Hi All,

I need to soon replace my system drive as it is running unrecoverable errors, (PC backups were causing WHS to freeze and "Home Server SMART" addon reports 199 bad sectors). The windows home server is still operational but is inconsistant.

I've read up on the user guide for system recovery but I'm not sure what happens to the data that is on the D: partition on that drive. If I replace the disk what will happen to all my data on D: drive. I have all my Shares with the data that is most important to me configured with Duplication On - does this mean once I replace the system drive the data should still exist from duplication drives?

Here is screenshot of Disk manager taken from the WH server disks configured... You will see that D: drive spans across all disks including the system drive...

You can clone the system drive: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6826

Or do the Server Recovery process you've read about, there's more info here: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/wiki/in ... ecovery%3F

A search will also turn up many discussions on the Server Recovery answering all your questions.

In short, if your shares are duplicated, all data should be safe and recovered automatically when you replace the system drive, except for the PC backups which aren't duplicated. You may lose some or all of them. There are techniques to move data off the system drive if you wish and have the free space, a search on Drive Balancer will turn up info on that.

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Alex Kuretz
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thanks for the response,..

I've gone an bought a 2TB seagate drive to use as replacement for the system drive which is currently 1TB, would this cause me any issues with the server recovery?

Jim

Not because of it being a different size, but make sure you understand Advanced Format drives.
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/12 ... me-server/

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Alex Kuretz
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Oh bugga! I have already installed the 2tb drive as system drive and have also another 2tb in as DE

I found that after system restore, the system was jumpy - like would run fairly smoothly and then pause for quite sometime. I decided I should shutdown and reboot to see if that helps... By doing this the shutdown had message that there were updates available and so I chose to install updates. It like 6 hours later now and it's still at 25 of 101 updates applied. This is not sounding so good...

I hope Seagate SmartAlign™ kicks in soon, if not then will need to figure how to get out of this without loosing data,..

Is it possible to "upgrade" the WHS operating system on the ex49x to WHS v2?

EDIT: errr, I don't feel so well now, I see WHS v2 is 64bit OS - looks like HP Mediasmart server ex49x is past it's "used by date" already and already formed lumps and a stink to it

EDIT: Oh man! I didn't even know HP Dropped the product in Nov. 2010 for WebOS and they even dropped that too - WTF!

Jim

All MediaSmart Servers are 64bit and will run WHS 2011.
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/04 ... rt-server/

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Alex Kuretz
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fewww - it was late last night and didn't check to see if my celeron processor supported 64bit OS... Looks like no DE comes with 2011 though, so will need to migrate data, I'm sure there is plenty of doc's here that help simplify the task...

May need to look at Drive Bender to do the data dup...

Thanks for your help Yakuza

EDIT: The Windows Update is now at 93 of 101,..

Hi Yakuza,

I'm all ready to install WHS 2011, but before I do - I really like WHS v1 how it backs up PC's and the data duplication - I would like to ask of one more question and run this by you; the question is

1. If I remove my 2TB System drive from the Storage and also remove one of my remaining 1TB drive from the Storage, would that mean then that the storage DATA partition from these 2 drives be deleted and the data on these drives will they then be re-distributed to free disk space on the other remaining drives? (refer to screenshots)

If that being the case, I could then move 1TB drive into System drive, run a system recovery on the 1tb drive and then later add the 2tb drive to storage. Does this process sound like it will work?

I find that my current system drive with 2TB disk is just wwwwaaaaayyyyyy so slow, its a joke! but accessing the shares and data from the other 2tb drive installed as Storage only disk is still as fast as my other 1tb drives...

You can try this to improve your system drive speed if it is indeed an advanced format drive.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10097

For your question, you can't remove the System drive from the storage pool. You could remove the 1TB drive and then use a tool like Drive Balancer to move all data off the system drive and then try to clone it to the 1TB drive.

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Alex Kuretz
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bugga - totally botched it all up!

I removed one of the 1T drives and then shutdown server, replaced 1T drive with System 2TB drive and performed system restore - all went well. Purchased and downloaded the paragon software and installed it on the WHS server. Selected the drive showing it had 4K [AFD] and then continued. I then noticed Windows Update kicked in and installed some patch while paragon software was doing its thing and the windows update rebooted WHS

So now I've removed all the 2TB drives and reset factory settings as the WHS was not booting back up, just had the health status flashing blue consistantly, couldn't connect nothing...

I'll now install each 2tb drive and run the paragon software against the drives and see how it goes from there...

If it still gets me know where then will do WHS 2011 instead..

I've safely backed up my critical data, but have lost lots of files that would have been handy... Oh well thems the draws,..

Jim

This guide is the best for recovering data off a failed server, may help you: http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-U ... 573697777f

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Alex Kuretz
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I added 1 of the 2tb drives to my system without the filesystem extender and could access it using windows explorer, all the data was there under the E:/DE/shares/... folder!

Copied all the data across to my 2 x 1tb drives in the filesystem extender set... Performance seemed to be fine too.. Then decided to add the other 2tb drive which previously had the system disk and the whole WHS connector session just froze and terminal session to the console was sluggish. I could see the SYS and DATA partitions on the drive so then eventually ran the paragon tool against the drive, it took like 1 minute to complete the DATA partition but failed on the SYS partition, and still server performance was bad.

so unplugged the second 2tb drive and performance was back to normal even with the other 2tb drive installed...

Now I'm tossing between biting the bullet, add the working 2tb drive to drive extender set; or to go the WHS 2011 road; or maybe exclude the 2tb drives and buy 2 x 1tb drives...

I just loved the data duplication and also the HP console tools

what to do, what to do???

Ok, so bit the bullet and installed WHS 2011,

1. it took about 15 minutes to create the USB Flash drive using Windows 7 USB/DVD tool, (nice little toy) created the cfg.ini and copied it to USB stick with WHS Setup disk,
2. attached USB stick to the rear USB port on the bottom and booted up the server - this took roughly another 15 min to install
3. and then ran the http://HPSTORAGE/connect and this must have taken about 1 hour, maybe longer... Once all this was done,
4. Installed the "Intel RTL) thing and then installed Drive lights and all worked beautifully..
5. added 2tb drive and copied all my data to the new d: partition shared folders as applicable.
6. Then purchased a copy of Drive Bender, installed it and then converted D: partition to DB pool, required a reboot so rebooted using windows shutdown/reboot option, but server appeared to hang so waited about 15 minutes, got fed up and pressed power button and server shutdown.
7. Rebooted and server came back up, but system disk drive light is blinking.
8. added the rest of the disks to server and added them to the D: drive pool and setup file duplication in Drive Bender
9. All appears to be fine!!! In total have over 5TB of disk space on D: drive, woohoo...

One probalem though is why are all my drives blinking after creating Drive Bender Pool? Is there a fix for this?

EDIT: Solved : had to change setting in file "HpMssService.exe.config" for DiskStatus.Healthy "BlinkingAqua" to DiskStatus.Healthy "Aqua" and restart the "HP MediaSmart Server Service" service...

Thanks
Jim

Glad you're up and running and happy, thanks for sharing your experience.

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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
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I have ex470 with an external SATA enclosure. I increased the RAM to 2GB and upgraded the processor. I had to replace the PS once with the unit from the UK. The system runs great. If I wanted to clone by system drive as a safety net in case of failure upstream can i just install a drive in my SATA enclosure and clone it? Any recommended cloning SW?