WHS - necessary to "remove" drive from pool?

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KevinG

Limp Gawd
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Jun 21, 2003
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I ran out of space in my WHS. It has 4 500 gig drives in it. I purchased two WD 2tb drives to fix the problem.

If I have folder duplication on for everything (meaning everything is on at least 2 drives), is it necessary for me to "remove" one of the 500 gig drives from the pool, or can I just power down the system, and replace one with a 2TB drive. Will it notice that the "backups" of some files have disappeared and place them back on the 2TB drive? I suppose the problem is the stuff that is on that drive but not backed up elsewhere that I have no control over (client backups, for example?)

If not, what's the best way to go about this?

Thanks.
-Kevin
 
You absolutely must use the removal wizard so WHS has a chance to move off the necessary files to the other drives (or compromise duplication) before removing the drive. Otherwise, you're putting all of your data at risk.

Use the removal wizard. It'll pop lots of warnings that files aren't being duplicated and that you're at risk. Ignore them. Insatll the new drive, add it to the pool and you'll be good. Rinse and repeat for the next drive (since you're adding a lot of space, you probably won't get the aforementioned dupliaciton failure warnings).

It'll work jsut fine. Just did it yesterday myself...
 
If you don't have enough free space for the data to go when its removed from the drive you're removing, you might have to turn off duplication on one or more shares to free up some space. You can then turn it back on when you've added the bigger drives.
 
Thanks for the info...

Is this something that takes a long time? In other words, should I start it now in preparation for the arrival of the new drives in a few days?
 
You absolutely must use the removal wizard so WHS has a chance to move off the necessary files to the other drives (or compromise duplication) before removing the drive. Otherwise, you're putting all of your data at risk.
Click to expand...

I am not sure I understand this answer, if every shared folder is duplicated and assuming we aren't talking about the main system drive, why couldn't he just remove the drive and put in a different drive into the system? I am not saying that is the way to do things in his case, but isn't that what the folder duplication is for? Say he wasn't replacing HDs cause they were almost full, but because one just died for no reason so he just removed the drive and put in a larger new one. Isn't it WHS job to see one of my drives that files were being duplicated is gone and there is a larger drive added to the pool. Copy the duplicated files that were on the old drive to the new one. If removing then replacing a drive will put all the data at risk of being compromised then folder duplication is a useless non-working function.
 
LurkerLito said:
I am not sure I understand this answer, if every shared folder is duplicated and assuming we aren't talking about the main system drive, why couldn't he just remove the drive and put in a different drive into the system? I am not saying that is the way to do things in his case, but isn't that what the folder duplication is for? Say he wasn't replacing HDs cause they were almost full, but because one just died for no reason so he just removed the drive and put in a larger new one. Isn't it WHS job to see one of my drives that files were being duplicated is gone and there is a larger drive added to the pool. Copy the duplicated files that were on the old drive to the new one. If removing then replacing a drive will put all the data at risk of being compromised then folder duplication is a useless non-working function.
Click to expand...

Client backups are not duplicated, so if client backups are stored on the system drive they would be lost by just taking out the system drive, replacing it and re-loading WHS OS. "Removing" and replacing a drive the proper way will not compromise any data. All files will be moved to another drive in the storage pool so the drive can be "Removed".
 
You could do it that way and you're right, it should work.

The other way is the correct way to remove/add drives in an orderly manner with no chance of a screw-up.
 
cavediver said:
Client backups are not duplicated, so if client backups are stored on the system drive they would be lost by just taking out the system drive, replacing it and re-loading WHS OS. "Removing" and replacing a drive the proper way will not compromise any data. All files will be moved to another drive in the storage pool so the drive can be "Removed".
Click to expand...

Cavediver's corrct - and I'll add that, yeah - the filesystem is redundant and it may recover just fine. This is what WHS does when a drive fails outright. It deals with it the best it can based on the duplication. But don't forget, client backups are not duplicated, so you may lose some or all of them during a drive failure or from simply ripping out a disk.

Considering that, why would you not use the wizard so WHS can gracefully attempt to move client backups to another drive and update the tombstone pointers to duplicated data (to ensure all data on the soon-to-be-removed drive is not only present, but duplicated anew to another drive)?

For a 500GB drive - assuming it's pretty full like the OP said - it should take the wizard about 30-45 minutes to remove it. So there's no need to do this in preparation to receive the drives. Just do it when the drives arrive.

I just did this two days back to replace two very full 1TB drives with 1.5's and it took 60 minutes per drive for the wizard to move the data and ready the drive for removal. WHS givse a status all the way through so you'll know how close you are to finished...
 
