WHS 2011 and Drive-Extender Add-ins

[BonzaiDuck]

So I've been adding pesky posts to other WHS threads recently . . .

I was reticent -- hesitant -- to buy the $50 WHS 2011 64-bit. I saw many complainants whining over the fact that MS dropped the drive-extender feature of WHS v.1 -- a feature with which I was growing comfortable.

Now I find that there are two WHS 2011 Add-ins which supply "drive extension."

One of them is "Drive Bender;" the other is "StableBit DrivePool."

Who is using these, and which is better? Can we feel assured that these add-ins are as good as what MS might have otherwise included as part of the 2011 version?

 

[Binky]

You missed flexraid. Its more advanced, but more expensive, and (I think) slightly more complicated.

I've been using drivepool for about 6 months. Its been great so far and it was cheap.

 

[Ferzerp]

I just went out and bought four 3TB WD red drives and called it a day instead of stressing over it.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I just went out and bought four 3TB WD red drives and called it a day instead of stressing over it.

I haven't placed my order yet. More inclined for smaller 1TB drives. The Reds have some recommendations -- no doubt about it.

But my question was about Drive-Extender add-ins -- no criticism intended.

 

[n0x1ous]

I have a client using Stablebit in his WHS 2011 and hasnt had any issues with it. Since your in transition, you might as well wait and get server 2012 essentials with Storage Pool and no 2TB drive limit.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I have a client using Stablebit in his WHS 2011 and hasnt had any issues with it. Since your in transition, you might as well wait and get server 2012 essentials with Storage Pool and no 2TB drive limit.

Ahh . . . too late for that, and I'll live with the 2011 WHS. It may or may not be reasonable, but I operate under a "techno-lag" effect. With other friends who are "techno-savvy" but retired, we all agree that we can only keep up with rapid technical change so far. So my friend bought three dual core Dell boxes for a total of $250 to use as he sees fit; we both tend to wait until larger sized disks are better established in production and use.

With a reliable drive-extender plug-in, I'll avoid RAIDing those disks or buying a hardware controller, and hopefully the size of the volume will be more manageable for the server's own backup.

So far, from the responses, "StableBit" is probably the way I'll go on this.

I still had a question I may have asked elsewhere in someone else's thread.

Supposedly, some think that the system volume should be installed on a smaller HDD -- I saw the spec of 160GB somewhere. Fact is, I should do some more reading before any installation, but I'm still finishing the hardware prep details.

so -- is that correct? Should I install the OS on a small drive, and then add disks for a data-volume or data storage?

 

[Binky]

Yes the 160 minimum is correct but there are ways to cheat that.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Yes the 160 minimum is correct but there are ways to cheat that.

What's the best strategy? At the moment, I have two 1TB HDDs (brand new) and a 320GB HDD (almost brand new). I'll order some additional 1TB WD "Blue" drives after the 11th this month.

I notice that the WHS config instructions at MS suggest hooking up the HDDs all at once. Why shouldn't I hook up the small drive first, add the others later? Or add the others later after installing StableBit?

Also -- drivers. I think I can assume that this version is based on Win Server 2008? That those would be the drivers I look for? Or that the 2011 WHS includes basic drivers for motherboards going back to 2007? Possibly the network drivers as well?

I would think that if WHS 2011 includes drivers for an older mobo, I shouldn't have to install storage drivers or have them ready during initial WHS install?

 

[Binky]

I would probably install WHS on the 320gb with only that drive connected. Once it's all sorted out with driver updates, you can install Drivepool or whatever pooling software you want to use/try (they all seem to have free trials...might be worth a look at each). Then you can install the data drives and add them to the pool. Some or all of the pooling add-ons allow you to add data drives that contain data, but you should check if this is an issue.

If you use drivepool, and maybe the others, be sure to assign the pool to a drive letter higher up in the chain (e.g. T, or R, or...). I don't think it's mandatory to use drive letters on the data drives but this is the default. It's pretty annoying when Windows automatically adds a new drive with a new letter, and your pool that was assigned as drive H suddenly disappears because the new data drive is now H. It's easy to correct, but it is a bit shocking the first time this happens.

