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modeski
Apr 21, 2005

Deceive, inveigle, obfuscate.

redeyes posted:

I loaded it on its own drive for ease of fixing things.

Yeah, this saved my bacon a few times when my system drive failed on my WHSv1 system. Serves me right for reusing a 5yo drive that had seen tonnes of abuse, but at least I was able to restore from an image. Of course you sacrifice a drive bay and SATA port, but I guess that's not the end of the world.

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Incessant Excess
Aug 15, 2005

Cause of glitch:
Pretentiousness
I'm about to set up my first server, a N54L with WHS11, and have some quick questions:

- What's the best way to monitor a server? I'd like to be able to check the temperature and ideally have something that shuts the server down before it gets too hot, since I'd like to put it in my closet where there's bad airflow.
- How do I access my server from my desktop? Do I just use the windows remote desktop utility?
- I want to stream video, is the bitrate of a video the same as the network speed I need to have in order to stream it? ie. if a video has a bitrate of 20Mbps, I'd need a steady 20Mbps wireless connection.
- When using Drivepool, can I add drives with data already on them to a pool and have the data on the drives be part of the new pool?
- Is there some way of automatically backing up specific files from my desktop to a storage pool?
- A guide about setting up WHS2011 that I'm using to orient myself says this about how you should set up your system drive:

quote:

Use this guide http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/answer-file-install-2.aspx build an WHS11 auto install answer file. Note using the example it uses only 60GB of the HDD, the remaining will be a D: drive. You want this!

Install any apps you want, but install them to the D: drive. This is why you created the 60GB partition and not used the entire drive. WHS11 will always backup all the data on C:. This isn't good if you have a downloading app, you don't want to backup what is being downloaded, only what HAS been downloaded – which should be to the D: drive.

Is this accurate, should I give the OS it's separate partition from the programs I'll use on the server?

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend

Biggest human being Ever posted:

I'm about to set up my first server, a N54L with WHS11, and have some quick questions:

- What's the best way to monitor a server? I'd like to be able to check the temperature and ideally have something that shuts the server down before it gets too hot, since I'd like to put it in my closet where there's bad airflow.
- How do I access my server from my desktop? Do I just use the windows remote desktop utility?
- I want to stream video, is the bitrate of a video the same as the network speed I need to have in order to stream it? ie. if a video has a bitrate of 20Mbps, I'd need a steady 20Mbps wireless connection.
- When using Drivepool, can I add drives with data already on them to a pool and have the data on the drives be part of the new pool?
- Is there some way of automatically backing up specific files from my desktop to a storage pool?
- A guide about setting up WHS2011 that I'm using to orient myself says this about how you should set up your system drive:


Is this accurate, should I give the OS it's separate partition from the programs I'll use on the server?

- My motherboard had built in "oh poo poo you're too hot shut it down" features, so I just used that. I'm sure SpeedFan has something similar.
- RDC is the easiest way
- I'm not sure on this one. I know I had trouble streaming "busy" 720p stuff (that one bird scene in Planet Earth) over wireless, and would get buffering on 1080p files consistently. That was before I bought a 5ghz router, though, but I haven't tried streaming over wireless since running a cable to my living room.
- No, you'll need to add the data of the drive to the DrivePool first and then add the drive in.
- The WHS client pretty much just works, although you can do manual backups. I'm reasonably sure you can configure it to backup certain files, and then configure the server to put those backups in a certain spot (ie, the drivepool folder).
- I honestly thought WHS did this by default? I hardly have any programs on the server anyway, so it's not a big deal. Any thing that uses temp files stores stuff on the c:\ drive and then moves completed files to the drivepool share, and I've never had any issues.

the tingler
Jul 15, 2009
Sorry for the really dumb question. I set up a network share on Server 2012R2. I can map the drive on a client computer, but I can't write to it (presumably because it's using the local user instead of the account I used to map it with?). How do I grant users on the home network permissions to write to it?

e: Think I figured it out. Under permissions, I added the NETWORK group.

the tingler fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Oct 30, 2013

Tapedump
Aug 31, 2007
College Slice
Quick sanity check, please...

WHS 2011 main hard drive (WD Yellow 1TB) is dying, CrystalDiskInfo shows a Reallocated Sectors Count of 4.

I'd like to clone that drive (100 MB Windows System partition, 60 GB Server OS partition, remaining 4-5 GB of remaining partition) to a new drive. I would like to avoid having to do a clean install.

