system drive fail- somebody remind me why WHS is so wonderful?

[btrcp2000]

This little hobby is starting to require an awful lot of time and energy. In the blink of an eye last night, I lost the whs system drive, which of course is impossible to backup. With it, of course, goes the sage setup and all the trappings, comskip, bmt, etc., etc. Oh yeah, and my wiz.bin, which is probably the big one. I will now be treated to 680+ shows in my videos folder, assuming the data drives are okay.

Must be physical failure, as bios cannot even see the drive

Just posting this for anyone out there to rethink whether they want WHS. From what I have read this morning, while data files can survive, the pc backups are usually unusable too, so now my other PCs are at risk. Really not well thought out by microsoft.

[gplasky]

So you didn't copy the SageTV directory on a nightly basis onto another drive? Last time I replaced the OS drive in WHS I installed the OS, tuner drivers, mb drivers, patches and power packs, installed SageTV and copied over the backup in about an hour and half. WHat took the longest was updating patches and power packs. (The download time)

Gerry

[btrcp2000]

No, I'll admit that was a failing on my part. Ever since I built this in the summer with all new hardware, I have been fighting with hdpvr and r5000. Always seemed like stability was just around the corner, so I never got around to putting my sage backup system back in place.

[gplasky]

Bummer. Well try attaching that drive in another PC just to verify its definitely a drive dead issue. If another PC can see the drive at least copy the data off of there including your SageTV directory. (If not a sata drive remember to change the jumper from master to slave)

Gerry

[Skirge01]

I don't mean to pour salt on the fresh wound, but this shortcoming is well documented by MS and well known among most WHS users. One of the first things I did after getting SageTV set up reliably was to begin backing up the entire SageTV directory on both my server and client. I also backup any other progams/settings/add-ins I've installed under WHS. The backups are placed on a WHS share which has duplication turned on. Currently, I keep 4 full backups and 7 incremental backups, which are kept for an entire month before the oldest one gets deleted. I'm using a free program called Cobian backup for this purpose.

If it's any consolation, it took a disaster like you just had before I began implementing a true backup solution for all my computers. Also, the next version of WHS (Vail) will be able to back itself up.

[davephan]

This is the reason I don't use WHS. I image my SageTV Window XP Pro system with both Ghost 9 and Acronis 10 Workstation with Universal Restore. Each night the system is imaged with either a incremental, differential, or full image. The SageTV system can easily be recovered to a working state to a daily recovery point, even to a different system board. My video files are all protected with RAID 1 drive pairs, which is much safer than one RAID 5 array.

There is a product that might fix the failed drive called SpinRite 6.0.
http://www.grc.com/intro.htm

SpinRite 6.0 costs about $89, and there isn't a trial version. It might or might not fix your problem. There is a 30 day money back guarantee if it does not work for you. There are many stories of successful recoveries using the product. It can take many days to recover a failed drive using the product. I purchased the product for general drive maintenance (I didn't have a failed drive at the time), however, I had trouble getting the software to boot up on my computers, so I returned it for a refund, and the refund was prompt. So, SpinRite 6.0 might be worth trying.


Dave

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by davephan

This is the reason I don't use WHS. I image my SageTV Window XP Pro system with both Ghost 9 and Acronis 10 Workstation with Universal Restore. Each night the system is imaged with either a incremental, differential, or full image. The SageTV system can easily be recovered to a working state to a daily recovery point, even to a different system board. My video files are all protected with RAID 1 drive pairs, which is much safer than one RAID 5 array.

There is a product that might fix the failed drive called SpinRite 6.0.
http://www.grc.com/intro.htm

SpinRite 6.0 costs about $89, and there isn't a trial version. It might or might not fix your problem. There is a 30 day money back guarantee if it does not work for you. There are many stories of successful recoveries using the product. It can take many days to recover a failed drive using the product. I purchased the product for general drive maintenance (I didn't have a failed drive at the time), however, I had trouble getting the software to boot up on my computers, so I returned it for a refund, and the refund was prompt. So, SpinRite 6.0 might be worth trying.


Dave

If the bios can't see the drive at all he is probably better off spending the $89 on a new drive. 500GB or something.

