2010-04-04, 00:22
2010-04-13, 04:23
flamez Wrote:I use unRaid as well. Its great!
+1 Another happy unRAID user here.. currently at 19Tb of media and counting
2010-04-22, 21:41
I just set up a WHS server and its currently backing up my movies and whatnot. My question is, how do i point xbmc to my new whs? Do i need to move all of my movies to the video share that it creates or how does this work?
2010-04-23, 03:12
I'm about to junk WHS.
There's a MASSIVE bug in it.
When you have a HDD having issues, it'll start giving "file or directory is currupt and unreadable" file conflict notices. They come and go. As the sectors on the bad hdd go, they come more often. WHS cannot fix this, ignore bad sectors and make a new copy of the file on good sectors.
THE HOLE THOUGH is that WHS cannot tell you WHICH drive is going bad. It's obviously going, but it's just stabbing in the dark as to which HDD is bad. So even with folder duplication, you can lose data. Which means you need to backup the server to an external disk. Which defeats the point of folder duplication in the first place.
So what's the point in WHS again?
There's a MASSIVE bug in it.
When you have a HDD having issues, it'll start giving "file or directory is currupt and unreadable" file conflict notices. They come and go. As the sectors on the bad hdd go, they come more often. WHS cannot fix this, ignore bad sectors and make a new copy of the file on good sectors.
THE HOLE THOUGH is that WHS cannot tell you WHICH drive is going bad. It's obviously going, but it's just stabbing in the dark as to which HDD is bad. So even with folder duplication, you can lose data. Which means you need to backup the server to an external disk. Which defeats the point of folder duplication in the first place.
So what's the point in WHS again?
2010-04-23, 03:48
gipper Wrote:I'm about to junk WHS.
There's a MASSIVE bug in it.
When you have a HDD having issues, it'll start giving "file or directory is currupt and unreadable" file conflict notices. They come and go. As the sectors on the bad hdd go, they come more often. WHS cannot fix this, ignore bad sectors and make a new copy of the file on good sectors.
THE HOLE THOUGH is that WHS cannot tell you WHICH drive is going bad. It's obviously going, but it's just stabbing in the dark as to which HDD is bad. So even with folder duplication, you can lose data. Which means you need to backup the server to an external disk. Which defeats the point of folder duplication in the first place.
So what's the point in WHS again?
I have been using WHS for over a year now. I have 10TB of storage and no issues so far. Maybe you should not use hard drives with bad sectors. I would suggest you download the WHS addin called Home Server Smart. http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/01/25/ad...ver-smart/
Even better use a Linux distro
2010-04-23, 05:18
gipper Wrote:I'm about to junk WHS.
There's a MASSIVE bug in it.
When you have a HDD having issues, it'll start giving "file or directory is currupt and unreadable" file conflict notices. They come and go. As the sectors on the bad hdd go, they come more often. WHS cannot fix this, ignore bad sectors and make a new copy of the file on good sectors.
THE HOLE THOUGH is that WHS cannot tell you WHICH drive is going bad. It's obviously going, but it's just stabbing in the dark as to which HDD is bad. So even with folder duplication, you can lose data. Which means you need to backup the server to an external disk. Which defeats the point of folder duplication in the first place.
So what's the point in WHS again?
This isn't really a bug so much as a scenario that isn't handled. Not trying to be an apologist, but a bug means something isn't doing what it's supposed to - this is a design flaw.
Anyway, there is a way to figure this out:
1. RDP (not the WHS connector, run mstsc) to your WHS.
2. Run compmgmt.msc and open event viewer -> system.
3. Filter for events from the source "disk".
4. Note the number of the disk that has events complaining about bad blocks.
5. Run cmd.
6. Run the following command: wmic diskdrive > C:\drives.txt
7. Open C:\drives.txt and you'll have a table of the drives in your server that includes the model number of the drives and the physical device number.
8. Remove the drive with the WHS wizard.
There are a lot of different ways to do this, that's just what I could think of without downloading any additional software. Nothing WHS specific about it, it's just general Windows stuff.
2010-04-25, 00:37
I'm really happy with WHS for the most part. The first time I tried it out was only about 5 months ago with Power Pack 3 and I was actually kind of shocked at how well it fit my data needs. I had also seriously looked at unraid, but even though I didn't go with it I think I would have been just as happy with that solution as I have been with WHS.
