WHS, Drive Pool, and 64k cluster size

[Beefcake550]

So, users of WHS, I ask you a few questions.....

I have a WHS machine:
Q9450 Quad core Intel
P45 base Asus mother board
4GB OCZ RAM
(3) 1TB WD HDs
(4) 250GB Seagate HD in RAID5 - 750GB array

Coming tomorrow:
(2) 1.5TB seagate HDs

So, I use the RAID5 array as my system disk and LZ (C and D drives) for speed and reliability. The 1TB drives are in the drive pool. With the new drives coming, I was thinking of a few things:

1) has anyone followed the guides for formatting drives IN the drive pool to 64k cluster sizes? If so, how did it work out?
2) how important is 64k cluster sizes when using WHS with a client PC versus a STX-HD100?
3) Should I just forget using the drive pool?

By #3, I mean I could put in the 2 1.5TB drives into the pool, migrate my data off of a 1TB drive and then take it out of the pool. Then, I could take this drive, leave it out of the pool and format it to 64KB (or ever 128KB) cluster size and share it to my sage client (more clients coming soon).

What does everyone else do? I don't have any issues with studdering do to hard drive access unless the server is really pounding on the hard drive pool. However, the only reason it would be "pounding" on it would be because of comskip with h264 running on it, so I'd be moving the "pounding" to be on only one drive.

Any help/thoughts are greatly appreciated.

-Brian

[bhyman1]

I use a WHS server to store my DVD rips and video files I DL. I don't use it for TV recording however.

I never bothered formatting any of it to 64kb clusters and it works great.

[dravenone]

I keep my recording drives out of the drive pool. I have always used 64k blocks (going back to V2.x). I just like to keep my recording space and data space seperate. I think there was also concern with WHS load balancing putting additional load on the drive while a recording was in progress, don't quote me though. I would think WHS would be smart enough to not do that.

Edit: I activate the guest account WITHOUT remote access and then give guest read access to my Sage drives. This lets my client read the drive without having to share it on the home server and without having to map it on the client. It also lets my client read the comskip files. If you have a wireless network, make sure it is secure before activating the guest account.

[michaeldjcox]

I'm considering buying a WHS as a SageTV server box.

Whats the current best practice on 64K clusters, the WHS pool and whether disks should be in the pool or not?

If the primary roll of the server is to perform for SageTV and not to backup other PCs do the above concerns mean that it is not necessarily the best choice?

Thanks for any opinions.

Michael

[camTexas]

I've been using WHS for over a year now with both my DVD rips and recording directories in the pool. I'm using two R5000 vip211 tuners (with the HD-only package). I have my pool drives all at 64K, except for the D: drive and have only had an issue once when I tried the trial of Diskkeeper for WHS and it thrashed several files. I recently rebuilt all again with the same setup and it's been running great for a couple of weeks now. - Chad

[Beefcake550]

Same here, I have all drives set to 64K and all drives in the pool. It's been working great for a little over a year now! WAF couldn't be higher since I moved to a server/HD200 model.

[MitchSchaft]

The drive is supposed to be outside of the pool, by itself. That way it doesn't mess with WHS stuff.

[gplasky]

For WHS you can have the recording drive in or out of the pool. Either way it needs to be formatted to 64k clusters. I have all the drives in the pool and formatted to 64k clusters. Having the drives in the pool gives you the benefit of easily adding or changing a smaller drive to a larger drive simply by using the WHS console to remove the drive (which will move the files to any open drives) shutdown, add the drive, bring it up and answer yes to add it to the pool and quickly format it to 64K clusters. It's been running that way for close to 2 years. All I've done is continue to buy bigger drives for it. It just runs and I only reboot for updates.

Gerry

[MitchSchaft]

I ran a drive of torrents in the pool for a year with no troubles either. This is just what the WHS nerds recommend.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

........This is just what the WHS nerds recommend.

Hey-I resemble that remark.

My take has always been if you're going to combine WHS and SageTV then do it so you can take advantage of all the features from both. SageTV works much better recording to drives with 64k clusters. You want the "pool technology" from WHS to take advantage of easy expansion and some type of drive recovery. Leave enough free space and WHS can handle moving files off a drive you need to remove. Format everything but the System drive to 64K clusters when you add them. Now you have one solid SageTV and WHS box. I don't do folder duplication so it doesn't spend a lot of time balancing the drives. And I have all the PCs in the house being backed up now.

Gerry

[davephan]

Is it possible to setup a WHS system just as a file server to store the video library and recording files using a mapped drive with a 1 gig Eithernet cross cable to a SageTV computer running XP or Windows 7?

I think it would be easier to recover the SageTV computer if it wasn't running on WHS, but only use WHS on a separate computer for the video file storage.

Dave

[gplasky]

WHS is based on Windows 2003 server so from that perspective it is just a file server. You can map out the shares as you would any other file server. Just treat is as a NAS and run your SageTV server on any XP or Vista or Windows 7 PC on the network. Not sure why you would want to use a cross over cable if you have a network and a switch on your network. I've rebuilt and recovered my WHS server in less than an hour after replacing the system drive. It's not like you can't recover it without an image. It just takes a little longer.