Be careful to only add folders and permissions through the dashboard. You can get yourself into trouble if you use the native Windows rights and security management. It's safer to stay in the dashboard until you understand the WHS model. You probably will never need to go outside of it.

I don't remember installing any drivers other than the default MS drivers. WHS2011 is built on the Win7/server08 model so it has a lot of drivers available through Win update.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I would probably install WHS on the 320gb with only that drive connected. Once it's all sorted out with driver updates, you can install Drivepool or whatever pooling software you want to use/try (they all seem to have free trials...might be worth a look at each). Then you can install the data drives and add them to the pool. Some or all of the pooling add-ons allow you to add data drives that contain data, but you should check if this is an issue.

If you use drivepool, and maybe the others, be sure to assign the pool to a drive letter higher up in the chain (e.g. T, or R, or...). I don't think it's mandatory to use drive letters on the data drives but this is the default. It's pretty annoying when Windows automatically adds a new drive with a new letter, and your pool that was assigned as drive H suddenly disappears because the new data drive is now H. It's easy to correct, but it is a bit shocking the first time this happens.

Be careful to only add folders and permissions through the dashboard. You can get yourself into trouble if you use the native Windows rights and security management. It's safer to stay in the dashboard until you understand the WHS model. You probably will never need to go outside of it.

I don't remember installing any drivers other than the default MS drivers. WHS2011 is built on the Win7/server08 model so it has a lot of drivers available through Win update.

. . . Which probably means I shouldn't bother looking around for the '08 driver equivalents until I'm sure something's missing. Especially, it would mean that my mobo's controller drivers are build in, so "no F6 or similar."

Thanks very much. And I mean -- Thank you very much, indeed.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, I installed it on a 300 or 320GB Seagate that showed 298GB. An SATA-II disk.

At times, the installation seemed a little slow, but then I'm too accustomed to my workstation.

So next I'll find the remaining audio and video drivers, and download a drive-extender add-in.

I'm actually impressed with the interface. This might be really something, as long as the add-ins I'll want are free or don't nickel-and-dime me to death.

Only complication: It's already created a [D]: [DATA?] drive -- a large chunk of the remaining disk space.

 

[n0x1ous]

Well, I installed it on a 300 or 320GB Seagate that showed 298GB. An SATA-II disk.

At times, the installation seemed a little slow, but then I'm too accustomed to my workstation.

So next I'll find the remaining audio and video drivers, and download a drive-extender add-in.

I'm actually impressed with the interface. This might be really something, as long as the add-ins I'll want are free or don't nickel-and-dime me to death.

Only complication: It's already created a [D]: [DATA?] drive -- a large chunk of the remaining disk space.

Yup, and theres nothing you can do about that. Glad they fixed that in Server 2012 Essentials so you can use a small (90GB) boot drive dedicated to OS

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Yup, and theres nothing you can do about that. Glad they fixed that in Server 2012 Essentials so you can use a small (90GB) boot drive dedicated to OS

And . . . would I be assured that you and Binky are correct about that? I figure you would know if there were any tricks or procedures I should consider.

It takes me time to read, review -- read again -- sources I can find about this stuff. And I've only partially proceeded through the first part of that sentence. But I thought I saw some forum post (some . . . where) about cloning "DATA" drive disks as opposed to cloning the "SYS" disk.

There seemed to be some issue about the latter. At this point I cannot be sure about the words used, but there was a reference to a "disk ID" and I tentatively assumed it meant the "disk signature." Since I'm using Acronis, it gives you the option of duplicating the ssame disk signature, or assigning a new one. And if you choose the former option (and I do -- often) -- you have to be careful about shutting down the machine and unplugging either the source or the target, or a boot sequence will render one of the disks unbootable.

I think using the "Repair" feature of a Win 7 install disc fixed this problem as it pertained to a Windows 7 system, and just a little common sense and care can avoid having it happen. But I don't remember seeing a repair feature on the WHS 2011 installation disc.

