HDD Meltdown...

[Riffman81]

Long story short, my HTPC Hard Drive took a crap on me and I lost EVERYTHING. Yes I know, it pays to have a backup, but I'm kind of a noob when it comes to disk cloning and not sure what program to use to get the results I want. Luckily, I still have my ROM collections backed up on an external drive along with all my videos and other media.So here's what I need to know. Fist off, is it worth putting the time into setting up the original GameEx all over again with EVO on the way if infact I can't restore my HDD? I know it'll basically be the same backend as GameEx Original, but I'd really hate to go through all the hassle of setting everything back up if in fact I have to do it all again with EVO.

Second, I have bought a new 4TB drive to replace the drive that I believe to have failed. I'm taking my old 2TB drive to a computer store today to have diagnostics done to see what could be recovered if anything. If the drive could be restored to working order, could I clone the drive, and transfer that image to my new 4TB drive? If so, what programs do you guys recommend for this and what is the preferred method of doing something like this? Cloning or backup? What I really need to know here is once I have a image of my HDD, how do I get said image on my new drive and have it boot and work properly?

Forgive me if this has been asked before, I didn't have much time to search the forums when I woke up this morning due to work. And waking up to a failed drive ruins anyone's day

[tthurman]

Just a couple ideas about the failed drive.

I had a drive (I thought) die on me like this just a couple years ago. After tinkering with it off and on a couple days I was convinced it was dead, so I took the dead blow hammer to it and chucked it in the recycle pile. After installing a new drive, and having some really bizarre results, i.e. nothing loading OS wise, it turned out what I had was a 1GB stick of Crucial memory die, and it was wrenching everything. I was kicking myself in the butt for smashing my drive, but eventually wrote it off as lesson learned.

I'm not a huge fan of cloning, but if were to do it I would use Acronis. Western Digital and Seagate offer free versions of this software on their site, so if you have one of their drives, most certainly go over and grab a free copy.

WD

Seagate (check this one, looks like Seagate has stuck this under their utility suite)

If you can't manage any data recovery, and it's really important, a last resort would be the freezer trick. It has worked for me in the past, but it has also failed miserably, so make sure it is only a last ditch effort...IMO.

Good luck man!

<edit> if you play with any amount of regularity, I'd go ahead and reload GameEx.

Edited November 3, 2014 by tthurman

[Adultery]

Just lost a hdd myself and I feel your pain. Usually I just raid my server but didn't want to spend the money for my games drive. This time around I updated my server to a quad core and 8gb of RAM, and put in an ssd for the OS. Wish I would have done it sooner... But still bummed about losing years worth of collecting.

In the end, raid your drives if you don't want to lose your data. All hard drives fail, it's just the way it is.

Oh and stay away from WD Green Power drives. At least in my experience they don't last as long.

[hansolo77]

So since we're on the topic...

The day I've been dreading is nearing. My HDD I have on my server as the OS drive is failing. I've noticed a steady decline (thanks to HD Sentinel) in it's pending write sectors and uncorrectable sector read/writes. In fact, it's also started to detect bad sectors. It's not dead yet, but it's on it's death bed hooked up to life support. The problem I'm going to experience very shortly is the dreaded OS crash and inability to recover data stored on the 12 other drives. So I'm in desperate need for help, and a miracle.

My OS of choice is the v1 of WHS (Windows Home Server). I built it when WHS came out, and really want to stick with it. The advantages of v1 over the v2 reboot is all to do with the drive management. v2 removed all instances of drive management. You can't just add any old drive and have it magically appear in the storage pool. And you can't just remove it and have the software re-locate the moved files. It also removed file duplication, which is mandatory if you have any desire to keep your files should a drive begin to fail.

