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PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 9:13 am 
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Last month, I installed the Home Server Smart addon. I'm glad I did because it gave me the chance to see that one of the drives was failing. I followed the proper procedure for removing a drive. As expected, it took several hours to move the data to one or more of the other storage drives. Once that was done, I powered down the server and external drive(s) to swap out the bad drive.

It took a while for the server to power down. I swapped the drives and powered back up. Initially, the same drive light showed purple and the others blue, then all drive lights went out. Since I don't have them turned on, it's expected. It takes an awful long time for the console icon to go from grey to some other color. I was hoping for a green light. If I double click the icon, nothing happens. But, if I right click and select Windows Home Server Console, I can login.

There is quite a delay in the login. Eventually, I get the message, "The previous attempt to open the Windows...". I was experiencing this issue before and thought it might be related to the failing drive. NOT! If I select Retry, I get an error, "This computer has lost connection to your home server". If I select skip, the console eventually comes up.

Once in, I find that the new drive and the drive that was displaying the purple light are not mounted. I also notice that the removed drive shows as missing.

What did I do that may have caused this? I'm an impatient fellow and might have caused this. After first removing the bad drive, I powered down the server. When I noticed the purple light on the third drive and that there was a significant delay in powering down, I pushed the power button to shut it down.

Is it possible that the process of moving all of the data and dismounting the drive was not quite complete and that's why it was taking a while to power down.


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File comment: It took a very long time for the server to power down. I noticed that one of the lights was purple. Normally, I have the lights turned off.
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 2:56 pm 
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You have posted in the WHS 2011 thread, but I think your using WHS V1? just fyi

But to your question, I would say you are correct, you pulled and powered down to soon.
When you click on remove a drive, I believe when it is done, it will come up blinking (telling you it is ready for removal) and then you can pull it, (someone can correct me if wrong) I have never had to remove a drive except a non-pooled drive and when I clicked remove, the light for that drive started blinking telling me it was ready for removal.

But, I do know if you have a drive that is bad enough that the system can not move all the data off it, then you just have to pull it and will get (a missing drive) I believe you can click on it and tell the system that the drive is gone. Save the drive, you can place it in a usb to sata dock and still get files off of it if the drive is not completely dead.

Then the data that is on the other drives will level out and the system may even give you a "low on drive space" warning and want another drive to be added to the pool.

I would put the drive back in and try to remove it again and it may take over night or longer to finish. If after a couple days, I would just pull it and tell the system it's gone.

Good Luck and let US know How it's going...

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 3:05 pm 
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OOPS, I'm sorry. Yes, I'm on V1.

I'll put the drive back in and give it a whirl. Thanks for the advice. Just to be clear, the drive displaying the purple light was not the dying drive. It was a healthy drive with data. The dying drive did not fail in the server, but it showed as failing, so that's why I replaced it.


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PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 6:30 am 
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Yes, I would for sure put that drive back and try to let the system remove it, it may take awhile.
Then you can deal with the purple drive.
But,
I was just looking at your last picture where it shows all the drives.
The 2 unmounted drives are setup as "non-pooled" drives. Drives "not" added to the pool will show up on the PC backup page as a space to backup the shares on the server. Did you intend to add them as non-pooled drives?

When you add a new drive to WHS it will ask what you want to do with the drive,
1) add it to the pool to increase the size of the main storage.
2) add as non-pooled drive for server backups of the shared data.

I have two non-pooled drives that I do bi-yearly backups, but when I'm done I fire up the console and tell the system I want to take them out (stop using them) and then I have harddrive cases I keep them in for storage.

Question: Do you need, are you using the unmounted / non-pooled drives? Have you backed up your shares to them? If not, I would take the out Via the console, then if you need the space you could add one or both back as "Pooled" drives.

Good Luck

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PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:11 am 
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Gardian wrote:
Yes, I would for sure put that drive back and try to let the system remove it, it may take awhile.
Then you can deal with the purple drive.
But,
I was just looking at your last picture where it shows all the drives.
The 2 unmounted drives are setup as "non-pooled" drives. Drives "not" added to the pool will show up on the PC backup page as a space to backup the shares on the server. Did you intend to add them as non-pooled drives?


