Christopher (Drashna)
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Posts posted by Christopher (Drashna)
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Then the next thing I would recommend is running a full disk check on the drives. If the file system is damaged, it could cause this sort of issue as well.
Also, could you try changing the letter for the pool to something other than Z:\ and see if it works?
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Awesome, thanks for taking the time to reply with all the information!
And looks like an awesome setup.
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@otispresley: nice setup, looks similar to mine (at least in services). For the "fault management, MRTG, and Unified Communications", what software are you using?
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If the error is happening during boot, then it may be that not all the drives are loaded into the pool....
But as for the Essentials stuff, all that stuff is logged in "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\WindowsServer\Logs" (or something very close to that). I can take a look at that if you want (best would be to upload it to dropbox or another cloud sync site, as the logs can be large. Otherwise, I'm not sure why it would be triggering that "randomly".
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Alex significantly changed the "Lock" system used by DrivePool, in part to greatly improve the functionality, performance and reliability. However, any significant change means that there is always going to be issues that crop up.
http://blog.covecube.com/2013/07/stablebit-drivepool-2-0-0-310-beta-file-system-improvements/
If you guys would be willing to grab some logging data and send it to http://stablebit.com/Contact, we'll see about getting the issue sorted. To enable the logging:
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection
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There is a new update for DrivePool 2.x out today.
There are a lot of changes, and it may fix a lot of these backup issues. I'm not sure, though. If you want to head to http://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Download and update the system and see if it fixes the issue.
If not, let us know.
As for Storage Spaces.... I can dig up a few more horror stories if you really want. But the lesson is that it's super new, and not well tested out yet. I'd recommend staying away from it till it's been well tested. And even then...
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That would be a very good reason to stop using them!
And you have checked to see if the drives are still under warranty, right? I suspect they're not, but free/cheap RMA would be a great idea, once they're cleared out.
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Check the "Balancers" on the DrivePool UI. I believe the "File Placement Limiter" balancer may be what you want.
As for changing the folder structure... There isn't a "master version" of the file. So changing it like you suggest would at best add a lot more overhead to DrivePool for a relatively small gain.
I'm sure Alex can explain this better than I, though.
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David,
After deleting the service folder for DrivePool, everything looks fine? No more duplicate drive listed, or?
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DFergATL,
Could you do this?
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Error_Reports
And after that, would you mind reseting the settings for DrivePool (you'll need to reactivate):
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2299585
And both of those issues are weird (and actually, probably related), and definitely something that needs to be fixed.
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It has some *very* basic intergration. It adds a "Manage DrivePool" link to the "Additional Tasks" in the Storage Tab.
The added bonus with 2.x is that you can install it on your desktop/client computer and use it to remotely control/manage the pool that way. No need to open the dashboard.
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The files are stored on NTFS volumes. So when you deactivate DrivePool, it basically turns off DrivePool. You're files are still fine.
Then you can move the drives to the new system, activate DrivePool, and it will recognize the "old" pool, recreate it, and even try to use the original drive letter.
This way, you don't have to try and move all the files around and spend hours. This way, you can have the new system up and running in minutes.
Alternatively, you could install DrivePool on the new machine, activate the trial, then copy the files over. Once that is done, you could deactivate the old system, and and use your ID to activate the new system, ending the trial.
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If it makes you feel better, what he's working on will right now (and is eating his time) may help or even fix the issue.
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XAlpha, It may not be exactly what you want, but have you checked out the File Placement Limiter balancer? (It's built in actually) You can basically do what you describe, albeit manually.
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It gets worse. Microsoft's official stance is that "Storage Spaces is only meant for storage. Not for databases of any kind". Which is half the point of using a RAID type array.
And it wasn't as much as bad QA ... as they "stole" the code from the WHS team, and then pushed it out to meet deadlines....
As for support, it's been forwarded to Alex, but he's been real busy on some real deep changes on DrivePool. Ones that may help with the issue (if not fix it. )
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That PEX-40062 should be good. It uses a similar chipset, namely one by Marvell, and those seem to work very well.