Currently my system is setup as:

Drive - Type/Size - Function

1 - Sata 500gb - (C:\ [os] 20gb , D:\ [storage] 480gb)

2 - Sata 500gb - (500gb [storage])

3 - Sata 500gb - (500gb [storage])

... - various 1tb, 500gb, - [storage]

13 - Sata 1tb - (1tb [storage])

14 - Sata 500gb - (500gb [temp backups])

If any drive between 2-13 fail, their files remain backed up via the file/folder duplication of WHS v1. If drive 14 fails, I lose whatever files I had temporarily saved while in process of migrating into the 2-13 storage pool. This is also the location where I store downloading torrents, etc. If drive 1 fails though, I lose EVERYTHING. Even though the files are stored on drives 2-13, their LOCATIONS (original and duplication) are stored in what are called "tombstones" which are located on the C partition of drive 1. If anything happens to the tombstones, then no data can be recovered.

Now the kicker...

You can't simply mirror or clone Drive C, or drive #1. The way WHS works is by the digital fingerprint of the serial number of each drive. It doesn't recognize a drive any other way. So in order for a file to be accessible, it needs to be read from the tombstone on the drive which created it. If that drive fails, your just SOL. And wouldn't you know? THAT'S THE DRIVE THAT IS FAILING!!!

There are ways around all this though.

OPTION 1 - I could somehow find a CHEAP 8tb drive (my ORIGINAL files are 8tb in size, with another 8tb for duplication) and copy all my files to that drive, then install a brand new drive, then reinstall WHS, then re-copy everything back over to the fresh server. The problem with this solution is there are NO cheap 8tb drives, or to my knowledge ANY 8tb drives.

OPTION 2 - Somehow find a way to move everything off the server onto other smaller drives, and repeat solutions in Option 1. The problem with this solution is (1) I don't own any other drives (2) I can't afford to go buy a shit ton more drives simply for temporary storage.

OPTION 3 - Burn off. Burn all content I have backed up onto removable media such as BluRay disks. Then continue with solutions in Option 1. Again, the problem with this solution is the lack of funds to purchase enough disks to backup the entire library.

OPTION 4 - Find some method of replacing drive #1 without losing the all to precious digital fingerprint and tombstones. The problem with this, is that I don't know if it's possible. I believe there are ways to clone the OS drive and it would migrate seemlessly in any other circumstance, but because of the way the WHS structures it's filesystem and secures the data storage, I don't think it's possible.

OPTION 5 - Throw it all away. Replace the OS drive, reinstall WHS. Start fresh from scratch and completely rebuild the shared storage. This would include another 3 years of re-ripping and re-encoding movies, re-ripping and re-encoding music, re-downloading tv shows, re-organizing everything. I would play it safe though and backup non-recoverable files such as photos. This solution is the beat all end all. It would work. But I'd really appreciate an alternative.

Anyway, sorry to hijack this thread with my own problem. But I'm at a point now where things needs to happen and I need the help of others to bring me through it. I just don't know what to do, and I don't know what solutions I have. I'm pretty poor. One thing I'm considering is replacing the OS drive with a solid state drive, but again, I can't afford nothing great. Are SSD's reliable? Will they eventually crash like regular HDD's do?

Please somebody, anybody, give me advice!

[nullPointer]

Seems like my last couple of posts have consisted primarily of click bait, but this article looks like it may be of valuable assistance to you Han:

Fix a Failed WHS System Drive

In that article he recommends my personal favorite cloning software CloneZilla. I've both backed up and recovered my systems using CloneZilla images, and I've never hit so much as a hitch. I know Acronis and Norton Ghost are perinnial favorites, but CloneZilla really is awesome, and even better it's totally free. I generally package it up with a live Linux distribution like TuxBoot, but it's just as easy to make a bootable disc out of it and boot from that. Hopefully that article contains some valuable nuggets of wisdom for you; I found it fairly interesting in its own right.

[stigzler]

Ouch. My sympathies...

[tthurman]

I believe this scenerio explains the eventual demise of drive extender, and man that's pretty much a worst case scenerio. It's a shame they didn't expand upon it to correct some of its shortcomings.

