HP MediaSmart Server? - Page 31

I believe aaronwt is using an EX490 and he mentioned a few posts back that his MSS supports the Seagate AF drives without any tweaking --- but iirc, the WD AF drives are not supported without the 'Jumper' or 'Realignment' tweaks

The Seagate drives claim to be able to adjust so that the AF thing doesn't matter and in any case he is running WHSv1.

philip

Yep, I guess I missed the fact that you inquiring about WHS v2011

Hi guys,

I have been living dangerously the past two years with no duplication enabled for any of my 16 drives on my WHS v1 box. I finally encountered a drive failure but didn't lose anything as I was able to access the drive on my Win7 machine.

The data loss risk is acceptable to me as almost all my files are blu-ray rips so any one drive doesn't represent that much work. However, I was wondering is there any way to just backup the system drive? Also, now that I don't have the system drive backed up what would happen in the event of a failure of the system drive?

So did you just put in a new drive and copy back the stuff on the old one? Pretty neat that you didn't lose anything on the other drives.

That's one thing I like about WHS and something that makes me nervous about Linux NAS systems with RAID.

philip

Yes it worked out quite well. However, I plead ignorance in terms of understanding what would happen if the system drive were to fail so I would like to back that up if possible.

I replaced a on AF WD drive that failed with one of these Seagate drives and while it works I find the write speeds much slower than the other 15 drives in my setup. Initially, when I start to copy over a file I see speeds in the 45MB per second range but then it steadily drops and levels off at about 22MB per second whereas the other drives in my setup average about 50 MB per second. Has anyone else had similar observations or am I the odd man out here?

I can only compare to my non AF WD green drives. On my WHS speeds are the same for me since the drive speed is not the limiting factor. But when testing the speeds of the drives on my main PC, the Seagates hit a slightly faster throughput than my WD green drives have.

An update and some advice I got from HP:

While sorting out how best to revive my EX490, I spoke with "Paul" at HP Tech Support. He concured with my diagnosis of disc 0 failing, and suggested when buying a replacement-

-stay away from green drives
-stay away from advanced format drives
-most AF drives have 64 MB cache, most non-AF drives have 32 MB cache (!)

I had heard the first two before, so I was not surprised, but the idea of avoiding AF drives by only looking at 32MB cache products was new to me. Anybody else hear this before?

I ultimately ordered a 1TB WD Black 7200, 32MB cache from that river-in-South-America place at a reasonable price. My plan is to just restore the server now and regain access to files (they should be intact as disc dup was on). Later, when prices are a bit better, but before non-AF types go extinct, I'll add a pair of 2TB discs to slots 3 and 4.

BTW Paul also advised that the old Seagate drive may possibly be "reincarnated" by using Seagate "Sea Tools" (the DOS-environment version) on a host PC to wipe and reallocate bad sectors. Need a SATA cable to try that, but it may be a fun exercise. I won't trust it as system partition disc again, though, even if that brings it back to life.

Mike

Stay away from green drives? All 31 drives in/attached to my WHS are green drives. They have been used in my WHS for years.

Hey guys, so is there any way to just backup the system drive?

Also, now that I don't have the system drive backed up what would I have to do in the event it failed? Would I lose any of my shares folders on other drives?

You could make an image copy.

philip

Its pointless. You can't simply restore the system drive if it dies unfortunately because all the tombstones that are associated with the data pool have changed

So what happens if DE is off and you restore an image of the C drive? Are you saying it won't know which files are in each share? Will it not be able to reconstruct D:?

Philip

I thought you could do a new install and it would still be able to see everything from the old drive pool? It's been a while since I messed around with it.

I recently turned on my WHS after having not used it for a month according to my Lights Out Add IN(I'm not adding anything new to my WHS so I've been mainly using my unRAID). Of course I installed the new version of Lights Out and now my WHS keeps coming out of standby at midnight everyday for some reason. All monitoring is off so I don't know what is causing it. I even went back to the older version and the same thing is happening. Unless one of the WHS updates that happened the same day caused the issue.

I think either way it won't work since your pooled data tombstones would have changed versus the your O/S drive you are trying to restore (unless I guess your C drive dies the moment you finished cloning).


That is different though Aaron. You can do a clean install and it will be able to rebuild your pool, but you can't try to simply restore the C: drive if it crashes.

EDIT - actually, this is what I was thinking, if you want to clone you have to follow this procedure (so it is not as easy as just making a copy)

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/foru...php?f=3&t=6826

However, I think this is only if you are looking to upgrade your C drive, this won't work for instance if you clone the C drive and a week later your C drive dies

I recently had a system drive fail. I tried server recovery (HP documentation online if needed) with the original system disk, but it wouldn't work. I was wondering whether I'd need to post on this forum to seek help.

