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PostPosted: Tue Oct 29, 2013 11:48 am 
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I have Acer H340 with 4x1TB (all same model/size). I have been having problems with high HD activity on my WHS and very slow access to my PC .. so I decided to run the balancer over night. Used space on each drive prior to balance .. 0/40%, 1/85%, 2/69%, 3/65%. These where much higher before I off loaded a bunch of data/files. Each drive was in the red before the offload. This morning the messages shown (in the command window) had 3 drives at 97% done and disk0 was 34%. The messages showed zero activity and the balancer was turning off/on the drive migrator ... I ctrl-C the process and the command window disappeared. The balancer info said that if the process was cancelled c:\fake & D:\fs\*\fake directories should be deleted. I was very leery about deleting anything .. so I went forward cautiously. I deleted the C:\fake directory as it had a bunch of files with names that made no sense to me. The D:\FS directory had 3 sub-directories within it 'O', 'U' & 'W'. Looking at my shares, it appeared all the files where there ... I would learn later, that the file explorer showed the files (with dates & sizes), but these files where not complete files. I started by deleted the same sub-folder in each of the O/U/W folders and could see the files still in the shares .. I assumed all was ok, so I started to delete the files in the 'O' & 'U' subfolders ... then I decided to see if the files in shares where still ok ... surprise .. the files in the shares would not open. I copied them to a USB drive and tried to open on my PC .. no go. I then looked on the server storage on the WHS console and virtually everything is gone. I was able to figure out that the 'W' subfolder contains most of my files and they appear to still work (I opened a few and they worked). I am now copying as many files as I can off the WHS on to an external drive. I tried a eSata drive, but it didn't recognize it, so I am using USB 2.0 .. very slow.
After all this .. I am just asking anyone what I can do to recover ... and WTF happened !!!


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 29, 2013 12:19 pm 
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I have never used the drive balancer in other than a hp ex490.
But you did not state what os you use nor what options you used.
The fake directory is usually just that.
It writes fake data to the drives selected and allows the normal whsv1 os to move the data.
I is possible that you reacted to quickly and the os has not finished moving the files..
It takes time for the os to move the files.
Possibly a day or two.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 29, 2013 6:17 pm 
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What are the O/U/W subfolders ?


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 29, 2013 6:30 pm 
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Not any help for your problem, but a thought I had.
Back in the beginning I tried the drive balancer, that was back when everybody thought it was bad if share files were on the system drive and a lot of people were using it to (force move files off the system drive) I think later on it was decided that it was not that harmful to have files on the system drive so people quit using it, but I do remember a few people had some bad experiences with it.

What I found worked best was to keep a clean/lean system and don't mess with it and it worked pretty good all by itself.

I do not have the Acer H340 and don't know what the specs are (cpu) (memory) but I believe that a clean load (you may be at a great spot to do that) and don't load anything you don't need and keep it clean and lean should help it run good.

I guess what I'm saying is, If I was you, I would take this opportunity (your files are off the server) to do a clean load, setup the must have stuff and then copy back your files. Might even be a good time to put in a couple of new 2tb drives.

Just thinking, hope this helps.
I have 2 x510's and I have SMART/PORT FORWARD/SERVIIO/SYNCTOY for addins and I leave them alone, one syncs to the other and all is good.

Goodluck

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 3:50 am 
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Hello, with a hope that somebody remember...

I used Drive Balancer way back,and I remember I was very pleased with the result. Now I replaced a 1TB drive with a 2TB to get more space. I migrated out the existing drive with the result of data being moved to System Drive, understandable.

Now with the new drive I'd like to go back to where I was, no data on System Drive and a nice and even spread over the three Data Drives.

I have now runned Drive Balancer for days, finally stopping it deleting all Fake Files, and I still have data on System Drive, and the new drive is only used for 42%. The other two still sits at 98/97%.

Any ideas,something I am overseeing here?

So, just to give a clear picture, I am at this point:

Drive 0 1TB 52% (SYS)
Drive 1 2TB 98%
Drive 2 1TB 97%
Drive3 2TB 42%


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 2:50 pm 
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Well I have not used the balancer in years for the same reasons Gardian stated it really is not needed since the landing zone went away.
Eventually DE will start to balance the drives as one fills up.
The big imbalance is usually due to adding a new pool drive, where it is replaced for the same size or larger.
WHS1 will just ignore the new drive till the existing drive or drives start to fill up.
Then eventually it will start to migrate files
If all the drives were the same from the beginning then it probably will be close.
But close is subjective meaning there could be a big difference from one drive to the othe still.

You did not say what system or os you are using it on.
That would help.
But I only used it to get data off the drivebay 0 D:/data partition.
I never cared about the other pool drives.