I just don't think I could bring myself to let it all go, but at the same time, it would be a difficult decision for me to put myself in the same realm of possibilities a second time. Aside from some cheap media back up like single layer DVD's (which would take forever) you could consider uploading your content to a cloud provider until such time you can obtain a more robust solution? I can't recall the company name right off the top of my head, but some of our clients have mentioned really affordable cloud storage, albeit not the fastest due to its due to its tiering within the RAID. Regardless, it could be a possible solution, depending on your transfer caps, and something you could use until you have time to deploy a better local solution.

If you're on residential upgrade speeds/caps, I realize this most likely isn't a good option, but I'm not familar with your particular situation in that regard. I do seem to recall you mentioning speed was an issue in previous posts though.

That's a bummer issue dude, sorry!

I'm completely on board with Adultrey's comment here, work yourself into a RAID setup. I know how it pains me to drop the extra cash for the storage, but man is it so much easier to recover from issues like this!

Thanks NP, I'll have to check out CZ, that's a new one to me.

[rockyrocket]

So since we're on the topic...

The day I've been dreading is nearing. My HDD I have on my server as the OS drive is failing. I've noticed a steady decline (thanks to HD Sentinel) in it's pending write sectors and uncorrectable sector read/writes. In fact, it's also started to detect bad sectors. It's not dead yet, but it's on it's death bed hooked up to life support. The problem I'm going to experience very shortly is the dreaded OS crash and inability to recover data stored on the 12 other drives. So I'm in desperate need for help, and a miracle.

My OS of choice is the v1 of WHS (Windows Home Server). I built it when WHS came out, and really want to stick with it. The advantages of v1 over the v2 reboot is all to do with the drive management. v2 removed all instances of drive management. You can't just add any old drive and have it magically appear in the storage pool. And you can't just remove it and have the software re-locate the moved files. It also removed file duplication, which is mandatory if you have any desire to keep your files should a drive begin to fail.

Currently my system is setup as:

Drive - Type/Size - Function

1 - Sata 500gb - (C:\ [os] 20gb , D:\ [storage] 480gb)

2 - Sata 500gb - (500gb [storage])

3 - Sata 500gb - (500gb [storage])

... - various 1tb, 500gb, - [storage]

13 - Sata 1tb - (1tb [storage])

14 - Sata 500gb - (500gb [temp backups])

If any drive between 2-13 fail, their files remain backed up via the file/folder duplication of WHS v1. If drive 14 fails, I lose whatever files I had temporarily saved while in process of migrating into the 2-13 storage pool. This is also the location where I store downloading torrents, etc. If drive 1 fails though, I lose EVERYTHING. Even though the files are stored on drives 2-13, their LOCATIONS (original and duplication) are stored in what are called "tombstones" which are located on the C partition of drive 1. If anything happens to the tombstones, then no data can be recovered.

Now the kicker...

You can't simply mirror or clone Drive C, or drive #1. The way WHS works is by the digital fingerprint of the serial number of each drive. It doesn't recognize a drive any other way. So in order for a file to be accessible, it needs to be read from the tombstone on the drive which created it. If that drive fails, your just SOL. And wouldn't you know? THAT'S THE DRIVE THAT IS FAILING!!!

There are ways around all this though.

OPTION 1 - I could somehow find a CHEAP 8tb drive (my ORIGINAL files are 8tb in size, with another 8tb for duplication) and copy all my files to that drive, then install a brand new drive, then reinstall WHS, then re-copy everything back over to the fresh server. The problem with this solution is there are NO cheap 8tb drives, or to my knowledge ANY 8tb drives.

OPTION 2 - Somehow find a way to move everything off the server onto other smaller drives, and repeat solutions in Option 1. The problem with this solution is (1) I don't own any other drives (2) I can't afford to go buy a shit ton more drives simply for temporary storage.