If the reference in what I read referred to something different than "disk signature," then . . . . there are complications, I suppose, and I will need to read that source material (forum or whatever) more closely.

 

[Binky]

I'm not sure what the problem is with having the D : partition. I use it for random stuff like temp directories for sabnzbd and sickbeard, but otherwise I just ignore it.

I haven't found a "repair" function for WHS2011. The only repair function that it offers is to restore a backup image. I recently had to deal with this due to a hardware failure. My acronis backups all failed too.

I'd strongly suggest using the built-in backup feature for the OS at least, and possibly for the data. The data is easy to back up in many other ways but for the system you may be stuck with this method.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'm not sure what the problem is with having the D : partition. I use it for random stuff like temp directories for sabnzbd and sickbeard, but otherwise I just ignore it.

I haven't found a "repair" function for WHS2011. The only repair function that it offers is to restore a backup image. I recently had to deal with this due to a hardware failure. My acronis backups all failed too.

I'd strongly suggest using the built-in backup feature for the OS at least, and possibly for the data. The data is easy to back up in many other ways but for the system you may be stuck with this method.

With WHS v.1 (32-bit), I vaguely recall some problem I had with the OS -- possibly even a problem I created -- on the SYS disk/volume of two 500GB WD Cav Black drives.

I simply reinstalled the OS, and it just . . . . rejuvenated itself, and properly configured the data files from the DATA volume. That's the way I remembered it.

If, on the other hand, the SYS disk just "went bad," I could see replacing it, reinstalling the OS and doing what "needed to be done" to reload the DATA files. The worst case would be uploading them from a hot-swap backup and reconfiguring the workstation computers and permissions.

 

[Binky]

Yes, WHS V1 had a repair function that basically reset WHS to the initial config. But WHS v1 couldn't back itself (the OS) up at all so this was really your only hope. That "repair" also required you to reconfigure the WHS box from the start. Now WHS2011 can do a full bare metal restore with its own built-in backup system, which is MUCH better, so I guess MS thinks the repair function is irrelevant.

The repair function may be there, but I haven't seen it. When you boot from the DVD, the only option you are presented with for "repair" is to tell it where the image is (and you created a backup image...right?). So use the included backup function, at least for the OS.

Acronis home 2012 also installs on WHS2011, but it failed to restore the system for me in the last week causing a huge amount of wasted time for me. If you choose to try acronis, I'd HIGHLY suggest making a built-in backup then fully testing an acronis restore. Do this long before you need it. I didn't do this and I'm paying for it now.

 

[joutlaw]

StableBit Drive Pool user here. No issues so far.

 

[kmmatney]

Watching this thread... I've been happy with WHS v 1, and have been running a Minecfraft server on it for my sons. However they recently wanted to run a special modded version of the server that requires 3GB if RAM, and the 32-built OS just couldn't handle it. I was thinking about using Windows 8, but I would prefer WHS. I have 2 2TB drives, following by a hodge- podge of drives of various sizes (including several laptop drives) that adds another 2+ GB. I really like being able to randomly add and remove drives, and at least 10 drives have been in-and-out of the system since I first built it. I'm cheap, so I upgrade the drives whenver I get a new one for free. Sounds like stable-bit Drivepool is a good way to go. I'm not sure want to pay the big buck for Server 2012.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Watching this thread... I've been happy with WHS v 1, and have been running a Minecfraft server on it for my sons. However they recently wanted to run a special modded version of the server that requires 3GB if RAM, and the 32-built OS just couldn't handle it. I was thinking about using Windows 8, but I would prefer WHS. I have 2 2TB drives, following by a hodge- podge of drives of various sizes (including several laptop drives) that adds another 2+ GB. I really like being able to randomly add and remove drives, and at least 10 drives have been in-and-out of the system since I first built it. I'm cheap, so I upgrade the drives whenver I get a new one for free. Sounds like stable-bit Drivepool is a good way to go. I'm not sure want to pay the big buck for Server 2012.

