dbailey75
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Posts posted by dbailey75
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A bit off the usual topic but I wanted to share this with the community as I've had such good luck with it. It is MoCA, it stands for multimedia over coax alliance. Practically, this is an adapter that connects to your router and bridges Ethernet to coax, a second adapter, wherever you need a fast and stable network signal converts it back to Ethernet. This will work with any coax network, so if your house is wired for cable, it's now wired for 100mbs Ethernet. The signal is solid, strong and fast. I stream 1080p from my server in my office upstairs to the xbmc in my living room through several splitters. Could not get it to work consistently with wireless and now it's as smooth as butter, no buffering, no stutter. The only thing that seems to be a problem is a cable/coax amplifier between the sending and receiving units. A little re-wiring for me and it worked fine. Install is plug and play. Coax is pass thru the adapter and it has an Ethernet jack out to your device or switch if you have more than on at the location. Hooked it up and the network picked it up in seconds and I was good to go. They cost about $45 each, you usually need 2, some devices for example the newer TiVo's and some TV's and Blu Ray players are set up for it already with an internal adapter. None of my stuff was.
The MoCA trade group is sponsored by some big names in computers, networking and cable so this is no fly by night start up. Adapters are just coming on line but are available through most major retailers though you have to look for them as they are so new. Best one seems to be from ActionTec (new version out this year), followed by Netgear and D-link. Got mine from Best Buy through a marketplace partner for $109 for the pair. Current network speed being reported is 80 mbs on average, more than enough for high def streaming. The big plus is the stability of the signal, no blips or anything has been seen so far through online gaming and streaming high def movies over the network. I am giving the links I used to check this out and order below, this is worth checking out if you are wired for cable, always wanted to have hard wired Ethernet but didn't want to tear up the house, and find wireless a bit lacking. I use 2 ghz splitters in my cable wiring and the run to my cable modem is kept separate to avoid any interference. Sorry if this has run a little long and sounds like a sales pitch, but I am really liking these things, they just work and work well. Plus they saved me from hard wiring my house or having to put up with my wife's rolled eyes every time a streamed movie stops and goes "Buffering". Check out the links below and see if maybe this will work for you. Thanks for all the drivepool help I have received here, hopefully this can be a bit of pay back.
Dave
Links:
Moca didn't work out well for me, at least with high bite rate material, it would choke and stutter, YMMV, but I'm still waiting for moca 2.0 devices to be released, and that should do the trick, there's a fantastic article over at smallnetbuilder.com, must be a few years old by now, but my through put was around 95% of 100MB's which is exactly what they had, but I'm thinking there must have been a lot of lost packets in overhead, I'm fairly certain My house has RG59, but you may have better luck with RG6,
You can also buy the old fios equipment on ebay, as Moca has been the backbone of their multi room DVR's systems for some time.
in the end, I ran 3 drops of cat 6.
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Very excellent, very informative post! Thank you so much!
Of course, now it makes the decision a little harder. Microsoft lists the WHS 2011 End of Mainstream Support date as 4/12/2016, so I'd hate to be left hanging re: security vulnerabilities... At the very least, I think I'll wait to hear about the "Server 8.1" equivalent to WSE2012R2 is before I make any decisions. I certainly wouldn't mind having a proper WSE machine at home to do things. It'd be good to practice and learn for my day job, too.
remember whs 2011 is based on server 2008 R2, while I can't say this with certainty, but I would think as long as Server 2008 R2 is supported, we should be ok when its comes to security patches through 2020, if I'm wrong you have a good two years and a few months, lol.
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Does DrivePool remember the drive letter of an "absent" pool, or would that have to be manually corrected if/as needed?
in my case the drive letter of the pool was not stored, it took on the next available drive letter in windows, so for back up that could be a pain.
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I haven't tried this yet, but I was wonder the ramifications of creating a pool that contains data that is only needed say once a month.
How would drive pool react to creating another pool, say with 4 drives, then during a shut down powering those drives off [i would use an external esata unit], then powering on.
Any serious issues beyond being reminded that those drives [or pool I guess] is missing?
Thanks.
I'd also like to know the answer, I can confirm, after an OS rebuild and reattaching all drives back to the pool, and then removing them after a shut down, forgot to install my movies, rebooted, and drivepool didn't throw a single error about the pool no longer being attached. This would be great for the monthly backups, and thus providing a truly portable pool.
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others on newegg, mentioned issues with the USB 3 driviers aswell, sorry can't help, but thinks for pointing out this board, would make a great home server when they get the kinks worked out.
