can (re)install a new OS, install DrivePool, attach the data disks, run the tool to re-implement the shares, and you are running.
- You can add existing data disks to the pool, DrivePool doesn't touch existing data.

You want Scanner too because:
- It monitors disk SMART data and does surface scans of the disks to check for and fix problems.
- It gives DrivePool the ability to evacuate a disk that is determined to be failing. This just happens in the background, and it works. I was wondering why one of my pool disks was unused. I was cursing DrivePool and trying to figure out why it wasn't balancing my data across all disks. Turns out that disk was poked and had been evacuated.

- It monitors the temperature of the disks, and DrivePool will avoid using disks that are overheating, which helps prevent disk damage.
- There's a discount. Use your code from the first StableBit product and get a discount on the next ones (I think the limit is 10)

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andrewNZ

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#901057 23-Sep-2013 10:58

Sorry, I completely misread your question...

There would be no need to remove the other healthy mirror, but you wouldn't want to add those disks to the pool.

Gilco2

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#901072 23-Sep-2013 11:07

thank you. have been looking for manual but references in google come up error.
I will get the scanner as well

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firefuze

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#901152 23-Sep-2013 12:05

Interesting, WHS v1 monitors disk health and will alert if 'unhealthy' Though I don't have a home build, Im using a HP EX490 so maybe its something HP have added in.

Just last week I had the status LED change RED and an alert in WHS Console stating Disk is unhealthy, did a quick 5min repair and everything has been fine since. In saying that I am going to get another couple drives as I have only the one at the moment offering no redundancy.. :S

andrewNZ

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#901167 23-Sep-2013 12:38

Gilco2:
The Stablebit site is loaded with info, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them here, on the covecube (stablebit) forums or over at WGS.

I also forgot to mention that the Stablebit products have a 30 day free trial which is fully functional.

And while I'm recommending addins, I'll mention LightsOut. It's a great power management addin, and the support is good too.

Firefuse:
The "unhealthy" errors can be because WHS failed to read or write to the disk, which is often because the disk has failed, and is too late to recover data. The other, more likely, possibility is that something just went wrong with Drive Extender (WHSv1 pool) that needed fixing.

HP may have added in some SMART monitoring (I don't think they did), but I'd definitely recommend adding something to monitor it yourself. HomeServerSMART will monitor the disks SMART data (which is far from fool proof, but better than nothing) and it's pretty usable. Stablebit Scanner monitors SMART data too, but also does surface scans of the disks, and is very user friendly.

Gilco2

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#901178 23-Sep-2013 12:55

I will try it but first I will use wdidle3 on the disks. Not worried about things going wrong as I have 2 full backups so can redo everything if needed. Just time consuming. I saw it has 30 days trial.

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andrewNZ

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#901188 23-Sep-2013 13:06

WDIDLE3 is pretty simple to use, and *shouldn't* affect anything else. FYI, it WILL change all connected compatible disks at once.

To add existing data to the pool, all you need to do is move folders in via the dashboard, or if it's not in shared folders just move it into DrivePools Poolpart folder.

Gilco2

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#901201 23-Sep-2013 13:25

so does that mean I can leave al the wd drives in and boot from the cd and run wdidle3 to change all at once. I was thinking would have to disconnect all then change one then reboot do the next one and so forth. Would be better if I can do all at once

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

andrewNZ

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#901213 23-Sep-2013 13:34

You don't need to disconnect anything. Just boot to the cd and change the settings. Only compatible WD disks will be changed.

Gilco2

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#901254 23-Sep-2013 14:32

well I did the wdidle3 and it did all 4 disks at once. Now however after starting had messages about services not started. I logged into the server and the existing mirror is now resynching so have to wait how many hours that will take

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

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