Drive removal failed?

[adavidm]

Hi,

 

A 2TB drive has gone bad on my WHS2011 box. The drive still works but is incredibly slow, SMART showing lots of unrecoverable errors. Good news is that the data IS still there and can be retrieved, but it takes ages. I've tried removing the drive in DrivePool and, after a loooooong time, I'm left with a picture like this:

 

 

Disk 4 (confusingly called STOREVOL3, sorry!) is the problem child. Before I hit remove the picture was identical except the grey areas were blue ('Unduplicated').

 

Is there still some process going on that will remove the drive completely, moving the data to the other disks, or am I going to have to force removal and copy the data back manually? If the latter, is it safe to simply drop the contents of the broken disk onto the pool and have Windows merge the contents or is there something more subtle required?

 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

Regards

 

David

[Christopher (Drashna)]

First, I'm sorry to hear that one of your disks is dying. That's never a pleasant experience.

 

As for the disk, there is a "Force removal" option, that will skip any errors and just remove the disk from the pool. This is what you want. 

Once that is done, it may leave a lot of your data on that disk. However, it should be accessible in a "PoolPart.xxxx" folder (that was hidden but is now exposed). You can copy these files directly into the pool (the contents of the folder will mirror the pool's folder and file structure/layout).

 

If you want, we could do this remotely, for you, so that you feel safe with your data.

[adavidm]

Thanks for the reply.

 

I'm going to use the force remove option tonight and try and salvage as you've suggested.

 

Nothing on the drive that is too vital or not backed up, so no worries.

 

Thanks again.

 

David

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Okay, well let us know how it goes.