You should be fine with either card, though.
Though the 40062 is a 2x card, so it does require a 4x or higher slot to use. So it may be more "efficient" to use 2x 40035 cards, as they are 1x cards. That way, if you get a bigger card in the computer eventually, you have the "higher" slots available still. But this is really up to personal preference.
And glad to help!
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Storage Spaces should definitely handle it. It's basically conventional RAID and functions as such.
As for Drive Bender, I'm not sure, but I don't think they do either.
And yeah, everything with file systems seems to end up more complicated that it would seem. I'm sure Alex has horror stories along those lines.
But like he said, it's on his to-do list.
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If you had the drive 90% filled at any time (like, lets say, you'd just added the one disk, and it filled most of that disk), then it would have triggered this warning. And .... the notification system sometimes doesn't clear the alert until you manually clear them. Or till the next time it does a "server assessment".
Otherwise, the assessment may have taken place while the system was still booting, and wasn't able to properly process the storage. Not entirely sure. (not without logs at least)
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Ouch. Sorry to hear that.
As for the drive mode, AHCI is much better... and it is possible to switch, but it's not exactly simple:
http://www.ehow.com/how_7508713_switch-mode-ahci-mode-windows.htmlAs for the Syba cards, they're pretty decent.
I'd recommend this card though:
I actually picked up one of these from Fry's Electronics a while back, and work pretty well. The only issue I had with it was that it was preventing the system from sleeping...
Otherwise, yeah, the cards get a lot more expensive very fast. If you want a cheap higher end card, the HighPoint RocketRAID 2720 is a decent card. You just need to get breakout cables as well as the card (supports 8 SATA drives though)
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Not a problem. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask!
Also, don't forget to deactivate the DrivePool license on WHS before re-installing/migrating. That way you can activate it on the new system and start using DrivePool immediately.
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I saw the "PFC" in the model number, and was glad.
All the cyberpower UPS's that support "pure/true sine wave" have "PFC" in the model number. APC makes it a lot harder to tell!
And glad to help. Sorry that you had some hardware issues. Hopefully everything works great after getting the PSU. On the plus side, that's a great modular, 80+ platinum PSU!
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I haven't looked closely but how much of a PITA is it to replace a rail? I'm not getting anything to work on one of them and I tried all the bays several times from L to R and vice versa.
As for replacing the Rail... I don't know yet. I'll make sure to let you know as soon as I do it. It shouldn't be too difficult (famous last words, and all....
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Check out the WD Reds for STBs. They're like the WD Green, but ... fixed and designed for NAS usage (aka, constant usage and long uptime). May be a great idea. (and yeah, same with the firmware...)Good to know the 4TB drives are achieving reliability. Like what WD is doing with migrating enterprise quality to consumer drives. I keep an eye on both Seagate & WD to see how they are doing ... I'm in the STB biz so it does matter. PS - agree about checking firmware. I learned the hard way.
I'm using it for storage and streaming. I use Server 2012 Essentials, as I've been using Active Directory/domains since I figured out how to do so on WHSv1. I use Serviio and Subsonic for streaming. I also use it to host some web content (a blog or two). As well as for "Windows Deployment Services", which is a PXE (network) boot server.How are you using your Norcoserver? For me, as you know it's really about media storage and streaming. I collected a ton of movies & videos over the years and realized I needed that long-term, reliable scalable solution we talked about (GREAT to hear that's CoveCube's aim with DrivePool). I have a separate server for backups (using WHS v1), so I don't need it for that.
I believe I shared with you previously that I was using WHS v1 as the OS for the Norco. With Drive Extender, I built a nice folder structure that allowed me to access videos, movies, photos and other stuff the way I wanted. But as you know MS booted DE in subsequent versions. That and it didn't support 3TB drives with ease.