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I know usb 3.0 can cause problems but I can't find a controller driver that works for the asrock fm2a85-itx motherboard and whs2011. This has the new Hudson d4 chip. So I guess this will be an issue till drivers are available. I tried the win 7 64bit drivers from asrock they have etron and asmedia. I don't know which this chipset uses but neither work and asrock documentation is lacking.
man, I've never seen an itx board with 8 sata 3 ports, why the heck would you even need USB 3
. I was just looking at the downloads, are you sure that the usb controllers is not part of the amd chipset driver? They don't list a separate USB drive on the site for this MB. I'm sure customer support has been great with assisting, but any driver that works with win 7, is going to work on WHS 2011. Its the same code.
edit,
Did you see this, was listed on one of the reviews on newegg, it may have been your review.
Manufacturer Response:
Dear ASRock Customer
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
For the USB 3.0, please download and install the AMD all in 1 driver at link " http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/FM2A85X-ITX/?cat=Download".
For the SATA ports, if drives are plugged to SATA3_5, SATA3_6, SATA3_7, please refer to user manual under page 47 at link http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/FM2A85X-ITX/?cat=Manual.
Try with another known good drive and SATA cable.
If you have any technical issues or warranty questions please contact our Tech Support at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.
Thank you
ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com
also, you can try installing the driver manually by going in to device manager, click on the usb 3 controller, should have the yellow x, search for driver option, and find the drive folder in the AMD download. this driver looks very similar to the one for the HP Microserver,
\Allin1_Win8-64_Win8_Win7-64_Win7_Vista64_Vista(12.8)b.zip\Allin1(12.8)\Packages\Drivers\SBDrv\SB8xx\UsbFilter\W764A
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I'm running an external Mediasonic HF2-SU2S2 Probox for backup, I'm using the esata connection with this little guy, http://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Support-Multiplier-Patent-Pending/dp/B005DCCMII/ref=pd_sim_e_22, Datoptic esata to USB 3 adapter. It worked fine when I first installed July 2012 with the version of scanner available at that time, I only connect the unit about once a month, I just started having issues with one of my drives, and realized the smart data is no longer available.
I tried the fix here, http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Q8371232,
<setting name="UnsafeDirectIo" serializeAs="String">
<value>True</value>
no dice. any suggestions.
As a precaution, I reinstalled the USB 3 drivers for my motherboard, Asus, P8H67-I, and just updated to the latest BIOS. Also, Home Server Smart 2013 is able to pull the smart data, seems, I have two backup drives going bad.
Setup
WHS 2011
Scanner version 2.4.0.2929
after working with Christopher(support), seems I was on the right track, no idea why changing the unsafedirectio to true didn't work the first time, but trying a second time did the trick, smart data is now accessible again.
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Ok, I'm not sure what these changes mean, as I can still pull smart data from other USB attached drives with scanner; I did connect the enclosure using the US2.0 connection, and smart data for 2 of the 4 drives was available; those were Seagate LP drives, one of which is having issues; the other two drives are HGST, and one of them is throwing smart errors using HSS 2013.
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I'm running an external Mediasonic HF2-SU2S2 Probox for backup, I'm using the esata connection with this little guy, http://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Support-Multiplier-Patent-Pending/dp/B005DCCMII/ref=pd_sim_e_22, Datoptic esata to USB 3 adapter. It worked fine when I first installed July 2012 with the version of scanner available at that time, I only connect the unit about once a month, I just started having issues with one of my drives, and realized the smart data is no longer available.
I tried the fix here, http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Q8371232,
<setting name="UnsafeDirectIo" serializeAs="String">
<value>True</value>no dice. any suggestions.
As a precaution, I reinstalled the USB 3 drivers for my motherboard, Asus, P8H67-I, and just updated to the latest BIOS. Also, Home Server Smart 2013 is able to pull the smart data, seems, I have two backup drives going bad.
Setup
WHS 2011
Scanner version 2.4.0.2929
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Also, if I do decide to purchase DrivePool/Scanner, do y'all offer discounts for students?
Yes, if you buy one, then you use the license key as your coupon code when you purchase the second, I believe is saves you $10,
Best OS for DrivePool?
in General
Posted
I'll be running whs 2011 until the next rev of win server is released, that's for sure, $400 for an OS is a bit much for a home user in my opinion. Great for those with TechNet and MSDN subscriptions through their employer, but not for the average joe.