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EX495 WHS v1 system disk crashed


DaveO

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I'm waiting on some new red drives to get here so that I can do a recovery.  I have a ton of data, movies, pictures, movies of the kids, etc and I don't have backups.  On some other forums, I've read where some folks have lost all their data trying to do a recovery in v1.  From reading this forum, I see several how to's using your stable bit app.  There's a whs 2011 64 bit on ebay for $150.  Since you can't buy it retail anymore, is that my best bet for a safe recovery ?  Are the new features of 2011 worth that much ?

 

I tried a recovery with a green drive (pre AF) that I took out of an old ehd and the process failed trying to write to the drive.  I've since learned that the green drive isn't a good choice for a system disk.  I use three green drives that I ran wdidle and the alignment tool on and they work fine.  I'm  going to move them to an enclosure and expand my network.  Any advice would be appreciated.   

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Tried connecting with usb 2 and all the unpooled drives showed up.  There's an issue with one of the ports or the cable.  Will trouble shoot that later as I need to get the data on the mediasonic drive duplicated, tons of photos, videos and music on there.

 

One question, I copied videos to the to the video folder which shows up on the e:\ drive.  Drive pool hasn't duplicated the files yet and I have real time duplication on.  Is there a sharing issue ?   Edit: never mind, just read your wiki ;)

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The mediasonic appears to be the issue.  When I try to add the unpooled drives into the pool, drive pool locks up at 90% and there is no drive activity lights on the probox.  Thankfully, I bought it through amazon.  It's going back.  I need a reliable external storage, maybe sans digital.  Tomorrow I'll swap the drives out an try to recover my data.

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Yeah, I'd recommend just about anything else over the MediaSonic ProBoxes. Alex has a few of them, I've owned one, and ... well, lots of customers with issues with them as well. They're great when they work.... But they do have issues.

 

Also as for the drives not showing up... if you're using eSATA, what controller is the eSATA port using? This really matters as a lot do not support "port multiplication", which is required for eSATA to recognize alll the drives in the ProBox (or any other eSATA enclosure).

 

If you're still using the EX495, then you need to download and install the Silicon Images 3531 chipset drivers, before Port Multiplication will work.

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I'm having a hard time getting SI 3531 to install.  When I try to update the driver, windows decides the driver is up to date.  There's another device in the list titled Mass Storage Controller that does not have a driver and when I try to update that driver windows doesn't show the file as an option.  Frustrating.  

 

Finally got the driver installed, now I see the 3 disks in the 5 bay sans digital.  Thank you Christopher for all your help.  Now I can execute your wiki.  I'm using the SI Raid5 manager, trying to configure as jbod, it may default to that, but I haven't figured it out yet.

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Well, I'm sorry to hear about all the issues with getting the driver to install properly. I would definitely recommend creating a backup of the system (at least of the C:\ drive) just incase!

 

I'm glad to hear that everything seems to be working once you got the driver installed though.

And I think "JBOD" is the mode you want. Since I'm not familiar with the management software for it, it should be that, or labeled as "legacy" or "passthrough" or something similar to that. 

 

Looking at the manual I've found.... http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/SATARAID5-UserGuide_v1.60.pdf

It looks like you want the "pass-thru" option, at least if you want SMART data, and to be able to use the disks if you replace the external enclosure.

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I'm guessing that the drives were under heavy load when this happened? If so, then that would be an issue with the Silicon Images chipset.  It's a known issue, unfortunately.

 

Otherwise, could you enable file system logging and attempt to reproduce the issue?

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection

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I uploaded a log file.  I believe the problem exists the 2nd of 3 drives in the sans digital.  When duplication stopped, I found the 2nd and 3rd drive indicator lights off.  I'm going to try to copy the data off of it and replace  the drive.

 

Edit:  Smart shows that the drive has a bad sector.  Duplication stops when it's working on a file I don't really care about.  So I'll manually duplicate the other folders.

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I can definitely see that the disks are "departing" from the system when this but, unfortunately, it seems that you just uploaded the log files, and not the tracing logs (the "CoveFS" folder). From that, this is about all I can tell. That, and that doesn't seem to to have been doing anything, 

 

 

As for the BIOS file for the Silicon Images chipset... This is for the onboard eSATA port? If so, I wouldn't update that or re-flash it, as it may cause more issues than it solves.

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Finally was able to repair the drive and get pool performance to 100% !  Now I need to replace the drive with a bad sector.  I thought scanner would evacuate a drive with a bad sector.  I guess there are some settings I don't have right.  I also must have permissions messed up.  I've tried sharing, permissions, unhiding files, but server folders remain empty to clients.  I want to see folders from any network device, like blue rays and tvs.  I don't get to work on this everyday, but I'm trying.

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Well, DrivePool will only evacuate contents in the pool's folder structure. That means that anything not in the pool is not touched. 

 

Specifically, if you have not moved the files into the hidden PoolPart.xxxx folders, then that would be why a) they have not been moved, and B) why they may not be showing up in the shares. 

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I followed your wiki to a T.  The pool server folders are fully populated, music, movies, etc.  I have a permission issue somewhere.  Clients can watch videos that I moved into the servers original video folder for example.

 

Got it, shared pool folders via dashboard server folders tab.

 

Thank you for all your help.  Now I need to get rid of the old drives, one at a time.

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Yeah, you need to change the permissions in the dashboard to fix the permissions to be "correct" for your system. Once you've done that, the entire folder should be good to go.

 

And to make sure, everything is showing up in the pool correctly now? And balancing data off of the damaged drives?

 

As for the old drives, if they're under warranty (which I suspect they are not), then you may want to try to RMA them.

Otherwise, ebay or craigslist them.

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The old server drives show 3.5 years of service, they are in the external enclosure and still appear to be holding all or most of the data.  None have hit the 90% limit.  I don't know how to force the data off the old drives.  Do you have a wiki for that ?  The pool performance bar is now solid aqua.

 

Drive pool shows 797 GB duplicated and 824 GB other.  I'm not sure what the other data is.  All the files were moved into the drive pool.

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Did you remeasure or reset DrivePool's settings?  If not, then it may not have properly indexed the contents, and would be why you have a large amount of "other" data.

 

 

As for forcing data off, you can use the "Disk Usage Limiter" balancer to do this. Uncheck both "Duplicated" and "Unduplicated" data for the drive in question.

 

Or you can do it... manually.

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One of the old pool disks had some media files in a shares folder in the DE folder.  All three of the old pool drives are holding backup files from v1 in the DE folder (backing up 4 computers).  This is where the bulk of other data is coming from.  I guess I can delete the DE folders as I have zero intention of going back to v1.  I did notice that whs 2011 is storing backup data unduplicated in the data portion of the system drive.  Can I move that into the pool  for duplication ?

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Before deleting the folders, I'd make sure there is nothing of importance to them.

 

The guide I posted much early describes how to move the "DE" folder structure to the StableBit DrivePool Structure, as well. Moving all of that data into the pool.

Here is that link again. http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q5463715

 

Once the data is moved out, then yes, delete the DE folders, but don't do so beforehand, unless you don't care about that data.

 

As for the Client Backup Database, you can absolutely move that onto the pool. And we highly recommend enabling duplication on that folder, because it can be very bad if you lose even one file of the backup database.

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