D Drive 0 bytes free, Storage Pool says 200GB free.
So for some reason my WHS says my D drive is only 56GB. My setup is a 80GB primary and 500GB secondary.
Storage Pool says I have 212GB free however I am now getting the less than 5GB warning message and now I have 0 free.
I have read other forums and it keeps saying "please do a server reinstallation". This is not an acceptable solution.
I am starting to get very frustrated with WHS. I have been very patient however because of all the custom work this "disk pooling" code that has been created application compatibility has gone down the drain. From data corruption issues to space not being properly reported and almost every thread I see "server reinstallation" is the solution. This isn't acceptable. I am sorry to harp but I thought the idea of this OS was a pain free home server for the consumer.
That being said, here is where my issues hit home.
1. I do alot of bit torrent downloads from our office server to home (in work from home scenarios). I set my WHS to run a bit torrent client for me. This transfers several GB of data and when set to a SHARED folder location, the data is then all corrupted and you can't unrar the files. This I believe is the data corruption bug.
To solve this, point the bit torrent download temp to D:\whatever_temp and it solves it. Once its complete you can copy it to your shares.
Because I have done this. Have I screwed up demigrator somehow? Is there a way for me to right the ship to reclaim some of the storage pool as usable space?
Again I am sorry however I am not going to be happy if server re-installation is the only solution possible. I am starting to feel like the win95 days are back. Once something is pooched you whip out the install disks. I really enjoy WHS when it works however I've spent more time trying to make it work than benefitting from it.
However things were implemented it seems FAR too easy to derail the entire system.
2. About 50% of the time when I copy a movie into a videos folder, it never shows up on my 360. I have to rename it 20 some times just tweaking with the filename, copy it out of the directory, back into it etc until it gets picked up. Restarting the Media Connect service doesn't solve the issue. I am also using the WHS to do WMV encoding. Is WHS monitoring the folder and if the CPU is busy, does that mean perhaps filesystem events aren't triggering to update media connect's library?
I would very much appreciate some assistance in any of these issues.
Thanks and take care.
Alle Antworten
Because you have your torrents downloading to D:\ they are taking up space on the drive, and this will cause things to not work as they should. The way that Drive Extender works, is that the share points are D:\shares\sharename, and then the Drive Extender Migrator comes along, sees that those files on the D drive need to be migrated, and it migrates the file, and creates a 4KB tombstone. Check to see how much space you have on D, and if you have torrents that havent downloaded, or are partials that have been sitting for a long time remove them, the D drive needs to be as big as possible, and have as much free space as possible. If you can get free space back you should be good to go.
So let me clarify again because my post answers many of those questions.
1. D drive says 0 bytes free. (D drive says its 56GB total. My system setup is a 80GB primary, 500GB secondary, so I am guessing the 56GB is 80GB - 20GB for system etc).
2. If I have a 500GB drive. Shouldn't it pretty much always say 56GB free out of 56GB on D? Since I have always never dropped below storage pool reporting 200+ GB free. So that means D should never drop below 56GB I would think once demigrator recalculates? This has never occured like this though. It started at 56GB and has continued to drop ever since until now being 0.
3. About the torrents. As I stated above. I could not set the download temp directory to a shared folder on D. This is because when you do, the files become corrupt. If a download is occuring for several hours or days, it is basically pooched when it gets completed. Thus I had to direct my Downloads temp directory to a non-shared directory such as D:\Downloads Temp\.
Let me give a more clear recap:
Storage Pool in Server Console reports:
Capacity: 76.33GB
Capacity: 465.76GB
Total Size: 542.1GB
Free Space: 236.93GB
Shared Folders (285GB)
PC Backups (136MB)
System (20GB)
Free Space (237GB)
If I go into Administrative Tools | Computer Management and into the Disk Management console snappin I see the following:
DATA
Capacity: 465.75GB
Free Space: 178.77GB
DATA (D
Capacity: 56.32GB
Free Space: 8.45GB
SYS (C
Capacity: 20.00GB
Free Space: 14.38GB
So I think this clearly shows I have over 3 times the 56GB space but still reporting 0 bytes. Am I missing something here?
Thanks for the help.