So for my situation, I needed a solution that allowed me to retain the folder structure I built ... provided simple folder duplication for redundancy (I didn't need everything duplicated) ... and where the OS was stable/reliable, easy to use, had plenty of support/tools/etc and best of all that I would be familiar with. That's why I was very happy when you helped me determine that StableBit DrivePool + Windows 7 was a viable long-term stable OS/SW solution for an extendable HW platform. Perfect.
Altogether, this solution has replaced the previous one. Back in 2008 when I was doing all the homework to figure out what the best strategy would be to play back media to the TV, the options seemed to be HTPC, a media extender of some type, or a STB. I rebuilt my PC to support an extender if needed (it was due for a rebuild anyways), but ultimately I chose a STB. At the time I was ready to get one, the Popcorn Hour C200 was released. I chose that because it had a large support community and more importantly its legendary codec support.
It did a good job - most of the time. But I ended up finding that the thing would crap out more than I anticipated. Basically if the encoding job on the video was poor, or the codec wasn't supported (audio, video or the combination), it would render the embedded media player into an unrecoverable state. The only fix was a hard boot. Given how often there are poor encode jobs done on internet videos ... and how many combinations of audio/video codecs there can be, it ended up that the Popcorn Hour was actually a Poopcorn Hour.
Nothing like watching a movie ... then suddenly in the middle it freezes and you have to get up off the couch to hard boot the box, go thru the menus again, bring up the movie and find your spot again. It's not a big deal if it only happens 1 in 10-15 times, but not when it's 1 in 4-5 times. Internet videos were worse. Overall, it just became clear I needed a new solution.
That's when I realized that I should just stream directly from my PC using VLC as the player. Seems like only 1 in 10,000 videos ever gives VLC a problem, plus it's tools, support and updates are fantastic. So that's what I did. Basically now I have a 20ft HDMI cable going from the Primary PC to my Panasonic Plasma. Using a wireless QWERTY/touchpad remote, I can navigate Windows Explorer on the Primary PC to play movies & videos using VLC flawlessly. No more crapouts. I can also use a browser to access YouTube or anything else, plus I can easily view photos on TV.
Basically I have the same setup in my bedroom - HDMI out from Master PC (to a switch) to my plasma. Same remote setup. Works like a charm. But with the Ceton card in my PC, now I have access to all my cable channels as well. Even better, the non-copy protected TV content is accessible over the network via a share in the Master PC.
When I bought my house it came with Cat-5e structured-home wiring, so with the Norcoserver housing all the media, now I can access the movies & videos in any room over the home network. Ditto for the TV shows being collected from my cable service in the Master PC. This is nice because now all this content is easy to find, plus if I want I can make it portable for when I travel.
The key to it all is the Norcoserver ... which is why I wanted a reliable, scalable, long-term solution.
And well said for the rest of it. And nice setup.
I've tried using some of the network media players... but I've had issues with them too. I've had to return my WD Live Plus HD (first gen) three different times... So, I stopped using that and opted for XMBC on Windows. Using the MySQL sync trick.
Works very well for me. -
A UPS is such an important accessory for your server. It's a must have. You pay for insurance on your car/home/etc, right? Then why wouldn't you want to protect your hardware in a similar manner! Just saying. Also, when shopping for a UPS/battery backup, make sure it's compatible with Active PFC power supplies. It's all but guaranteed that your power supply will be. And if the UPS isn't compatible (aka uses "true sinewave"), when it switches to battery, it could short out the UPS, blow the power supply or damage your hardware. Just a heads up. I've dug up a lot of that info recently because my UPS is getting old, and I really do need something with a higher VA rating.
As for chkdsk, it usually wont recover files. It will fix issues with the file system and *may* recover files. But you'd have better luck with a data recovery program.
And the less you use that current power supply, the better.
Free space is low on hard drives
in General
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Well, glad you got it sorted out then.
Also, if I may make a suggestion here... don't use Z:\ on the clients. If you need to use the Client Computer restore feature, it will throw a fit, because it expects to be able to use the Z: drive (or at least, WHSv1, and WHS2011 have this issue, and I suspect it wasn't changed in 2012E).