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PostPosted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 8:43 am 
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My EX490 has been running flawlessly for the past 5 years or so WHSv1. I have the 1TB drive it came with, 2TB WD Green EADS drive and a 2TB WD Red Drive. I use it mainly as a backup device for my many (10,000 or so) photographs and misc files. I don't use it to stream videos but do store some music on it. So I recently got the flashing health light, which, thanks to reading the posts here helped me to determine that it's due to one of my drives (WD Green). I'm in the process of checking that out now. The server is backing up two newer pc's running WIN 7. So the recent hard drive issue has me asking if this is still meeting my needs. I thought I read on here that there is an issue with restoring files back to a pc with WIN 7. Is this true? Also, a search here on hard drive recommendations doesn't show any current info. I think the last forum discussion I read about HDD was from 2012. Since I'm just using the server as a backup, are the WD Reds sufficient?

If I need to upgrade from WHSv1 to something like WS2012E, I might be better off just getting extra HDD's to mirror the existing HDD's in my pc. Keeping a back up of my photos and other data is crucial and I just want to make sure that my EX490 is capable of meeting my needs with my pc's running WIN 7.

Your thoughts?

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 12:40 pm 
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Well I can say I have a ex490 with whs1.
Backing up win vista 32, win 7 64,win 8.1 64.
Backups work fine if you goto the pc power settings and keep it from falling asleep.
Restoring files works fine.

However using the pc-restore disk is another story with windows 7 or 8, 64.
The nic card drivers needed are not supported on some motherboards.
In my case I have some old nic cards and or usb nic's that support say as old as win98. So the native drivers work fine.
The bitch is dealing with the reserved partitions which are hidden.
I have one laptop that has 3 hidden partitions.
Whs1 thinks they are each a partiton with a different drive letter.
So it will create a full restore on the os drive with multiple partitions such as drive c:,d:,e:, etc.
During the pcrestore you need to elect the advanced option. Then change say for one example the system reserved partition to the c: drive. Same goes for the other hidden partitions.

Last is the uefi partition (another hidden one)which you may need to goto the bios on the pc and turn off safe/secure mode so it does not boot from the uefi partition.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 6:57 pm 
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When you talk about the hidden partitions, are you refering to when the server is restoring the OS (in this case, WIN 7) to the PC? If this is the case, I may not have a problem. I have my WIN 7 running from a SSD which is backed up separatly from the server. My photos are on two separate HDD's (no raid config) which are backed up to the server every night. So if I was to do a PC restore from the server, I would only be doing it to these two HDD's that house my photos. With this being said, will I still run into the issue with the nic card drivers? My motherboard is an ASUS P8Z68-V Pro for what it's worth. A few years old now.


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 28, 2015 11:14 am 
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Then you would not use the pc restore cd that came with the server.
restore your os drive then view backups in the server and copy paste the files to the other drives on the pc.
The pc restore cd is used to restore everything such as the os and system files and extra drives in the pc.
The restore cd could still be used if you wish.
You would opt to not restore the os drive but still do the data drives.

Give it a try and you will see how it works either way.
View backups in the server console or the restore cd and see your options.
Just follow the prompts and be patient either way.
It takes a while to create a virtual drive for view backups and it takes a very long time to boot from the pc restore cd.
You can always backout when it is ready to do the actual restore.

In fact you should have already tried either way just to make sure it works for you.

FYI, I use the wd reds 2 tb for the server.
For example I have a windows 8.1 HTPC and it has multiple drives all different sizes from 3tb to 1 tb full of media, my os drive is a 128GB ssd then I use stabilbit on that pc to make mirror duplication.
I back it up to the server. Including the os drive. Takes a very long time for the first backup.
Then the ssd failed.
I did not use the restore cd I just reinstalled windows 8.1 from the microsoft cd. Reinstalled some apps from their original cd. copied over some files for settings as mentioned before.
Then at the same time I changed some smaller drives to larger ones and copied over the backups in the view backups area of the console to the media drives to recover any files missing.
Then I backup that pc to the server
It is better to do a trial run when everything is working than when a drive fails and you are in a state of panic.