However, I replaced the system drive (first bay for me and presumably for everyone) with a new Seagate HDD, performed recovery, and thankfully confirmed that all of my data was intact. I have duplication on all important folders. The server recovery disc was relatively simple. I ran from an older Dell connected directly to my EX495. Someone earlier in this thread, I think, cautioned and the recovery process instructs that you need to turn off all firewall and antivirus systems, which is true because that caused a failure the first time that I attempted server recovery with the new Seagate.

As a result of this experience, though, I'm backing up important data elsewhere. I haven't had the best experiences with Twonky or remote access, but this situation illustrated for me that this little HP MediaSmart server is still a good investment. I hope that this helps someone else.

Kind regards,

Jason Havens
Destin, FL

Jason,

Hi, I'm experiencing about the same thing with my EX490 and had a couple of questions for you. First though, a back story. This started a couple of weeks back when I tried to add a new HD to the pool. I received a message that my #3 drive (#3 in EX490) failed. It also wouldn't add the new drive and the drive extender migrator service was offline.

I tried doing recovery a number of times with limited success. I made it past the all too familiar "Step 2 of 4 Failure" message but the recovery would eventually fail while setting up the back-up service. My next thought was to pull all drives and do a restore. I pulled drive #1 (#1 bay in EX490) and ran a few diagnosis on it while trying to see if there was anything that I needed to copy from it before running restore. The diagnosis came back that the drive was failing and while it still has some life in it, I should keep an eye on it.

Now..... when you replaced the sytem drive, (trying to confirm) did you copy everything from the old drive to the new drive before running recovery? (Also confirming) You didn't have to do a complete restore because of the new drive?

Any insights would be most appreciated.

Joe H
Houston TX

Hi Joe, Jason, and others following the saga of my EX490 system disc failure and replacement.

The new WD drive arrived and was installed in slot 0 without incident. I performed a Server Recovery (NOT Factory Reset, as I hoped to recover my data folders) and succeeded on the first try! I credit what I learned during the pervious Recovery, but even more valuable were a couple of guides published elsewhere. In particular, I found this post on mediasmartserver.net to be very helpful:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/wiki...X490_and_EX495

Some observations:
-I copied the entire Server Recovery disc from HP onto the HDD of the host PC, and ran the executable from there rather than the CD-ROM. I bombed at step 2 or 3 multiple times before doing this. Don't know why that would make a difference, but suppose faster and higher sustainable read rate from the HDD helps.

-The host PC for recovery was an older Dell running XP service pack 3. I uninstalled all the HP SW from it first (Media Collector, Console Connector, etc.).

-I directly connected the host PC and the 490, with no other devices. (should use a crossover cable but most NICs now can auto-negotiate this if you use a standard RJ-45 cable). In theory it will also work through a switch/hub, but NOT a router as the 490 seeks an IP in the 169.37.37.xx range from the PC during recovery and most home routers are using the 192.168.xxx range. No DHCP device should be on the net with the 490 and the host PC!

-The timing of pushing the front recessed "reset" button is critical. Have the paperclip inserted but not far enough to depress the switch when you power up the 490. As soon as you see the "violet" (I'd call it PINK, mix of red and white) flashing status LED, push the paperclip in ONCE.

-Once successfully started, the Recovery process can take some time, so don't be alarmed if the "progress" bar seems stalled at several points in the recovery. (Mine took close to 2 hours).

-Once you reach success with Server Recovery, and the 490 is connected back on the regular network, you still have to wait while all the updates are downloaded and installed. (Mine took over an hour).

-At that point the server will be able to deliver files, but it will probably take a full day or more before the file-duplicated folders are completely rebuilt and are fully redundant. You'll hear continuous drive activity and the CPU and discs will be warmer than usual.

-The new WD drive is hotter; SMART reports it at 43C most of the time, which is borderline "warm". The slot 1 Seagate runs 38-39C.

-I found it necessary to reinstall Connector on the PCs I want to be able to run MSS Console on. The previous install was not recognized by the 490 (dont know why). Don't use the supplied CD-ROM but pull a fresh Connector install from the server "software" folder as it is the most updated version.

-MSS attempted to recover the PC backups but failed. (Ae they all on the slot 0 drive?) I lost them all but new ones are now populating the backup history, so nothing was lost.

One PC refuses to run Connector, still hacking at that, another won't (yet) autobackup overnight, so I've forced a manual backup for now.

