• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Home server HDD issue, need advice

F

FXDawg

Gawd
Joined
Jan 27, 2009
Messages
679
Hi Guys,

I built this server 4 years ago and one one of the drives is showing as missing.

What would be the best way to fix this?

When I go into server storage, it has been stuck on "calculating sizes" for quite a while now.

Here are the server specs.

1 COOLER MASTER ELITE 335 RC-335-KKN1-GP Mid Tower Computer Case
1 BIOSTAR A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
1 Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V
1 AMD Athlon II X3 445 Rana 3.1GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Desktop Processor
1 G.SKILL NS 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory
2 Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal HD -Bare Drive
1 Microsoft Windows Home Server Power Pack 3
 
What would be the best way to fix this?
Click to expand...

Maybe the drive is dead or is ready to die? Remember regardless of how much you use any drive expect a 2% to 10% annual failure rate.

Run CrystalDiskInfo and see if the drive or both drives are any status other than good.
 
Last edited:
according the WHS console the drive has failed. I should probably install 2 new drives? yes?
 
I guess my question is about a recommendation on new drives. Do I need to get 2tb drives again? 3tb seems a better deal. will the addition be seamless? The drives are failing in there 3rd/4th year. should I go for a 5 year drive this time. I can get 2 red Pro 3tb drives for $319 or 2 Black drives for $325.

Both carry a 5yr warranty. Is one preferable over the other? are they both overkill for home server storage?
 
FXDawg said:
I guess my question is about a recommendation on new drives. Do I need to get 2tb drives again? 3tb seems a better deal. will the addition be seamless? The drives are failing in there 3rd/4th year. should I go for a 5 year drive this time. I can get 2 red Pro 3tb drives for $319 or 2 Black drives for $325.

Both carry a 5yr warranty. Is one preferable over the other? are they both overkill for home server storage?
Click to expand...

2TB hard drives would be the easier drives to add but yes 3TB drives are the better deals. With the 3TB drives, you'd have to do this workaround in order to get WHS to see and use the 3TB drive:
http://forum.wegotserved.com/index....rives-work-as-storage-pool-drives-in-whs-pp3/

Don't bother with going for a "five year" drive. They can still die after a year or so. IN addition, for the same price as those two five-year 3TB drives, you could buy three Seagate or WD 3TB drives and be better off data uptime wise.
 
FXDawg said:
1 COOLER MASTER ELITE 335 RC-335-KKN1-GP Mid Tower Computer Case
1 BIOSTAR A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
1 Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V
1 AMD Athlon II X3 445 Rana 3.1GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Desktop Processor
1 G.SKILL NS 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory
2 Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal HD -Bare Drive
1 Microsoft Windows Home Server Power Pack 3
Click to expand...
I only see a pair of shitty green drives in the list of a very basic desktop PC..... I hope you were not silly enough to put an OS of greens in the first place...?

If you are silly enough and did do it, then get real and put in better drives. Put the OS on a small 60GB SSD, buy decent drives (NO GREENS) and setup the machine better. 2GB RAM is on the low side as well.
 
Umm, not going to say silly, perhaps ill advised. :)

Otherwise Lost-Benji has it, however you don't say which Windows server version you are using.

WHS 2011 will not install on 60GB SSD.

PS I use WHS 2011 and use 4-6 TB NAS drives.

PS Check Amazon for 2-6TB Red drives, cheaper than you indicate.
 
yes, I do agree as well, I'm going to add a ssd for OS and install 2 - 3tb drives

i guess a fresh install will be the order of the day.

say what you will, that system lasted 4 years and it has proven to be a very cost effective back up device for several PCs.

it is still working except the backup services wont start.and although the os was installed on one of those "crappy green drives" it was still protected by a 2nd drive and balancing.

i was after an inexpensive system to handle backups and o got that. now i'll make it a bit better and add the more robust drives and an ssd i have laying around.

I ended up ordering the 2 red pro drives by the time i got any usable advise here... i did a little research and those drives were well regarded... i could send them back but, i probably won't...

its funny but the other drive now shows up as healthy but i still can't start the backup service.

the version is WHS power pack 3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116855
 
FXDawg said:
i was after an inexpensive system to handle backups and o got that. now i'll make it a bit better and add the more robust drives and an ssd i have laying around.
Click to expand...

