WHS-Defrag Drive NOT in pool... is it OK?

[dealsdyker]

I know you shouldn't defrag a drive in the WHS storage pool. I found that out rather by accident. However, I have upgraded my Sage recording drive which is in the WHS but NOT in the storage pool to a Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB drive. Since doing that I have gotten (seemingly at random) shows that stutter for the entire show. I did a defrag analysis on the drive and it looks quite fragmented.
1. This drive is not in the storage pool.
2. I formatted for 64k clusters
3. I confirmed: this drive is formatted for 64k clusters
4. I ran WD's data Lifeguard diagnostics on the drive overnight and there were no errors/problems reported.
5. I did jumper pins 7&8 on the drive . I jumpered before installing and formatting the drive in WHS (with 64k clusters)
6. I did not format it with the align tool as suggested here, I jumpered instead.

My questions are:
1. Can I defrag this file in WHS using the standard defrag option, since it is NOT in my storage pool?
2. Can anyone think of another reason I have been getting (10-20% of time) these stuttering shows?
3. The more I think about it, maybe I should pull the drive, remove the jumper, then run the align utility instead. Can I do that if I already have 700gb of shows on the drive (will that erase my shows?)?

[gplasky]

As long as it is not in the pool and you're not doing any volume shadow ccopy on that volume you should be fine.

Since you recently put this drive in when did the stuttering show up? How full is the drive? If you can remove all but one or tow recordings do you still get the stuttering? What about your network connection? Is the NIC configured correctly? Where are you trying to play the file-on a PC client or an extender?

Is your drive running in DMA mode or PIO mode? It needs to be DMA and you should be able to change it either in Device Manager and/or the BIOS. I would check this first since you just recently installed the drive.

Gerry

[JetreL]

Originally Posted by dealsdyker

My questions are:
1. Can I defrag this file in WHS using the standard defrag option, since it is NOT in my storage pool?

If the drive is not in the storage pool than you should not have any problems defraging the drive. The problem with most defrag programs is it typically skips very large files. There is another post asking about defraging. I personally never defrag without any issues and 64k clusters shouldn't be needed anymore for V7 of Sage.

Originally Posted by dealsdyker

2. Can anyone think of another reason I have been getting (10-20% of time) these stuttering shows?

There can be many reasons for this. Just off the top of my head here are a few:

• Is this HD content? You could try a different video card. Have you tried playing the media with VNC or some other player to see if the stutters happen in the same location.
• Is the drive running in PIO mode?
• Is this issue happening on extenders or on the local playback?
• How many recording streams are you running at the same time?
• Is there any other running on the system during playback?

I could really go on an on, without some-more details on your specs this is a shot in the dark.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by dealsdyker

5. I did jumper pins 1&2 on the drive . I jumpered before installing and formatting the drive in WHS (with 64k clusters)

You should have jumpered pins 7&8 not 1&2. Pins 1&2 enable SSC which has to do with preventing noise. Pins 7&8 change the sector mapping. Info

Originally Posted by dealsdyker

6. I did not format it with the align tool as suggested here, I jumpered instead.

3. The more I think about it, maybe I should pull the drive, remove the jumper, then run the align utility instead. Can I do that if I already have 700gb of shows on the drive (will that erase my shows?)?

If you re-jumper pins 7&8 it will report the sectors differently rendering any data on the drive useless. I'm not sure about the align tool, but I wouldn't run it. I would just copy the data off, jumper pins 7&8, then reformat and copy the data back. Of course, I currently have the free space to pull that off; I can't speak for you

The stuttering is probably due to not having the sectors aligned. I know on unRAID the performance of an un-jumpered drive is horrid.

[dealsdyker]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

You should have jumpered pins 7&8 not 1&2.

You are right, and I mis-spoke. I did jumper 7&8. I just pulled the drive to double-check. It is clearly labeled on the drive. I'll fix my top-post. It is properly jumpered on 7&8.

[dealsdyker]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Is your drive running in DMA mode or PIO mode? It needs to be DMA and you should be able to change it either in Device Manager and/or the BIOS. I would check this first since you just recently installed the drive.

Gerry

I checked BIOS & everything is set to auto and what BIOS reports is:
PIO Mode: 4
Async DMA: Multiword DMA-2
Ultra DMA: Ultra DMA-6
SMART: Supported

I did notice in my Foxcon BIOS that all my drives are showing as IDE even though they are SATA (only option it seems). And this drive is considered IDE 1 Slave, where the IDE 1 Primary is the DVD drive. In "old days" I remember you would never want your HD to run through a CD/DVD drive when it was "real" IDE. But these are all SATA... do you think it could be the port on the motherboard it is plugged into? I could always move it to a different SATA port. It doesn't push the data path through the CD drive like it used to years ago, would it?

[gplasky]

Go to device manager. Go to your IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller (or whatever yours shows) and look at each channel properties. This will tell you what mode Windows is running your drives in. If any of your hard drives show PIO that is a problem. Change it to DMA 6 or whatever mode it supports.

Gerry