OPTION 3 - Burn off. Burn all content I have backed up onto removable media such as BluRay disks. Then continue with solutions in Option 1. Again, the problem with this solution is the lack of funds to purchase enough disks to backup the entire library.

OPTION 4 - Find some method of replacing drive #1 without losing the all to precious digital fingerprint and tombstones. The problem with this, is that I don't know if it's possible. I believe there are ways to clone the OS drive and it would migrate seemlessly in any other circumstance, but because of the way the WHS structures it's filesystem and secures the data storage, I don't think it's possible.

OPTION 5 - Throw it all away. Replace the OS drive, reinstall WHS. Start fresh from scratch and completely rebuild the shared storage. This would include another 3 years of re-ripping and re-encoding movies, re-ripping and re-encoding music, re-downloading tv shows, re-organizing everything. I would play it safe though and backup non-recoverable files such as photos. This solution is the beat all end all. It would work. But I'd really appreciate an alternative.

Anyway, sorry to hijack this thread with my own problem. But I'm at a point now where things needs to happen and I need the help of others to bring me through it. I just don't know what to do, and I don't know what solutions I have. I'm pretty poor. One thing I'm considering is replacing the OS drive with a solid state drive, but again, I can't afford nothing great. Are SSD's reliable? Will they eventually crash like regular HDD's do?

Please somebody, anybody, give me advice!

I forget exactly how it was done but after removing all my pool drives, I upgraded V1 to WHS2011 a few years back via a clean install.

Drive Bender was installed to handle redundancy and worked perfectly.

I remember being a tad nervous migrating/importing my old pool into drive bender one drive at a time but ran into no issues.

The process is a bit scarey but ultimately was worth it as no data was deleted and you can still pull the drives and grab data in another box.

Have a look at the bottom of this page for more info...

https://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/cf354b5d-b37b-4b7f-a0d5-8e573697777f/how-to-recover-data-after-server-failure?forum=whsfaq

[hansolo77]

Thanks guys, got lots of reading to do.

[stigzler]

Hey Hans - lot to take in on your post, but skim reading - seems a need to upgrade to WHS2011 with two (or more) failing drives, with tombstones etc etc....

I went through exactly the same thing beginning of the year. However, gotta say the upgrade to WHS2011 has made things sooo much more stable and the drives are ticking over 24/7 very nicely.

The process here: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=13718&start=75

the latter posting showing what worked. Dunno what WHS you got, but if it's a mediasmart, seriously consider upgrading your hardware too.

Good luck.

[Riffman81]

Ok, so the verdict is in. HDD is a total loss.... looks like I'm facing a rebuild. Not happy about this, but not much else can really be done now except to dive in. I'm still a little hazy on the whole EVO thing... should I wait for it's release or setup original GE again and migrate over to EVO once it's here?

Adultery, I bought a 4TB red lable drive from WD. Any experience with those? I'm kind of strapped for money at the moment getting ready for the holidays and such, so what I'm really looking at here is something to buy me a little time until I can come up with a better rig.

[tthurman]

That's a bummer dude!

my 0.2

The Red drives are intended for NAS usage, and so I would think their performance would be similar to that of the Black label enterprise drives, which I've had pretty good success rates with BTW.

[rockyrocket]

Reds are perfect for a RAID 1 set up if you fancy buying a second to ensure you do not get into this situation again?.

If that is a bit rich for you maybe you could use Sync Toy to mirror any important data onto another partition, kind of a fake RAID1?.

Macrium reflect is a free imaging tool that so far has never failed me.

I have to say though that personally it has never been a problem to have a small OS partition combined with a larger Data one on the same drive, or lately a 60 or 120GB SSD and a separate Data drive.

These times are a real PITA, and we have all been there and know your pain - just be comforted by the thought you will only let it happen once .

[Adultery]

+1 for Red Labels, but you probably don't need the extra endorsement.

