I have had a EX495 running for over 18 months (give or take) with no problems whatsoever. Until last night that is.
I noticed my PC was unable to access my EX495. I went and noticed the Health Status Indicator light on the front was solid red. Based on this link "http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01764555&product=3969718" it states it is a Operating system failure. Well I rebooted the server and it came back online fine. Well after a few hours or so it lost network connectivity once again. Repeat a few times till finally I realized I had to try and recover the system. Well I threw in the System Recovery CD into my laptop, connected an ethernet cable from PC directly to EX495. I was able to reboot ex495 then push in the Status Recovery button and get to restore the server. (losing all user accounts etc...) I then was able to log back in and patch the server and setup old user accounts again. Within no time my PC lost connectivity again and the Health Status Indicator light was solid red again. WTF!!!


So that is where I am. I have two drives in my system. 1.5TB in Bottom slot and one above it. Had my data on both.

What is my best plan of action going forward?
I want to ensure I don't lose my data first and foremost. So with that in consideration what is the best option?

Here is what I am guessing. I yank the bottom drive (I believe that is the one with the OS) while EX495 is powered off.
Replace it with the other drive in the system. Reboot and do a server recovery attempt. My only fear here is if I do that I could possibly lose my data. I want to be 100% sure that is not the case before I do it.

Is it worth pulling my drive and trying to backup data elsewhere first? If so is there any tricks to it? Can I hook it up to my PC and just pull the data off it like an external drive?

Please advise. Thanks...

See here

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NatasNJ,

My EX490 ran for hours at a time before going red light too, and installing the "Home Server SMART" addin helped me realize the OS disk (bottom slot #1) was suffering from bad sector errors. I replaced the OS disk, and did not move or otherwise dink with my 2 data drives (slot #2 and #3).

Others can confirm, but I understand the recovery process can and will reformat a disk in slot #1, but the recovery process will respect and try to preserve data on disks in slots #2-4. As such, do NOT put your data disk into slot #1 !!!

--Siletzspey

Thanks. Question is what is best deal on a replacement drive?
I think my two drives are 1.5TB Seagate 7200RPM.

Can I go with a 2TB as my OS drive and 1.5TB as my secondary drive?


I ask because Amazon has a 2TB for $99. The 1.5TB is $131.
Any suggestions on best place to get replacement drive (brand/cost) please advise.

Thanks again...

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-3-5-Inch-I"nternal-ST2000DL003/dp/B004CCS266/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1324307259&sr=1-1&tag=5336432779-20

I have a SATA to USB adapter that I was going to connect my 2nd (data) drive to my PC and try and dump all the data from it before moving forward with any type of recovery.

Can someone post a link to the process on how to go about doing this data backup? Not sure if there is some specific rules/details on seeing the drive on my PC, where the data "should" be stored, etc...

Thanks.

You posted this question twice; I posted an answer over here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11759

I'll reiterate just a couple points here that I made in my original reply. Priority One is determining which disk is failing. The EX4xx servers all are capable of locking up when a data disk fails. Sure it could be the system disk, but it could also be the data disk. I have two approaches to help you out there. The first involves installing a SMART add-in for WHS, if you can get the server rebooted and up again. It only needs to be up for 10-15 minutes. The add-in installs quickly and will tell you right away if there's a problem on any disk(s). If you can't get that far, install HD Sentinel on a PC and use your SATA-to-USB adapter and hook each disk to the PC. HD Sentinel will examine the SMART data and tell you if there are any issues with a given disk.

If you're not sure how to interpret what either tool reports back, post your results here (you can post screen shots).

Each of the above mentioned tools will highlight the most common signs of hard drive failure, including bad sectors, pending bad sectors, end-to-end errors, reallocation event count, spin retries and offline uncorrectable sector count.

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Matt Sawyer
Owner, Dojo North Software, LLC

HP EX490, 4GB, E5300, 15TB - Server 2012 - Sharing and Streaming
HP EX487, 4GB, E5300, 13TB - Server 2012 Essentials - Backups