HP MediaSmart Server? - Page 26

I think the key to your statement is "4 weeks now". From what I recall from the link above (been a bit since I read it), they will work fine in the short run, but long term use may cause problems (it's either alluded to or spelled out in that mediasmartserver article). Frankly, I've tried to stay with only the advanced format drives that allow the use of jumpers (for example, the WD drives) to change back to the old format for compatibility.

I pulled the trigger and got the MediaSonic 2.0 USB and eSATA 4 bay enclosure as well as 4 of the onsale Hitachi drives.

I am still up in the air on what the best method of backing up my files would be. My inclination is to throw all 4 drives (in enclosure connected via ESATA) into the pool and set the server to duplicate my blu-ray rips. As long as WHS duplicate process backs up the files on seperate disks I am fairly well covered. However, my chief concern with this process is that if I decide later to upgrade to vail or want to pull out of WHS and use something like an unraid, the process for unraveling the files will be a nightmare.

Anyone have any advice?

Why would the process of unraveling the files be a nightmare. Simply shut off duplication when you want which will remove the second copy. Then as you remove a drive any data on that drive would get moved over to the remaining drives. Unless you have a different process in mind?

So that I understand this, let me apply an example and you can tell me if this is correct or what parts are wrong.

I have a WHS with a 1.5TB root main drive and 3 x 2TB drives. This give me just over 7TB of total storage (accounting to 20GB of WHS software and what not). I plan on adding 4 x 2TB drives which will expand my total physical storage to 15TB (give or take). Of the 15tb I have about 6TB of rips, audio and photos. If I turn on duplicate on these shared folders, the files will be duplicated on a seperate physical hard drive. This will reduce my logical storage to 8.5TB (8.5TB would be duplicate).

When I am ready to move to a different solution such as RAID or unRaid, I would turn off duplicate, then remove the last drive four drive (8TB of data) which will contain ONLY duplicate files, correct? I could then mount these in an unraid or raid box and format the drives. Then copy the files from my WHS (8.5TB) to the raid server and verify transfer. Then add the WHS drives to the RAID which would then format those drives, correct?

The last four drives will not only contain duplicated files. I believe that when you add a new file WHS usually will add it to the drive with the most amount of free space. So when you add these drives and then add new media it will most likely first be written to one of the new drives and then duplicated elsewhere.

So how would you clear out those drives eventually I guess is what you are asking? Well, first you would shut off duplication. This would leave you with one copy of each file spread across all your drives. Then, in the WHS console you would manually choose to remove one drive at a time (when you do this WHS will copy any files off these drives over to your remaining drives). Hope that makes sense

Why not keep duplication on, since it is protecting you data by having a second copy? Then have the WHS remove a drive and put that in the unRAID. Once you have enough space in the unRAID just copy the files from the WHS to the unRAID box. It might take some time but at least the data will be protected during the entire process.

Do you have a source saying they are advanced format drive? Everywhere I've read online say the hitachi 2tb 5k3000 are not 4k but 512 sector drives and thus are not advanced format drives.

You may be correct actually, I just looked at the specs quickly and saw the 6.0GB/s SATA. Doing a quick search I don't see anywhere it being referenced as AF either

EDIT - duh, for some reason I thought is was the Samsung FE4, obviously it is not...

Not AFT drives.
http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-d...eskstar-5k3000

I have several Hitachi 2 TB 7200 RPM drives and quite satisfied with those.

The 5k3000 would run cooler with coolspin like the Seagate 2 TB 5900 RPM drives which I like as well.

How do you have WHS remove a drive?

What happens if my physical free drive space is less than 2 TB and all my drives are 2TB.. so if I removed a 2tb drive, I would be removing data that can not be moved to a seperate drive because there is no space.

If you get to the point where you don't have enough free space with duplication you will actually get a critical warning message in the WHS console (so it is not something that would just happen as you are removing drives as you would know already).

Anybody?

Great...that I think concludes all my questions for this topic. I will be adding the drives to the pool and doing duplication. Appreciate you taking the time to answer all my questions.

Sorry bud, no clue. If you can't find anything here you may want to ask on the MediaSmartServer.net forums.

Also do a search on the MS KB database for that error and perhaps the pertinent MS forums.

That file is for the Console QuickView Monitor Service (part of the new Media Center functionality). It's a harmless error code, though annoying. Some have gotten rid of it by rebooting WHS a few times.

Could this possible be added to the HP MediaSmart Server to give 5 eSata ports?
http://www.sataport.com/
then hook up 5 JBODs via eSATA?

I purchased one in 2009 or 2010 and if I remember correctly it will do that. But it makes more sense to just get a port multiplier enclosure insetad of five separate eSATA single drive enclosures.

