Lost faith in Windows Home Server.
fatchowmein
Posts: 2,637
WHS with Power Pack 2
Problem: File conflicts, file corruption, NTFS error 55 (file structure errors).
Cause: Power supply slow death affecting the drive spin.
Resolution: Make sure no other pc has access to your WHS while you're working on it. Ran chkdsk /r on the D partition (do not reboot), followed by chkdsk /r on C:\fs\22 and C:\fs\20 (those were the two main culprits but I did it for all). Reboot. There was 1 folder left that showed a conflict but wasn't in any fs folder so I made a copy and deleted it. Do NOT turn off duplication as a solution to the file conflict errors until after you've fixed the problem.
Story:
One of the benefits of WHS is the Drive Extender feature that lets you add hard disks as needed into one large logical partition. To avoid a drive failure wiping out your data, WHS has a Duplication feature, basically software mirroring that will place a copy onto another disk. The theory goes, if a drive fails you still have a good copy on another disk and all you need to do is replace it and the data will be duplicated again.
Back in 2007-2008, there were corruption and file conflict problems because WHS would either lose track of where the data and it's copy were or lose track of changes made by other software. This was fixed with Power Pack 1.
Unfortunately, I'm on Power Pack 2 and I've spent 8 days hunting down files in two locations (they're in the C:\fs folder) and copying, deleting as needed but it's extremely time consuming when dealing with terabytes of data. I tried check disk a billion times but it wasn't until yesterday that I got the sequence right. The D partition is where the share folder resides (the big drive cloud) and it had to be repaired first before touching the fs folder one at a time: C:\fs\1N, 1T, 1W, 1Y, 20, 22, 25, and Z. When you're dealing with large drive sizes, it takes a very long time. Do not reboot in between repairs.
Another problem with WHS is it doesn't exactly tell you which physical drive went wrong. In fact, from the WHS admin screen, all my drives showed "healthy" but the event logs showed errors with the file structure of fs\1Y, 20, and 22. Luckily, I had an add on program called Disk Management which shows disk activity so I had an idea of which drive fs\20 was using for the most part. I removed one of the drives associated with fs\20 from the drive pool and scanned it on my main pc. No errors.
I like WHS. I think it's a great product for the home environment but they've got to fix this file conflict error when Duplication is used. As always, backup your most important stuff like photos, music, and financial data but it's just not economically feasible to backup terabytes of movies. I could turn off Duplication for movies and store a copy on another PC. That would reduce the drive space requirement on WHS to half and I can move those drives to the other pc. However, you've got to keep in mind that your one movie sitting in the movie folder may have all of its vobs spread across 5 different physical disks. Looks like I'll have to make ISO's out of all of them to reduce the spread. Just thinking out loud.
You've been warned.
Problem: File conflicts, file corruption, NTFS error 55 (file structure errors).
Cause: Power supply slow death affecting the drive spin.
Resolution: Make sure no other pc has access to your WHS while you're working on it. Ran chkdsk /r on the D partition (do not reboot), followed by chkdsk /r on C:\fs\22 and C:\fs\20 (those were the two main culprits but I did it for all). Reboot. There was 1 folder left that showed a conflict but wasn't in any fs folder so I made a copy and deleted it. Do NOT turn off duplication as a solution to the file conflict errors until after you've fixed the problem.
Story:
One of the benefits of WHS is the Drive Extender feature that lets you add hard disks as needed into one large logical partition. To avoid a drive failure wiping out your data, WHS has a Duplication feature, basically software mirroring that will place a copy onto another disk. The theory goes, if a drive fails you still have a good copy on another disk and all you need to do is replace it and the data will be duplicated again.
Back in 2007-2008, there were corruption and file conflict problems because WHS would either lose track of where the data and it's copy were or lose track of changes made by other software. This was fixed with Power Pack 1.
Unfortunately, I'm on Power Pack 2 and I've spent 8 days hunting down files in two locations (they're in the C:\fs folder) and copying, deleting as needed but it's extremely time consuming when dealing with terabytes of data. I tried check disk a billion times but it wasn't until yesterday that I got the sequence right. The D partition is where the share folder resides (the big drive cloud) and it had to be repaired first before touching the fs folder one at a time: C:\fs\1N, 1T, 1W, 1Y, 20, 22, 25, and Z. When you're dealing with large drive sizes, it takes a very long time. Do not reboot in between repairs.
Another problem with WHS is it doesn't exactly tell you which physical drive went wrong. In fact, from the WHS admin screen, all my drives showed "healthy" but the event logs showed errors with the file structure of fs\1Y, 20, and 22. Luckily, I had an add on program called Disk Management which shows disk activity so I had an idea of which drive fs\20 was using for the most part. I removed one of the drives associated with fs\20 from the drive pool and scanned it on my main pc. No errors.