If the storage pool drives are too full, then the removal of a drive will fail because there is no available space for WHS to put the data. You will either need to turn off duplication on one or more shares and wait for the space to be freed up or add another drive via an external usb enclosure, then remove the full drives which will allow the data to be migrated to the external usb drive. You can then take out the smaller drives and move the external drive to the internal space.
 
Filling in the details, right now it looks like this in Disk Management:
Disk 0 - 465 GB 41% used
Disk 1 - 465 GB 95% used
Disk 2 - 465 GB 95% used
Disk 3 - 465 GB 95% used

Storage Pool:
Capacity: 1863 GB
Used: 1409 GB
Shadows: 124.3 GB
Free: 453 GB

However, in the normal "Server Storage" tab, it looks like this:
Shared Folders: 558GB
Duplication: 558 GB
PC Backups: 271 GB
System: 146 GB
Free Space: 330 GB

So, it's gonna be close...but I have plenty of space on one of my clients, so I can always free up some space before the removal.

Thanks for all of the advice.
-Kevin
 
KevinG said:
Filling in the details, right now it looks like this in Disk Management:
Disk 0 - 465 GB 41% used
Disk 1 - 465 GB 95% used
Disk 2 - 465 GB 95% used
Disk 3 - 465 GB 95% used

Storage Pool:
Capacity: 1863 GB
Used: 1409 GB
Shadows: 124.3 GB
Free: 453 GB

However, in the normal "Server Storage" tab, it looks like this:
Shared Folders: 558GB
Duplication: 558 GB
PC Backups: 271 GB
System: 146 GB
Free Space: 330 GB

So, it's gonna be close...but I have plenty of space on one of my clients, so I can always free up some space before the removal.

Thanks for all of the advice.
-Kevin
Click to expand...

The simplest thing for you to do is to turn off duplication for one or more shares, remove one 500 GB drive, add the 2 TB drive, and turn duplication back on. You should then have plenty of space to remove the other 500 GB drives and add new 2 TB drives one at a time.
 
cavediver said:
The simplest thing for you to do is to turn off duplication for one or more shares, remove one 500 GB drive, add the 2 TB drive, and turn duplication back on. You should then have plenty of space to remove the other 500 GB drives and add new 2 TB drives one at a time.
Click to expand...

I feel like we're beating a dead horse. You can do all of this without turning off duplication. All that does it prevent the warnings you'll otherwise see.

Just run the wizard. You'll get a warning that there may not be enough space to preserve all files. Duplicated files get ditched before backups are lost - it's good that way. Ignore the warnings. Remove and upgrade the drive. Rinse and repeat for the 2nd drive upgrade.
 
You could also temporarily plug in an external enclosure or two to buy some breathing room before the upgrade.
 
brentsg said:
You could also temporarily plug in an external enclosure or two to buy some breathing room before the upgrade.
Click to expand...

Yes. Or you could do it the WHS way and not have to move any files and still not lose any data (the duplication will reestablish itself as soon as there's more drive space available). So the only files at risk are the duplicated versions - and only for as long as it takes to dismount the drive (~30 minutes) and load the new one (1 minute).

No need to waste time copying, turning off duplication or otherwise jumping through any hoops. This is exactly what WHS is made to handle natively.
 
What a complete mess this has made!

So, my 2 new drives show up.

I go to the WHS console, and tell it to remove a drive from the pool...and off it goes.

It warns me not to turn off the machine or remove the drive during this time (duh).

It's obviously going to take a really long time to do this, so I close the WHS Console, and go about my business.

But now I can't launch the console anymore! And when I RDP to the box and try to run the console there, it comes up with an error message that says "The Windows Home Server Computer Backup service is not running. Some Windows Home Server Console functions will not be available. Please restart Windows Home Server. If the problem persists contact Product Support."

When I click the "OK" button, the console comes up (empty) and then goes away.

WTF?!

Task manager doesn't seem to have anything taking up much CPU time, so I'm completely stuck as to what to do now...
 
DONT RESTART

Yea if you close the console during a drive removal you cant open it back up.....its always been like that....not sure why.
But dont restart.
The only way to tell when its ready again to wait for the backup service to come back online, or to open up the windows disk management snap-in and watch the free space% on the drive you are removing.
 
Thanks. No plans to restart. :)

What I've done is brought up the built in performance monitor, and I'm monitoring Avg. Disk Bytes/Read and Write...So I can see that it's moving data all over the place.

Interesting that the backup service will come back online by itself...I wouldn't have guessed that.

I'll try the disk management snap-in as well just for peace of mind.
 