I've tried Macrium Reflect running live from the OS, ShadowProtect Recovery Environment, and CloneZilla. None will complete the OS partition clone/copy/backup/image without errors. ShadowProtect used to be my go-to for cloning a failing HDD.

WHS's Backup Server will not even complete.

So, I'm hosed without a clean rebuild, right?

Side note: Assuming I have to do a clean install, is there a (simpler than by hand) way to get my Sickbeard/SAB/CPS and XBMC's MySQL data migrated to the new system?

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend
Anybody have any recommendations on a new 3tb internal drive? I'm looking at this Seagate model since it's cheap and I get free shipping via Prime.

Gerdalti
May 24, 2003

SPOON!

EC posted:

Anybody have any recommendations on a new 3tb internal drive? I'm looking at this Seagate model since it's cheap and I get free shipping via Prime.

Seems like a solid choice.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

EC posted:

Anybody have any recommendations on a new 3tb internal drive? I'm looking at this Seagate model since it's cheap and I get free shipping via Prime.

I have a bunch of them in a file server, no complaints. I think I'm at about a year of ownership. They perform pretty well and go on sale frequently, I got 5 of them for almost half the price of the WD Reds. They are a bit louder and run a tiny bit hotter but I doubt you would ever hear it over a case fan.

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend

Gerdalti posted:

Seems like a solid choice.

The Gunslinger posted:

I have a bunch of them in a file server, no complaints. I think I'm at about a year of ownership. They perform pretty well and go on sale frequently, I got 5 of them for almost half the price of the WD Reds. They are a bit louder and run a tiny bit hotter but I doubt you would ever hear it over a case fan.

Thanks!

Anyone have any tips for troubleshooting I/O issues? I'm having some weird issues, and I don't quite know how to narrow it down. It started with XMBC freezing during watching videos, and then I started seeing the same thing in VLC on my laptop. I rebooted the server and my 3TB WD drive didn't show up, and I figured out it wasn't powering up at all. I swapped the power connection on it and it's been better...but not like it was. If SAB is extracting a file, I'll get constant stutters on playback via XBMC or my laptop, and I've seen a couple of cases where SAB wasn't able to extract a file due to "disk full or i/o error".

I'm buying the 3TB above in an attempt to remove the data from the WD drive and see if that fixes it. I ran the WD extended scan on it last night (it took a whopping 16 hours!) and it came back clean, though.

PUBLIC TOILET
Jun 13, 2009

EC posted:

Thanks!

Anyone have any tips for troubleshooting I/O issues? I'm having some weird issues, and I don't quite know how to narrow it down. It started with XMBC freezing during watching videos, and then I started seeing the same thing in VLC on my laptop. I rebooted the server and my 3TB WD drive didn't show up, and I figured out it wasn't powering up at all. I swapped the power connection on it and it's been better...but not like it was. If SAB is extracting a file, I'll get constant stutters on playback via XBMC or my laptop, and I've seen a couple of cases where SAB wasn't able to extract a file due to "disk full or i/o error".

I'm buying the 3TB above in an attempt to remove the data from the WD drive and see if that fixes it. I ran the WD extended scan on it last night (it took a whopping 16 hours!) and it came back clean, though.

Are you using WHS v1 or 2011?

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend

PUBLIC TOILET posted:

Are you using WHS v1 or 2011?

2011, sorry I didn't specify. I sort of forgot about v1. :v:

Edit: with Drivepool, and six different drives. One 3tb, the rest 2tb.

EC fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Dec 17, 2013

Tapedump
Aug 31, 2007
College Slice
So, I had to rebuild my OS drive. I used an Intel 530 240 GB SSD this time. It's got the C: and D: partitions, and there are 5 2TB WD RED drives in a DrivePool pool.

As such, the D: partition on the SSD is where Client Computer Backups live by default. I don't have enough space on that partition to allot for all the PCs I have.

My question now is, is it safe/a good idea to move Client Computer Backups to the DrivePool pool? Alternatively, could I partition one of the Red drives in half or so and add one partition to the Pool and use one as Backup storage?

I'm going to do some reading of the WeGotServed forums regarding this but am hoping for advice or a trip report from someone here.

Thank you.

PUBLIC TOILET
Jun 13, 2009

EC posted:

2011, sorry I didn't specify. I sort of forgot about v1. :v:

Edit: with Drivepool, and six different drives. One 3tb, the rest 2tb.

