Home server shares are missing.

[teddyboy16]

Something happened to my shares. Basically they were DVD's, Software, and Music. They are completely gone.  The data is still there as is the actual folder structure. How can I recreate them without loosing any data.

 

I had a couple of things go wrong with my server. I had a MV8 Sata card fail, but I had a replacement for it. Two of the ports on the card stopped working and the card just became really wonky. It ended up bringing the server to it's knees, so I just replaced it with another one that I had as a spare. Now all 15 drives are recognized. I did have to replace two drives that where dead with two 6TB drives, and now drive pool is doing it's thing rebalancing.

 

The failed card and the failed drives may be coincidence, but I don't want to dwell on that as the server comes up quickly and is responsive now.

 

I just need to figure out how to bring back my shares so media player and media center can see the movies and music.

 

:-) Help!

[teddyboy16]

Well it looks like I'm back in business again! I figured out how to add the missing folders. Basically you just go in and add a folder through the dash board. Everything is on the pool so I browsed to the pool and found the share in severfolders and after Home server did it's thing it popped up. Now the pool is balancing and figuring out what data belongs to what share and how big each share is.

 

Yes it was that simple! I was making it way harder thinking that it was going to be difficult. it wasn't in my case.

 

:-)

[Christopher (Drashna)]

If this is for WHS2011 (or Windows Server Essentials), we do have a utility to streamline this process actually.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Utilities

The "WSS Troubleshooter" utility is designed to reshare the folders, and bypass the Dashboard's issues with moving shared folders to locations with existing content. 

[teddyboy16]

Yes it is for WHS 2011. Thanks for the link. I'll save that for future refernce. Everything is back up and running now. I was able to recreate the shares through the dash board. All the shares are where they where before WHS freaked out. I also ordered some AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards for spares. I found a great deal on them on EBay. $35 each for two new cards.

 

Well I'm happy that things are back to normal. I need to pick up some more 6TB drives over the next couple of weeks. Gotta replace one 2TB drive that has a some bad blocks and a couple other 2TB drives that Scanner says I should consider replacing. Funny thing is I've had the most problems with WD 2TB drives. The WD 1TB drives I have installed in the pool I've never had a problem with and they are older drives.

 

At least I have access to my music and movies and performance is snappy.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You're very welcome. The utility makes the entire process a lot simpler.

 

As for those cards, I do believe that Scanner does have issues with them, so just heads up.

 

 

Also, personally, I'd rather pick up an IBM ServeRAID m1015 card. They're closer to $80-100 and (I think) require flashing. However, they're SAS cards, so cable management is a lot easier! And you can get an SAS Expander card ($$$) and ... well expand one of the ports (it has two, but they're "4 lane" ports and can connect 4 drives to the one port), into 5 ports (so 20 drives, with "breakout cables"). 

[teddyboy16]

Thanks Chris.

I've been running Drivepool for some time now and there has never been a issue with Scanner having a problem with the AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards so far. They are little workhorses. I don't even use the SuperMicro drivers because it doesn't work in Home Server 2011. After some googlez, I found a thread on the on we got served and the old sage forum. Someone figured out that the signed 64bit Sonnet Technology driver works on the card since its basically the same card. The only downside to the cards is the cable management.

 

I have 3 Supermicro 5 in 3 hot swap cages which I just love. All the cables are very neatly arranged as are all power cables in a rosewill 9 bay mid tower case. The 9 bay 5.25 slots seem to have all disappeared! You just can't find them anymore.

 

The whole system is running off of a Gigabyte mATX board with 4 gigs of ram. It's a little cramped in there but it's nice and compact. I have a IBM Server Raid m1015 that I need to cross flash so it will act as individual ports. It's been sitting in the box for a while now.

