I've been using my EX495 for a while w/ no issues. I've used it mainly for OSX. A while back Time Machine started to slowly fail so I've been using strictly as a NAS.

Last week, I noticed that it started to randomly drop off the network. The only way to make it come back is to reboot the EX495 but even then, it's only alive for maybe 15 minutes.

When I use the MSS Client, I see a 'Validation Error'. Other points of interest:

1) When the EX495 isn't seen on the network, I can still ping it. I even used an iOS tool and the Server Name still shows up. Somehow, that leads me to believe that the system drive 'kind of' works because it still connects to the network.

2) I tried to see I could connect using a Win7 PC. It can 'see' the server and shows the the drive name but I can't log into the drive. So this tells me that it's not specifically a problem on OSX.

3) I've seen the same problem on Snow Leopard on Intel, Lion on Intel and Tiger on PPC, so I know it's not specific to the latest versions of OSX. I even pulled up an old Hackintosh w/ a rarely updated OS and it also has the problem.

I've got a Drobo so I do have a place to put all the data, but I can't get the EX495 to stay alive long enough to copy files.

Any ideas how to either fix this or get my files off?

Following the advice of another thread, I pulled the drives one by one to see if I could keep it on the network longer. Didn't make much diff.

However, I did use the advice of pulling the drives and running CHKDSK on them. Out of 3 drives so far, 2 drives allowed themselves to be 'checked/fixed'. A 3rd was visible on Explorer but when I ran the check, the window closed. I'm going to check all 4 drives and then try to reboot. At the least, the 3rd drive does become visible so it's not completely corrupted. If I don't get far, I may take another step and run SPINRITE on all 4 drives.

One thing that comes to mind is a failing or sensitive network switch or port which can occur when the Switch is fully populated and it can drive you crazy too. Sometimes these issue can occur when a network cable is having connectivity issues caused by a bad crimp or if the cable at one time or another was bent too many times because solid wires tend to be brittle and can break easily. So sometimes just changing out a cable is all that is needed. If the server is not connected directly to the router your best bet would be to move it closer to the router and make the network connection that way while keeping the network cable issue in mind for swapping out.

This of course does not rule out the possibility that the LAN Port on your EX495 is not the issue but you do need to rule out the simpler things first because they are the easiest to rule out and elliminate.

You do not need your server to move your data off the Storage Pool disks although it does make it simpler to do so. If you have a computer in the home capable of reading NTFS Formatted disks then you can connect the actual storage pool drives to that computer and move the data off them to the location of your choice. You would need to set the computer that your connecting the drives to, to be able to see hidden files and folders and then you will see the hidden foler DE which will contain your data and then you can just transfer the data.

The Drobo's take RAID to a new level of simplicity and I hope your Drobo unit serves you well for many years. I also hope you share your future experiences with the Drobo to allow others to see if it might be a storage solution for them to consider.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

You might want to download WindowSmart2012 and install it on the client your working with. This will give you a good picture of the health of your drives. http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net/

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Thanks Comp1962 for the ideas.

I'm pretty well versed in networking, it's what I do for work (and home unfortunately...) The EX495 is in a space where it's not moved at all, so I doubt there's a cable issue. I had the same thought w/ the switches (and mine are stacked at home) so I moved the EX495 to the main 24-port switch so that it was on the same subnet as my main Mac. No changes to the results. Yeah, it could be the NIC on the EX495 but it doesn't explain why I can still ping the EX495 and still get the correct Server Name to appear and respond properly. If the NIC died, I would've expected it to disappear. I know weird stuff can happen, and I've seen it, but not like this. Though it could still happen.

Thanks for the hidden files tip. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't see the files. I had a feeling they were there since CHKDSK was scanning files. I may have to do that after this first CHKDSK cycle, just to make sure I remove some data before the drive(s) take a hike. It didn't occur to me to enable hidden files, I use OSX so much, I now get lost using Windows.

My Drobo FS experience has been quite good. I've kept both the Drobo FS and EX495 running and slowly moving critical files to the Drobo. I haven't had issues w/ the Drobo and I'm happy that it's SO much faster than the EX495. I don't think I'll miss much of the EX495 features, especially since most of these have been slowing failing over the years. It is a bit quieter too. I also tried Lion and the Drobo shows up w/o even installing the Dashboard so that's good too.

Too bad the EX495 is dying. It's been a good product for me but it's this kind of failure that I've been fearing. At least on the Drobo, all I have to do is look for that red light and swap out for an empty drive. The big thing I'd like to see on Drobo (will never happen) is emulate the folder concept of WHS so I could choose folders that are NOT duplicated. There are some pieces of data (large) that I don't need duplicated. Then I don't have to waste 1/2 the drive space. But I'll take the ease of use any day.

BTW, the biggest reason I need this EX495 back up is because of iTunes. My entire library is synced to the EX495. I can't just copy the files to Drobo because iTunes doesn't work that way. I have migrate the entire library to another network volume and that takes days. I need to do it this way to keep the playlists and tagging intact, w/o having to resort to complicated XML editing. One of the painful Apple taxes.

So for iTunes all you really need to do is pull the music files off your servers storage pool disk onto a client and have iTunes pull the files in then they should move over to the Drobo.