My Build:
SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SB Motherboard
Core2Duo E4200
Norco RPC-4020 Case
Corsair CMPSU-850HX Silver Certified PSU
2x SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 Sata Controllers
320gb Western Digital Blue
2TB Western Digital Greens
I already had the PSU, Processor, and 320gb HD that I gutted from a machine I was no longer using and I put some quieter fans in the Norco case (the stock fans were not to terrible loud to begin with though).
The rig ended up being pretty quiet and I've just been adding 2TB Green's to it as I need more space. I use it for serving all my media, openvpn server, transcoding for ipod touch on-the-fly for all my mobile media, and i use it as a web server for my various pages i need to host. It handles it all pretty well and I haven't had any hiccups so far.
Issues
Some of the big problems I have found with it have been slated to be fixed in the next release, some of them are big and some are just features that are not present. The biggest thing is being able to backup just the OS. WHS only uses 20GB of whatever drive you put in there and the current edition of WHS requires at least an 80gb (Vail is suppose to require a 160gb for now, but many people looking to put it on cheap SSDs have been complaining so that might change). Whatever is not part of the OS is automatically added into the pool of data which initially made it annoying to image that drive because mine was 320 gb and I really only needed to make a 20gb image. Also like a previous person mentioned it was annoying not knowing which drive was getting errors or what drive something is stored on. However, all of the things I didn't like about it were fixed by Add-ins I found and seem to be planned to be integrated in the WHS Vail release. One thing I didn't really like was the fact that I had to install so many add-ins to get all the functionality to work like I needed, but its sounding like Vail has already addressed most of them regarding the backup database/images and other functions that were missing.
WHS 2010
From what I've heard about Vail from various sources is that it will allow the user to be more selective of file duplication so you can more easily pick and choose what you want and the OS will innately be able to make backup images of itself. It has been built around the newer Server 2k8 which is another plus when it comes to drivers, compatibility, ease-of-install, and support. It has also be rumored that a small business version of it will include the ability to make use of windows cloud software Azure, but I not experience with Azure whatsoever so its just a interesting addition really.
Streaming
I have XBMC Live loaded on an Acer Aspire Revo 3610 and I wanted to have it setup so I can take that little computer anywhere and be able to watch any of my content. I am on Verizon FiOS internet service with 35mbps up and down so I am able to serv almost all content on my drive except for the extremely large blurays. Most of the time its the internet that I connected to on the remote side that ends up limiting what I can watch (like when my buddy only has DSL). I did a lot of research on the best way to get this connected and the solution I ended up with (not saying it is the best but it is working beautifully for me) is running OpenVPN server on my WHS machine and on XBMC Live I have my key and client files loaded up on an SD card that I stick in when I wanted XBMC Live to boot up and connect to my VPN. After that my library is set so once the VPN connects it is connected to anything that is available and uses SMB which I have had the most success with in terms of streaming. WHS has no problem serving up the content.
Speed
With the newest Power Pack I consistently get 65-70 MBps off of each of the hard drives over my gigabit lan which is more than enough for any bluray content.
Overall I'm very pleased with the speed, data protection, and capabilities of WHS. It was a solid first attempt but lacked significant polish which was made up for with Power Packs and Add-ins. I think WHS 2010 is going be an exceptional solution for pretty much everyone when it comes out considering how far Microsoft has come with the WHS software and I love the fact that if a drive starts to die or does it wont take the rest of my data with it since WHS drives are added to a distributed file system but not in a proprietary data format. My initial tests before I got it all together included taking it out and seeing what the data looked like in a different computer. So considering that any drive dies I won't lose any data and if the OS dies I have backups. Even if the mobo dies and takes a hard drive with it I don't lose data because I can still pop any of these into another computer and copy the data right off.
My Build:
SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SB Motherboard
Core2Duo E4200
Norco RPC-4020 Case
Corsair CMPSU-850HX Silver Certified PSU
2x SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 Sata Controllers
320gb Western Digital Blue
2TB Western Digital Greens
I already had the PSU, Processor, and 320gb HD that I gutted from a machine I was no longer using and I put some quieter fans in the Norco case (the stock fans were not to terrible loud to begin with though).
The rig ended up being pretty quiet and I've just been adding 2TB Green's to it as I need more space. I use it for serving all my media, openvpn server, transcoding for ipod touch on-the-fly for all my mobile media, and i use it as a web server for my various pages i need to host. It handles it all pretty well and I haven't had any hiccups so far.