 

I actually do plan on replacing the motherboard with a Supermicro X7SBE I bought it because is has the PCI-X slots for the SAT2-MV8 cards. It's a good board and I have the IPMI card for it. It's ATX and it will fit into the case but it may prove problematic becaus of the hot swaps cage size. I do have a Norco 4020 case brand new that I bought from Newegg with a 120mm fan bracket. I also have a skeletek 24u rack still in the box, and a nice UPS as well.

 

I'm renting a house right now with a garage, but I'm not sure if I'll be here back up in Oceanside to my house or in another part of San Diego, so space is a consideration for the Norco case and goodies. I think for fun I'm going to design (I'm a Mechanical Engineer) a case that will look good sitting out in a shelf for fun in Solidworks. The easy way would be to buy a 12 bay Lian-Li case and be done with it but I like the design of some of the Niveus and mCube cases.

 

Let's have some fun and brain Storm!

 

Thoughts? :-)

[Christopher (Drashna)]

We've had reports of issues getting SMART data with some of the supermicro cards, which is why I mentioned it. I'd rather give a heads up and be wrong, than not say anything.

 

And yeah, the cable management would be a nightmare.... Especially if you have more than one card.

As for the 9x5.25 bay cases, yeah .... There are some, but more and more, you're seeing then replaced with a large amount of internal 3.5" bays. Lian Li has a few cases though. And there were a couple of other companies...

 

 

As for the M1015 that you have, I would recommend flashing it to the IR mode, even if you don't plan on using the RAID functionality. The reason behind that, is that the cards I have would periodically (every couple of minutes) ping the attached disks, keeping them active. So something about the IT firmware was ... flawed. The IR firmware seems to work MUCH better!

 

 

As for the Supermicro board, well, IPMI is REALLY nice! 

 

ANd I can definitely understand the space issues. Rackmount cases are not easy to move, and definitely do need some dedicated space. Also, depending on teh specific rack that you have ... if it doesn't the back mounting section, I'd be wary of mounting the Norco to it. Just because of balance and vibration.

As for designing a case, that's pretty neat.

[teddyboy16]

Appreciate the heads up about the smart data issues with Supermicro cards, but I've never had any issue with access to smart data through scanner with these particular cards. Like I said they are little workhorses!

 

Yes I do plan on flashing my M1015 card with IR firmware since all I really care about is pass through for DrivePool. I've read a lot of nice things about the M1015. Looks like a really nice card for not a lot of money.

 

It's pretty cramped in my current case, and I think I'm going to design a case to hold the motherboard, PSU, and three SuperMicro drive cages. I'm going to design two with the second being used as a JBOD case. That's why I picked up the M1015. I need a expander for it.do you have any recommendations? Thinking about a Intel RES2SV240 powered by a Supermicro JPBWR2 power control board which I already have. The intel board has a molex power connector, so I can use the power control board without the need for a motherboard. thoughts?

 

This won't be cheap,but that's not why I want to design my cases. It will be pretty straight forward as all the mounting patterns for the atx board, psu, and add-in cards are standard. I thought about buying a case then modifying it, but I think I'll get the most out of a custom case.

 

The 24u rack that I have has back posts and it will be more than enough to support the Norco case if I go that route.

 

I really like Supermicro boards and the IPMI is really nice. When I start playing with a design I'll post a thread in the hardware section.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Appreciate the heads up about the smart data issues with Supermicro cards, but I've never had any issue with access to smart data through scanner with these particular cards. Like I said they are little workhorses!

I'd seen it before and felt it was worth mentioning. However, if it's grabbing SMART data, then that's fantastic!

Yes I do plan on flashing my M1015 card with IR firmware since all I really care about is pass through for DrivePool. I've read a lot of nice things about the M1015. Looks like a really nice card for not a lot of money.

I ... well, have 3 (though you'd really only need one, as the chipset can handle either 128 or 256 devices, IIRC).

They're champs. The RAID5 performance is atrocious apparently, but as I got them to just be an HBA card ... They do great at that.

