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Windows Home Server FAQ
- Thread starter theDreamer
- Start date
Having some concerns with my WHS lately. Hopefully someone here can shed some light on it.
Recently my WHS seems to freeze/pause and in general seems to be slower than it use to be. For instance when I open up windows explorer on my main PC (Win7 Pro 64bit) the folders on the left won't show up. I just get mangifying glasses. If I open another explorer right away everything will be there on the new window, but still searching on the old one.(Pic below). Also when I am going through my picutures, if I am in list view and switch to thumbnail view, I don't get any previews, like it's just sitting there thinking. If I open another explorer view and go straight to that folder and go into thumbnail view, they pop up just like I figure they should. Another thing that happens is if I am moving or copying files from one folder to another it will pause for a 30 seconds or so, and then resume the copy/move.
I can't seem to put my finger on the time when it started happening. Things were going great and I am not sure what has changed. Most recent addition has been the 1.5TB WD Green drive.
All my drives minues the boot drive are the WD Green EADS drives, so not worries on the sector size issues.
Any suggestions would be awesome. Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot this? Any maintenance I should run on the disks? Pleae help!! Because it's annoying.
Specs:
ASUS P5Q-SE Plus
Intel e5200
4gb RAM
1 x 500gb WD
4 x 1TB WD Green EADS
1 x 1.5TB WD Green EADS
Window after switching to thumbnails
Explorer on the left searching, second explorer open right after
Not sure if anyone really cared, but figured I would share my results. I was able to reinstall WHS, install all new drivers, and didn't put anything extra on the server. So far so good, guessing it must have been a driver or maybe some service that was messing everything up. Either way I am so much happier now.
Glad to hear 2011 worked for you.
I'm in the latter not because of being "butt hurt" about DE, but because the HP mediasmart extras that I want are not 2011 compatible.
I am still thinking about how to run 2011 as the base OS and my current HP WHS install in a virtualbox VM. I think there are threads about it in various WHS forums, but I've forgotten where they are.
If you are using 2011 without any difficulties, then you may be in the minority. Try backing up a Mac and see what happens. As the testing in real world after the RTM, a few problems are starting to crop up. Have you tried installing connector on a win7 ultimate yet ?
I wish. Haven't had enough time these past two weeks to try out WHS 2011.
I haven't done a Mac backup yet although I have heard that it isn't working well. And I installed connector on 2 of my Win 7Ultimate x64 boxes and an Vista Ultimate x86 notebook. I will say it was a little finicky on the first overnight backup but has not had any issues since.
In outfitting a new WHS 2011 build I'm considering using an SSD for the boot drive, with of course, large capacity, conventional SATA drives for the storage requirements.
In addition to the speed advantages, a small SSD will allow me to image the WHS OS without having to also image a lot of data that WHS might also put on the boot drive.
Is my thinking sound here?
Also does Supermicro manufacture SSD adapters for their conventional 3.5 " hot swap bays?
Thanks!
In addition to the speed advantages, a small SSD will allow me to image the WHS OS without having to also image a lot of data that WHS might also put on the boot drive.
Is my thinking sound here?
Also does Supermicro manufacture SSD adapters for their conventional 3.5 " hot swap bays?
Thanks!
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I'm pretty certain that 2011 requires a minimum 160 GB drive for the OS, and then it installs on a 60 GB partition on that drive. That's what it is on my server, anyway. So you'd need a pretty large SSD to run it unless you can install on a hard drive, then image it to the SSD. I don't know if that's possible. You can back up the 60 GB OS partition without backing up any data if you want.
lovemyram4x4
Weaksauce
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Your hot swap tray shouldn't need an adapter for a 2.5" drive, it should have 4 holes on the bottom to mount the drive.
Cliff Couser
[H]ard|Gawd
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Yes. very much possible. just need to insert a file on the instllation media (USB for example)
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whsvailbeta/thread/b4536418-357c-4483-b493-190ba541ba40
The Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool, will also work in creating a bpootable WHS2011 USD stick.
Sorry, I thought I was subscribed to this thread, but I just now saw your reply.
Good information and very useful. Thank you.
Are you guys running WHS 2011 from TechNet download? When it is officially released, won't you have to completely reinstall the OS?
Thanks again!
nitrobass24
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - December 2009
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Yes you have to reinstall.
The Beta, has already expired.
The Beta, has already expired.
OK great.
I think I am going to go the route of a small SSD for the boot. It may not make too much speed difference, but it seems like a better way to go then just using another large capacity HDD for the boot drive. Am I wrong here?
Is there any way to tell WHS 2011 to NOT store any data on the boot drive?
nitrobass24
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - December 2009
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Yes, once you install you can remove the boot drive from the Data Storage area
Thanks.
There is some excellent information at the link your provided.
To me it seems like a simpler solution to just image the OS to a ready-to-pop-in HDD rather than a USB.
Sorry for a very basic question, but if I reboot from a USB image, what do I do next to get the OS back on a boot HDD? Just copy the entire USB image to another HDD?
Thank you.
Ok, that is great.
I don't recall if the original WHS had that capability, however I never really looked into it.
It certainly seems like the best way to go, no?
nitrobass24
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - December 2009
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You can do it with WHSv1....its just not a one click setting.
