Drivepool endless duplication loop

[Varroa]

Hey Guys, I am still rocking WHS 2011 with drivepool 1.3.7585 and recently I had drive fail to the point that my PC wouldn't even boot unless I removed the damaged drive. I was able to identify the drive and replace it with a larger drive (WD 3 TB red for the 2 TB dead drive) and my PC was happy with this. I added the new drive to the pool and the Drivepool app started to duplicate the missing files. The next day I noticed the server was hard locked and required a reboot and it started to duplicate from the very beginning again. This is now happened several times and it happens even if I manually reboot the server as well. The new 3 TB drive is slowly being used up (there is 256 GB space used) but at this rate it seams to only be able to duplicate about 20 GB of files before it hard locks each time. Any suggestions? I tried to run the stablebit troubleshooter app but when the PC hard locks it is no longer running.

 

[Varroa]

Well duplication has almost completed finally so it appears it was either a bad cable/loose cable or possibly even dust. I am not ruling out the entire slot yet because I have not re-populated it yet with a new drive because at least 1 of the new drives I tried it in early is F'ed up now and only reads 700Gb capacity (even though it is a 3 TB drive). I am running the WD diagnostic tools on it in the hopes of recovering it but if it is bad then that will suck, especially since now that I am 1 drive short my server is maxed out on capacity.

I have some older 2 TB drives I can sacrifice and try to see if the slot is still ok but I don't want to put in a new drive until I know the the slot is fine.

[Umfriend]

I have no clue. I would consider upgrading to DP 2.x (which I have been running for years now on my WHS2011 box). Do you have Scanner as well? Perhaps the remaining 2TB HDD is dying as well? Event Viewer showing any IDE/ATAPI/NTFS/DISK errors?

[Varroa]

I do have scanner but it always seems to lock up and then is says all drives have never been checked so I stopped using it. I have 4 other HDDs in there as well.

 

Maybe I will give 2.x a try.

[Varroa]

Ok, what ever is the newest 2.X version is now installed and that went painless for the upgrade. Now I am watching to see if it locks up again.

[Varroa]

Just checked and it is off line again, sigh.....

 

[Umfriend]

Just to ensure it's not a disk issue, could you open up Event Viewer and check for IDE/ATAPI/NTFS/DISK errors?

[Varroa]

I just stopped a duplication and went to a balance and also tried to do a scan of the new disk and it hit 15 bad sectors in the first 3% so I think I have found the issue. Now to determine if it is the disk or a loose wire.

[Umfriend]

Sounds like it. Hope it just needs you to re-seat a cable.

[Varroa]

Yep, it is either the cable or the slot in the backpane. I switched in another drive and it won't even format correctly.

[Umfriend]

Got another slot and cable?

[Varroa]

Ok, so even with no drive in that slot my server hung. I shut it down and opened it up and replaced all the SATA cables on that backplane. I just booted it back up with no drive in that slot (just in case) and I am letting it do it's thing.

SFC found no errors

Windows error logs show an endless list of ATAPI errors so it is certainly an issue with a drive/SATA port causing all the problems for sure.

 

EDIT: I am also going to do some scans of the remaining disks to see what they say but I am doing them one by one.

 

[Varroa]

So on last update, the server has been up and running for 24 hours without issue. The sacraficial drive I added completed a few disk check and now I am doing a burst test on it to really push it to it's limits. The first 3 TB drive I tried to add to the pool is definitely damaged and I am going to see if I can return it to Western Digital but I doubt that will help.