One of those two drives was part of the drive pool. That is the one that shows the purple light when I power down and power up. It's in the #3 bay. The one in the #2 bay is the one that was failing.

So, it seems the failing drive has done something to the drive in the #3 bay. I've yet to determine of any data is missing, but I plan to check.

Gardian wrote:
When you add a new drive to WHS it will ask what you want to do with the drive,
1) add it to the pool to increase the size of the main storage.
2) add as non-pooled drive for server backups of the shared data.

I have two non-pooled drives that I do bi-yearly backups, but when I'm done I fire up the console and tell the system I want to take them out (stop using them) and then I have harddrive cases I keep them in for storage.

Question: Do you need, are you using the unmounted / non-pooled drives? Have you backed up your shares to them? If not, I would take the out Via the console, then if you need the space you could add one or both back as "Pooled" drives.

Good Luck


The goal was to have all drives as part of the pool, with redundancy. I have a four bay drive enclosure plugged into the back of the server with a sata cable. Those two drives are part of the pool.

This morning's update

Yesterday evening, after reading your suggestions, I added the failing drive back. Stupid me added it to the pool. It didn't take long, but it worked. So, I then tried to remove it from the pool. It stayed stuck at the same point all night. Even the console was locked up. Sooooooo, i RDP'd into the server and did a restart. Probably not very smart, but I just kinda wanna get this fixed. Now, the #1 and #4 bay lights are on and the #2 and #3 bay lights are off and it's once again stuck.

I have now logged on to the console and I got in quickly without any errors. The interesting thing is, that I now have the Mediasmart Server tab. Also, it shows that the drive in bay #2 has failed and is missing. However, the drive in bay #3 is part of the pool, but has no light.


What else I find interesting is that the missing drive, that is not really missing, can still be removed from the pool.

I'm pretty confused.


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PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:55 pm 
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I've been busy copying files from the server. That are quite a few that are "missing". because of the drive in bay #3. I'm going to copy what I can, then remove the drive in bay #3 and see what I can get of it standalone.

I should consider buying one of those 10TB drives to use as a backup. But, that's gonna have to wait until I sort out the mess.


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PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 4:57 pm 
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Wow, with all the drive in/drive out/pool/non-pool the server is very confused.
If it were mine,
I would remove the two unmounted (Non-pooled drives) via the console, set them aside and then let the server have 4-8 hours to see what it does. Hopefully the picture will look better.

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PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 8:36 pm 
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Yup, totally screwed the pooch. I'm gonna finish transferring what I can before I do anything else. Thanks for the help. I'll try to be more methodical in my approach.


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PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 7:01 am 
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Sorry to hear, the mediasmart is an awesome device, but it will give you nothing but hell unless you do things the way it wants them done #-o

But, the one good and bad thing about them is they are windows, you can always pull a drive and attach it to another pc and get access to the data, if all else fails.
The problem in your case is you seem to have so much data, it is hard to find a place to gather it all together and store it till you can get the server lined out.
I am not a big believer in the cloud, but unless someone has a bunch of 2tb ext drives it might be a option at least short term.
In my case, I have kept my rips small 1-2 gig per rip and am still using just drives in the server, when I grow outside the server I will use one of the medisonics ext 4-5 bays and then to back it all up I have a 5 bay ext that will get filled with 5 2tb drives for server backups.
Drive 1 would be all the user data
Drive 2 would be all the music
Drive 3 would be all the movies
Drive 4 would be all the iso and software
Drive 5 would be empty till needed

Always having a backup of your data outside the server is a must have (just in case) but it becomes harder the more data you get.
The main thing is when adding a drive, you need to pick add to the pool, unless you want a non-pooled drive for server share backups and always be ready for when the OS drive fails and you need to perform a recovery or a reset and copy the backup data back.

Good Luck, at least the data is still there unless you let a drive get formatted.

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 9:35 am 
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Not to worry, I'm not as ignorant as my actions display. I've just grown more impatient with technology and increasing age. It's beginning to overwhelm me and my desire is leaning towards simplicity. When something happens to one of my electronic gizmos, it usually takes a huge chuck out of my day or week to fix.

