Comments on: Using Server Recovery on a DIY Windows Home Server

By: Alex Kuretz

Alex Kuretz — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:11:50 +0000

Good questions Jon, definitely let us know how your build goes. Damian addressed all your questions well, I believe, so I’ll just confirm that the current version of WHS does indeed have a 32 drive limit.

By: Damian

Damian — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:01:38 +0000

Jon,

Assuming you have duplication enabled any data on the O/S drive shoudl also be on one of the other storage pool drives, so the recovery will grab from there (I actually asked that question myself!).

As far as physical limitations I had read that a max of 32 HDDs could be used (so in theory up to 64TB). I would expect this would be expanded with Vail. Once again, I read this, did not actually confirm for myself.

I don’t see any reason why you cannot use the IDE drive for your O/S. Also keep in mind that WHS will only store non system data on your O/S drive if there is no more room left on the storage pool drives, so if it gets down to that you probably have a bigger problem and need to get more storage

Regarding – “At the very beginning the “Windows is loading files…” process will not complete unless you remove all connected storage pool hard drives”. The only reason why I got this message was because I was having hardware problems (I needed to change a BIOS option for the SASLP card that was causing a conflict). There is no need to leave the storage pooled drives detached, the fact that WHS would not load for me at first with them attached just indicated that I had a problem elsewhere.

Hope I answered your questions. Good luck with the build, make sure you post your setup on the DIY Build section of the forum!!!

Cheers
Damian

By: Jon Andrews

Jon Andrews — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:54:13 +0000

Firstly, thanks so much for a great write up…I am about to build myself a 16 disk setup and was really wondering if I had to do a full new build and then migrate everything across slowly but it appears I am gonna be good to “restore” to get to the same point.

I did have a few questions if that is ok though..

What happens if I have some data on the original system drive, at the moment, I have my original WHS and an external eSATA case which means a total of 8 1 TB drives..however as the system drive is also a 1TB drive and im currently getting to the point where most drives are as full as can be, will I not lose any of my “shared” data if I put in a new system drive and do a restore…or will the system recreate the missing data from the remainig 7 drives.

Is there a physical limit to the amount of drives that the WHS software can work with….the new case I have ordered holds 16 drives, so with enough sata ports…(motherboard with 6) and 2 or 3 cards with extra ports I will have more than enough…but is the system gonna be able to work with all of this.

Seems a stupid question to ask, but would it be possible to have the sys disk installed on an ide drive…as all motherboard come with them…and it will let me get the most out of my machine……and I guess on top of that (to allow this to work at all), does the sys drive HAVE to hold any of the storage pool…..cos I can assume if it did the IDE drive might not have the throughput to handle the data moving about

Final question, in your problem points above you say

“At the very beginning the “Windows is loading files…” process will not complete unless you remove all connected storage pool hard drives”

Does this mean I should unplug all of the sata drives apart from the system drive a that point…if so when would I plug the other drives in.

Im actually looking forward to building this machine and cannot wait to get it all up and running..so thanks again for the help in your article…I know I would be stuck without it.

Thanks again

By: Timothy Daleo

Timothy Daleo — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:22:05 +0000

In my case (EX470 PP2) the Database repair worked because I had let the system update back to the most recent release.

By: Alex Kuretz

Alex Kuretz — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:45:59 +0000

In both Damian’s case and mine, the belief is that the backup database was lost due to us not fully updating our recovered servers to the same patch level as prior to performing the server recovery.

By: sr

sr — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:30:09 +0000

Well this article will really help me, but I have to say that loss of the backup database is UNACCEPTABLE. This WHS product is decent for a Microsoft product but it reminds you that it is a Microsoft product when things like migrating your server is hard to do and even harder to do without data loss. This is UNACCEPTABLE in this day and age. It is inevitable that people will need to migrate without data loss from one WHS machine to another if not this year, next year. These things need to have been thought through better and documentation should have been issued. Otherwise what exactly is the cost of this software for?

By: Damian

Damian — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:16:43 +0000

Phil,

Good point, I guess at some point we will all have to migrate.

The good thing for me going through this process is now I feel confident I can get through a migration to Vail which I was worried about since it will probably be x64. My system will support x64, so it is just a matter of having the correct drivers (not always an easy feat!!!)

By: Phil Alban

Phil Alban — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:14:32 +0000

Great article – especially considering the migration to a DIY WHS. I made the mistake of mentioning to my wife that a new WHS O/S would likely ne available in another year or two, just fter we bought our refurb MSS from HP. She rolled her eyes and said, “So we’re gonna have to start all over again?” I lied and said it would be a piece of cake.

Much thought has gone into migrating from one WHS to another, and to the next gen OS as well. I love the ease of use of the MSS (EX470 in my case), but have been a bit disappointed with the bang-for-buck quotient. I am convinced I could build a high-capacity DIY for less than what HP will eventually charge for their next gen MSS (WHS based on Server 2008 code, or later). Of course, it won’t have all the bells and whistles that HP provides, but that’s not always a bad thing.

Glad to see someone is blazing the trail. We’ll all have to migrate eventually, won’t we?

By: The Home Server Show 58 : Home Server Show

The Home Server Show 58 : Home Server Show — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:14:40 +0000

[...] The AK Method The Damian Method [...]

By: Greg H

Greg H — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:02:01 +0000

In Ghost . . .

DISK > to IMAGE > would back up the ENTIRE disk….

That would include which holds the O/S and which holds the shares/data.

you are correct . . Backing up and restoring ONLY the partition WILL NOT WORK!

The hard drive I am BACKING IT UP TO is not associated with WHS. It is NOT added to the pool.
Its a drive formatted exclusively in FAT32 and used for images.
GHOST backups are done in DOS off a windows startup cd I made.

I would assume you could use this process with a regular HP WHS if you had the video cable assembly to actually see what you were doing (but you’d loose one drive you could have added to the pool, because you’d have to reserve it for the ghost image(s).

I am going to do a backup here in the next few days. I’ll report how long it takes. I do NOT use compression. Its just file per file backup. In theory, if you had a very full WHS, this could take some time, but I only probably have 200GB of data total.