Gerry

[michaeldjcox]

Thanks all the replies - gonna order it today.

Michael

[michaeldjcox]

Actually some questions...

The system I'm thinking of getting comes with a single 1.5TB disk.

So that will hold the system and some video and probably the recordings.

Is the 64K cluster just to support recording or to support playback of video in general?

Should the system drive be formatted as 64K?

Would I be better off getting a smaller disk formatted < 64K clusters for the system and maybe put photos and music on that one and sticking all video and recordings on another disk?

Do all drives in the pool have to have the same cluster size?

Michael

[gplasky]

What I would recommend doing is getting 2 drives. WHS is designed to be a multi-drive server. With more than 1 drive the D: drive (second partition of the primary drive) won't be used for storing your media files. You don't want your system drive formatted in 64 k blocks, just the drives in the pool. If you only do a single drive system then your media files will be stored on the D: drive and you'll want to format it with 64k blocks. The 64k blocks improves playback of large media files like recordings and helps prevent stuttering as the drives fill up. I use a 500GB drive for the system drive and have 6 drives of varying sizes from 500GB to 1.5TB in the pool.

Read up on WHS. You don't put "files on a disk" You save files to the shares which represent the drive pool. It is actually multiple drives the files can end up on. You want all drives in the pool to have the same cluster because you don't know where files will end up. If you don't read up on WHS you could do things that are fundamentally wrong for WHS but you would do for a normal PC.

Gerry

[michaeldjcox]

Thanks - I will do that.

Can I add external USB drives to the pool?

Michael

Update:

Got to say I'm a bit confused about what to buy:

The sort of costs of drives are: 2TB £135, 1.5TB £66, 1TB £40, 0.5TB, £32.

It kind of makes sense on the one hand to buy bigger drives including the system drive - but it sounds like I won't be able to add that extra storage to the pool if the cluster size is different. Or might be able to use that storage in some other useful way?

[scat]

I have a question about WHS storage, if I have 2TB of space in the pool and Sage is recording to the pool in a folder Sage Recordings,
and if all data ( pc backups, Sage recordings, DVD rips) is written to the storage pool, how do you tell Sage that it can use only 1TB of space for recordings out of a 2TB total storage pool?

Thanks
Scat

[Beefcake550]

When you add the dir to Sage, you setup a rule that says "use up to 1024GB".

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

Thanks - I will do that.

Can I add external USB drives to the pool?

Yes you can. Most people don't use them long term. You want to make sure they are always on and available when the server boots.

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

Got to say I'm a bit confused about what to buy:

The sort of costs of drives are: 2TB £135, 1.5TB £66, 1TB £40, 0.5TB, £32.

It kind of makes sense on the one hand to buy bigger drives including the system drive - but it sounds like I won't be able to add that extra storage to the pool if the cluster size is different. Or might be able to use that storage in some other useful way?

I always look for the biggest bang for the buck. Another reason why I like WHS is it is so easy to replace a smaller driver with a larger one. As long as you have an equal amount of free space available. I started my WHS with 500 GB or 400GB) drives. 400GB was the system drive so that left me 300GB on the D: drive. The backup database will reside there so the more PCs you back up the more space you want. The other time it will use that drive is if you use up all the free space of the pool. It will start putting the actual media files there. I never let that happen. In my last drive replacement I connected a 500GB USB drive and put it in the pool. Told the WHS console to remove a drive and it moved all the files off of there and placed most of them on the USB drive. After adding the new drive I told the WHS console to remove the USB drive from the pool and it moved most of the files onto the new one.

I think your 1.5TB drives gives you the cheapest cost per GB. Right now I have a 500GB system drive, 3 x 500gb, 1 x 1TB and 1 x 1.5TB in the pool. SO I'll be working on replacing the 500GB drives over time. As I need more space.

Gerry

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Yes you can. Most people don't use them long term. You want to make sure they are always on and available when the server boots.




I always look for the biggest bang for the buck. Another reason why I like WHS is it is so easy to replace a smaller driver with a larger one. As long as you have an equal amount of free space available. I started my WHS with 500 GB or 400GB) drives. 400GB was the system drive so that left me 300GB on the D: drive. The backup database will reside there so the more PCs you back up the more space you want. The other time it will use that drive is if you use up all the free space of the pool. It will start putting the actual media files there. I never let that happen. In my last drive replacement I connected a 500GB USB drive and put it in the pool. Told the WHS console to remove a drive and it moved all the files off of there and placed most of them on the USB drive. After adding the new drive I told the WHS console to remove the USB drive from the pool and it moved most of the files onto the new one.

I think your 1.5TB drives gives you the cheapest cost per GB. Right now I have a 500GB system drive, 3 x 500gb, 1 x 1TB and 1 x 1.5TB in the pool. SO I'll be working on replacing the 500GB drives over time. As I need more space.

Gerry

My backups to my WHS system appear to go into the pool. Is it configurable to point them to the "D" data drive? My primary drive is 1.5TB so I would love to push the 5 backups to d drive instead of the pool...