CT Droid
CT Bot
Well, time to play around with WHS and see how it does.
I have only two disks in there now....the 160GB system disk, and a 40 GB disk I added. There's very little free space left on the WHS, and I have lots of files checked for duplication, so I know the 40GB disk is being used.
Sooo...I went down, and pulled the power from the 40GB disk. I want to see what happens.
My first impression is of disappointment. I would have expected that WHS would notify me on my client PC that a disk has "failed". Otherwise, I have no indicator that anything is wrong, but Ive now lost my duplication capability. I really shouldn't have to log into the WHS console to be notified of stuff like this, in my opinion. I put the mouse over the WHS icon in the taskbar, and it says everything is healthy. Hmmm.
I start the console, and no warnings or notices. In fact, there's a big green shield indicating that the system is "Healthy". I click on that icon, to get details....and wait......and wait.... Its obviously having problems now since I pulled the power from the 40GB drive. It takes a while (several minutes), almost to the point of thinking you need to kill the console and relaunch it...when finally it comes up and says the drive has failed. And now I see a red icon on my task bar. It's possible if I'd waited longer, WHS would have noticed on its own and notified me...but I just thought it would have occured almost instantly. Maybe WHS is smarter than to keep accessing all the disks all the time. *shrug*.
After a time, I went back down and plugged power back into the drive. I wanted to see if WHS would acknowledge the drive again. I went into the console, and looking at the drives, it still showed the 40GB drive as "missing". So I guess a reboot must be needed to see the drive again.
While I was at it, I decided to look at the existing backups and see how they were going. However, as soon as I picked a computer and clicked "View Backups", I get a msg box that says: "The WHS Computer backup service is not running. Please restart WHS." At the same time, i get a little text bubble on my WHS icon on the taskbar saying the same thing. Soooooo, if the backup service wasn't running...wouldn't that be good info to have before I found it on my own?? Maybe there's a plugin that makes WHS a little more forceful in passing on status info...
I decide to RDP into WHS to reboot it, and when I log in, I get an error message: "Windows Home Server Computer Backup encountered a problem and needed to close." It's the typical microsoft error box for sending the error report and such. So, the backup process errored out, I guess, which is why I was told the service wasn't running. Who knew that a drive losing power would be so catastrophic...
I reboot WHS, and all is well again and quickly. It appears to have picked up the 40GB drive where it left off, instead of having to reformat it. Good....I guess. *shrug* At least Im back up to speed having now "replaced" the faulty drive.
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I have only two disks in there now....the 160GB system disk, and a 40 GB disk I added. There's very little free space left on the WHS, and I have lots of files checked for duplication, so I know the 40GB disk is being used.
Sooo...I went down, and pulled the power from the 40GB disk. I want to see what happens.
My first impression is of disappointment. I would have expected that WHS would notify me on my client PC that a disk has "failed". Otherwise, I have no indicator that anything is wrong, but Ive now lost my duplication capability. I really shouldn't have to log into the WHS console to be notified of stuff like this, in my opinion. I put the mouse over the WHS icon in the taskbar, and it says everything is healthy. Hmmm.
I start the console, and no warnings or notices. In fact, there's a big green shield indicating that the system is "Healthy". I click on that icon, to get details....and wait......and wait.... Its obviously having problems now since I pulled the power from the 40GB drive. It takes a while (several minutes), almost to the point of thinking you need to kill the console and relaunch it...when finally it comes up and says the drive has failed. And now I see a red icon on my task bar. It's possible if I'd waited longer, WHS would have noticed on its own and notified me...but I just thought it would have occured almost instantly. Maybe WHS is smarter than to keep accessing all the disks all the time. *shrug*.
After a time, I went back down and plugged power back into the drive. I wanted to see if WHS would acknowledge the drive again. I went into the console, and looking at the drives, it still showed the 40GB drive as "missing". So I guess a reboot must be needed to see the drive again.
While I was at it, I decided to look at the existing backups and see how they were going. However, as soon as I picked a computer and clicked "View Backups", I get a msg box that says: "The WHS Computer backup service is not running. Please restart WHS." At the same time, i get a little text bubble on my WHS icon on the taskbar saying the same thing. Soooooo, if the backup service wasn't running...wouldn't that be good info to have before I found it on my own?? Maybe there's a plugin that makes WHS a little more forceful in passing on status info...
I decide to RDP into WHS to reboot it, and when I log in, I get an error message: "Windows Home Server Computer Backup encountered a problem and needed to close." It's the typical microsoft error box for sending the error report and such. So, the backup process errored out, I guess, which is why I was told the service wasn't running. Who knew that a drive losing power would be so catastrophic...
I reboot WHS, and all is well again and quickly. It appears to have picked up the 40GB drive where it left off, instead of having to reformat it. Good....I guess. *shrug* At least Im back up to speed having now "replaced" the faulty drive.
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