Okay, I was going to say that playback stuttering was a common issue in WHS v1 with the drive migration service that runs in the background. That doesn't exist in WHS 2011, Drivepool would handle all migration if you're using it. Have you tried a different power supply? Have you done any HDD diagnostic scans with something like UltimateBootCD?

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend

PUBLIC TOILET posted:

Okay, I was going to say that playback stuttering was a common issue in WHS v1 with the drive migration service that runs in the background. That doesn't exist in WHS 2011, Drivepool would handle all migration if you're using it. Have you tried a different power supply? Have you done any HDD diagnostic scans with something like UltimateBootCD?

I need to look into the PSU, I don't remember what I put in there. The 3tb drive disappeared again, so there's something up there. I did the extended WD diagnostic, and it came back clean, but I haven't gone any further. I think I'm going to pick up a 3 or 4tb drive, try to get the data off the WD, and then test from there. Any suggestions on that front would be great.

PUBLIC TOILET
Jun 13, 2009

EC posted:

I need to look into the PSU, I don't remember what I put in there. The 3tb drive disappeared again, so there's something up there. I did the extended WD diagnostic, and it came back clean, but I haven't gone any further. I think I'm going to pick up a 3 or 4tb drive, try to get the data off the WD, and then test from there. Any suggestions on that front would be great.

Loose/bad SATA or power connector, bad/dying PSU, dying SATA controller. Could be any of those things if the HDD diagnostic scans are coming back clean. I'm in the process of replacing my older Seagate 1.5TB drives with 2TB Western Digital RED drives and those have been working very well. Reasonably priced, typically on sale from Newegg/Amazon. Have you taken a look at the Stablebit forums to see if anyone else is having a similar problem with Drivepool?

Mister Fister
May 17, 2008

D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
KILL-GORE


I love the smell of dead Palestinians in the morning.
You know, one time we had Gaza bombed for 26 days
(and counting!)
I want to install Windows Home Server 2011 on a 64 gig SSD and i read about a trick to bypass the 160 gb requirement by creating a cfg file to bypass the requirement:

http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2011/09/20/installing-whs-2011-or-sbs-2011-essentials-on-ssd-or-sata-hard-drives-smaller-than-160gb/

However, some people are having problems with getting the trick to work using a combination DVD/USB drive installation.

I was wondering if it would be possible to do this by creating a usb install disk on a usb drive instead of using a dvd and copying the cfg file that does the 160gb bypass trick to the usb flash drive instead?

FCKGW
May 21, 2006

It's been a while but I'm pretty sure I did that exact same thing when installing to my 128gb SSD.

Mister Fister
May 17, 2008

D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
KILL-GORE


I love the smell of dead Palestinians in the morning.
You know, one time we had Gaza bombed for 26 days
(and counting!)
Hi, i just realized my copy of Windows Home Server is the older one (i guess from 2007). Also my WHS server (it's the acer one) is fried and i have to buy another server (looking at the HP Proliant). Does anyone know if that stupid 160 GB limitation is only on the 2011 version of WHS? I guess i'm going to have to find a way to extract the serial number from my fried WHS' hard drive (which still works thank god) because I only have a stupid recovery disk for it, UGH.

FCKGW posted:

It's been a while but I'm pretty sure I did that exact same thing when installing to my 128gb SSD.

Thanks. Guess it's moot now though!

Mr. Clark2
Sep 17, 2003

Rocco sez: Oh man, what a bummer. Woof.

Anybody have a download link to an .iso of the first version of WHS? I need to reinstall but my disc is long gone (I've moved 3 times). Googling gets me nowhere. Not asking for any serials or warezish type BS, I have a legit key already.

FCKGW
May 21, 2006

I pulled this URL from the MSDN site http://goo.gl/dt3m8r

Fragaday
Mar 14, 2005
Probably not Scottish
Just in case anyone is reading this who does want to install 2011 onto a small drive, I couldn't get the cfg.ini trick to work, but used this instead:

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php/topic/25510-installing-to-drive-smaller-than-160gb/

Mr. Clark2
Sep 17, 2003

Rocco sez: Oh man, what a bummer. Woof.

FCKGW posted:

I pulled this URL from the MSDN site http://goo.gl/dt3m8r

Thanks, that worked perfectly :D

kri kri
Jul 18, 2007

I am going to be moving my WHS 2011 install to my old desktop computer. If I just move the drives over will I just need to reauthorize my install granted I can get all the drivers working?