Issues
Some of the big problems I have found with it have been slated to be fixed in the next release, some of them are big and some are just features that are not present. The biggest thing is being able to backup just the OS. WHS only uses 20GB of whatever drive you put in there and the current edition of WHS requires at least an 80gb (Vail is suppose to require a 160gb for now, but many people looking to put it on cheap SSDs have been complaining so that might change). Whatever is not part of the OS is automatically added into the pool of data which initially made it annoying to image that drive because mine was 320 gb and I really only needed to make a 20gb image. Also like a previous person mentioned it was annoying not knowing which drive was getting errors or what drive something is stored on. However, all of the things I didn't like about it were fixed by Add-ins I found and seem to be planned to be integrated in the WHS Vail release. One thing I didn't really like was the fact that I had to install so many add-ins to get all the functionality to work like I needed, but its sounding like Vail has already addressed most of them regarding the backup database/images and other functions that were missing.
WHS 2010
From what I've heard about Vail from various sources is that it will allow the user to be more selective of file duplication so you can more easily pick and choose what you want and the OS will innately be able to make backup images of itself. It has been built around the newer Server 2k8 which is another plus when it comes to drivers, compatibility, ease-of-install, and support. It has also be rumored that a small business version of it will include the ability to make use of windows cloud software Azure, but I not experience with Azure whatsoever so its just a interesting addition really.
Streaming
I have XBMC Live loaded on an Acer Aspire Revo 3610 and I wanted to have it setup so I can take that little computer anywhere and be able to watch any of my content. I am on Verizon FiOS internet service with 35mbps up and down so I am able to serv almost all content on my drive except for the extremely large blurays. Most of the time its the internet that I connected to on the remote side that ends up limiting what I can watch (like when my buddy only has DSL). I did a lot of research on the best way to get this connected and the solution I ended up with (not saying it is the best but it is working beautifully for me) is running OpenVPN server on my WHS machine and on XBMC Live I have my key and client files loaded up on an SD card that I stick in when I wanted XBMC Live to boot up and connect to my VPN. After that my library is set so once the VPN connects it is connected to anything that is available and uses SMB which I have had the most success with in terms of streaming. WHS has no problem serving up the content.
Speed
With the newest Power Pack I consistently get 65-70 MBps off of each of the hard drives over my gigabit lan which is more than enough for any bluray content.
Overall I'm very pleased with the speed, data protection, and capabilities of WHS. It was a solid first attempt but lacked significant polish which was made up for with Power Packs and Add-ins. I think WHS 2010 is going be an exceptional solution for pretty much everyone when it comes out considering how far Microsoft has come with the WHS software and I love the fact that if a drive starts to die or does it wont take the rest of my data with it since WHS drives are added to a distributed file system but not in a proprietary data format. My initial tests before I got it all together included taking it out and seeing what the data looked like in a different computer. So considering that any drive dies I won't lose any data and if the OS dies I have backups. Even if the mobo dies and takes a hard drive with it I don't lose data because I can still pop any of these into another computer and copy the data right off.
2010-04-27, 04:43
mpw222 Wrote:This isn't really a bug so much as a scenario that isn't handled. Not trying to be an apologist, but a bug means something isn't doing what it's supposed to - this is a design flaw.Agreed, but now you've hit on the bug. The events in event viewer only ID disk drive D:
Anyway, there is a way to figure this out:
1. RDP (not the WHS connector, run mstsc) to your WHS.
2. Run compmgmt.msc and open event viewer -> system.
3. Filter for events from the source "disk".
4. Note the number of the disk that has events complaining about bad blocks.
5. Run cmd.
6. Run the following command: wmic diskdrive > C:\drives.txt
7. Open C:\drives.txt and you'll have a table of the drives in your server that includes the model number of the drives and the physical device number.
8. Remove the drive with the WHS wizard.
There are a lot of different ways to do this, that's just what I could think of without downloading any additional software. Nothing WHS specific about it, it's just general Windows stuff.
..... which we know is ALL of the drives having a data volume. It doesn't distinguish between drives even in the "debug" or "diagnostic" sections of the OS.
2011-01-21, 00:40
WHS works great in conjunction with XBMC. I have a modified AppleTV in the living room running xbmc as well as 2 modified xboxes running it, one in garage and another in the bedroom. I just set up mapped network drives on the WHS then pointed the XBMC to each mapped drive. I can run all 3 at once with no problems. My WHS hardware is an MSI Wind PC with an atom processor and 2- 1TB drives. The loss of information I have hear about is due to using the built in windows backup software. I am using a third party software for my backups. IMHO WHS is a fantastic platform. Not to mention I can access all my data and computers through my personalized website included in WHS.
