so I had a hard drive failure, WHS - Update - File conflicts on dead drive

[monkey333]

got 7 drives in the drive extender, and 1 failed. I have all of my folders replicating. In theory, anything that is on that drive is on another, right. So I SHOULD be able to just take it out of the loop and be fine?

if that's the case, will WHS realize that and duplicate that data somewhere else?

thanks.

 

[Homerboy]

got 7 drives in the drive extender, and 1 failed. I have all of my folders replicating. In theory, anything that is on that drive is on another, right. So I SHOULD be able to just take it out of the loop and be fine?

if that's the case, will WHS realize that and duplicate that data somewhere else?

thanks.

In theory, yes you should have lost NO data at all. Everything that was on that dead drive should still exist on a different HDD.

And yes, WHS should recognize that you now have unduplicated data and duplicate that to a different HDD(s) assuming there is space available.

There is a add-on out there (forget the name) that shows you to which physical HDD each file is duplciated to. It provides a standard windows explorer "tree" on the left, and on the right your drives indicating which drives the file is physically lcoated on.

Get that add-on and play around with it. Interested to see the results.

 

[WT]

Get that add-on and play around with it. Interested to see the results.

Likewise. My 500gb drives are feeling a lot smaller after seeing all the deals on 1tb drives passing me by.

 

[monkey333]

Likewise. My 500gb drives are feeling a lot smaller after seeing all the deals on 1tb drives passing me by.

newegg had 2tbs for 70 bux.

I won't buy anymore 1tb's

 

[Homerboy]

newegg had 2tbs for 70 bux.

I won't buy anymore 1tb's

Yeap. I have a mish-mash of 500GB to 2TB in my WHS (LONG LINE DRIVE EXTENDER!). If I ever add or replace, I won't go below 2TB as it just doesn't make sense price wise.

 

[monkey333]

WTH?!?! I'm getting a bunch of file conflicts and cannot open files on the data drives?

HELP!!!!!

 

[BTA]

how about some info?

have you removed the bad drive yet?

(And by remove I mean through the Console, not just physically)

 

[monkey333]

I physically removed it, and the console is spinning trying to calculate sizes of the pool.

 

[RebateMonger]

Maybe surprisingly, unlike RAID 1, you won't be able to ACCESS files on WHS until you've done something about whatever broke. If you've had a failed disk, tell WHS to REMOVE the disk. AFTER WHS has "removed" the disk, you should be able to access your files that either weren't located on the failed disk or were being duplicated by WHS.

Here's an article on this:
http://homeservershow.com/windows-home-server-hard-drive-failure.html

If you've lost the System disk, of course, the repair process is different.

 

[Homerboy]

Maybe surprisingly, unlike RAID 1, you won't be able to ACCESS files om WHS until you've done something about whatever broke. If you've had a failed disk, tell WHS to REMOVE the disk. AFTER WHS has "removed" the disk, you should be able to access your files that either weren't located on the failed disk or were being duplicated by WHS.

Here's an article on this:
http://homeservershow.com/windows-home-server-hard-drive-failure.html

If you've lost the System disk, of course, the repair process is different.

RebateMonger is (unsurprisingly) correct. You have to remove the drive from WHS itself. Not just physically remove it.

 

[monkey333]

what about the warning that says all file will be lost? or is that just the duplicates of the files?

 

[RebateMonger]

what about the warning that says all file will be lost? or is that just the duplicates of the files?

Well, you don't really have much choice. WHS has to rebuild its file index to reflect the "bad" or missing disk.

If you have Folder Redundancy enabled on folders, those folders should be OK.

I've been through the "repairs" of both a missing data disk and a missing system disk in WHS (all in simulations using virtual disks under Hyper-V). It's not physically "hard" to do the repairs, but it can take a while for WHS to do the repairs.

 

[monkey333]

all the file conflicts come from duplicated folders and yeah i guess i have no choice. the funny thing is when i go to the folders, the files all seem to be there, but i cannot open them...

 

[RebateMonger]

all the file conflicts come from duplicated folders and yeah i guess i have no choice. the funny thing is when i go to the folders, the files all seem to be there, but i cannot open them...

I don't personally use the folder duplication feature, preferring instead to keep backups of my WHS shared folders. So I don't have extensive experience with duplicated folders. But I believe this is just WHS trying to protect its files until it sorts out what's what and is able to rebuild its file listings.

 

[monkey333]

I don't personally use the folder duplication feature, preferring instead to keep backups of my WHS shared folders. So I don't have extensive experience with duplicated folders. But I believe this is just WHS trying to protect its files until it sorts out what's what and is able to rebuild its file listings.

I pulled the trigger and I'm back up and running and I don't think I lost anything.