Nor do I . . .

I'm not out of the woods yet on this, only for the uncertainties. I must explain. I'm even tempted to start another thread, and it dovetails with the "Memory and Storage" forum.

First, maybe it was Binky -- yes it was -- who mentioned drive-letter assignment for new drives to be added to the storage pool. I took the chance of omitting a drive letter assignment to the first 1TB drive I added, and it seems to work fine: The remainder of the boot drive was "D :" and had that assignment, but the 1TB drive has no drive letter. They both contribute to the storage pool, which thus far is about 1.14TB.

Second. Here's where I think I'm in the woods, so to speak. When I ordered these WD Blue 1TB drives ("EZEX"), I had been specifically looking for disks that wouldn't raise any hardware issues on this old-tech Striker Extreme motherboard and its nVidia nForce controller. I quickly discovered that the drive manufacturers were throwing a curve-ball at us with "Advanced Format." This means that the sector-size of drives will no longer be 512 bytes, but 4,096. And it requires that the OS can deal with it in either of two ways: either with "512E" emulation, or simple accommodation of the 4K-byte sectors. Otherwise, with older OS'es and specifically WHS v.1, these drives will slow down and eventually begin experiencing corruption.

NewEgg should have noted that the WD Blues were AF drives, and you would have expected it to show in the "Overview" and "Details" tab. But it was nowhere to be found, and I assumed they were not AF drives when I ordered them.

There are fixes you can find in various blogs and forum posts for the older software (specifically OS software), and I read where you can actually disable the AF feature with a jumper, but couldn't find the documentation pertaining to the jumper and its pins.

In any case, WHS 2011 (Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7) are capable of handling these drives. Even so, when I hooked up one of the Blues to the system, opened Server Manager and Storage Management to create a Basic partition and Simple volume, one is given the choice with a drop-down list between "Default," 512, . . .. 4096 . . . etc. and I assumed that this was the sector size. So I picked 4096.

So now that the remainder of the system boot disk and the new 1TB Blue drive are in the storage pool, I need to put the original folders (on the boot-drive's DATA volume) into the pool so they are duplicated.

I just really feel edgy about these AF drives, or whether I prepared them properly. And also, the Striker's BIOS doesn't offer "AHCI" versus "RAID" for the SATA disks. Only "non-RAID" or "RAID" settings. I have a newer BIOS on order -- custom-flashed to PLCC chips that I can just exchange in the mobo to avoid the risk of a flash failure -- something that the Striker had shown when I first started using it 5 years ago.

Third -- as I put it in another new thread posted today -- It seems a bit puzzling that I'd have two "connector" software programs on my main workstation: One for the WHS v.1 server (which is still "up"), and another for this WHS 2011 -- which I'm trying to configure. So far, I shared a server "Software" folder to my workstation account, and the connectivity is there. But I'm still accessing the server by switching to it from my KVM switch.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Apologizing for the length of my last post, but asking someone -- anyone -- to read it.

I'm getting old -- forgetting things. I think I mixed up the issue of "sector size" with a Windows "format disk" dialog that presents options (512, 4096 . . etc.) as cluster-size choices.

It also turns out that advice for formatting a 1TB drive recommends 4096, which may even be "default."

Therefore, I'm thinking -- just as someone, somewhere (even another thread?) suggested [Ah! I know, it's in the "mem & storage" forum!] -- Let Windows "do its own thing.

I think the choices I made actually let "windows do its own thing" even if I didn't trust the "default" selection.

It's been so long since I've had to deal with this minutiae, and disk storage was never my forte, if there ever was a strong suit at all.

Acronis home 2012 also installs on WHS2011, but it failed to restore the system for me in the last week causing a huge amount of wasted time for me. If you choose to try acronis, I'd HIGHLY suggest making a built-in backup then fully testing an acronis restore. Do this long before you need it. I didn't do this and I'm paying for it now.