Yea, it turns off the backup service since during the removal process, you might be moving some of the backup files to another drive. It should re-start automatically when the drive removal is finished.
 
nitrobass24 said:
DONT RESTART

Yea if you close the console during a drive removal you cant open it back up.....its always been like that....not sure why.
But dont restart.
The only way to tell when its ready again to wait for the backup service to come back online, or to open up the windows disk management snap-in and watch the free space% on the drive you are removing.
Click to expand...

Nitro and Cavediver are 100% correct.

Just wait for that sucker to 'go green' and indicate the backup service is back to a running state. Then you'll be able to reconnect to the console. When you can, shut down the server and remove the little drive you're taking out (don't forget to be 100% sure which drive it is). Slide in the new drive. Restart server.

Once it's going again, open the WHS console, add the new drive to the pool and your next removal will be even easier (especailly if you don't close the console while the 2nd drive is being removed :) )
 
So, here it is, the next morning.

Sure enough, I can start the console again, but when I do, although the drive now claims to have 0 used on it...it is still marked as being in the pool. Is that correct? I would expect it to indicate that it isn't part of the storage pool.

Thanks again.
-Kevin
 
Well, it gets worse.

Since it was still in the pool, I told it to remove it again...after about 15 minutes it failed.

It said there was a conflict on a file, and the details are that there is a "Data error (CRC)"

on the file Data.4096.43.dat
in the folder D:\folders\{00008086-058D-4C89-AB57-A7F909A47AB4}
the file is big, measuring 3,749,708 KB on the disk.

I restarted the WHS, and went through the process again with the same results....

Thoughts?
 
KevinG said:
So, here it is, the next morning.

Sure enough, I can start the console again, but when I do, although the drive now claims to have 0 used on it...it is still marked as being in the pool. Is that correct? I would expect it to indicate that it isn't part of the storage pool.

Thanks again.
-Kevin
Click to expand...

When a drive is successfully removed, it will show as "Not Added". It sounds like the drive wasn't successfully removed.
 
KevinG said:
Well, it gets worse.

Since it was still in the pool, I told it to remove it again...after about 15 minutes it failed.

It said there was a conflict on a file, and the details are that there is a "Data error (CRC)"

on the file Data.4096.43.dat
in the folder D:\folders\{00008086-058D-4C89-AB57-A7F909A47AB4}
the file is big, measuring 3,749,708 KB on the disk.

I restarted the WHS, and went through the process again with the same results....

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I believe that file is part of your backup database. Either that file is corrupted or the disk is damaged at the location of that file. Either way, when you take the disk out of the MSS, you will loose your backup database. If you have made a backup of the backup database using WHS BDBB addin, then you can just restore the backup database or if you don't have a backup, you will just have to start over with your backup database.
 
cavediver said:
When a drive is successfully removed, it will show as "Not Added". It sounds like the drive wasn't successfully removed.
Click to expand...

Right, but I couldn't tell why since I didn't have a console...Now that I've re-run it, I get the CRC error mentioned above...not sure what to do now...I can't be sure that the CRC error is on the drive that I plan to remove, or is on the drive that it is trying to copy the data to...
 
KevinG said:
Right, but I couldn't tell why since I didn't have a console...Now that I've re-run it, I get the CRC error mentioned above...not sure what to do now...I can't be sure that the CRC error is on the drive that I plan to remove, or is on the drive that it is trying to copy the data to...
Click to expand...

It's on the drive you're trying to remove.
 
cavediver said:
It's on the drive you're trying to remove.
Click to expand...

I think you are probably right, but is there any way to be sure? It certainly isn't spelled out anywhere that I can see...

I'm not terribly concerned with losing the client backups...as soon as the WHS is up and running again I'll just force a backup on each client. There isn't any history that I care much about.
 
KevinG said:
I think you are probably right, but is there any way to be sure? It certainly isn't spelled out anywhere that I can see...
Click to expand...

If the drive removal wizard won't remove the drive, then you can be sure it's on the drive that you're trying to remove, because it can't or won't move the file off of the drive, due to corrupted file or damaged disk.
 
Yes, that must be the case...since, if it were having trouble moving the file *to* another drive, it would likely just try to put it on another drive instead of giving up entirely.

This will have to wait for tonight, though, since I'm at work now...Hopefully there are no more gotchas. I hope this CRC error doesn't show up in one of my TiVos where this 500 gig drive is destined. :)

Thanks for your help cavediver! (and all others along the way)
 
Cavediver hit the nail on the head.

The only thing I can suggest is to run a backup of your backups database.
There is a registry value you can change that will also duplicate the backups.

also try to manually copy/paste the file.
 
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