benmmellor

Thanks for the response - I asked the same question on HomeServerShow as there's no direct answer. Looking at the manuals for the onboard B120i controller, if you have it set up in 'raid' mode irrespective of using RAID0 or RAID1, it hides the physical device data from the OS and presents an HP Smart Array Logical device. I'm not too comfortable in using the 'legacy' mode so it looks like I'll have to go down the AHCI method and get hold of a 16GB MicroSD card and use that as a boot loader (or a USB key or USB>SATA converter in the USB port) and set USB as the top of the boot order. Such as shame that they won't issue a revised BIOS which allows you to specify the ODD port on the controller as priority over the disk ports...

I've bought a new Gen8 microserver and looking to migrate my build from the current N54L into it. The N54L current has it's own boot disk (250GB) and the pool is made up of 2x 3TB and 2x 2TB individual drives. Drivepool sorts out all the file placement and Scanner has alerted me to disk issues late last year - hence the upgrade to 2x 3TB (replaced 2x 2TB). The Gen8 is a bit of a sod in that it's funny about booting from a disk connected to the ODD port. I think I have 3 options: 1) Set the bios to 'legacy mode' and and have 5 disks addressable - I have to flag the ODD controller as a boot device. 2) Use AHCI and have to install on a drive in a LFF bay.... not ideal 3) Use the onboard b120i controller in RAID mode and set each disk as a RAID0 logical volume - so end up with 5x logical drives but no chance of Scanner working (and thus reliant on the iLO emailing me with disk issues.... Any comments or advice would be appreciated,

well 2 new 3TB WD Red's should land tomorrow ready for an install and 'gig-mig' when I add the first disk into the pool to replace the 1st failing drive. Funnily enough the WD lifeguard full scan doesn't issue a warning on the disk! The data move to the remaining 3 drives in the pool seems to have triggered a new unstable sector on another disk so planning to swap that one. Got them from scan.co.uk - £185 for two drives delivered - would have cost me more in petrol to do the 30 mile round trip to pick them up than I paid for delivery! Any recommended tests/checks to do on the new drives once I install them prior to moving data onto them?

Ok well I did a backup and had planed to pick up another drive this week but not had time. I've removed the disk from the pool and all the data has migrated - a concept I'm pretty familiar with in my experience as I've worked with IBM AS/400's for years and they use a similar concept of pooling disks. The drive itself hasn't been any more trouble but I've set WD Lifeguard running a full test anyway. How do I find the Disk Usage Limiter Tab and set it to hold just the duplicate files if I add it back into the pool until I can get around to picking up a new disk after Xmas? Edit - found the plug-ins so tinkering now. At the moment the remaining 3 drives are re-distributing my duplicated data so will have that finish and then tweak the drive pool.

I have an N54L running 4x 2TB WD Greens which are a few yrs old now - they previously sat in my Netgear ReadyNAS and had no issues. The 4 drives are configured as one big drive pool - boot is from a 250GB disk on it's own. Server OS is WHS 2011 One of the2TB drives has started logging 'unstable sectors' under S.M.A.R.T and reported back via StableBit Scanner as I got the automated email. It's only got a count of 19 at the moment, but in order to protect myself I'm planning on swapping this disk out to a 3TB WD Red unit. This will be part of a rolling migration as and when I can afford to buy new drives. I know that I can drop the suspect disk out of the drivepool and swap it out when I power down the N54L. This may take some time to migrate the data into the remaining drives. I'm also wondering if I should take this opportunity to upgrade to the v2 of Drivepool? If so what would be the recommended procedure (assuming I can leave the data on the remaining 2TB disks for the process!) Thanks in advance!

I'm building a new machine - HP Microserver, booting from the stock 250GB drive and using 4x 2TB drives for my pool. I've bought and installed v1.3.3.7563 but noticed that v2.x can be used on WHS 2011 - should I removed the version I've installed and go for v2.x instead? Can I migrate versions without wiping all the data on the disks in the pool at the moment? I've seen that I have to remove the current version completely and install v2.x as a new install. My main criteria for this is to maximise my space from the 4 drives - showing 7.28TB in the pool - but critical data will be sync'd to my external USB chassis for backup purposes. Not overly bothered about the 2TB limit in WHS2011.