I think its the best way to go if you are using an SSD or small boot drive.
I am wanting to build a data server for my home for shares that will contain our Pictures/Music/Documents and as a dump for our HTPC to record to and stream from. I was looking at Windows Home Server for the single fact that it allows one to pull drives that die and or replace drives for larger drives without losing data or having to rebuild everything. Having that on site redundancy and the ability to upgrade space on the fly is VERY appealing however as I understand it the new version of WHS no longer functions this way.
Should I move forward with the older WHS OS or look into using something like Amahi instead?
Should I move forward with the older WHS OS or look into using something like Amahi instead?
Trepidati0n
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If you still want to stay windows based, WHS v1 isn't bad...just inefficient. I've been running that way for several years now and probalby will until my wife finally records 5 or 6 TB of NCIS in HD.
The new version of WHS doesn't offer "much" more than the old one...unfortunately.For me personally it is missing the one great feature that made the original a must have, brain dead move on Microsoft's part imo.
I now use 2011, although reluctantly due to the de exclusion. It works just as the old one did but now I have to be conscience as to where and how I organize my data, mainly movies. I thought about going raid but I didn't want to mess around with that on top of a whole new system. So far so good but I still miss de.
How is your data protected and how will you go about adding more storage to the system later on, are you not limited to just the storage space on each individual drive?
Cliff Couser
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Newegg has OEM version for $99 (FS)
WHS 2011 has drive mirroring so it's essentially a simple Raid 1 (I guess). I was lucky that my data drives were two Samsung 1 TB and one Samsung 1.5 TB, so I placed my shares on one 1TB, mirror it with the other 1TB, and have client backups on the 1.5 TB. For future expansion, I can get another 2 TB and mirror both 1 TB drives to it I'm pretty sure. Finally, I have a 1 TB usb external that it all backs up to. So, for me DE is really a non-issue. I can see how it can be, though, if you have a lot of data on an assortment of oddball drives. Setting up the mirror is simpe, and no more difficult than partioning a new drive.
http://usingwindowshomeserver.com/2011/02/10/windows-home-server-2011-drive-mirror-video-edition/
At the risk of getting ripped apart here, I think the removal of DE is getting a bit overblown. If I hadn't stumbled onto this mirroring demonstration I too would have been concerned about my data security without going Raid 1 on my drives. I see DE only as data duplication in a flexible way. Granted mirroring isn't as flexible, but it's easier than Raid and much more flexible than Raid to boot. I suppose you could even mirror 4 250 GB drives to a single 1 TB of different makes and performance. So even though the discussions I've seen are often rejecting 2011 because the lack of data duplication without resorting to Raid are misguided. It seems the only down side to using the mirror is the need to adjust drive sizes to fit on a mirror drive, and the inconvenience of having to split up data to the various physical drives.
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Trepidati0n
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At the time of its removal, it deserved to be overblown. DE was one of the two huge points of WHS (that and braindead backup). It was so decently good there was nobody else really in the market . That was the issue.
And if anybody brings up any *nix platform, DIAF. WHS took me a grand total of about 15 minutes to get up and running...I could not say that for any of the *nix options.
My original WHS v1 install took longer because I was using a SATA drive and had to go through the install driver from floppy trick. None of that on 2011, it just worked. It's similar to XP versus Win 7. It just feels better. I hope it works better too; it's been fine so far. When I swapped hardware on v1 it corrupted my entire system and I had to do a complete reinstall. I had my important data backed up, so it was just an inconvenience. But it didn't make me comfortable to not be able to recover my system if it was an unplanned crash. I wonder if the DE file system had anything to do with that.
I am wondering what the upside of it is outside of the media streaming which as I understand it was "nerfed" before release and could be handled by apps like Playon or Tversity anyways.
Anyone care to explain why I would buy this over the original if all I want is a simple file server that is both easy to upgrade and protects my data?
Seems to me they took out the best feature (DE) and what we have left is something slapped on top of 2008 server.
Anyone care to explain why I would buy this over the original if all I want is a simple file server that is both easy to upgrade and protects my data?
Seems to me they took out the best feature (DE) and what we have left is something slapped on top of 2008 server.
Support for drives over 2 TB is a good reason to upgrade. I imagine we will be seeing 4 TB drives soon and then 3 TB drives will be getting cheaper. WHS V1 is getting long in the tooth. Also reinstalling WHS V1 sucks. As do the network speeds. If you don't care about any of these things and don't plan to then V1 should be just fine.
SOSTrooper
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So are Hitachi 7K3000 and 5K3000 the only 512byte sector 2TB drives left in the market? 20EADS seems to be dwindling in stock by the day, and other 2TB like the Samsung and Seagate are Advanced Format.
I'm still rocking my 2 year old WHS v1 here, still solid and does the job for me.
I'm still rocking my 2 year old WHS v1 here, still solid and does the job for me.
Trepidati0n
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What I want is the HP microsever to get a "tolerable" RAID5 chip that supports adavanced format. Getting 9TB with a parity drive seems just like the cats meow...especially when the total cost is <$1000 including server, RAM, drives, and WHS 2011
nitrobass24
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - December 2009
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Yes the 5k3000 is 512byte