Gerry

[sic0048]

While I run SageTV on my WHS, to be safe you should really run SageTV on a different machine. WHS was never designed to run separate applications on it so you really cannot blame MS when you run it like this and then loose information. Obviously the desire not to run two machines 24/7 has kept me running Sage on my WHS machine. But I have considered the idea of running SageTV on a virtual machine (I don't have any PCI slot tuner cards). That would give me the best of both worlds - one machine running WHS and SageTV and automatic backups of my SageTV machine.

[btrcp2000]

I agree, and I knew about the shortcomings of WHS, but I thought I'd have at least a year or two to sort things out with brand new hardware, not the six months that I got.

Another WHS flaw was the way it reported the failing drive. It has been screeching for a few days about a laptop with a fresh W7 install that didn't yet have antivirus. I finally got sick of it and went to "ignore" the warning, and I saw a yellow "caution" flag that said the WHS sys drive was failing. Seems to be a bit mis-prioritized.

HEYHEYHEYHEYHEYHEYANTIVIRUSNOWAMTIVIRUSNOWANTIRUSNOWWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOP ((and by the way I'll be dead by noon tomorrow)

Hopefully the cablecard tuners will become viable, and I'll just build a brand new w7 box for sage, and just have a separate whs box back it up like the others.

[btrcp2000]

Tried the freezer trick for a few hours and installed it in a DNS323 NAS, which can't see it either. It spins up, sounds fine, no clicks or anything, but no computers can see it.

Oh well, this will give me a chance to clean out the old crap we don't actually watch anymore.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

Another WHS flaw was the way it reported the failing drive. It has been screeching for a few days about a laptop with a fresh W7 install that didn't yet have antivirus. I finally got sick of it and went to "ignore" the warning, and I saw a yellow "caution" flag that said the WHS sys drive was failing. Seems to be a bit mis-prioritized.

I totally agree with this - it is totally stupid that not having AV software running gives a red warning but failing drives give a yellow warning.

[btrcp2000]

Holy crap, another few hours in the freezer did the trick! Just for giggles, I threw it back in for a few hours while I ran a few errands, including picking up a new caviar green drive. Wouldn't boot at first, but made some different noises, so I put it back and forth between the server and the NAS. Finally the NAS saw it and wanted to format it, so I put it back in the server, and it's running again.

So, given a second chance, I immediately offloaded copies of the entire sage directory, properties, and wiz.bin to a couple different drives. Phew.

What's the best way to clone a drive? My thought right now is to pop the dying one and the new one into a W7 desktop with Acronis. Any smarter/easier ways?

[eric3a]

Excellent!

I never had the freezer trick work for me, but I'v had "dead" drives ressussitate long enough to get everything out of them. That's often better than a backup, and complements it.

Acronis is great. You can also download software direct from WD.

Eric

[ericscottf]

I would start a new install from scratch. If the drive is dying for an unknown reason, when you copy everything off of it, you might get some bad sectors that still look good, and you'll be fighting with the system forever.

be happy that you got your sage metadata off and go do a fresh install.

[gplasky]

With your SageTV directory safely backed up elsewhere it shouldn't be much effort to load WHS from scratch and install the drivers for mb and tuners. I would remove the tuners for the OS load and load the OS and download and install all drivers for mb, patches and Power Packs before proceeding with the tuner install and drivers and SageTV install. After Sage is installed then copy back over your SageTV backup and you should be good to go.

Gerry

[KarylFStein]

I moved to WHS knowing full-well it's limitations with system backups. I had been using Acronis for a while prior to WHS, and although it had some growing pains especially in 10 and 11 for me, the 2009 version was always solid in my set-up and something I highly recommend, (although not with WHS). However, I wanted to see what WHS was all about and I tend to go all-in on these things. The big things I miss from Acronis is obviously the system image/bare-metal install functionality, and the "Try and Decide" feature for when I want to try a change. It's really great to hear that there may be a way to do a system backup in the next version!!

