I was asked the following in a PM:


I am answering here as (1) the answer is one that others may be interested in and (2) private answers generally are reserved for my paying client (with a few rare exceptions)!!!

(1) The recommendation for the larger drive being the System Drive was back when WHS was first becoming available, when a 500GB drive was L-A-R-G-E (and expensive) and when the Drive Extender initially placed all files in the System Drive and THEN moved them elsewhere. DE doesn't work that way any more and the typical drives currently in use (certainly even the 500GB in the EX47x) generally obviated the need for anything any larges as the System Drive anyway! In the net, that recommendation is not bad advice, just outdated.

(2) I believe that the 750GB was chosen by HP for the EX48x as that drive was the best cost tradeoff for their design AT THAT TIME. A great many folks purchase the MSS models with a single drive and do not add another drive for a considerable time period. A single 750GB drive meets a lot of folks needs even today.) FYI, I am probably going to replace my 500GB System Drive on my EX475 with a 10,000rpm 150GB drive. It should be a little faster and I try to avoid storing any data on that drive anyway. And bear in mind that, especially a couple years ago, the majority of the participants in the WHS websites had built DIY servers using spare disks they had available -- ones they generally had replaced with higher capacity models. (My WHS beta unit had nothing over 100GB as I recall. My test server today has nothing over 200GB. I have one client with a DIY unit that has 10 drives, all in the 200-320GB range -- and a mix of SATA and IDE as well!)

(3) Obviously any folder duplicated will require twice the storage capacity -- and it will have to be on another drive. Generally it will not slow things down. When the WHS server does its duplication/balancing there will certainly be an increase in disk activity and CPU utilization. Folks with the unmodified EX47x have definitely reported seeing some impacts on streaming when that occurs. Even some EX48x users have reported that when streaming HD content. But is it a real problem? If you have multiple clients trying to stream at the same time and someone drops in a few large files to duplicate, yes, it can be a problem. ANY server can be overloaded. But at the worst it is a bit like not flushing the toilet when someone is in the shower in an older home. You learn to be considerate of others.

(4) I do not believe that any transfer speed issue on a 48x would be in ANY way related to the SIZE of your System Drive. Once a WHS server has settled down from initial duplication, virus scan, etc. I do NOT believe that duplication would impact transfer speeds.

-- That is easy to test though. Turn it off, leave it to settle down overnight and try a transfer in the morning.

You might also look at the CPU Load (via an RDP session) while attempting a transfer. If that is maxing out at 100% then I'd probably be looking for something in the MSS; otherwise I'd be looking at the network and/or clients.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Thanks for your thorough reply. can you explain further how folder duplication works? i just spent like 5 months digitizing my entire music collection and wish to add another HDD into my EX485 as a backup for all the music and hard work i just did.

so once i get a new hard drive and add it to the pool, does the storage all become 1 large drive? or will the new HDD be assigned a new letter and the WHS console recognizes it as 2 drives?

also, based on your response, it seems as if folder dupe only occurs when files are being dropped into the folder with folder dupe on, is that correct? so when files aren't being transferred over, the WHS isn't constantly refreshing or checking to see if new files are added to the folder on a regular basis, is it?

also, could you turn off folder dupe when doing major file transfers and then turn it back on and it will recognize that new files have been added?

so once i get my new drive and if i go the folder dupe route, will the WHS automatically start shifting files over to the new drive all by itself?

how does you use your WHS? do you have folder duplication on? you think it would just be better to copy files over twice manually rather than using folder dupe? also, if the WHS sees both drives as 1 large pool, how can you make sure you have the same files on both drives in case one fails?

THANK YOU!!!!

@ Lazer - Microsoft's technical briefs contain a very good article on Drive Extender, which is the duplication and pooling feature. Here's a link to the download from microsoft for the article; it's in Word format. http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=135693 Here's also a link to the WHS Technical Library on MS. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 47475.aspx

_________________
HP MSS EX490 with Intel E6300
4 GB RAM
7 TB Drive Storage

MediaSmartServer.net Wiki, it's loaded with helpful information about WHS and the HP MediaSmart Server.

wow, after some quick googling, i found most of my answer...and funny enough, most of the answers were from other forum posts that were answered by John Bick.