It will only turn the MSS eSATA port multipilier port into 5 eSATA ports. You will not get port multiplication on any of those five ports.

when I purchased it i was hoping that it might give port multiplication on the five ports but it didn't. If I can fiind it and you are interested in one i can sell it pretty cheap.

I would like to access my iTunes music off my 495. I have all the folders/files stored in the music share. I turned on the iTunes server functionality, but when I log into iTunes from the workstation on the network (I can see my folders on this machine) I do see anything representing the server. I am obviously missing, can someone point me to more information on how to set this up correctly or provide some direct assistance?

On my PC where iTunes is installed I just have to add my server folder where my music is stored. I can then see all my music files. Not sure if this is what you are trying to do

The smart add on now installed on my EX490 does a nice job keeping track of HDD fitness and temperatures for the internal drives and the drives in the Mediasonic 4 bay enclosure.

But if users want this functionality for their PC take a look at 'SpeedFan'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedFan

This free program is installed on all my computers to interrogate and report the SMART status for all HDD on the PC as well as report voltages and temperatures for the motherboard.
Particularly useful is the 'hard_disk_in-depth_online_analysis'

So, strange error:

I'm trying to copy a ~25 GB file from my laptop onto my MSS, but whenever it gets to about 1 GB left to go, it cancels the transfer and shows an error message that says something along the lines of "operation failed: disk is full". When I view the drive via Finder and a Samba share on my Mac, it says there's ~525 GB of free space left, and when I use RDC and check on the server itself, there's ~490 GB left. I'm not sure why there's a discrepancy there, but that's another issue.

There should be plenty of space to transfer this 25 GB file. Any idea why this is happening?

Do you have duplication enabled? Possibly you don't have enough space to copy additional files over and still have duplication working

No duplication is enabled (but even if it was, there's still 500 GB free compared to the 50 GB a duplicated file would take up).

Strangely enough, I tried transferring the file to a different folder ("Music" instead of a subfolder of "Video") and it worked. I'm going to see if I can then move it where I want it later today.

Is the distribution across multiple HDDs that the MSS automatically does limited to a folder-by-folder basis, so maybe if I have one folder with a ton of data in it, that all has to reside on the same drive, and that particular individual drive doesn't have enough space for this file? Does that make sense?

Well, don't forget, with duplication it isn't necessarily how large the file size is but how much free space you have left for duplication. So as an example, lets say you have 4 x 1TB drives with duplication enabled. You are using 3TB worth of data. Technically you do not have 1TB free even though the pie chart says you do.

But anyway, you don't have duplication enabled so that isn't the issue. Assuming are your drives are part of the data pool (are they, or did you keep your drives outside of the pool?) the data in your Videos share would get spread across multiple drives. Honestly I have never heard about the type of issue you are having, where there appears to be a size restriction on a particular shared folder.

So, my question was pretty much answered on a different forum. Thanks to everyone who helped out/responded both here and on the other forum. Here's a link if anyone is interested in the explanation:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/foru...ic.php?p=81922

Now for a completely unrelated question: what happens to my MSS if the main OS drive (not the other ones with just data on them) fails? What are my recovery options for getting the MSS back up and running, and can I easily retrieve my data from the other HDDs if I want to migrate to a new system whether they have duplication turned on or not?

If your O/S drive dies you would simply just need to pull out the old drive, but in a new drive, and do your system restore. Now keep in mind that on the O/S drive only a small portion is used for the O/S, something like 20GB. The rest of the drive is used for your pooled data. Since you don't have duplication enabled and your O/S drive dies you will also lose whatever data is stored on that drive as well.

For the other drives you can simply connect the drives to another PC and view all drives via Windows Explorer

More noobish, all-over-the-place questions:

1. As a Mac user, if I trust the files that I'm putting on my MSS, do I even need to worry about anti-virus on the server itself? (for example, can Windows viruses sit on my Mac and jump to the server?) Would it be possible for my roommates to accidentally infect the server even if I've only given them read-only access?

2. Does the MSS automatically go into some sort of sleep/hibernate when not in use for long periods, and if not should I set that up for better long-term health (and how would I do that)?

Not a Mac guy so can't answer #1

#2 - It does not go to sleep. I never put my WHS to sleep, and there are no health benefits to letting it sleep (some people say that constantly powering up/down could affect the lifespan of the HDDs, don't know how true that is). I know the EX49x series has a built in sleep feature, or you could use an Add-In such as LightsOut

You can configure it to go to sleep in the console. I guess the only benefit is power consumption? I think my LX195 is rated at 5w when in sleep mode. By default it's setup to go to sleep from 12am to 6am, BTW. But you can change that to whatever.