Fair warning: That is how I started. Slippery slope my man! :)

For me things got out of hand. I now have 20x3Tb WD reds in a rackmount case, with mirrored SSD's as OS drives and 10 GBe links. You will get to where I am, I am just a couple of years and servers ahead of you. :)

Mind you, I learned a lot of skills that I now use to make money, so for me it was worth it. But if your primary interest is not in computers, it can be a money pit...
 
rsq said:
Fair warning: That is how I started. Slippery slope my man! :)

For me things got out of hand. I now have 20x3Tb WD reds in a rackmount case, with mirrored SSD's as OS drives and 10 GBe links. You will get to where I am, I am just a couple of years and servers ahead of you. :)

Mind you, I learned a lot of skills that I now use to make money, so for me it was worth it. But if your primary interest is not in computers, it can be a money pit...
Click to expand...

thanks for the warning!!! :D

I did good on the first one, going four years, I think if this next upgrade goes well, I could get another 5 or more years as a set and forget upgrade to my backup device
 
Okay, so, I have the new drives and it turns out there is a bad block on one of the drives. I'm trying to remove that drive through WHS Console. I have enough room to move all the files and remove the drive, I'd like to be able to access the backup files when all is said and done.

I have two 120GB SSDs I can use for the OS.
I plan to add the 2 new 3TB drives and use the still good 2TB drive.

I have a couple of questions.

Is there any way to move the OS to the SSDs without the need for a fresh install?
If a fresh install is the best way to go, can I still access the existing back up files?
How will I go about mirroring the SSDs for the OS?

Any and all suggestions and insights are well received and very appreciated!
 
Is this WHS v1?

If so, you are limited to 2TB drives.

This limit has had me playing with windows server 2012 R2
The 4TB NAS drives work well
 
the version is WHS power pack 3

must be V1

There is a link to a work around for the 2TB limit posted earlier in the thread in Post #5
 
I played with a 2TB work around many years ago.

It works fine until you need to reinstall WHS.

On a server reinstall WHS can locate and install existing storage drives, the version of the work around I tried broke this ability.

It might be time to leave WHS v1 behind if you want to use >2TB drives.
That said, 2TB NAS drives are fairly inexpensive.
 
Looked at the link, I remember doing a lot of testing back then.

In summary, you are buggered if the os drive fails.
 
Depends on what you used WHS for. I used it a few years ago but ran into a problem of some sort (can't remember now). I switched over to use a NAS - better suited for my needs at the time.
 
Well, I was going to add 3 Kingston 128gb SSDs ( had them laying around doing nothing) for the OS and the 2 new WD RED 3TB drives and leave the still working WD Green 2TB drive but, I don't have the SATA ports for 6 drives. I only have 4.

So, my alternatives are;
Use 2 SSds & the 2 new drives and re-install the OS and lose all my backups or

add something to allow for more drives? (not really sure what)

new build? (seems overkill)

...anything else?

I was going to try and recover the backups from the still working drive as all my Itunes music and videos are in there and that PC crapped out around the same time as the backup server...
 
You can buy SATA cards. One of my systems has a Vantec SATA2 RAID controller (but I'm not using RAID). I believe you can get SATA3 cards that have a few extra ports.
You might also see if you can use USB3 (and an external drive). Not sure if that would be ideal but might work for you.
 
Okay, I got my new hard drives, the Raid card and the SSD adapter and got it all installed last night. I fired up the WHS and it booted into the OS, recognized the new 3TB drives (actually it saw like 2.72TB each), without any added steps, GREAT!

I added the two new drives to the one remaining good drive and I've got about 7.65TB total.

The System sees the 2 SSDs I installed but I did not add them to the others.

I'm still having issues running a backup. It keeps failing. I'm not reaqlly sure what to do from here.

I'd like to get the OS onto the the SSDs and mirror them and use the 3 HDDs as the storage.

Any ideas what my next step should be?

I'm trying to salvage the backups but I guess it isn't the end of the world if I lose them. My biggest concern is getting my music library out the old house PC that crapped out on me. I'm going to pull the hard drive on it and see if I can access it that way.

Thanks in advance!
 
Hello again. Here is an update.

I installed the drive I thought was failing initially and WHS says it is healthy
I added it to the array
I now have 9.1TB total sorage on 2-2TB and 2-3TB HDDs
The SSDs are still not added
The OS is installed on a 20GB partition
I'd love to mirror the 2 SSDs and move that Partion over to the mirrored SSDs
The new raid card came with some software I have not installed yet.
I wonder if that software may have some tools to help
I ran backup recovery and lost some data but I'm backing up again successfully
I was able to remove the HDD from the failed PC and can access it through and external dock.
So, I'm back in OK shape, I'd just like to maybe take it one step further and get the OS onto the separate SSDs.

As Always, Any comments, tips, insights or suggestion are very well received!
 
If your motherboard has onboard RAID, use that to setup the SSDs in RAID 1. Then use an imaging software like Acronis True Image to copy the OS from the HDD to the SSD.

Also, search is your friend. ;)
 
cloning the WHS OS partition to a new drive is NOT as easy as cloning the install to a new disk.
if the drive size is different, you have some registry editing to do.
I think there was something else, too.

I had to go through a bunch of crap when my OS drive starting failing and ended up replacing the failing drive with a 2TB drive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top