Synced23 wrote: So let me clarify again because my post answers many of those questions. 1. D drive says 0 bytes free. (D drive says its 56GB total. My system setup is a 80GB primary, 500GB secondary, so I am guessing the 56GB is 80GB - 20GB for system etc).
Correct.
Synced23 wrote: 2. If I have a 500GB drive. Shouldn't it pretty much always say 56GB free out of 56GB on D? As long as you are moving the files from D:\whatever_temp to a network share (UNC) path, then deleting the torrent files from D:\whatever_temp, yes. Is that what you are doing?
Synced23 wrote: Since I have always never dropped below storage pool reporting 200+ GB free. So that means D should never drop below 56GB I would think once demigrator recalculates? DEMigrator does a lot more than just recalculation. It takes the files in D:\shares and moves them to a secondary drive.
Synced23 wrote: This has never occured like this though. It started at 56GB and has continued to drop ever since until now being 0. Can you check the processes on the server and see if DEMigrator.exe is running?
Synced23 wrote: 3. About the torrents. As I stated above. I could not set the download temp directory to a shared folder on D. This is because when you do, the files become corrupt. If a download is occuring for several hours or days, it is basically pooched when it gets completed. Thus I had to direct my Downloads temp directory to a non-shared directory such as D:\Downloads Temp\. Let me give a more clear recap:
Storage Pool in Server Console reports:
Capacity: 76.33GB
Capacity: 465.76GB
Total Size: 542.1GB
Free Space: 236.93GB
Shared Folders (285GB)
PC Backups (136MB)
System (20GB)
Free Space (237GB)
If I go into Administrative Tools | Computer Management and into the Disk Management console snappin I see the following:
DATA
Capacity: 465.75GB
Free Space: 178.77GB
DATA (D
Capacity: 56.32GB
Free Space: 8.45GB
SYS (C
Capacity: 20.00GB
Free Space: 14.38GB
So I think this clearly shows I have over 3 times the 56GB space but still reporting 0 bytes. Am I missing something here?
Thanks for the help.
So here are my answers:
1. Yes it is moving from D:\Downloads Temp\ however to D:\shares\videos etc..
2. Yes Demigrator is running. I had 2-3 weeks of it balancing itself but it seems to be running better since then except for the fact my usable storage lowers.
So I deleted some files off the shares and I have reclaimed some HD space however this still signifies an issue with the storage system in general. Since you said as long as I have over 56GB free it should always say 56GB of 56GB available (give or take some time lapse between demigrator running I image). However I have never seen the 56GB free since the beginning when I installed for the first time and it was empty.
That being said. I don't know how this is going to be fixed in the future. As long there is direct drive access via Explorer, people are going to be screwing up the storage pool system continiously. That and the case of the corruption bug forces certain apps to avoid the shared folders such as I have in this case.
I hate to harp but as a developer myself this just wreaks of if you open a door for a user, they will walk through it. Unless you remove the Explorer access to "My Computer" etc people are going to mess up this system. This is a huge issue IMO. I also don't agree that removing this access is the proper solution either.
There has got to be a better way for the storage pool management to operate without having to rely on file shares to be the only file access. Perhaps I am out of line in these statements but I don't know what reporting free space has to do with file shares. Can it not see that there is over 3 times the 56GB D drive available?
I have some space free now however its going to dwindle back down to 0 meanwhile I have another 178GB doing nothing.
Thank you and I appreciate the help.
Synced23 wrote: So here are my answers: 1. Yes it is moving from D:\Downloads Temp\ however to D:\shares\videos etc..
There's one possible reason. The way the file filter works is through the UNC path. You need to move the data to \\[servername]\[sharename], not D:\shares\[sharename].
Synced23 wrote: 2. Yes Demigrator is running. I had 2-3 weeks of it balancing itself but it seems to be running better since then except for the fact my usable storage lowers. So I deleted some files off the shares and I have reclaimed some HD space however this still signifies an issue with the storage system in general. Since you said as long as I have over 56GB free it should always say 56GB of 56GB available (give or take some time lapse between demigrator running I image). However I have never seen the 56GB free since the beginning when I installed for the first time and it was empty.
Another possibility is Shadow Copies. Can you check to see how much space is being used for Shadow Copies on your D drive? Also, try right clicking on D:\shares, then click Properties. Please report how many total files you have inside that folder and the total Size on Disk.