To help mitigate some of WHS's shortcomings, I run my system drives in a RAID-1 array and use GoodSync to backup stuff on my system drive to the pool. I've been meaning to test a restore, but haven't gotten around to it. I know it won't be anywhere near as painless as just booting from the Acronis Recovery CD, selecting an image to restore, and waiting 10 minutes or so. Instead, you have to do an install of the OS, drivers, set-up users, install add-ins, and reconfigure everything. But, I do like WHS regardless even if it has quirks, and plan to stay with it, (at least until I get the urge to tinker with a perfectly good system again). I'll wait to see what a WHS "system backup" actually does, but hope it can do a bare-metal reinstall and get back to the latest image painlessly, (and of course that the images can be done automatically).

Good luck with the recovery. It's a great feeling to be able to get things back that you thought were lost...something I wish I had more experience with feeling . That's probably why these days I'm pretty paranoid about having a backup/restore plan in place for things. My pictures have been all digital for a while, I now buy MP3s instead of CDs, and someday I'm sure home videos will be all digital too. Pictures and home videos are the most important to me to keep safe. On the flip side of this stuff seeming to be more vulnerable due to hardware failures, it's also easier to have offsite backups in case the house burns down...

I don't see WHS, Acronis, DRBD (from my Linux days), etc. being a better or worse solution; I've had "wonderful" and "not-so-wonderful" moments with each. For anything, I'd say make sure you have a plan for recovery or availability of those things you find important and adjust your tools as needed.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

To help mitigate some of WHS's shortcomings, I run my system drives in a RAID-1 array and use GoodSync to backup stuff on my system drive to the pool. I've been meaning to test a restore, but haven't gotten around to it.

I hope you don't mind a little critique of this. The first thing that this says to me is that you don't actually have a good backup plan. The fact that you haven't tested a restore says that you don't really know if your current method is actually working or not. While it may very well recover without any issues, you simply don't know yet. This leads me to the second thing, which is the RAID1 under WHS. I've heard (no firsthand proof) that WHS may not recover to a RAID array because it may not load the RAID drivers at an early enough point in the reinstall process. I know it works on a regular PC backup from WHS, since I've done that myself numerous times to a RAID1, but the WHS system drive is a different animal. Just something you may want to keep in mind.

[btrcp2000]

Just got back from poker night with the neighborhood guys. Sage is still functional even with my flatlined hard drive. Kids played all day together without it, even though it was functioning. So maybe we won't mention that they can watch tv.

Baby pictures are safe, and always were, due to backup plans B, C, and D.

WHS console still has its panties in a bunch over the laptop without antivirus, but in the same breath refers to the twice-frozen drive as "Healthy".

Probably will all crash shortly, but it's just TV. Tomorrow, I will clone a drive, or maybe we will just play board games all day.

Thanks to all, especially Gerry, and good night!

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I hope you don't mind a little critique of this. The first thing that this says to me is that you don't actually have a good backup plan. The fact that you haven't tested a restore says that you don't really know if your current method is actually working or not. While it may very well recover without any issues, you simply don't know yet. This leads me to the second thing, which is the RAID1 under WHS. I've heard (no firsthand proof) that WHS may not recover to a RAID array because it may not load the RAID drivers at an early enough point in the reinstall process. I know it works on a regular PC backup from WHS, since I've done that myself numerous times to a RAID1, but the WHS system drive is a different animal. Just something you may want to keep in mind.

Yes, that's true, I should test it. The RAID-1 bit is more for availability than anything else, but don't know if it will cause problems with a recover. I could use a duplicate machine for testing...

The backup side of things are WHSBBDB to the pool, (wish that was automated), GoodSync of certain system files/directories to the pool, then GoodSync the entire pool to a TrueCrypt volume on a large removable drive that I swap offsite weekly. Of course the other computers in the house are backed up to the server nightly.

[chiledog]

Also for backups, you might want to look into a parity solution.

I use disparity ( http://www.vilett.com/disParity/ ). Basically you use your largest drive as a parity drive. It can survive any one drive failure (much like RAID5) but the drives do not need to be the same size. Plus any of the drives can be used outside the "raid".

The only disadvantage, it doesn't handle "on the fly" changes as well as RAID (or at all). But, it is perfect for a media store (since the files do not change much).