My server is mostly used for backing up my main desktop and streaming music. The music files on the server are redundant. The videos are not redundant. I haven't watched most of them in the last couple of years because I've gotten addicted to Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. I'll be only slightly disappointed if I lose the videos, but I'm pretty confident they are all there. I just need to invest the time to copy as much as I can before trying your last suggestion.


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PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 4:58 pm 
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I would never assume anybody being ignorant :-#
But I hear ya when it comes to wanting things to just work loloolol
Our todo lists get longer as we get older and times seems to move faster.

I remember when my ex-470 was working fine and I tried the Update in-place and everything went south, all my data seemed to be gone and I didn't have a backup of any of it, 30 + years of Pic/Apps/Docs/Home movies, Gone!! I was about to freak when Comp1962 told me about just pulling a drive and accessing the data direct, Thx God it was still there.

Now I keep 3 backups of everything.

Good Luck and I hope it goes well for you, shout back when you get it shorted out, we all might learn something.....

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 5:50 pm 
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I've gotten what I can from the server. I powered it down and removed the drive in bay #2. Upon power up, the drive in bay #3 is not displaying a light, but shows as being part of the pool.

What do I do about the missing drive? Do I remove it thru the console now that I've yanked it?

So, I'm not sure if I should remove the drive in bay #3 or not.


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PostPosted: Thu Jul 20, 2017 6:44 am 
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I am starting to wonder about your lights: When you say you have a pooled drive in a bay and it has no light, that's not good.
I would tell the console the missing drive is gone, if, you plan on accessing the data on that drive via another pc for copy back later, yes.
Once you tell the server that drive is gone, it looks like you are close to being back to normal. I would let it settle in over night and then check your access to some of your files and see if you get any errors. This will take some time, your going to want to make sure the important files are real (accessible) and not just a ghost place holder.

Working with what you have now is probably going to take some time, but the only other option is trying to find a place to copy all your data to, reload the server, format all the drives and start over.
That is where a good backup comes in handy.
If I have problems, I just blast the OS and reload, copy back, normally takes a full day to complete. But then you know everything is solid.

Good Luck, hopefully with the unmounted and missing drives gone it will start to come around and then it will be interesting to see what the lights do.

I feel your pain, but, since Microsoft abandoned us, there really isn't a better solution out there unless you want to go NAS, and that is not windows, so pulling a drive and getting the contents will not be easy.
Got my fingers crossed for ya....

P.S. I noticed in one of your pictures you have warm drive warnings, that is probably just because all the drives are thrashing to move data around, once things settle in, they should cool down.
If not, a can of air to blast out the front and rear of dust bunnies normally helps. I do this a few times a year.

Hopefully your close to being done.....

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 20, 2017 6:58 am 
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I copied everything I could yesterday. I've removed the drives in bays #2 and #3. The two lights are still off and they both show as missing. It's been "Calculating sizes" since yesterday evening. With only 6.5TB of storage, I would think it would have finished by now.

If I am to start over, would it be possible to clone the OS drive? Or will that be a cluster?


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PostPosted: Thu Jul 20, 2017 4:54 pm 
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There is a guide to cloning the OS drive. But I wouldn't because you will clone over all the bad stuff that has happened over the years.
I have seen most people have success with the clone, some have not.
Back in the day, you cloned and then you had to change the drive ID to match what the OS drive ID was you were cloning from, before you put the new cloned drive back in and fired it up. I had seen where something else needed to be changed, but by then I had already decided I would not do a clone. Not worth it for me.

I remember back in the win3.1 and win98 days when you needed to reload the os about every 6 to 12 months just to keep it running right.

Server 2003 isn't as bad, but, I would go for a clean load and copy back, if you have somewhere to store the data till it's ready again.
If not, then the clone might be a way to go, at least you would still have the old OS drive if the new one didn't work.
When I get home, I will look for the Cloning thread and post here later.

Found this: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/01/17/forum-spotlight-how-to-successfully-clone-and-upgrade-a-whs-system-drive/

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