Hey everyone, i know its been a while since i have been around. I have been crazy busy with work and school. I'm having issues with my system drive on my EX487. I have ran check disk numerous time but it seems the hard drive crashing once a day. end of story i need a new drive.

Then i remembered this post http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6826 by ymboc.

I didnt know if that would work for the system drive. or if it would be safer just to run the recovery on it.

I have 4TB of data on my server atm and i would greatly enjoy to not lose all of it. I'm pretty sure a new install will cause me to delete all my data, unless there is some workaround that I'm not aware of.

I'm open for best suggestions. I'm currently running 3.0 on the server.

If you need anything else let me know i will provide it.

Thanks.

These are the logs I'm getting.




and the main one.



but.... I run chkntfs and i get this.

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STOCK EX487 6.5TB

Nothing... HMM okay let me just ask this.

Do you think it would be better to do a system recovery so i have a fresh clean OS or should i just mirror the disk and go back to work.

I have also been looking into Windows Home Server 2011 over the past few days. Do you think it actually worth upgrading to this?

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STOCK EX487 6.5TB

Get the Home Server SMART Add-In and check the health of your drives. If the system drive is indeed bad (which it sounds likely) then you can replace it and perform a Server Recovery. As long as your data is Duplicated on the server you shouldn't lose any data, though you may lose some or all of your client PC backups. Cloning your system drive is possible even with bad sectors, I did that exact thing several months ago and relayed my experience in ymboc's forum post.

There's plenty of discussions on WHS 2011, search for those and review the WHS 2011 General forum, then post any specific questions you have there.

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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?

You're saying that even though the system drive that's failing. I know its failing 1/2 the time i cant even open up my management console anymore unless i do a hard reboot.

I can take the drive out & replace it with a new one. Do a system recovery and I will not lose any data other then what was on the old system drive? The only down fall would be that I would lose all configurations correct?

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STOCK EX487 6.5TB

WHS can lock up if non-system drives are failing, but most commonly if you are seeing lockups its the system drive. It is in your best interest to make sure, so again I suggest you get the Home Server SMART Add-In to verify your assumption.

The HP help files, along with the Wiki and Search features of this site will answer your Server Recovery question and many more.
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/wiki/in ... ecovery%3F

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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 Alex, I do have the Home Server SMART Add-In. I will have to wait until i get home to reboot the server to check.

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STOCK EX487 6.5TB

The WHS version is great however in the event that you are unable to get the ADD-IN installed then download and install WindowSMART 2012 as it does the same thing but runs on the client which means you have to connect the drives you want to check out to that client.

For more information check out the following linkk: http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net/

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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

Its definitely disk 0 My OS disk. 4125 back sectors...

Reallocation event count failed it has a value of 1

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STOCK EX487 6.5TB

After reviewing pros and cons of windows home server 2011 I'm doing to plung in and upgrade. The only real downfall is see is the removale of DE. I would just go for a RAID 5 if this was a new build the only downfall would be that each drive is differnt is size so I would get the full use of each drive, and each drive would need to be formated. I think that drive bender is a good solution for the removal of DE so my plan is to use that.

Current my system is 6.4 TB using 4TB. I don't have a problem losing any backups but I believe. Thays only 500GB of data. Movies TV shows and pictures I have put 4 years of work into anf I would greatly enjoy not losing them.

Picture I will backup to my PC since those are priceless

Currently I do have the 2TB drive that will go into the system but I'm trying to decide if I should back as much data as I can to that before I proceed.

What do other suspect the best way of migration would be? Is there an option to UPgrade current system (power pack 3) to 2011?

Thanks for your time

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STOCK EX487 6.5TB

If it were me I would set the current storage pool drives aside install the new System Drive and install the new OS. I have no experience with Drive Bender as I use Stablebit Drive Pool but that doesn't mean its better its just thats what I have been using. If it were me I would get a couple new drives to get the server started and simply copy the data off the existing storage pool drives then once the data is moved I would then format and install them to the new server storage pool. This would mean you would end up with a couple extra drives but once can never have enough drives but this really depends on your storage needs.

The one thing about WHS2011 is when you install a new drive thats already been formatted you can actually read it and move data from the original storage pool drive to the new Drive Bender Storage Pool Drives but to see the data you will need to make certain the server or client the drives are connected to can display hidden files and folders and the files you would be looking for are in the DE Folder.

Actually there is not right or wrong approach to this task it all boils down to how comfortable you are with moving your data and you may of course not want to purchase additional drives to help you but if you have no objection to that I can tell you it will make your task much easier but its your money not mines so the choice is yours to make.

Personally I would not entertain installing WHS2011 on an HP MSS but others have and many have attempted to go back to WHS v1 only to find out that on EX47x and EX48x had issues because something went wrong with their SMI Area so they were unable to install WHS v1 back into their servers. I am not sure why this happend but if you search the forums you should be able to read what others have had to say about. What I do recommend you do is before you jump into installing WHS2011 that you make an effort to copy the contents of the Hidden SMI Area by disableing the HPMediaSmart Service to expose it then copy the contents of the area to a safe location just incase you find you need it in the future.