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend
So a friend of mine wants to replace his old HP MediaServer that's crapping out with a brand new box. I'm basically replicating my build from a couple of years ago, but I've hit a snag. I can't find a copy of WHS2011 from any seller that look legit. Newegg is out, and the three or four on Amazon all list them as "open box" which seems shady as gently caress. Any advice?

Eh, maybe I should finally give up on WHS and just stick W7 64bit since all I really want is the DrivePool software working.

EC fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Apr 21, 2014

Nebulis01
Dec 30, 2003
Technical Support Ninny
Buy a copy of Windows Server 2012 Standard and enable the Windows Server Essentials Role. It's the replacement for WHS/SBS 2011. If all you need is the drive pooling and not the backup/user management/etc then Windows 8.1 would be fine, or roll a ZFS box of some flavor.

JnnyThndrs
May 29, 2001

HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

Nebulis01 posted:

Buy a copy of Windows Server 2012 Standard and enable the Windows Server Essentials Role.

Isn't WS2012S like $500, though?

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend

Nebulis01 posted:

Buy a copy of Windows Server 2012 Standard and enable the Windows Server Essentials Role. It's the replacement for WHS/SBS 2011. If all you need is the drive pooling and not the backup/user management/etc then Windows 8.1 would be fine, or roll a ZFS box of some flavor.

That seem way more expensive than a license for Win7 and DrivePool though. I do wish I could have the backup features.

Dammit MS why did you do away with WHS I loved that poo poo.

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM

EC posted:

That seem way more expensive than a license for Win7 and DrivePool though. I do wish I could have the backup features.

Dammit MS why did you do away with WHS I loved that poo poo.

It is a lot more expensive. Really, you could easily just use Storage Spaces in Windows 8 and get a lot of what you're after, or you're aforementioned Win7+DrivePool.

That said, I went from WHS->Server 2012->xpenology and I gotta say, the xpenology setup is by FAR the best performing and my favorite.

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend

AlternateAccount posted:

It is a lot more expensive. Really, you could easily just use Storage Spaces in Windows 8 and get a lot of what you're after, or you're aforementioned Win7+DrivePool.

That said, I went from WHS->Server 2012->xpenology and I gotta say, the xpenology setup is by FAR the best performing and my favorite.

I went to the site to check it out, and it forwards directly to the support forums. Not a problem, really, but I don't see any kind of feature list, hardware requirements, or anything about the software. So maybe you can answer my main question: does it support dynamically adding disks like Drive Pool does? That's a big requirement in this whole thing.

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM

EC posted:

I went to the site to check it out, and it forwards directly to the support forums. Not a problem, really, but I don't see any kind of feature list, hardware requirements, or anything about the software. So maybe you can answer my main question: does it support dynamically adding disks like Drive Pool does? That's a big requirement in this whole thing.

Kinda, the only caveat is that any drive added must be at least as large as the largest drive in the pool. So if you're using 2x1TB and 2x500GB to make a 3TB pool total, you cannot add a 500GB drive to that pool, you must add a 1TB drive or larger.

edit: also, there's an expansion process that normally takes hours to run after adding a drive. The pool remains available during this process, but the additional storage is not.

http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID%3F

As for features, there's a robust plugin library that will do just about anything you can imagine. Hardware requirements are pretty light. I am running it on a 54L microserver and it is more than enough with the stock 2GB of RAM.

Here's a list of packages you can add, all of which are available and compatible with xpenology, afaik: http://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/app_packages

AlternateAccount fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Apr 22, 2014

PUBLIC TOILET
Jun 13, 2009

Nebulis01 posted:

Buy a copy of Windows Server 2012 Standard and enable the Windows Server Essentials Role. It's the replacement for WHS/SBS 2011. If all you need is the drive pooling and not the backup/user management/etc then Windows 8.1 would be fine, or roll a ZFS box of some flavor.

Why not Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials? Unless you're recommending Windows Server 2012 Standard because of the additional features and less licensing restrictions. Standard is around $800-900 and Essentials is around $500. I still recommend WHS 2011, though simply because of the price.

modeski
Apr 21, 2005

Deceive, inveigle, obfuscate.

PUBLIC TOILET posted:

Why not Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials? Unless you're recommending Windows Server 2012 Standard because of the additional features and less licensing restrictions. Standard is around $800-900 and Essentials is around $500. I still recommend WHS 2011, though simply because of the price.