 

Also, If you're connected at the "proper" speed (both SATA and PCI-e bus), in theory, the card can handl about 40 disks at 120MB/s (maxed, basically). So, it's a fantastic card for a DrivePool system.

 

Only caveat is that some people need to enable the "Unsafe DirectIO" option with these cards. I didn't have to personally, but some have reported needing to.

 

It's pretty cramped in my current case, and I think I'm going to design a case to hold the motherboard, PSU, and three SuperMicro drive cages. I'm going to design two with the second being used as a JBOD case. That's why I picked up the M1015. I need a expander for it.do you have any recommendations? Thinking about a Intel RES2SV240 powered by a Supermicro JPBWR2 power control board which I already have. The intel board has a molex power connector, so I can use the power control board without the need for a motherboard. thoughts?

Man, I'm jealous of your skills. Designing your own case is something that is VERY neat!

That said, the Intel Expander that you've mentioned is the one that I would recommend. I've been looking and purchasing it myself, and replacing the two "extra" M1015's I have.

Though, the card is meant to be used internally, and I'm not sure if it would work elsewise (I don't know, honestly). And many companies do make SATA to Molex power adapters, so that may be an option as well.

However, it sounds like you want a stand alone module that you could build a separate case for (if I'm wrong, I'm sorry). If so, you may want to look into something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-16-Channel-Port-Multiplier-Rocket-EJ340/dp/B00DWV4SKM

A number of companies build stuff like this, which you could build a case around.

 

This won't be cheap,but that's not why I want to design my cases. It will be pretty straight forward as all the mounting patterns for the atx board, psu, and add-in cards are standard. I thought about buying a case then modifying it, but I think I'll get the most out of a custom case.

Oh definitely. The fun is in building it yourself!

 

And yeah, the mounting patterns should be relatively straight forward. And what isn't you can get the actual hardware and then measure, as well.

Speaking of which, it may be worth getting some of the parts, and seeing what your options are (I believe that Norco and SuperMicro do sell the "rails" for the hot swappable HDD bays, but they're long, not tall. That could be useful as well.

The 24u rack that I have has back posts and it will be more than enough to support the Norco case if I go that route.

Okay, glad to hear it! Wouldn't want it toppling over!!

I really like Supermicro boards and the IPMI is really nice. When I start playing with a design I'll post a thread in the hardware section.

IPMI and Intel vPro are both very nice! Being able to manage the system as if you were right in front of it makes troubleshooting a lot easier. Especially when you need to performance bios/firmware changes.

 

 

And looking forward to the finished product!

[teddyboy16]

Hi Chris,

 

My plan is to use the PCI-X AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards in the Supermicro board I mentioned earlier. Those can handle the internal drives in the case I'm going to design. They are pretty quick on the PCI bus now, but the extra bandwidth on the four PCI-X slots 100mhz and 133mhz should really let the cards loose. The one M1015 once it's flashed for pass through will sit in the PCIe 8x slot and be hooked up to the Intel RES2SV240 SAS expander that will be in the JBOD box.

 

I'm going to use my existing Supermicro hotswaps in the new server box. I'll take a look at getting the hot swap rails. The ideal thing would be to use hotswap backplanes with bare rails, but if it came down to it I could buy more Supermicro hotswaps boxes. Need to take a look at it.

 

BTW that Intel SAS Expander we've been talking about. I just bought one on EBay brand new for $60+12 shipping . It's on it's way to me as I type this. The guy has or had a boatload of them and the card had a buy it now price of $160 which is a great deal to start with but he'll also take best offers on the card. I found out about it through the Serve The Home website. I'll end up having a nice little JBOD box for addrional expansion.

 

I'll start a new thread this weekend when I've done some research. Need to get my PC to settle down. I got a blue screen last night with the Stop Error 0x00000101. It was random. Dunno what caused it. I just did a fresh install of windows last weekend everything is up to date including drivers. I did apply a patch last night for usb 2.0 that could cause it. Maybe that might take care of it. The other patch was related to a Intel erratum for Nehalem processors. That would not install because it said that it was not applicable to my system even though I have a 1156 i7 870 cpu that has Nehalem micro arcitecture. It might be that specific patch was already installed through Windows update. Need to take a look at chipset drivers as I used the ones on the original disc for my ASUS board.

