Hi All,

I have been a regular reader of posts but this is my first post. I am seeking help regarding the availability issues i encountered in past 1 month's time.

EX495 has three drives. #1 stock seagate 1.5 tb drive as system drive and #2WD EARS 2 TB drives as pool drives. For some reason, my EX495 go unavailable on every second day. I need to hard restart to fix the issues. The WD EARS drive has the jumpers on 7 /8 pin from day 1. Suddenly in past one month my server started encountering the availability issues.

I called up HP support, but they said they can support unless the AFD are replaced with non AFDs . With HDD prices skyrocketed now, i dont wish to buy any new ones as well.

I did a server recovery last weekend and it did not help as well. I did the recovery with pool drives on, but it did not help.

I have Avast AV, RAXCO Perfect Disk 11, ADmini me, my movies as some of my add ins. I am completely clueless on what i need to do and fix the availability issues. Any suggestions is welcome.

I am also looking for a alternative solution for backups. Have important pics and videos in it. Cant risk loosing it.
regards,
Prasanna KV

Hi pitchucold and welcome to the forums.

My gut instinct is to think you have a failing system hard drive, or possibly a failing data drive. Failing data drives have been known to cause boot issues, more than they cause lock-ups. There are two things you can do, one of which can be done immediately. The other will involve an $80 purchase.

The first thing you can do is install the Home Server SMART add-in, available here: http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net/Freebi ... SMART.aspx. This tool will show you, in the WHS Console, the state of your hard drives' health. Things like bad sectors, spin retry (motor problems), end-to-end errors, etc. are shown here and the tool will give you, quite quickly, an indication if any of the hard drives are causing problems. SMART is built into modern hard drives--drives can detect problems on the fly, and some problems are detected during "offline" operations, meaning when the drive is idle it can run self tests. These are stored in the drive's firmware, and programs like Home Server SMART and HD Sentinel can read this data and report back to you.

The second thing is to consider ordering a VOV debug cable ($80 USD, includes shipping), and gives you video as well as PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectivity to your Server. If your server is frozen and you need to hard reset it, it would be nice to have a look at what's on the screen, which cannot be done without the debug cable. The VOV Gen3 cable is talked about all over the forums. I have one hooked to my EX490 and another is on its way here for my EX487.

What this will tell you is whether you're getting a blue screen of death, a black screen of death (a black, blank screen) or an unresponsive Windows UI. Normally a blue screen should trigger the server to reboot, but sometimes they don't, although when Windows restarts it usually will say, when you log into remote desktop (not the console), "The system has recovered from a serious error."

If Home Server SMART shows disk problems, please take a screen cap and post back here so we can have a look and recommend the next course of action.

Oh, and with regards to AFDs...I have 5 of them attached to my EX490. Officially Microsoft does not support them in WHS v1, which is why HP doesn't either. Unsupported doesn't necessarily mean "doesn't work," but rather that the vendor won't do anything to help you. It's their easy out, canned answer, to blame your problems on you using an "unsupported" configuration.

_________________
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

Hi Msawyer,

Thanks a lot for the response. I guess you were bang on target.

When i installed SMART and tried itItshowed my system drive is having lot of issues. It showed some warning for the pool drive as well.

I have attached the snapshot for the system drive and pool drive along. I am not sure which one is physical drive 1, so i can remove it .

Hi Msawyer,

I have identified physical drive 1 as drive in bay2 with help of disk management and server storage hard drive.

It had zero data in it, but the removing the drive was running for ever and pulled out the drive from server. WHS was showing it as missing server, now i am removed missing drive as well.

I am going to see if my server is available for next couple of days.

regards,
Prasanna KV

OK I think you confused me a bit. You said the system drive was having a lot of issues and the pool drive had a warning. It looks to be the other way around, based on your follow-up (and the screen cap). \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 should be your system drive, and it looks to be in a lot better health than \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1.

Judging by the drive model, my guess that Western Digital drive should still be under warranty, so you should seek to get an RMA for that one.

Definitely keep a close eye on the system disk because it's not uncommon for bad sectors to start popping up once the first one appears.