As for the files you do not want duplicated you might want to look into a Port Multiplier connected to a client or another NAS just for those types of files you want to have access to by not duplicated.

Doesn't the Drobo have options to reserve space for other things? I know it can reserve space for drive failures but I also recall it will reserve space for NTFS but I could be confusing the space reservation feature and function. I obviously do not have a Drobo here but have often looked at them in the past and the part which has always kept me from purchasing one is if the hardware itself failed the only way to get access to my data would be to replace the Drobo with another one where as with WHS I could still pull my data off the drives. WHS is slow compared to a Drobo and running a Drobo is less complicated, faster and supports the larger than 2TB drives so its also attractive.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

I was heavily into the Drobo world until the Drobo FS. I then moved to 2 WHS v1 systems (Acer H340 and HP EX490) which I keep in sync using synctoy. I find the WHS systems much faster than the FS which I sold. Perhaps it depends on what you do. The Drobos are really nice and simple and I never worried about losing data. But I really like WHS and have an Acer RC111 (WHS 2011 based) on order to replace one of the WHS systems. Given the recent Microsoft moves I am now rethinking this. Perhaps a move to a Synology NAS. Just don't know. Does it make sense to move to WHS2011 on new hardware given the recent announcements?

The problem I have with NAS units is the inability to run a lot of things on them, as well as the ext() file systems.

The Drobo FS isn't an ideal iTunes server.

Philip

Hey pmcd,

Only you can answer if WHS2011 is right for you. If you have a 64bit client that meets the minimum requirements I would say download it and install it and take it for a test drive to see what you think of it. I built my server named Highlander a year ago and I have no regrets. I still run WHS v1 because I know it works well but I have to tell you that I am very impressed with WHS2011 running with Stablebit Drive Pool but time will tell how Stablebit Drive pool actually works over time.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

I have a Mac Mini that's our main computer. It runs the master iTunes library, along w/ Plex and a bunch of other things. In this way, Drobo FS works fine. Yeah, I could 'save' a machine by using the EX495 but it's become so unreliable.

I did look at Synology and QNAP but it's WAY more expensive and has features that I don't really care about. It's sad that there's really no consumer-level multi-bay solution outside of Drobo now. DLink, Netgear, iOMega only have 2 bays. PLUS, none of those vendors support their hardware for more than 2 years. They expect people to just replace.

EX495 question. I'm in the process of pulling files off and moving them to Drobo. I'm guessing there's a file somewhere that's corrupted or on a bad sector. My thought is that I could remove the files that I don't need, thereby maybe removing the offending file from the file system. If I do that to the drive directly when it's not in the EX495, will I have problems when I install it back into the EX495? I can remove almost everything from all the disks, leaving on the iTunes files. Those iTunes files are on a folder that is specifically NOT shared, so I'm guessing that it's not 'striped' (for lack of a better WHS term) across drives. Thoughts?

When your working with your storage pool drives outside the server you should never alter anything to keep the Storage Pool Integrity in good working order.

What I suggest you do if you have not done so already is to perfrom a CHKDSK /r on your storage pool drives and allow Windows to perform the necessary repairs on the drives. This will keep things working properly when you reinstall the drives in your server if you chose to do so.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Thanks Comp1962. Yes, I have been running Chkdsk on my drives the past few days. W/ 2x 1TB and 2x 2TB drives, it took a while. Probably moreso because I had to use my Parallels VM for Win7 on a Mac Mini, as that's my most powerful PC. I do have a Hackintosh Dell Mini 9 running Win7 but it's woefully slow.

I did the 3 non-system drives first. At first, 1 drive did not even allow me to run CHKDSK, the connection kept dropping. I thought that might be the offending drive but it was more likely a poor connection to my USB SATA adapter. I ran all 3 'data' drives and CHKDSK found no issues. Then yesterday I ran the original 1TB system drive that came with the EX945. This morning it completed, reporting that it did in fact find errors and fixed them. So I put everything back and let it run for about 2 hours. I'm at work so I logged in with Logmein and lo and behold, it's still running. So now I'm moving files slowly off it and putting it onto the Drobo.

Looks like the system drive was the offending culprit. I don't know if it's 'just' a data corruption issue or a bad sector. However, I don't want to take a risk w/ my data, hence the migration to the Drobo. I do want to still make use of the EX945 though. Any suggestions on the best way to keep the EX495 environment and 'copy' the system drive? Can I just 'dd' the existing system drive onto a new 1TB? My plan is to decommission the EX495's 2x 2TB HDDs and move them to the Drobo. But I'll still have 2x 1TB in the EX495.

Thanks for the help. I can breathe now...

Hard Drives are funny thing they can be find one day and not the next while others degrade over long periods of time. I imagine one could write a book on things which can cause hard drive issues. Some issues are preventable others are not. Last night when a T-Storm passed through and briefly interupted the power I tell you honestly all I could think about was those running computers without a UPS which when setup properly will not only keep your computers or servers running but properly instruct them to shut down. Imagine everyone in my area who was using a computer and the power goes out and for some it can corrupt a hard drive if it were being written to during the power failure. Again preventable

Knowing the actual health info for your drives also allows you in most cases ample time to address and replace drives with issues on your terms not after the fact. Best way to do this is to install HomeServerSmart on you server to help you keep an eye on the drives. http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net/

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8