 

Aren't computers fun! :-)

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, PCI-X is still pretty darn fast, so either way, you should be fine!

 

And to make sure, I recommend the IR (RAID) firmware over the IT (passthrough/HBA) firmware. Both can do passthrough, but the IR seems to behave better. Besides, extra options are great.

 

 

As for Intel SAS Expander card, great catch! And yeah, I've only been able to find them for $200 or so. So finding one for $60 is fantastic! (if you see another, link me!)

 

 

As for the BSOD, it indicates a CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT bug check. This indicates that an expected clock interrupt on a secondary processor, in a multi-processor system, was not received within the allocated interval.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff557211(VS.85).aspx

As for the hotfix, it may be OS specific. And hotfixes aren't usually pushed through Windows Update. They're usually option installs offered to fix specific issues.

This is the hotfix you're referring to:

https://support2.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;975530

And if you check lower down on the page, there are a couple of registry tweaks that you can try, and see if it works.

 

 

 

If it happens again, set the dump to us:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_System_Crashes

[teddyboy16]

Even better from the same seller! 34.95 and free shipping! At that price I just might pick up another one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221463870395

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Even better from the same seller! 34.95 and free shipping! At that price I just might pick up another one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221463870395

Even better!

 

Hopefully, with no issues this time!

 

 

Also, that's why I like the SAS cards. You can get two expanders for the one M1015 card, and get 40 drives connected.

Speaking of which, I found a nice deal on eBay, and picked one up finally. 

[teddyboy16]

Ha! For some reason I thought the eBay link was for the intel sas expander. My bad!

 

My Pc blue screened again over the weekend. Same stop error. I'll collect logs and then send them off. It's really frustrating. It's completely random. I can't figure out what's wrong.

 

I'll collect the crash logs when I get home from work tonight.

 

Sigh...

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Not a problem.

 

And sorry to hear that it BSODed again.

[teddyboy16]

Uploading now as I type this. The stop error is noted in the description.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Any chance you have any antivirus installed (such as Avast), or disk tools like Daemon tools?

 

Otherwise, it may indicate a CPU issue. 

[teddyboy16]

The only anti virus I have installed is security essentials. No daemon tools, but I have have slysoft clone drive installed to read the occasional iso. That's not really essential to have installed. I am planning on upgrading my hardware but not for another couple of months to something more modern.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Ah, well, it could be that as well. Try uninstalling it and see if that fixes the issue.

[teddyboy16]

I'll uninstall clone drive when I get home. I'll keep my fingers crossed! I do have $900.00 in new hardware sitting in my shopping cart from newegg. Asus X99-A board and a 6 core haswell i7 w/16 gigs of ram to start. It's amazing that what I paid for my Asus P7F7-E WS board 322.00, i7 870 quad core for 313.00,163.00 DDR3 1600 16 gigs. I get a platform that is much more powerful for about a $100 more. It will last me for a long time.

 

I may pull the trigger and get it. At least my server is stable now. I just need to replace the last green drive that is throwing smart errors about excessive head parking. Eventually I'll replace all the green drives with 6tb seagates. Been doing some research on the server case. I can set Solidworks to save every 5 or 10 minutes just in case until I get some new hardware. I'm basically ready to start.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

If I may make a suggestion, get a Xeon CPU instead. It should have similar performance, but it's meant for more "server" type loads. And you can get much better CPUs (more cores, etc), for not a whole lot more.

