Christopher (Drashna)

I've been waiting patiently for Filesafe.  If anything happens to my family photos, I'm afraid of what my wife may do to me.  But I'm sure you guys will hear about it in the news. 

Since you asked, I'll add to the thread even though it is not a rack mount system. 
 
Case - Rosewill Blackbone - http://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Steel-Plastic-Computer-Blackbone/dp/B004A9XB6W
PSU - Seasonic 80+ Platinum 460w, fanless (I wanted as low power use as I could get)
CPU - AMD Athlon II X4 610e, 45w TPD  Had to upgrade last week, now is a Phenom II X6 1090T, more on that at the end of post.
Cooler - I don't remember, I built this thing several years ago. It's huge and the giant fan is quiet.
Memory - 8GB (I don't really care about brands, it's Corsair though I think)
OS - WHS 2011
NICs - using an Intel Pro gigabit for the network, onboard Realtek gigabit for video cameras
Drives:
1x Hitachi 500GB boot drive
1x WDS WD5000AAKS - boot backup drive, and yes it's PATA
2x Samsung ST32000542AS 2GB
1x WD WD30EZRX 3GB (Yes, that's a green drive, and it's been solid as a rock)
1X ST3000DM001 3GB (yes it's been replaced once)
 
No, it's nothing special, but it works for what I'm running on it.
MediaBrowser Server 3
BlueIris 4 controlling 8 3MP cameras
Plex
Subsonic Server
SabNZB
SickRage
CouchPotato
 
And of course, DrivePool and Stablebit Scanner.
 
BlueIris is quite the processor hog, even with everything optimized to be as efficient as possible. I was having some CPU overload issues when SabNZB went to unpack files, so I upgraded the processor.
 
My plan in the near future is to build a second server, run ESXi, and start working with some of the open source data center tools. I have a long IT background, but moved into IT security audit about 3.5 years ago. My home stuff is the only thing that keeps me hands-on current. This server will get the 610e back, remain my disk space server, and will most likely keep BlueIris until I add so many cameras that it can't keep up. 
 
New server is going to be an i7 4790 based system on an ASRock Z87 Extreme6 board. Gobs of memory, ESXi, and solid state drive.
 
I won't go into all the network gear, but it is all enterprise stuff - lots of APs (long 1954 ranch style house dictates it), Juniper gear throughout, etc. Cameras and some of the APs are PoE, you get the idea.

Just to chime in on my own opinion of which version to use with WHS 2011.  I started with V1 and moved to V2.  From my perspective, V2 is the right choice.  
 
1) I like the V2 remote view/control scheme much better.  The WHS Dashboard is soooo sloooow to load whereas the V2 remote app for DP is super fast.  
2) I like being able to place certain files on a specific drive (I put my VM images on a very fast drive, for example)
3) I have yet to see any benefit of the tighter integration from V1 vs V2.  
 
So no downside with V2 over V1, and several areas of upside.  Frankly, I am surprised to see Covecube still supporting a separate product for WHS.  IMHO, V1 is really not needed.  

bobbyc,
 
This is why we generally recommend manually changing the drive letter to something not commonly used.
For instance, Y:\ or B:\. Neither of these are used often and should be available. In fact, Windows should never attempt to use B:\ normally, so it's a great letter for DrivePool.

pool is fixed I had to delete all data and recreate pool after a format with zeros with wd diag but I think it was more data corruption than anything else ill transfer data back to pool tomorrow


still gonna look at getting a new hdd or 2 for the pool but that scared me


thank god for external backup

Ah, okay. Then yeah, that's probably not a good thing then.
 
As for why the WD tool gave the drive an "all clear" ... some SMART values are marked as "pre failure", meaning that they're "more important. Also, there is a threshold value on most drives. If the value isn't marked as pre-failure (and I don't think it is), and it's not above the threshold, the drive may not be flagged as bad by the manufacturer's utilities. 
 
But if StableBit Scanner is running into bad sectors as well... then definitely a good idea to replace it.