[Riffman81]

Due to the size of my HTPC case, having a 2nd drive isn't an option for me, so I'll have to seek other alternatives. I think for now, an exact image backup is what I'm looking at until I can get another PC built and that's something I'm working on at the moment but probably won't get finished until after the holidays. Anyway, thanks guys for the feedback and options. It's now time to start setting up Game Ex again and get things back to order.... going to be a long weekend.

[Adultery]

Well if it helps you feel better, I'm going to be doing the same. Since I lost a bunch of things anyways I'm going to push the cab up to Windows 8.1 Pro and start completely over from scratch.

I could probably use a refresher anyway after all these years.

[stigzler]

.... start completely over from scratch.

* Shudders..... That's as bad as pictures of David Hasslehoff....

[Adultery]

Lets not go crazy...

[Riffman81]

Update: Got GE up and running and I'm guessing I'm about a third of the way done getting things setup. At least the "Core" part is done with getting my GE settings the way I want. It really helped with time in having all my media/artwork and such backed up on an external drive. Now it's just a matter of copying things back over and to the correct folders. Aside from tying up a few loose ends, all is good to go. Figured while I'm at it, might as well bump up to Windows 8.1. Has anyone had any issues with shelling GE in 8.1? I asked the same thing over on the HyperSpin forums as well because I plan to bump that setup up as well. Thanks

[hansolo77]

I can update too... I got my replacement HDD in the mail yesterday and spent a good 13 hours cloning my WHS Boot Drive. All went well, and my WHS is running great!

I decided to buy a USB->SATA adapter through Amazon, but it arrived late. I went ahead and disconnected all the drives in my media center and just cloned it directly using the SATA connectors in that. The USB-SATA adapter I bought came today though, and it doesn't even seem to be working right. I plugged it in, and the drive just sits there without spinning up. It came with an AC adapter for 3.5in drives but device doesn't do anything. Device Manager shows a new USB disk device, but it doesn't populate with drive details. And if you wait too long, it looks like the USB device just dies. There is a blue power light that goes out in about 20 seconds. It's also compatible with 2.5in drives (just unplug the AC adapter) but my spare "testing" 2.5in drive just clicks and clicks, without ever populating any drives that I can access through the Device Manager or Windows Explorer. Kinda bummed about all that, since this was more than $30 bucks with shipping. I'm going to wait and see what the manufacturer can do, as I've contacted their support about it. Apparently they only sell through Amazon or directly, so there's a good chance I can work a dispute with Amazon if I can't get anywhere.

Here's the adapter I bought. I has great reviews, so I was psyched to buy it.

http://www.ianker.com/product/68UPSATAA-02BU

[DazzleHP]

The USB-SATA adapter I bought came today though, and it doesn't even seem to be working right. I plugged it in, and the drive just sits there without spinning up. It came with an AC adapter for 3.5in drives but device doesn't do anything. Device Manager shows a new USB disk device, but it doesn't populate with drive details. And if you wait too long, it looks like the USB device just dies. There is a blue power light that goes out in about 20 seconds. It's also compatible with 2.5in drives (just unplug the AC adapter) but my spare "testing" 2.5in drive just clicks and clicks, without ever populating any drives that I can access through the Device Manager or Windows Explorer.

Hey Han,

This is probably a longshot, but you could check your USB and HDD power settings (usually somewhere in Advanced Power Management). It could well be that Windows is powering off the connection before your drive gets to do anything. I've seen some crazy things with external drives

[hansolo77]

I experimented a bit, and plugged the drive back into my media center with true sata power and data cables. Booted right up. But when I tried using the USB adapter, it just kinda halts at like a 20% spinup then dies. I have 3 other HDD's (3.5in) that I had hoped I could try to recover using the external adapter. They all do the same thing though, only spin up partially then die. I'm too tired to keep messing with it tonight, but I'm off work tomorrow and will spend some time checking it out.