Twonkymedia went bezerk (again, see way up this thread) so I had to disable it. Was hogging 99% resources and bogging everything down. I use mapped drives for access and streaming by media extenders and PCs so this was no loss.

Media Converter was also disabled; don't ned the low-rez versions and don't want the background CPU usage (the 490 horsepower and memory is a bit light, compared to the 495 IMO)

Joe- I don't think there is any value in manually precopying any files to the new slot 0 system drive before installation. I suspect the Recovery process formats the new disc, sets up the OS partition (about 20GB) and then installs the OS. Any duplicated files recovered from other discs will then be rebuilt in a second partition using all the remaining space. (you don't get to see where files are on the discs, however, as they only appear as folders in the user interface. I think if you RDP into the 490 you can "explore" the physical file and folder structure on disc, but my mantra is "look but do not touch" while inside the 490 using RDP as the WHS software manages everything.)

Some brands of drives apparently benefit from being formatted in a PC first. I just threw the WD into the 490 and immediately started Recovery.

In theory, I believe if you suspect the sys disc is in trouble, you can "remove" it in Console, which might put non-duped files from that disc elsewhere... in my case disc 0 more or less failed before I could exercise the option of "removing" it from the pool before physically removing it from the case. But file duplicaton had been on so everything except the older PC backups is intact and we are (almost) back to normal operation.

Yikes, long post...

I am not a PC or software maven, so if I plugged through multiple Server Recoveries and replacement of the OS drive, anyone can. Just be patient and follow the cookbook steps. My thanks again to those here and on the mss.net boards for the help.

Mike

Anyone have experience with these drives? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...m-_-22-152-245

It's $99 after promo code which seems like a pretty good deal considering what storage costs these days. I just recall some people saying to stay away from the "green" or power saving type drives. Any thoughts?

I've had several 1.5TB and 2TB of these Samsungs in my WHS for over a year without issues. Good to finally see 2TB prices coming down to more sane levels... still not at $70 sales prices pre-Thailand floods.

I don't have any hands on experience with this drives - but as mentioned in the previous post, and in posts #888 and #910 in this thread it seems as though the Seagate Green, AF drives should be fine

Thanks Mike. I've been trying to work through some of this in my head before pulling the trigger. You post definitely helps and I'm eager to try it out this weekend.

Thanks again.

Joe

I've got one in my unraid server, and its been working fine for the past 4 months.

My EX495 has been performing fine for the last two years, but today it's acting up. I first noticed it when it would lock up media player on my other PCs when I tried to browse the library or play music files that were on the server. All the indicators on the 495 were green and everything looked ok. I rebooted the 495 and everything would be OK for a while - I could browse the folders and play some music, but after about 10 minutes, everything would lock up, and I had to reboot the 495.

After rebooting, I'd remote log into the 495 and see that all the indicators were green on the status screen. The only strange thing would be that CPU useage would eventually go to zero, and memory always stayed at around 48%. Eventually, the screen would lock up, and I wouldn't be able to communicate with the 495. Before it died, I checked the temps (38 C) and the volatges and everything was correct.

After rebooting the 495, I could watch a movie stored on it with my Dune player, and it would play, but when I stopped the movie, the dune would lock up. If I restarted the dune, it could not see the 495 using either SMB or DLNA.

If I reboot the 495, my Onkyo receiver can see the TwonkyMedia DLNA server on the 495 to listen to music files, but it can't see anything at all using the Windows Connect DLNA server. It will stream music for a while using the TwonkyMedia server, but eventually, the Onkyo will crash.

In all cases, the indicator lights on the 495 are all green all the time. But no device on the network can access it. Can anyone help me out on this?

No, Joe, it was a clean disk. Then I simply followed the recovery steps. I'm sure that the recovery CD creates partitions and installs the custom version of SBS 2003 on which these machines run. My only problem, as noted earlier, was failing to disable antivirus on the connected PC, which caused the recovery to fail. After disabling the antivirus and firewall, everything proceeded smoothly.

Kind regards,

Jason

I'm having a similar issue right now. Did you get your problem resolved? What was it?

Okay, I know we have some of the greatest minds watching this thread. Any suggestions?

I'm thinking of trying the following:
-Replace router
-Replace cables
-Order a USB NIC to try with the WHS (any recommendations?)

Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why not try to turn off DLNA (Twonky), Windows media sharing? Connect a PC or a media player directly to the WHS and use smb to play a video. That way you can start narrowing down the problem. You may have to rebuild the WHS. Perhaps something messed up your system drive.

Anyway, you have to start narrowing things down.

Philip