WHS Replacing drives in pool, questions

[Hunter69]

So earlier I had posted about freezing and recording issues. I determined drives in the pool were having issues. Now I need to start replacing the drives. Here is my situation:
I have:
1 system drive
3 1.5 seagate drives in the pool (I need to start replacing these drives)
1 1.5 tb wd drive (not added to the pool)
1 liteon sata bluray drive.

My whs server has the following mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128342

All the sata ports are being used. The easiest way I thought to do this was to:
Buy the replacement drive. Get a USB hardrive dock. Add the drive to the pool via the USB dock Now here is my question:
Can I add the drive via the usb dock, then move it to a internal sata connector?

Thanks
Bill

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Hunter69

So earlier I had posted about freezing and recording issues. I determined drives in the pool were having issues. Now I need to start replacing the drives. Here is my situation:
I have:
1 system drive
3 1.5 seagate drives in the pool (I need to start replacing these drives)
1 1.5 tb wd drive (not added to the pool)
1 liteon sata bluray drive.

My whs server has the following mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128342

All the sata ports are being used. The easiest way I thought to do this was to:
Buy the replacement drive. Get a USB hardrive dock. Add the drive to the pool via the USB dock Now here is my question:
Can I add the drive via the usb dock, then move it to a internal sata connector?

Thanks
Bill

No. If you're going to add the drive to the pool the first thing it will do is format the drive. When you disconnect the drive from USB dock and then connect via SATA it is not considered the same drive by the OS. It will ask to add it to the pool and format it.
Recommendation:
I just connect an external USB drive the same size or larger than what I am replacing and add it to the pool. Now just tell WHS which drive you want to remove and wait...a long time. Once all the files are moved and WHS gives you the go ahead then shut down, physically remove the drive and replace it with the new one. When it comes up add the new drive to the pool and wait. Then you can either tell WHS you want to remove the external drive from the pool-which will move all the files off the drive and back into the pool. (This is what I do.) Or maybe try the program Drive Balancer which should basically do the same thing. Then pick the next drive to remove and repeat. Use the add-in Disk Administrator so you can easily see which physical drive you are working with.

Gerry

[Hunter69]

I was hoping I wouldn't have to purchase an external usb drive and a internal drive but I guess that is the way it goes.

Thanks for the help
Bill

[jsin]

I just had to did this last week. Fortunately, I had enough free spaces in my pooled drives, so all I had to do was 1. remove the bad drive from the WHS pool and wait for it to copy data off of it (it took several hours for 1TB of data), and then 2. shutdown, replace the bad drive, 3. add the new drive back to the WHS pool, and 4. run Drive Balancer (I guess not strictly necessary).

Had I not enough free spaces in my pooled drive, I would've temporarily added a new USB external drive to the WHS pool to make free spaces. Once I have replaced the bad internal drive, I would've removed the USB external drive from the pool and from the computer.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by jsin

I just had to did this last week. Fortunately, I had enough free spaces in my pooled drives...

Last time I upgraded my recording drive I did the same thing, I went through Sage and deleted all the watched recordings (I usually just let Sage do it as it needs room) and a few IRs that I probably was never really going to watch, that freed up enough space I could clear the smaller drive to replace it.

[Skirge01]

Currently, I keep a live spare in my server which is equal to the largest single drive I have installed. I do not have it as part of the drive pool or used for anything else. It's completely blank 99% of the time. When I want/need to pull a drive from the pool for whatever reason, I just add that live spare to the pool and then tell WHS to remove a drive. Once the data is copied over, I physically remove the drive I just had WHS remove, install a new drive, add it to the pool, and tell WHS to remove the original live spare. This causes WHS remove the data from the spare and put it onto the new drive I just added. Additionally, this keeps me with a hot spare should any drive come up as failing. I would follow the same process for that scenario, again, keeping the live spare blank in the end.