[teddyboy16]

Well I took a look at a Supermicro MBD-X10SRA-0 ATX board 2011 plenty of pci express slots, on board audio, dual intel nics, ton of sata ports. This would be a good motherboard for me to get, and it would last me for a long time for 269.99. The CPU is about double the cost for a 8 core ivy bridge 2.0 ghz 889.99, ECC ram one stick of 16 gigs 166.99. Total cost out the door would be 1432.30. I think I may just spring for the board first. I don't want to spend that much at one time. I'll get the CPU and memory down the road. I can get by with what I have for now.

 

I could get a six core Xeon 2.1ghz 2011 for 401.99 then upgrade to more cores later and that would drop the cost closer to my original cost.

 

The cost with a six core would be 911.97 which is my target cost. That's doable for me right now. I don't over clock so system stability is more important along with tons of ram slots. Already have a workstation class graphics card. The other pci express slots would serve for GPU computing.

 

Cost got bumped up a little to 936.83. I picked the wrong CPU it should be a E-2620 v3 for 429.99 on sale right now. It's still doable though. I could knock it down more if I got a E-2609 v3 1.9ghz 6 core for 304.99. That should still be plenty fast? I'm not to familiar with Xeon CPUs.

 

 

 

What do you think?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, they have cheaper CPUs. 

They have CPUs for about $200, but it depends on what you want/need.

For instance: Intel Xeon E5-2603 v3

http://amazon.com/dp/B00M1BUY7K/?tag=extension-kb-20

 

It's any Haswell (or "higher") Xeon E5 ("v3") CPU.

So it really depends on how many cores you want/need.

Also, keep in mind that these CPUs do have hyperthreading, so they have double the listed value. (In most cases).

 

As for how fast? They're as good or better than the Core i7 processors. So it depends on the work load you'll be using.

Even the Xeon E3's are fantastic in most cases.

 

I would also check SuperMicro's tested memory list, to ensure you get RAM that will definitely work.

 

 

As for overclocking, you're using a Xeon. They don't overclock well.

[teddyboy16]

Solidworks, FEMA, 3d modeling animation in modo/maya, sculpting in z brush, circuit works which is a schematic capture and pcb layout application. ripping movies to my server, and the occasional game of diablo, or Starcraft, sometimes a shmup. I don't generally play games on my Pc. That's what I have gaming consoles for :-). I think a six core 1.6gjz would do just fine to start with. Memory is much more important. I'll double check on the memory for the board. I've been reading the performance on Xeon and its pretty impressive. I guess I shouldn't let the lower clock speeds fool me into thinking that they are nessasrily slower.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Ah, so yeah, the more cores the CPU has the better.

 

And no, lower clock speed doesn't mean that much anymore. Because most everything (ironically except most games) are designed to be multithreaded, the more threads you can have (cores/hyperthreading), the more work can get done. Especially with animation or any sort of rendering. The program can render multiple frames in different cores at the same time, finishing the product much quicker than if you just had one core with a lot higher clock speed.

 

 

And if you want to see how much it makes a difference, Linus Tech Tips has a nice video showcasing a review Xeon E5-2699v3, I think it was (18 core @ 2.3 GHz CPU!!! but it's like $4500).  

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Hi Chris,

 

My plan is to use the PCI-X AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards in the Supermicro board I mentioned earlier. Those can handle the internal drives in the case I'm going to design. They are pretty quick on the PCI bus now, but the extra bandwidth on the four PCI-X slots 100mhz and 133mhz should really let the cards loose. The one M1015 once it's flashed for pass through will sit in the PCIe 8x slot and be hooked up to the Intel RES2SV240 SAS expander that will be in the JBOD box.

Well, I got the Intel RES2SV240NC card, and installed it.

You can hook it up in a PCI Express slot for power, or have it mounted elsewhere and connected to molex (4pin) power. 

 

The M1015 card (well, LSI's MegaRAID util) recognizes the Expander as an "Enclosure".

 

If you have a SAS card, and a lot of drives to hook up, it's a fantastic setup.  I need to do some testing for performance, but I'm much happier with the setup now!