Personally I hardly ever use the pc restore cd now due to I want a fresh os.
When a os drive fails I usually use the original factory cd's that create all the hidden partitions such as recovery ,uefi etc.
Then I use the view backup to copy over what I want such as outlook pst file, browser bookmarks misc data files etc.
I figure if a os drive fails, how good is a backup to use for system files. They could be corrupted in the backup.
And my media is several hundred movies and 500+ music cd's and several thousand family Photos, which I scanned from actual prints. That took many months for the photos and I don't want to do that again.

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 28, 2015 3:42 pm 
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My 2 cents.
1) Your hardware is getting old and you don't have a spare unit in case you need parts.
2) Your OS is EOL (end of life) HP or Microsoft will not support anything.

It's working now but what will you do when something dies?

If you keep going with the EX-490 I would get a spare from Ebay and start slowly (1) drive at a time, start changing out drives to the 2 tb reds.

I am running 2 x-510 (same hardware as yours) I have 2 backups servers in boxes for spare parts.
I backup the main server (Full of 2tb reds) to another server full of 2 tb Hitachi drives.
I have (2) 2tb red non-pooled drives with server backups.

You are at the same place as a lot of other people here. What to do now?
I will continue to run WHS v1 backing up my 10 pc (a mix of win7 and vista) for at least another 4-5 years.
I have movies and photos and music. I don't use twonky, I use serviio to stream to my Samsung TV.

The win7 problem was the 64 bit os, to restore a 64 bit os pc you need the 32 bit drivers and there is a newer restore cd you can download from microsoft.

I will not be using win 10 or win 8 (my choice) all this being said:
I have a DIY win2012E Server running on mirrored SSD drives for the OS and using 4 tb reds for the pool using drive bender for down the road.

Some people are looking at the Qnap and Synology NAS .

Always have a backup outside of the server and ideally another copy offsite.

You could keep it going, but you might want to think about other options before spending any money.

Good Luck and let us know what you decide to do, others are thinking the same thing.

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PostPosted: Sat Aug 29, 2015 12:18 pm 
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Ah, PC restore. I guess I didn't know exactly what it did. Since I run my OD on a separate SSD, I would most likely just do a fresh install if something were to happen. I've already had to do a system image restore that was kept on an external drive so I was good. My main concern was making sure that my photos were being backed up and that I couold restore those if I had a disk failure. It sounds like I can simply drag and drop or restore those from the server with no problems.

What to do now with an aging server? I plan to combine my PC HDD's to one larger one and set up a RAID1 for redundancy and backup. I plan to use my EX490 until it dies then I would probably look at Synology or Qnap as a replacement. Too bad HP got out of the home server business. I've really liked mine and would by a newer one if they still made them.

Most importantly, thanks for your help and information!


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 1:25 pm 
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I just did a full restore on my son's WIndows 7 64-bit HP laptop as he ran into an issue with the OS licensing validation while upgrading his video driver that I could not resolve. Worked fine except as someone above alluded to I needed to track down the Vista 32-bit driver for his network card and load that from a USB drive.

I'm backing up Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 to my EX-485. I've been able to restore files on the Windows 10 PC but haven't tried a cold full restore yet.

As long as it works, I'll continue to use it as you can't beat the simplicity for backup.

Scott


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 18, 2015 7:52 pm 
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EOL last I saw on Win 7 was 2020 so I will be running my 510's at least till then. I will run them as long as they backup without question. When they quit backing up, then I will have to think on that one.

I could switch over to my DIY win2012E box, but don't really want to.
I could just use the 510's for file server and buy acronis backup for each pc and point them to the server. $$$$
Don't know of a free pc backup that would point to a network folder, but it might be an option.

I sure wish HP and MS would have kept something for the home user, besides (The Cloud) :-#

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[X510 /2 in box]
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:twisted: Fear the Cloud :twisted:


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