I agree. I'm building a new server this year to replace my WHSv1 machine, and have bought WHS2011 because of the price and because the feature set is all I need in a home server. For the price of Essentials you could buy two 4Tb drives.

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend

modeski posted:

I agree. I'm building a new server this year to replace my WHSv1 machine, and have bought WHS2011 because of the price and because the feature set is all I need in a home server. For the price of Essentials you could buy two 4Tb drives.

Where'd you but it from? I've been looking around but haven't found anywhere that looks legit enough to buy from.

Nebulis01
Dec 30, 2003
Technical Support Ninny

PUBLIC TOILET posted:

Why not Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials? Unless you're recommending Windows Server 2012 Standard because of the additional features and less licensing restrictions. Standard is around $800-900 and Essentials is around $500. I still recommend WHS 2011, though simply because of the price.

Only reason was i didn't think you could get Essentials in the pseudo-oem or system builder channel, thought it was limited to Tier1 OEM only. Now that google tells me i'm wrong, I'd vote for that. Yes the price is higher but it's considerably more capable than WHS2011 if you will ever take advantage of any of the features or the tie ins to Windows Azure for backup, O365, etc. I understand that for most people they will never need or want to run a domain at home but if you'd like to get your feet wet WSE2012R2 isn't a bad way to get started.

modeski
Apr 21, 2005

Deceive, inveigle, obfuscate.

EC posted:

Where'd you but it from? I've been looking around but haven't found anywhere that looks legit enough to buy from.

I got mine from a local computer shop (to me) - https://www.scorptec.com.au. Although I should say I bought it in December because I heard that Microsoft would stop selling it at the end of last year. So you might have to ring round a few places to see if anyone still has it in stock if that's the case.

Civil
Apr 21, 2003

Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".
If anyone really wants a WHS2011 license still, I probably still have my disks and everything at home, along with a license to Drivepool. I've been playing with other OS's on my server and probably won't run WHS again.

modeski
Apr 21, 2005

Deceive, inveigle, obfuscate.
I'm about two weeks away from building my new WHS2011-based NAS. I can't wait to get off these loving WD green drives, holy poo poo.

I have 10Tb of data over five 2tb drives on the WHSv1 server, and I need to get all that over to the new server. Ideally I'll preserve the same folder structure of the shared drives, but I'm wondering what the best way to go about this is. What's the best tool to copy so much data? The IT bods at work seem to use Robocopy, but I've no experience with it. I'm a little worried as I was copying some data (about 120Gb) to an external drive recently and got CRC errors, so I'm worried about starting this massive copy process and it stalling because of some CRC errors or otherwise unhealthy drives.

Also I have some programs running like SABnzbd, Couch Potato, Sickbeard etc, so I'd need to stop those and possibly disable automatic updates as well. Would be very interested to hear how any of you have managed a similar process.

duckfarts
Jul 2, 2010

~ shameful ~





Soiled Meat

modeski posted:

I'm about two weeks away from building my new WHS2011-based NAS. I can't wait to get off these loving WD green drives, holy poo poo.

I have 10Tb of data over five 2tb drives on the WHSv1 server, and I need to get all that over to the new server. Ideally I'll preserve the same folder structure of the shared drives, but I'm wondering what the best way to go about this is. What's the best tool to copy so much data? The IT bods at work seem to use Robocopy, but I've no experience with it. I'm a little worried as I was copying some data (about 120Gb) to an external drive recently and got CRC errors, so I'm worried about starting this massive copy process and it stalling because of some CRC errors or otherwise unhealthy drives.

Also I have some programs running like SABnzbd, Couch Potato, Sickbeard etc, so I'd need to stop those and possibly disable automatic updates as well. Would be very interested to hear how any of you have managed a similar process.

Are you going HDD to HDD? Wouldn't you just copy the partitions over?

modeski
Apr 21, 2005

Deceive, inveigle, obfuscate.

duckfarts posted:

Are you going HDD to HDD? Wouldn't you just copy the partitions over?

I'm going from 2Tb drives to 4Tb. Plus I can only see the individual partitions in the Disk Management console, so I'm not sure how that would work. If I just browse the computer using Windows Explorer it doesn't show me the contents of each drive, just the shares and the folders within.

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The_Frag_Man
Mar 26, 2005

I'm not sure if this helps you much but I use a tool called WinMerge for comparing file/folder trees. You can use it to copy files between trees as well.
It may help you if you are worried about CRC errors as you can tell it to compare two trees and it'll tell you if any of the files are different.

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