Agreed but I am trying to avoid an Intel vs AMD fanboyz debate. Let's just say the A10 do well for a Server? I used to be an AMD fanboy and LOLled at the Pentium 4s and their heat issues. But Intel has come a long long way since then and well, I changed sides and will remain here until a better product comes along.

Lol the old Intel vs AMD debate not even going to get started on that one my own personal preference is AMD but that's my preference. My Input on this conversation was simply that I use the APU and my particular system runs without any problems I can stream 1080p to 7 rooms, play music and download torrents as well transfer data between computers at the same time without any problems but then again I also use WD greens which people say are rubbish but  all 20 of mine have been fine some are even reaching the 4 year old mark so all I can say do your research and choose what you can afford.

Disconnect the pooled drives. All of them.
 
This (hopefully) should let you boot into the system without running the disk check.
Once it's done that, use the "show disconnected devices" "feature" (?).
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315539
 
Open up Device Manager (run "devmgmt.msc") and find the "Covecube Virtual Disk" drive. (Should be under "disk drives"). Right click on it and select "Uninstall". DO NOT select the "delete drive files" option.
 
Reconnect the disks and reboot the system.
 
 
 
If this doesn't help, unseed the pool (on another system).
To "unseed" it, basically move the contents of the hidden "PoolPart" folders on each disk to the root of the disk. Then delete the now empty PoolPart folders.
Reconnect these folders to the system, and boot up. Then "seed" the pool.
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

I'll see about getting the upload limit increased (or feel free to use dropbox or the like and link the image).
 
Not sure what to tell you. If it comes back, let me know. But hopefully, it stays working properly.
 
Also, just to make sure here: the client back up is a single instance storage engine. That means that additional backups don't take up additional space.

I've been saying for years now that everyone should have a personal copy of the interweb.

my plan is for my 1 120gb ssd 1 wd red 2.5 1TB 1 slot load dvd writer and 12 6TB wd red (2 of wich will replace my 1 TB black and my 1 TB green) for a current grand total of 120gb os drive and a 61TB data pool


until larger drives come out

That's still twice as many HDDs as Ryo was planning to use but I see your point. Max power per rail is something that is overlooked easily, in this case by me perhaps and, yeah, peace of mind is worth a lot.
 
I was still looking at Ryou running 3x1TB and missed that he was planning on 12.

Interesting... Success!!!!
 
So I tried the first of the two provided methods, and at least DrivePool identifies the two missing disks. Awesome! Then, I re-added them and the pool re-measures. The correct volume size was then listed (17.8TB). The unfortunate bit was that all data listed on the SSD's was listed as "Other" data. That sucked, because I know some of that data isn't being listed in the pool exists in that "Other" data.
 
I then mounted one of the previously missing disks as a drive letter and browsed the PoolPart folder (as suggested in the latter aforementioned steps). BEHOLD! My data! Curiously though, there were TWO PoolPart folders. I'm certain this happened when they became disconnected, then re-added to the pool.
 
So, just to be safe, since I knew all my data was in-tact I figured I'd give your second process a go. After a few tedious bits I recreated the pool and everything is back up and working normally. YAY!
 
Drashna, you are my hero of the day, once again!

FCOL, a 1200W PSU? Get some splitters! Them's to be used with like dual X295 AMD cards having a TDP of 500W and a 150W CPU or something. I wonder what kind of efficiency they reach when you're actually drawing like 120W (10%)?
 
On the other hand, what's another 170 bucks...

Yo Ryo, there's an old saying, Poop, or get off the pot.  Go get your SSD, and get it going already. You're over thinking this,    Forgot my wink.

I'd be careful going with any of the current 2.5" drives geared for laptops, excluding the 2.5 WD red, many if not all of them have head parking issues which plays into the systems time out/sleep features and saves battery life for laptops. I was going to go with a 2.5" black, but I found mixed reviews, some complained about the head parking, while others did not, so I went with a SSD.   The issue with the head parking is that drives have so many load cycle counts before the drive starts throwing smart errors when you hit the max.  I have a couple 2.5 HGST drives, that i use a program to write data to them every 8 seconds which keeps the heads from parking.  
 
 there's no reason to go mechanical at this point for the OS drive, SSD's are too cheap.  Use the built in windows utility to back UP the os drive, and forget about.  

