Tutorial: SageTV on WHS with 64K clusters in the drive pool...

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by heffe2001

Well, looks like Acronis did the trick, no data loss, and all DATA drives are now 64k block size. Won't get a chance to check playback until I get home tonight though.

I'll add the "convert method" (and give you credit for testing it) to the tutorial later, it's a good option for people with a lot of full drives. Empty drives/new installs will still be faster to use the "format method" for the pooled drives though.

[Beefcake550]

Couls someone post how I can verify the drives have 64k clusters?

I have 3 disks in the pool currently with data on them. I have been removing them from the pool to get the data off of them, then adding them back in and then using disk manager, I quick format them to 64k cluster size. Following this, I added the drive back into the pool and started to repeat the procedure on another disk.

I am done 2/3 disks, so any help would be great. Dang, moving around data 1T at a time takes a few hours....but it's "neat" to think I can move it that easily....

And yes, SME, you did at least get my attention in the other thread about my 64kb cluster fear enough for me to try it again.....no harm in trying!

-B

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

Couls someone post how I can verify the drives have 64k clusters?

...then adding them back in and then using disk manager, I quick format them to 64k cluster size. Following this, I added the drive back into the pool...

You can use chkdsk or the defrag tool to verify. If you use the defrag tool, just "Analyze" the drive, don't actually defrag it.

How are you adding it twice? You quick-format the drive AFTER you add it back to the pool, not before. If you have a lot of data on the pool drives it could be faster to use the "convert method" as heffe tested...

[gplasky]

It is AFTER you add them back to the pool you have to format them with 64k cluster size. Any time you add a disk into the pool WHS will automatically format them to 4k clusters.

You can use disk defragmenter to ANALYZE the disk. (Don't defrag them. It will mess them up)

Gerry

[Beefcake550]

I will look into the analyze function on defragger.....but I hope you only mean it would mess them up if I'm using the one built into windows. I'd like to think the PerfectDisk one will be fine. Any comments?

Oops....I should have said I remove them, add them, and then format them, repeat.

How do you run chkdsk on a pooled drive? what drive letter do you go to at a CMD prompt?

[S_M_E]

Yes, with the built in defrag you should only use the "Analyze" function. With perfect disk it shouldn't cause any trouble.

You should read the thread:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...37&postcount=7

[Beefcake550]

Ok, so I did the analyze and that shows 64kb cluster size. I'm going to check out the Acronis program as well for the d:

Also, I tried the chkdsk /f at the different mount points (sine there are no drive letters in WHS) and I remember it not working as expected last time....but who cares. I forgot to remove the last drive to convert over before I went to bed last night. So, it's going to be a few more hours. No big deal as I am also working on releasing a beta version of my "Disk Balancer" program. It will have 3 options:

1) distribute data in pool among all drives in pool except D based on equal percentage used.
2) same as #1 but put same amount of data on each disk
3) same as #1 but include D (any reason to really want this?) I'd think you wouldn't want anything on D so that tobstone reading/writing is as fast as possible
4) same as #2 but include D (would you really want this?)

Also available for #1 and #2 would be the equivalent of running LZReallocator before the data in the rest of the pool gets balanced. I actually look at the source for lzreallocator to get some ideas.

Does anyone here find any interest in this tool? It was driving me loopy to have my drives in the pool without the same amout of data on them.

-B

[S_M_E]

Acronis isn't cheap, you might want to see if a freeware program like parted magic (linked by pat) does the same thing.

I'd say that 1 and 2 would be enough. Will 1 and 2 pull data off of D (if it exists) to put on the other drives too? I think it would be a useful tool if it works without causing any corruption.

[Beefcake550]

Anyone want to see if the slightly cheaper version works? The server edition is $500!

I have that as an option to pull data off of D before balancing the rest of the pool. It does not cause corruption. It basically works by creating fake files in order to get DE to do what I want it to. The only current downside is that I have not found a way to "wake up" DE from inside a program. So, that step is manual, but I display information to tell when you and how to do it.


oh, and it looks like Disk Director Server 10 is shareware, so I'm downloading it and we'll see if it can do what I want and the delete it off the system.

-B

[S_M_E]

Yeah I remember how lzreallocator worked but it stopped working for some reason. There was another "drive balancer" tool on the WHS forums for a while but I never tried that one either.

Hopefully somebody will test some of the freeware disk utilities but my drives are done so it won't be me.

[Beefcake550]

Well, looking at the source for lzreallocater, due to microsoft's update in January (or whenever they started reported the size of the drive pool "correctly" to Vista) LZreallocator now gets the wrong info for the drive size on D:. I noticed it when I tried out his code instead of "Brent"s code over at the wegotserved forum. Brent's code used the Windows API and worked fine.

I'll be ready to post my beta version hopefully tonight/tomorrow morning. I'm going to put it through the paces one last time on my own machine once I get this 64K Cluster thing doen with. On that note, I'm currently copying over my Sage recordings to the pool and should be done within the hour. Then I need to take the afternoon off and go bring my kids to a birthday party. When I get back, I have a few code changes to make and we'll be ready to test.

-Brian

[S_M_E]

FYI:
You should be able to force DE to "wake up" by calling "net stop" and "net start" for the Drive Extender Migrator Service. You may not always need to stop the service as it's manual but it can't hurt to run it in case it's already running, just to reset it.

[Beefcake550]

I will try this and see what happens....would be a big win if it works.

[Beefcake550]

holy crap...it worked.
The start/stop worked great. Now I will try just the restart as that would be preferrable for my code. If this works out, I owe you a beverage of choice. It's the last piece I needed to make my program fully automated.

-Brian

[Beefcake550]

So how does one "restart" a service? I can't figure that out.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

So how does one "restart" a service? I can't figure that out.

You stop and start it.

[Beefcake550]

you're funny..... I thought there might be a way to "restart" a service such that trying to restart a running service would have no effect, but if it were stopped, would start it. In the end, this really doesn't help me because the "data Migrator" service is still running when it's not doing anything.

So, I just put in some timers that check for forward progress and if none has been made in 15 minutes, it stop/starts the DE service. So far, it's running on my own machine like a champ and I've witnessed it restarting the DE service successfully.

So, if it all pans out tonight, I'll release some beta code in the morning.

-Brian

[S_M_E]

The "restart" option in the gui just runs stop then start, regardless if it's running or not. The "net" command has no restart option. Either way it sounds like you've found a working solution.

[S_M_E]

I've updated the tutorial with more current information...

[PLUCKYHD]

Okay trying this on a fresh install

I have one 320gb for the c and d:

and 5 1.5tb drives

I look at all 5 drives and I don't see any storage used on any of them.

When I reformat them all to 64k my backup service stops running and I gets errors I can't get rid of.

I turn all duplication off but the software.