Man, that guy's all over the scene. what a good samaritan...always helping new WHS owners out.

a question i have is, can you set folder duplication on a non-shared folder?

also, can you manually drag non-shared folders to another drive so you're basically doing a manual dupe when you already have your drives set up as a pool and not as a backup or unmanaged?

thanks!

Thank-you for the kind words...!

Unfortunately NO, you cannot set fi\older duplications to lower levels. What you CAN do is to add new folders -- allowing you to set the duplication AND PERMISSIONS differently.

You should not try to "manually drag non-shared folders to another drive so you're basically doing a manual dupe when you already have your drives set up as a pool and not as a backup or unmanaged". First, the drives are not individually addressable within the server logic. And, if they were, you would be running some risk of messing up the DE logic. And then the duplication would not be automated. If you want to do this I suggest adding an UNMANAGED disk.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

what does this exactly mean, add new folders?

currently i have most of my stuff in my shared folders but i also have some important docs in a folder labeled PRIVATE that is not in any shared folder. is there a way to set that to dupe as well so i have a backup of that?

if i can't set that folder to dupe and i can't manually drag it over, how would i go about getting another copy of that folder on the new drive?

also, how does this method handle backups? are backups just stored on one drive and that's it? can you dupe a backup?

Can you answer these 3 questions i had above in my previous post:

also, based on your response, it seems as if folder dupe only occurs when files are being dropped into the folder with folder dupe on, is that correct? so when files aren't being transferred over, the WHS isn't constantly refreshing or checking to see if new files are added to the folder on a regular basis, is it?

so once i get my new drive and if i go the folder dupe route, will the WHS automatically start shifting files over to the new drive all by itself?

how do you use your WHS? do you have folder duplication on? you think it would just be better to copy files over twice manually rather than using folder dupe?

thanks john...you really are the man

You can define new Shared Folders. (See the "Add" slection at the top of the Shared Folders tab in the Console. Do remember to restart the server after defining them as if you do not they may not be visible to clients.)


Add PRIVATE as a new Shared Folder. When you do that just give it different permissions. Then just copy your files to the new shared folder and delete the old.


It would be a NEW folder -- copy contents and delete the old one.


As a new Shared Folder you can turn duplication on/off just like all the others. Nothing special. Handled the same way.


Actually I believe it checks ("balances") every hour. Check out the MS WHS Technical Library at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347480%28WS.10%29.aspx, specifically under the Technical Briefs at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd309758(WS.10).aspx -- and more especially the one for the Drive Extender.


Yes.


MOST of my files are duplicated. I figure that I would rather re-rip DVDs so those are NOT duplicated. Since I have the space at the moment my music is duplicated but I could re-rip that if I had to. For me the most critical things are photographs (family and professional) and financial records. YMMV. Figure what is most important and compare the cost to replace it with the cost of another disk (plus the value of your time). FYI, I also back up my server, backups AND shares, automatically and rotate a copy off-site regularly. A very small subset of things is also backue up in the "cloud". (YES, I am paranoid -- and proud of it!)

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

i meant the backups of PCs....how does it handle those backups? do you choose which folder you have backups saved too and then if that folder is set to dupe then it gets duplicated?

i haven't set my PC to be backed up yet. what exactly gets backed up? the entire contents of my HD? does it take periodic snapshots of my system for a restore to a previous time and date if anything were to go wrong?

also, when you create a new shared folder, can you set that new share folder to NOT be shared? ya know...for my docs in my private folder and such.....i dont want those to be shared...but want it duped.

THANKS!!!

I will ass-u-me you are referring to backing up the Shared Folders from the MSS (or other WHS server).

When you select the server to be backed up you are presented with a screen that allows you to select a destination device (a separate disk added as a backup disk and NOT added to the storage pool) for each of your Shared Folders. They do NOT all have to be the same, but the Shared folder must fit on the disk. You do not get to duplicate the backups as they are NOT saved in a Shared Folder, e.g., they are not saved to disks in the storage pool.