I like WHS. I think it's a great product for the home environment but they've got to fix this file conflict error when Duplication is used. As always, backup your most important stuff like photos, music, and financial data but it's just not economically feasible to backup terabytes of movies. I could turn off Duplication for movies and store a copy on another PC. That would reduce the drive space requirement on WHS to half and I can move those drives to the other pc. However, you've got to keep in mind that your one movie sitting in the movie folder may have all of its vobs spread across 5 different physical disks. Looks like I'll have to make ISO's out of all of them to reduce the spread. Just thinking out loud.
You've been warned.
Post edited by fatchowmein on
Comments
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fatchowmein wrote: »I like WHS. I think it's a great product for the home environment
I never understood why people would buy it, other than only knowing how to deal with Windows. What are the things it can do that others can't? -
you lost me at windows
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I never understood why people would buy it, other than only knowing how to deal with Windows. What are the things it can do that others can't?
It's a nice, simplified all-in-one solution when it works.
1. Simple backup. Just click and set backup schedule while the client is online. I use this all the time whenever I'm testing the codecs on my Windows Media Center. Another feature I like is you can control the backup of every system in the house from the WHS Admin console.
2. Simple restore. Boot to the restore disk, point to WHS, and you're done.
3. Simple network share. I prefer mapping them but nice for the non-techs.
4. Simple JBOD. Right click Add/Remove as needed.
5. Simple software mirroring.
6. Full integration with Windows Media Center and Media Center Extenders. It even shows up on my PS3.
7. There is a WHS Home Page for accessing across the Internet but I don't use it.
8. Free, shareware, and retail Add-Ons created by anyone. There are stuff out there like the Squeezebox Server software specific for WHS. There's also Add-ons for home automation. You can log into your WHS from work and modify when your A/C kicks in. Stuff like that.
9. You can leave it on in a corner somewhere without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse and just hit the WHS admin console as needed.
10. I paid $149 for it a while back but it's now $90 on Amazon.
It's a nice little package. Sure, you can do the same in Linux or Windows administration but it was just so simple and easy to use with minimal configuration and little tech knowledge.
Just as long as it doesn't screw up my data... -
It didn't screw up your drives... your power supply did. It didn't know that the drive wasn't writing what it told it to until it tried to read it. Oh, and you also just found out why JBOD sucks compared to a RAID solution.
Sorry... I don't have a problem with Home Server, though I've never actually used it. I just think you're blaming the OS for a hardware problem....Ludicrous gibs! -
fatchowmein wrote: »It's a nice, simplified all-in-one solution when it works.
That's the thing. Simplified, unreliable. Simplified also means it's not as powerful or flexible as other solutions would be. If it was free, maybe it would be ok for some uses but when you have a free product available that is far superior for the task, I don't really see any place for WHS.
I understand if people want to use Windows for desktop because of the programs they are used to, but to use it for as a server? With the time you have spent on trying to get that thing running reliably, you could have setup a Linux server with all the same services, and gotten to know how it works.
The only thing that is missing from a Linux solution that is on WHS is this:# Health Monitoring - Can centrally track the health of all PCs on the network, including antivirus and firewall status.
Everything else is there, and more. It's not really that hard to setup and it works.
[EDIT] I read the above and while it might read strongly negative, it only reflects my feelings about MS Home Server, just take it as it is, a rant from a person who uses multiple operating systems (MS, Apple, Linux) every day. -
BTW- I wasn't saying that RAID would've prevented the data corruption. Just that with JBOD there's no easy way to identify what drive is doing what. They still likely would've read all healthy.
Yet another reason to not overlook the power supply when you're building a PC, be it for home or server use! I see all too often high-power rigs put into el-cheapo cases using the PSU that came with the case. No quicker way to fry hardwareLudicrous gibs! -
I read the above and while it might read strongly negative, it only reflects my feelings about MS Home Server, just take it as it is, a rant from a person who uses multiple operating systems (MS, Apple, Linux) every day.
Np, all of your points are valid. I just wanted to give a shout out as a warning to anyone thinking the corruption issue has been addressed by PP1. In a way, perhaps it has been fixed because I was able to recover all but one unimportant folder but that still doesn't inspire confidence. -
Yet another reason to not overlook the power supply when you're building a PC, be it for home or server use! I see all too often high-power rigs put into el-cheapo cases using the PSU that came with the case. No quicker way to fry hardware
Amen, bro but even the high end stuff fails, just not as often. -
fatchowmein wrote: »Amen, bro but even the high end stuff fails, just not as often.
Stay away from Antec
Ludicrous gibs!
