WHS 2003 interrupts iTunes paly during WHS balancing

[dpolson]

I have a home server running WHS 2003 (32bit) and if I'm playing music via iTunes (music files on the Server, iTunes on the PC) and the server is balancing it consistently interrupts the music playback intermittently while it is balancing...which is very annoying. The server seems to run the balancing once every 1-2 hours.

These are the Server specs:

• GIGABYTE LGA 775 Intel P45 SATA 3gb/s ATX Intel motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 Wolfdale 2.8GHz LGA 775 CPU
• 4gb (2x2gb) Kingston HyperX T1 DDR2 1066 RAM
• 6 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" HDD's
• 1000w Coolermaster Silentpro modular PSU

These are the PC specs:

• Asus Sabertooth 1366 x58 SATA 6gb/s motherboard
• Intel i7-950 quad core CPU
• 8gb (2x4gb) G Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600 RAM
• Crucial Sata 6gb/s 128gb SSD
• 1000w Kingwin modular PSU

I already have the iTunes streaming buffer set to "Large", but it still interrupts. The Server connection through the Actiontec router (Qwest Q1000) and into the PC are all gigabit all the way through.

Is there any way to adjust WHS 2003 to not max out resources when balancing so it's not interrupting, in this case, iTunes playback?

I'd appreciate any solutions anyone has found.

 

[RebateMonger]

I'm curious what kind of files you are storing. Are there many that are larger than a couple of gigabytes?

 

[dpolson]

Almost all of the files are music and photo and small docs/spreadsheets and are relatively small (<7mb), but we do have a fair number of family video files that typically run between 200mb up to 1.2gb.

Your question has made me wonder though - is it possible that our HDD image files choke things up with WHS Balancing somehow? I used Norton Ghost 14 to make a "clean" post-install HDD image file stored on the Server of each of our Win XP-Pro PC's on our home network), and those Ghost files can get into the multi-gig size. We haven't added a new PC image via Ghost for over a year, but is it a known issue that something like a multi-gig image file could create this problem?

 

[RebateMonger]

There have been occasional complaints about WHS having resource utilization problems when it's trying to deal with very large files (meaning many Gigabytes in size).

The client PC backups that WHS makes are a bunch of "small" files that WHS can easily handle. The daily client image backups that WHS makes work VERY well. Not to mention that since they detect duplicate filesand only keep a single copy the total backup size of multiple computers can be much smaller than those made by other backup programs.

 

[dpolson]

Thanks. So if I'm understanding this right, in my case, I should try to pull off the Norton Ghost folders/files onto an external drive, the delete the Ghost folders/files on the Server, then see if that helps with the balancing interruptions. Do you think that would solve the interruptions problem, or at least help?

On the WHS image backups point you made -

I have WHS file duplication turned on, and also periodically back up the WHS to external drives via eSATA and take the newly backed up external drives off site and bring back the set that was stored off site and run the WHS back up again, so I always have duplicate client data files on the Server as well as redundant copies of the WHS client data files, one on site and one off site that is approximately 30 days out of date.

But regarding Norton Ghost vs WHS 2003 OS and programs imaging - does WHS also do full images of the OS and programs on the client PC like Norton Ghost that can be used to restore the PC if it crashes? If so, then I wouldn't need Norton Ghost to image the PC and restore the PC if it crashes and I repair it and want to reimage it.

Thanks for your help.