What gets backed up is the Shared Folder (or folders) you select. And it backs up everything in that Shared Folder -- you have no further control over that just as you have no lower level control for Duplication.

Yes, like the Client Backup Database this process stores files only once and you can access an incremental history. (It's really an "archive".) Unless you set up permissions at the OS level the target disk will only be accessible via the Administrator functions -- either RDP or Console.

This is a MANUAL process; YOU have to initiate it.


YES. When you set up a new folder you can set up the access by user. (Those accesses can be set up either under the user setup or the Shared Folder setup. Result is the same either way.) Be sure to restart after changing the permissions.

----------------

To back up the Client Backup Database take a look at the BDBB Add-In. This is also a manual process.

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To set up an AUTOMATED backup take a look at the process outlined at http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3261. This can be automated to the schedule you desire. Backups can be set up for any level of Sub-Folders. Targets can be backup drives OR unmanaged drives. You get a lot of control because you get to write the script with the backup logic. The other downside it that there is no "archive" to the saving of the Shared Folders -- just a single copy as it existed at the time ir was scheduled to be backed up.

ALL of these are incremental. First operation takes considerable time, especially if you are backing up a lot of data. Subsequent backups are MUCH faster. (If backing up the Client Backup Database any backup on Sunday will take a lot of time as the database cleanup occurs during the Sunday maintenance (backup) window and almost ALL the data files get updated (changed) so there is a lot of incremental change! (Like 95+% change!)

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

wow, thanks again for yet another detailed, informative reply.

where are these client backup database stored on the MSS? in a folder or somewhere else?

i assume you can't just point it to save it to a share folder with folder dupe ON and thus, creating an automatic backup of the backup, can you?

thanks again, im adding my new HDD in there tonight!

I think you may find this link interesting with regards to backing up the client backup database.
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/wiki/index.php/WHS_BDBB

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

thanks. do you or anyone here stream a lot and have folder dupe on?

i am a BIG media streamer. i own a sonos system that streams music from my MSS all the time and in addition, stream blu ray movies from the MSS to my ps3

im worried about issues with streaming and folder dupe on. should i be worried or will i be fine?

how easy is it to format the new HDD and change it to unmanaged if i dont like folder dupe?

and finally, for an unmanaged drive, are its contents scanned by the WHS' AV program even though it's not being managed by WHS at all? what if my main system drive fails, do i just replace it with a new HD and then afterwards, the contents of my unmanaged drive will be available? how is an unmanaged drive accessed? can you just access it thru windows explorer on your computer? will it be recognizeable in RDP to the MSS?

THANKS!

YES. You should be fine with a possible exception of when balancing occurs just after saving a LARGE amount of data. I have an EX475 with 1640 processor. I have yet to see an impact on music. I have only been streaming video about a month and have not had any problems there -- but I have not duplicated a bunch of large files while viewing that I an aware of.


Just click on the REMOVE drive (same place upu ADD it). When the operation is complete it is an unmanaged drive.


This is a function of how you set up your AV software. Generally there is an "all local drives" option that would handle the addition of new drives without yourmanual intervention.


Do not understand the question. There are entries in the wiki for replacing system drives. I am not sure how you are relating this to unmanaged drives. (REMEMBER, a Susyem Drive MUST be in that bottom slot on an MSS -- and the FIRST drive in a DIY system.


Set it up to be shared via the disk properties (using Remote Desktop). Then YES and YES to the last two questions. I believe it wall also show up in your Shared Folder -- as a drive.)

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

so there's no way to somehow clone the system drive to another drive and then replace it, without having to redo your MSS options/configuration?

I use YMBOC's "How to clone a system drive" tutorial and I do it all the time and never lose any settings. I currently run a 64Gig SSD on my OEM system and have done switches on my MSS units going from small drives to large drives and going from large drives to small drives viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6826

_________________
HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server