As long as you have folder duplication turned on for all your folders you shoud be okay if the system drive "drive 0" dies.

Even if you don't when you replace your system drive using the recovery not reset method on the cd it should rebuild what are called tomestones and bring back your data.

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 3:01 pm 
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PS,
I don't recall fake files to manually delete.
What it does is write 0 data filesto the drive cylinders to make it appear full then de takes over and moves the excess to other drives.

Maybe you picked a different option than I have used in the past.

But bear in mind a 1 tb drive where the os is just 20GB is a lot of data to move if it is full.
It may take more than a few days.

It does not do it in one pass, it will move a bit then sit idle then move some more.
Rinse and repeat.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 12:22 am 
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Thanks, well I will let it run then, I just don't recall this extensive time.

The main purpose for me is to move data off the system drive, as I plan to clone that later and want as little as possible to handle.


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:52 am 
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Hello again, it has been many years since I used the drive balancer but I do remember it did not work correctly the first time I tried it, then after a reboot, it seemed to start working. It did take a long time as I remember, at some point in the next few days/nights I checked it and it was done and closed itself. Also, using/access the system will slow the process, so while it's working you most likely want to keep every off of it so it can work uninterrupted.
I do remember seeing it move some files, then stop, then move some more and so on.

But, just my 2 cents.
The 2 things I wouldn't do is "Clone" and use "Drive Balancer" both are not supported and I believe just not good ideas.
Drive Balancer just thrashes the drives and a clone is dicey at best if you can get it to work.

But your rig, your rules :-)

I would certainly try rebooting the server and then read the options on drive balancer closely and make sure you are picking the correct choice, I remember I was a little unsure which one to pick back in the day. And I believe there were two versions of drive balancer, the first one had some problems and the second one worked lots better. I just looked and the version I have is 1.06.

Anyway, Good Luck to whatever you decide and enjoy.

Let us know how it comes out, it will be helpful for others.

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:46 am 
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So; here's a little report on what happened, for me this time.

I left Drive Balancer running for four days before I stopped it and I was quite dissapointed with the result, the change was just a couple of % data moved across to the desired disc. I find this strange as I have a totally different memory from last time i used it, several years ago.

Nevertheless, I am now in a much better position, although with some manual tricks. What I did was turn off duplication to offload data. Then I actually moved data off the server, to a WS, and copied it back. The server then filled up the drives as I wanted, and finally I turned duplication on again. The result is that I now have relatively balanced drives again.

I should add that I have an offline backup, so even though it sounds a bit risky moving large amounts of data around, I felt relatively safe.

Then to the cloning, the reason why I am looking to clone the system drive is because I get more and more frequent warnings that my frive is unhealthy and I have repair the volume. This makes me worried I will come to a situation where the server just dies, and I have to rebuild from scratch. My hope is to prevent this by, with time on my hand, and with some control, clone the drive now. Understand it carries some risk, but so would a server crash.

I see you advice against this, what would be a viable option in my situation?

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 2:28 pm 
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Well I can speak about cloning and I believe Gardian will agree.
Unless you have a very complicated setup with many clients and many addin's and are missing your setup cd's. It is a bad decision.
Think about it.
You are having problems,Then determine that you system drive is bad.
Meaning corrupted files,etc.
So you buy a new drive clone it from the bad drive,bring over the problems from the old drive to the new drive. Then spend forever fixing it.

Or just run a recovery, Not Reset and add your clients and addins and you have a virgin install, including your media data intact.
Nice, clean,pristine.
It will rebuild the data from the other drives as long as duplication is turned on for all the folders.
Now you will loose your existing client backups, But as soon as it is done backups start again. the next night.

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 18, 2017 2:51 pm 
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Thx for letting us know how it went for you... Having a backup is always a good thing and does make us braver :-)
Sounds like it worked for you and that's what counts.
The only time I used BALANCER was to get the storage data off the system drive after upgrading to a 2tb main drive. It seemed to work fine for that.
Now I have two 2tb reds that are 98-99% full and the system drive has 1.09tb free. I will soon have to put the forth drive in.

I will have to agree about the clone though. Cloning WHS v1 is not for the faint of heart anyway and windows being the file corrupter it is, I prefer clean fresh loads.
Back in the win95/Win98/Winxp days I would wipe and reload about every 6 months just to keep it running good. lololool
Thats why I had a file server to keep all my data on so the reloads didn't hurt to bad. Then stumbled onto this site and was all in. :-)

But, your system, your rules. Good Luck and enjoy....
If you do clone, let us know how it went when your done and have a few days run time on it.
Maybe any tips or tricks you find along the way.
Could help others.

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