WHS 2011 has been working just fine for me almost all of the time, including when serving iso's to my HTPC to enjoy HD video.

However, for reasons I can't figure out, it tends to stutter just after midnight when serving those same files. I've checked and double checked, and made sure that WHS 2011 is not set to do any of the client computer backups at midnight (I set it to do those @ 3am). The data pool in my WHS is a RAID 6 array run by an Areca 1231ML PCIx8 card, and I'm unaware of it running any scheduled processes at midnight, but I admit I could be wrong there.

Writing this it occurs to me to see if the HTPC is doing something particularly strenuous at midnight, but I can't think of anything it would do that would cripple it so obviously, and I'll try to "localize" the problem to the WHS by remembering to try watching the same video served to my home office PC (rather than the HTPC) the next time this happens.

But are there any other ideas that come to anyone's mind?

On a related note, I have the option (at no cost) to change my current WHS 2011 processor & memory from its current 4-core/4GB to an 8-core/12GB setup. If I went to the trouble, could I expect any performance increases from doing so? I admit I don't do any transcoding on the server itself.

If you have the OS being backed up then it will occur twice a day at 12am and 12pm. You can change those times if configured to see if you get different results.

I have 8 GB RAM in my server when it was running WHS2011 and it only utilized just over 2 GB so I am not sure what improvement you will see with the extra RAM but if you can get it who knows maybe in future you may make use of it. Not sure your server will utilize all those cores. I have an 8 core processor in my desktop not because I needed it at the time but felt down the road it may come in useful. Not quite sure how you would make use of it in a server but I imagine if you have lots of RAM and CPU Power you could do some very cool virtualization something I don't mess with but many others do.

_________________
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 for your reply. I'll try that as soon as I can. Right now the Areca card is extending the array (I added another 2TB HDD), and unfortunately, it's going so slowly that it looks like it may be late next week before it's done! I'm using the Western Digital "Green" 2TB HDDs, bought some time ago, before their more NAS/RAID-oriented "Red" HDDs became popular, and if I understand what I've read correctly, those "Red" HDDs have a more appropriate TLER for this use case and wouldn't take so much time for this sort of operation. Too late for me to change HDDs now - I'm not buying any more!

And to compound my error, I started this operation from the RAID card's BIOS at startup (rather than accessing it through its ethernet port while WHS 2011 was already up and running); now, I don't feel that confident in the Areca's ability to correctly resume the expansion operation if I interrupt the process now and reboot; I fear I would have to start all over again. Anybody chime right on in if you know better about that!

Anyway, when that's all done I'll try out your suggestion and report back here.

Problem with RAID and consumer drives is its like playing with fire as you risk these drives dropping out. Best to use drives designed to work within a RAID Array. RAID is faster then a Drive Pooling solution but I have to tell you that running a pooling solution like StableBitDrive pool allows you to easily work with consumer grade drives and is a very user friendly solution too but its not as fast as a RAID Solution.

Once you get your Array back in working order I recommend you backup your most important data because if your Array Fails you will lose your data and the drives would not be readable on another computer. So sometimes the slower solution is the best way to go but one should have a backup of their important data in a location other than the server.

_________________
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 hear you. I console myself with the RAID 6 feature that allows two HDDs to fail and still maintain the data, plus I keep a third "safety" HDD attached to the array as a hot spare at all times. I spent too much on too many of these "Green" HDDs to abandon them now, and in addition, according to Western Digital, for an array consisting of more than five HDDs, they actually recommend their more expensive datacenter "Se" HDDs rather than their "Red" HDDs, the latter apparently being meant for a small NAS with less than six HDDs. If I were to make this change, purchasing the minimum six new 4TB "Se" HDDs (to maintain 12TB of data, two parity HDDs and one hot-swap) from Amazon would require $1,646.64 that I'm not prepared to spend right now.

I understand that you're saying that using a 3rd-party software solution such as Drive Bender or Drive Pool will make using my consumer-grade "Green" HDDs easier, but will doing so actually increase the data reliability as compared to a RAID 6 array? If I read correctly, the problem lies mainly with the RAID controller itself, which may prematurely decide to dump out one of the HDDs as a failed HDD, even though that HDD may just need more time to recover its bad sector(s). Is it true that a Drive Bender-type of solution will not exhibit this problem?

I don't use Drive Bender I use Stablebit Drive Pool and its served me extremely well. I have made the mistake on pulling the wrong drive out or my server and its not created a major issue for me, once the drive is seen again things return to normal fairly quickly. I also use HomeServerSMART to monitor my drive health to help me avoid issues with my drives so that I can remove them before a predictable failure so I rarely have issues on my server and I have had as many as 23 or 24 drives running in my server. With the newer 4TB drives I have been using I have been able to reduce the drive compliment down to 17 or 18 and repurpose those other drives for other things.

I have no intention on using RAID other then RAID 1 Mirror for System Drives but I only have one server a WHS2011 server running with this type of a setup but for its Storage Pool I use StableBit Drive Pool. Do not get me wrong I do not fault anyone for wanting to use RAID but to do it properly can get very expensive very fast. I understand you have an investment in your Green Drives and would like to run them. I stopped buying Green Drives a couple years ago and some are still around here but the majority I have given away to friends and family. I have some here which failed shortly after their warranty period expired. When I buy drives I wait for them to go on sale then I will purchase 1-4 at a time and if there is a limit on how many you can buy I bring friends with me to help me get the quantity I desire. Since April I have been buying 4TB drives for my server and pulling my older drives out to retire them from my server. I have enough capacity so that if a drive does fail its not a big deal to pull it which for me means StableBit Drive Pool is actually more flexible then a RAID solution but doesn't have the speed of RAID but to achieve true speed you actually need HARDWARE RAID which as I said gets expensive real fast.

_________________
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