I would also urge you to consider installing a DEBUG Board to better help you with the installation of WHS2011 and troubleshooting later. While you can perform a blind WHS2011 install some have partially installed WHS2011 using a client then finish installing it on the server end. While this may appear to be a cost effective way to install the OS it only takes a mistake to find out you need to do it again so the DEBUG Board and an External USB Connect DVD Drive will make the task much easier.

Anyway if I were you I would take the time to read what others have written about installing WHS2011 on their HP MSS Servers particularly your model. I am not trying to discourage you but to bring to your attention of the potential issues you may encounter and I for one would hate to see you one day post that you wanted to go back to WHS v1 but were unable to perform the recovery as others have.

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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

Some great points. Thanks I value good feed back. I think you're 100% correct. I did get a little excited.

Do they allow valuation peroids of 2011?

Right now I will just keep v1 running on my MMS. Then if possible run a virtual server of 2011 with a few virtual client on my pc. I will spec it out close as I can to my MMS. This should give me a good idea on what I should do.

At that point I will get new drive to help the migration.

Now where I'm stuck is. Recovery.

On important files I have DE enabled. Videos and other personal data I had to turn it off since I didn't have enough free space to keep it up.

If I put in the new disk and do a recovery I'm sure I have a 99% chance to lose all data that's not douped.


Which is best.
Run recovery with current failing drive, then mirror the drive with the process stated above.

Pop out current drive and run the recovery on the new drive then copy the files back to the server over the network.

Just mirror old hard drive to new hard drive and pop it in.

I think option 2 would be the best, but I don't know if tgmhe whole file is stored on that drive or only a partial.

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STOCK EX487 6.5TB

Its always good to make your data your #1 Priority and now is a good time to establish if your data is really backed up or not.

What I mean by backed up is that the data exists in more than one location which is not to be confused with duplication. So a backup means your data would exist in 2 or more physical locations.

As a precaution you might want to create a backup of the data which exists on your storage pool drives which is always a good excercise but one thats can also be time consuming.

Ok with the backup issue now addressed what I can tell you is that if you perform a Server Recovery the data on your storage pool drives will be left alone and will be there after the recovery process is complete. For a Server Recovery to be successful your storage pool drives should be in good condition and be installed in your server so that WHS can see them.

Now if you perform a Factory Recovery then all the installed storage pool drives will be formatted so make certain you do select Server Recovery which will preserver your data.

After the initial recovery is complete and you have named and password protected your server you will need to download all the HP and Microsoft Updates and ignore any alerts and warnings that the Client Backup Database is corrupt because those alerts and warnings will go away once the updates have been installed.

After the updates are done then you will need to recreate the user accounts, setup remote access and reinstall any ADD-INs or 3rd Party Software you may have been running and you will be good to go.

As for WHS2011 you might just want to pickup a copy and set it up on another computer to see if you like it or not leaving your EX48x to do the job it has been doing. WHS 2011 cost less than $50 but you may also want to seek out alternate solutions to meet your future needs for the time when your current server no longer meets those needs but there is still alot of life left in WHS v1 but I am not certain how well it will backup Win8 but thats for others to determine down the road.

Good Luck and let me know if you have any questions or concerns before you begin the recovery process. Oh yea one cool thing is that with a clean drive installed in the bottom bay your server should automatically boot into its recovery mode so there is no need to muck around with the Status Reset Button.

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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,
I have done a recovery successfully once before. I didn't lose any data. My main concern is all the data that was one the drive that I'm removing will be gone. Everything that was not in the DE folder Moved to my PC to recover the data once complete, and its my understanding that anything inside of the DE folder will be recreated.

I guess All i can do is wait and see. just got done installing all software so its time to do the recovery. Wish me luck.

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STOCK EX487 6.5TB

Quick question. When it was updating it said don't forget your password you will need it to recover your files after a system restore. Where do I do this. Maybe I missed something. I just finished the system restore but my video/music.... all of the folders say empty.

I just realized I forgot to turn my 2 external drives back on.... did that just wipe all my shares?

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STOCK EX487 6.5TB

WHS uses the System drive as the last place to store data. While I understand there is a high amount of bad sectors on the original drive but you might still be able to read the drive and if so then make certain the client your using is set to see hidden files and folders. Then look in the hidden folder DE and there you will find any files stored on the drive.

As I mentioned previously WHS will need to see all your storage pool drives for the Server Recovery to be successful. During the recovery WHS will look at all the attached storage pool drives and rebuild the storage pool based on the tombstone files. I believe you will need to perform another Server Recovery so WHS will see all your Storage Pool Drives. You may want to also get a 2nd opinion on this.

_________________
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