Unfortunately, sometimes when you add a new drive, Windows gets stupid, and can bump the drive letters. That sounds like EXACTLY what has happened here.
 
The easy way to fix this is with the "WSS Troubleshooter" utility. DOwnload it, and run the "rebuild DrivePool Shares" option. This will change the shared folders to match the new drive letter.
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Utilities
 
 
Alternatively, if you know what letter the pool was, you can use Disk Management to reassign the letters.
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q6811286


And to clarify, once this has been done, you may need to restart the system. 
And the client backups and everything should come back properly. As if nothing happened, basically.

getting my 1 TB 2.5 inch WD red for the os this week and may build my pool soon after. with a 1 TB WD black and 1 TB WD green

Yeah, I had a feeling.
 
As for the data, I'm not exactly sure what you mean there, or where your data is already located.
However, we do have a "seeding" guide, which may be what you are looking for (or give you enough of an idea to do what you want):
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

Bluetac,
 
It sounds like you may have accidently added each drive to a new pool.  If you rapidly clicked on the "Add" from the UI, it could do this.
 
Remove all but one of the disks from the pool. Once that's done, then add them. This should add the disks to the one pool.
 
It should look like this:

...backups are not needed, really.
 
All recordings are stripped from ads and then get stored on my NAS automagically.
The only data that comes with some hassle to reconstruct from scratch is the channel list and sorting of these into programme numbers.
But the idea with kvm is still the best...but because of the space left in the attic, I need some kvm-over-ip gear...I'll be scanning the bay ;-)
 
Again, many thanks for your support and second thoughts...I really appreciate this!

I haven't had any experience with torrenting directly to my pool, but that was a conscious decision on my part. My main pool consists of 4 disks that are only accessed for storing/retrieving VERY rarely, and they are set to go to sleep after 30 minutes. Obviously for me, I wouldn't want something like constant torrent activity keeping the drives awake (downloading, seeding, etc). So I came up with a cool way to transfer torrents only after they've been completed.  You may be asking "Why doesn't he just use the store downloading files here and completed files here option in utorrent", that wouldn't work for my setup since the completed location would be the pool, thus keeping the hard drives spun up from seeding.

uTorrent stores completed downloads to my C drive (the C drive is always on anyway). Then, an app called SyncBackPro detects the completed torrent files and copies to my pool. Afterwards, I use another app to delete the original torrent from my C drive after 2 weeks (allows for seeding to almost always finish after downloading, cause I like to seed). The 2nd app is called Belvedere, which is an app that detects file changes and can perform an action when an event is triggered. So basically, I told Belvedere to delete files/folders that are older than 2 weeks. Works great for me, especially with huge multiGB downloads! Keeps my 4 pooled disks sleeping, until the torrent is complete, and then it does its thing in the background without me having to touch a thing.

I do realize this might not help you or might be a complex setup, but I figured i'd throw in my two cents!

Strange that some people have issues with direct pool torrenting though, I'll have to test that one day.

I highly recommend SyncBackPro from 2Brightsparks for syncing. It has an awesome feature which can trigger a sync automatically when it detects a file has been changed on the source, instantly syncing to the destination afterwards. So you don't even have to schedule anything. It's always on and always synced

But you DID mention free, so... that might not work for you. Here's their site if you're interested though:
 
http://www.2brightsparks.com/

...IMHO this is definitely the right strategy.
As per your choice of the 1830...I don't know where you are located, but over here in Germany,
the 1840 is approx 30% cheaper than the 1830...I'd go with the CPU that offers the best/most features in its datasheet for your budget.
The 1840 offers "clear HD video" when compared to the 1830, for example.