Where do you keep your backups?

After all this, I'm pondering buying another large drive and backing up the shares in addition to the duplication...
thanks to all who contributed, it was scary as it was un-chartered territory (for me), this was my first drive failure, I think.

 

[Homerboy]

I pulled the trigger and I'm back up and running and I don't think I lost anything.

Where do you keep your backups?

After all this, I'm pondering buying another large drive and backing up the shares in addition to the duplication...
thanks to all who contributed, it was scary as it was un-chartered territory (for me), this was my first drive failure, I think.

The only thing I backup off of WHS is completely IRRIPLACABLE items such as the /photos/ directory and also my /home movies/ directory. These are both on file duplication already, but I back up to an external HDD once in a while and either take it off-site or toss in a fireproof box.

Things like /videos/, /programs/ and such I dont care if they get lost. I can always recoup most of that over time.

 

[monkey333]

I'll prob use allway sync and run it twice monthly and store it in a firebox too.

 

[monkey333]

A silver lining to all this, the drive is still under warranty....

 

[RebateMonger]

Where do you keep your backups?

After all this, I'm pondering buying another large drive and backing up the shares in addition to the duplication...

I keep backups of shared data on large SATA disks that I hook up using an eSATA docking station.

Right now, my situation is pretty simple because I use WHS inside a virtual machine under Hyper-V. I can just tell Hyper-V to "Export my Virtual Machine" to a 2 TB eSATA disk. So that backs up my System disk, as well as my client PC backups and my shared folders. If I have a disk failure on my Hyper-V server, I can just "Import" the backup to the Hyper-V virtual machine. I've actually recovered from an apparent disk failure on the disk that contained my WHS virtual machine and had the virtual WHS server back up in a couple of hours.

But my entire WHS server is currently smaller than 2 TB. When it gets larger, I'll either have to use a larger export disk, send the files to a network location, or use a file utility and literally copy the files to multiple external disks.

Another option for backing up "huge" file stores is a SECOND WHS server, using a file copy utility to periodically copy the shared folders. If you need to back up "huge" amounts of date, the extra $100 for the WHS software is likely small compared to what the extra set of disks for the backup will cost.

Note that I use "backups" rather than redundancy NOT because I don't trust WHS' folder redundancy. I don't solely trust ANY form of RAID or disk redundancy with truly important data.

 

[monkey333]

That VM setup you have is an awesome idea. I could run my backup to my whs in a virtual machine with a large hd....

 

[RebateMonger]

That VM setup you have is an awesome idea. I could run my backup to my whs in a virtual machine with a large hd....

I've virtualized several WHS servers, both in households and in businesses. So far, I've used Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Microsoft's Hyper-V. I imagine that the various VMWare offerings would work as well. All of my WHS installs only use 512 MB of memory, so they don't take much away from the host server.

The main reason I virtualize many of my WHS servers is I don't want to increase the number of computers running 24/7. My Hyper-V server, for instance, runs my company servers, including my email server, so it has to be on all the time anyway.

Finally, I don't want to give the wrong idea. I think that WHS' folder redundancy is a VAST improvement over what most households and many small businesses have for "backup" -- Which is no backup at all. If folks used it in their home, along with the built-in client PC image backups, most of the zillions of "Sob. I just lost all my photos" and "Sob. My PC has been taken over by malware" incidents would disappear. But I have the resources and knowledge to go a bit further, which I do. But that extra step is not necessarily worthwhile for everybody.

 

[monkey333]

So how do you add hd's to the pool?

does a virtual whs server have access them to them just like a physical machine?

I've got vmware workstation and may give this a go..

 

[RebateMonger]

So how do you add hd's to the pool?

does a virtual whs server have access them to them just like a physical machine?

I've got vmware workstation and may give this a go..

1) Add a new physical disk to the server.
2) Create a new virtual disk on the new physical disk using the virtualzation software's configuration panel.
3) Add the new virtual disk to the virtual machine in the virtualization software's configuration panel.
4) The virtualized WHS will now recognize the new virtual disk as a "disk" and ask you if you want to add it to the storage pool.

Just remember that you don't want to suddenly "shut down" or "restart" your entire machine without properly shutting down your virtualized machines. Hyper-V will try to protect its virtual machines and shut THEM down correctly before allowing the entire server to shut down. But MS' Virtual Server 2005, for instance, doesn't know how to do this. If you shut down the Windows Host, Virtual Server won't protect those virtual machines and they can end up corrupted from a sudden shutdown event.

I imagine that VMWare does all this safely, but just thought I'd mention it.

 

[monkey333]

mind = blown.

thanks.

 

[RebateMonger]

No problem. I hope your WHS recovery went well and you didn't lose anything that was protected with folder redundancy.