See, Binky -- I knew that WHS v.1 had some or all of those features, or I thought maybe there was more than one way to skin the cat. I might take "disk images" as drive clones on certain workstations. I have a mix of data on the workstation and data on the server in shared folders or a "User" folder. But I also make "shared folder and file" copies to a pre-formatted hot swap disk. So if I had some files configured for duplication, I have a third duplicate on the manual, file-to-file hot-swap copy.

If I don't have a backup that is as little as two days old, I may have one that is a week -- even a month or two old.

The only files I've lost since 1985 were on "black" floppies I forgot to convert to 3.5" "HD" 1.4M disk, and files that I forgot to copy from a workstation that was being mothballed or sent to salvage.

Sometimes, it could just be best to keep an up-to-date software inventory with activation codes in ".txt," keep track of installation files and discs, while also keeping insurance for data files with several backups.

With a complete Windows re-install, you might take a day or two to get back to the Windows setup you had. On the other hand, a clone of the system disk and restoration of data files could take little more than an hour or so, using different aspects of the backup strategy.

This may be total BOOL-S***, but that's what I do.

 

[hoorah]

Watching this thread... I've been happy with WHS v 1, and have been running a Minecfraft server on it for my sons. However they recently wanted to run a special modded version of the server that requires 3GB if RAM, and the 32-built OS just couldn't handle it. I was thinking about using Windows 8, but I would prefer WHS. I have 2 2TB drives, following by a hodge- podge of drives of various sizes (including several laptop drives) that adds another 2+ GB. I really like being able to randomly add and remove drives, and at least 10 drives have been in-and-out of the system since I first built it. I'm cheap, so I upgrade the drives whenver I get a new one for free. Sounds like stable-bit Drivepool is a good way to go. I'm not sure want to pay the big buck for Server 2012.

I'm in a similar boat. I like using a hodgepodge of drives that come out of old systems, but I also wanted some features of the new 2011. I recently put together a new WHS out of an old emachines box with drives of various sizes and of course, 2011 doesn't have drive extender.

Your data usage might be different, but the loss of drive extender wasn't terrible for me even with a bunch of drives, it just forced me to be a little more organized with my data for a few hours to move things around, now I'm back to a 'set it and forget it' configuration.

Im sure in 6months-a year I might have to revisit this and move drives around, but so far it isn't terrible. I might give the 3rd party drive pool a try as well, haven't decided yet. Heck, I haven't even decided if I want to activate yet or not. I took some trash to the recycling center yesterday and saw a Gateway PC being thrown out that looked like it had better specs than my emachines WHS box...if I see another in the future I might grab it before I complete the WHS installation.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'm in a similar boat. I like using a hodgepodge of drives that come out of old systems, but I also wanted some features of the new 2011. I recently put together a new WHS out of an old emachines box with drives of various sizes and of course, 2011 doesn't have drive extender.

Your data usage might be different, but the loss of drive extender wasn't terrible for me even with a bunch of drives, it just forced me to be a little more organized with my data for a few hours to move things around, now I'm back to a 'set it and forget it' configuration.

Im sure in 6months-a year I might have to revisit this and move drives around, but so far it isn't terrible. I might give the 3rd party drive pool a try as well, haven't decided yet. Heck, I haven't even decided if I want to activate yet or not. I took some trash to the recycling center yesterday and saw a Gateway PC being thrown out that looked like it had better specs than my emachines WHS box...if I see another in the future I might grab it before I complete the WHS installation.

I can really understand this, because I've always tried to prolong the life of used HDDs. some of them I'd made into external USB drives in Tt SilverRiver IDE boxes -- good ones. But by the time I was building the first server, I'd picked up two 500GB IDE and some 500GB SATA-II drives, using them in hot-swap caddies and trays from StarTech (which are great). And also, it seems to be a trade-off between power-consumption and redundancy -- between smaller, older drives and larger ones.

By the way -- you can try "drive bender" or the other add-ins, and they're probably great. But this Stablebit DrivePool seems rock-solid and totally functional in a way that matches the built-in feature of WHS v.1.