My home server disaster!

S

SpeedyVV

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Sep 14, 2007
Messages
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Sorry but I am in pain so I have to share.

Came home from a 7 week trip, to find my WHS clicketing away.

I shut it down and restarted it.

The 500G WD system drive was dying, and one 1.5T data drive DEAD! :eek::eek:

I was able to make a "copy" of the system drive onto a spare 1T drive I had.

Looking around I noticed that the exhaust fan in the back was DEAD. I wonder if this is what caused the 2 HDDs demise? If so, I am worried about the remaining 4 Drives!!!!!

The system boots, but the WHS Console keeps crashing, but the server still comes alive, as in I can see all the shared drives and accounts.

I not sure what to do next! I am heartbroken!!!

At least there are still 4 drives worth of data, and my Photos and key business files are replicated on the cloud (ASUS Webstore).

Any words of consolation are appreciated.
 
Wow, that sucks. I have a little redundant cooling on my drives as a just in case. At least you didn't lose anything super important.
 
This is why you need to back up your data on something that isn't mechanical and online all the time.
 
Looking around I noticed that the exhaust fan in the back was DEAD. I wonder if this is what caused the 2 HDDs demise?
Click to expand...

I do not think so unless the air inside your case was very hot. Over 50C?
 
drescherjm said:
I do not think so unless the air inside your case was very hot. Over 50C?
Click to expand...

That is what I thought, specially since the front fan was still working, so some cooler air was comming in.

I guess, just probability being a bitch!
 
This is not to rub it in, but running WHS and on top of that a bunch of old consumer harddives 24/7, this is what you risk.

Save what you can and look into creating a system you can trust even after a failure. A ZFS RAIDZ2 volume would have 1) reassured you that all the data you can retrieve can be trusted and 2) two harddrives could have failed and still no chance of data loss. I am pretty sure you would have seen signs of such failures early if you'd used ZFS. And never keep a harddrive in use more than 12-18 months.
 
The one thing bothering me is now I wont know what is missing and what is not.
 
[LYL]Homer;1037107359 said:
Bummer!

But don't leave a server on its own for 7 weeks. :eek:
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I know, but it actually was very usefull to be able to access files from the other side of the world. That was one reason for the server, for remote access from anywhere in the world.

One thing I will say, this is the 1st home server i put together, and it has been a great experience. Very usefull, but also unfortunately a "learning lesson".

Oh well, time to start thinking about home server V.2
 
Another thing you learned the hard way is..........a server isnt a real backup solution. Aside from the ZFS stuff. And TBH I avoid any of that mess like the plague due to the fact I dont have time to learn a new OS and god forbid you ask any kind of *Nix/BSD question without first researching all 3,432,234,122 google returns pertaining to the problem. ( Yep, I have said it before, the worst part of the *Nix/BSD OS is the elitist attitude you get when you ask a question)

The best/easiest option is to reinstall WHS. Then buy a new drive to replace the failed one. IF WHS doesnt recognize it as a reinstall and you have to do new install youll have to copy all your data over one drive at a time. Make sure youre copying the DE/Shares folder wih the correct file in it, not the tombstone.
 
jay2472000 said:
Another thing you learned the hard way is..........a server isnt a real backup solution. Aside from the ZFS stuff. And TBH I avoid any of that mess like the plague due to the fact I dont have time to learn a new OS and god forbid you ask any kind of *Nix/BSD question without first researching all 3,432,234,122 google returns pertaining to the problem. ( Yep, I have said it before, the worst part of the *Nix/BSD OS is the elitist attitude you get when you ask a question)

The best/easiest option is to reinstall WHS. Then buy a new drive to replace the failed one. IF WHS doesnt recognize it as a reinstall and you have to do new install youll have to copy all your data over one drive at a time. Make sure youre copying the DE/Shares folder wih the correct file in it, not the tombstone.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice on the reinstall...i will probably just that...

BTW, I do know a server alone is not a backup solution... that is why I invest in external HDDs and off site cloud storage...I like at least 3 levels of backups... but the WHS is a backup of the workstations and laptops we have in the house...

BUT losing online access to lots of information is more inconvinent that I thought it would be... I need to do some $ calculations to see what is affordable.
 
So okay, you had a server, but I can't glean from the text, you didn't have reduntand storage on the server ? Just random drives waiting to fail? I don't see how it would have been better if you had been at home, drives fail, data is lost. That's why the universe spawned RAID, and later, updated it with ZFS :)
 
Major Bummer!

Duplication would have taken care of it. ;)

But it's still a bummer!
 
jay2472000 said:
Another thing you learned the hard way is..........a server isnt a real backup solution. Aside from the ZFS stuff.
Click to expand...

No, even a server with ZFS is not a backup solution, it just adds to redundancy and ensures access to the data even after a disk or two fail.

A backup is a solution to a different problem then a raid array no matter what kind of raid array we are talking about.
 
@ OP, what I am considering doing is building a freenas based server with the ability to access it from outside my lan. I am running dual WHS boxes and will probably just put whatever I think Ill need on the freenas box , that way all my stuff isnt open to the outside world. Plus I personally dont need access to my whole server outside my home so I can build a decent little freenas on some old hardware I have laying around. My situation may be different than yours though, just a thought.
 
Well, I have now completely re installed WHS on a new drive, and in the process of "rebuilding" my WHS.

I say rebuilding because when the SYS drive dies, the whole thing pretty much dies.

So far it has taken 2 days, and I expect it to take 1 more day.

I expect that even loosing 2 drives out of 6, I will be able to recover, 100% of my critical data, and 95% of my non critical data (ie recoverable through other means like re ripping my DVDs).

Painfull, but not the end of the world.

Thanks to all that offered support, it really helps to have community of knowledgeble folks to help smooth things with ideas and solutions.

Once the whole thing is back I will summarize the good and back of what I learned from this experience.
 
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