Matt

_________________
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

It was a typo. Your understanding is right. Pool drive was having issues and now i am trying for a RMA with WDC. System drive has minor issues and it looks like it is running hot always. i shall keep a close eye on it.

Thanks for the help Msawyer, it was driving me nuts.

Regards,

Prasanna KV

Hi all,

I have another issue. I see the disk temperatures are around 65 Deg Celsius. I have three disks, EARX, EARS 3 TBs and Seagate 1.5 TB Stock Disk.

1. I read that the Speed FAN may not used to control Fan Speeds in EX 495.
2. I read one other option is to change it in BIOS using the debug cable
3. Third option is to use intel hardware monitor.

Is there any other addin available to control the FAN to reduce the disk temperatures.

Also i am not able to remote desktop into EX495. What could be the issue and what can be done to fix both the issues?

regards,
Prasanna KV

There is no Add-In for fan control on the EX49x servers.

What error message do you get when you try to RDP to the server?

_________________
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? If so, be sure to Rate them at WeGotServed.

Hi Prasanna,

OK let's try to take these items one at a time. Disk temperature - you said a disk is running 65 degrees C. Would this be the EARX? Based on your earlier pictures, you had two disks with issues. The serious one was a lot of bad sectors on an EARS disk, but no temperature issues. The system disk also showed 1 bad sector plus it was running warm. Home Server SMART has four temperature checks for which you can be alerted - warm, hot, overheated and critical. None of your disks were in the critical range (65 C would certainly be critical). That's a 19 degree uptick in disk temperature, since it would appear the warmest disk from your original pictures was 46 C. I can't help but wonder if you had a fan quit in the server or if there's been some other environmental change like moving the server from an open, cool room to a small, hot closet.

There are lots of tools that can report temperatures of various components. I think SpeedFan can tell you temperatures, and there are some other free tools like CPU-Z HWMonictor that can tell you all sorts of details about system temperatures and voltages. Check out http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

If you want to do any tinkering in the BIOS, the debug cable is a must. It's a little pricey, but it's well worth the investment. It's a must in the MediaSmart Server toolkit.

Regarding remote access - like Alex said we'd need to know the error message you're seeing. Can you get into the Console, but just not full RDP? Or is the Console inoperative too? Your system disk did have a bad sector in the original pictures so it's always possible that disk is failing. My EX490's system disk (an original) developed a bad sector last week. Another showed up on Saturday, and a couple more have popped up today so it's sliding down the slippery slope. Bad sectors are one of the most common early warning signs of HDD death so it's worth looking into seeing if the problem is worsening.

Matt

_________________
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

Hi Matt, Alex,

Thanks for response.

1. RDP issue is partly fixed. After i setup RDP port routing in the Dlink 655 router it has started working. I am able to access RDP into it with IP but not with <<server name>>. Any help here would be helpful as well.

2. Disk Temperature :

I actually switched my EARX (2 TB) drive into system drive and moved the stock seagate (1.5 TB) into Pool drive along with EARS (2 TB). I have attached the snapshots of SMART disk temperature along. They are showing Warning Symbol.

EARX (System) - 48 deg C
EARS (old Pool) - 50 deg C
Seagate Stock (Moved to pool from system) - 53 deg C.

I have attached the CPU temp and Fan Speen along as well.

Current Plan :
1. I shall install speed fan and CPU Z and check the status. I have the debug cable with bios changing cababilities on the shopping list, will request my friend to get it to India, his return is due end of may.
2. Anyway i plan to replace my stock drive soon. I once ran Seatools, they did not capture any bad sectors . Can i use this drive in PC?


Regards,
Prasanna KV

Hi Matt, Alex,

I have installed Speed Fan and CPU ID as well. Please refer to the snapshot.

regards,
Prasanna KV

Those temps look warm to me, what's the ambient temp where the server is located? Does it get enough airflow?

_________________
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? If so, be sure to Rate them at WeGotServed.

Hi Alex,

The Ambient temperature is around 25-35 deg Celsius. Could the bad disk be the only reason for pushing up the temperature?

regards,
Prasanna KV

A disk that is running hot could raise the temp on other components. And make sure the server has plenty of airflow and isn't enclosed in a cabinet.

_________________
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? If so, be sure to Rate them at WeGotServed.