Synced23 wrote: That being said. I don't know how this is going to be fixed in the future. As long there is direct drive access via Explorer, people are going to be screwing up the storage pool system continiously. There is no direct drive access unless you go outside of the normal use of WHS. It's been written in all WHS documentation and countless times here in the forum: Do not use D:\shares at all for any reason.
Synced23 wrote: That and the case of the corruption bug forces certain apps to avoid the shared folders such as I have in this case. I hate to harp but as a developer myself this just wreaks of if you open a door for a user, they will walk through it. Unless you remove the Explorer access to "My Computer" etc people are going to mess up this system.
See above.
Synced23 wrote: This is a huge issue IMO. I also don't agree that removing this access is the proper solution either. There has got to be a better way for the storage pool management to operate without having to rely on file shares to be the only file access. Perhaps I am out of line in these statements but I don't know what reporting free space has to do with file shares. Can it not see that there is over 3 times the 56GB D drive available?
The console can, the underlying OS (WS2K3) cannot. All it sees is the free space on the D partition.
Synced23 wrote: I have some space free now however its going to dwindle back down to 0 meanwhile I have another 178GB doing nothing. Thank you and I appreciate the help.
Part of your problem (besides copying to D:\shares) is your primary drive is too small. All WHS documentation says to use the largest drive size possible as your primary drive (to avoid the limitations you are now facing). Your best option would be to get a new hard drive of sufficient size (at least 250 GB in my opinion), then treat your server as a failed primary hard drive and replace your 80 GB with the new drive and do a Server Reinstallation.
- Torrents work, I am doing them right now. I put them in a directory I made on the d: and when they are finished, I open the shared folder on the desktop of the WHS and cut/paste them there. If you have 20 gig system and 56 gig data drive, that 56 gig will go down as your are downloading your torrents as those files are stored on the data drive (d and are not moved by the migrator until you move them to the correct folder, which is the \\share name. So if you have 20 gig of torrent data, your drive will show 36 gig available until you move it to the correct share and the migrator takes over.
Synced23 wrote: I am starting to get very frustrated with WHS. I have been very patient however because of all the custom work this "disk pooling" code that has been created application compatibility has gone down the drain. From data corruption issues to space not being properly reported and almost every thread I see "server reinstallation" is the solution. This isn't acceptable. I am sorry to harp but I thought the idea of this OS was a pain free home server for the consumer.
Unfortunately, it's also a V1 product. and we are the early adopters.- Synced23,
I'm sorry you're experiencing so much difficulty. However, you are using Windows Home Server in ways not envisioned by Microsoft, and you have to expect a certain amount of difficulty as a result. Windows Home Server is designed to be a headless appliance on your network, providing certain services to client PCs. It's not designed to be used as a general purpose server operating system; Microsoft has said that all the administration you should need to do can be done through the Windows Home Server Console. When you install applications that you can't manage through the console, you're likely to be in technical violation of the EULA (because there's a restriction on using the remote desktop for anything other than administration functions, and e.g. shuffling files is a user function) and you are certainly beyond the boundaries that Microsoft has put in place.
First, disk use; the way the server uses it's disk drives is as follows:
- The system disk contains the system partition (C: ) and the primary data partition (D: ) which is the root of the storage pool.
- All other disks that are added to the storage pool are used as "secondary" storage.
- All disks attached to the server but not added to the storage pool are unavailable to Windows Home Server itself, but can be used by other tools on the server, managed manually, etc.
Given that you have more than one disk in your server, the shares that WHS manages (everything under D:\Shares) will normally contain only "tombstones", with the shadows of those files being on a secondary disk. With only two disks, if you turn on duplication for a share, the additional shadows of those files will be stored on the system disk as well. Components of the backup database can be stored on either disk (though normally they will be on secondary disks) as well. And any additional applications that are WHS-aware and that use WHS application folders for data may also be consuming space on one or more disks.
In your case, you're using a bittorrent client to download files to a folder not in the shares; we'll call that folder D:\torrents for the moment. All of those files are guaranteed to exist on, and occupy space on, D: and nowhere else. You say that you then copy files from D:\torrents into the shares. Do you leave the files in D:\torrents? They will continue to occupy space in D:\torrents until removed. That's a very easy way to fill a small primary drive. A combination of share duplication, backups, and this are what I suspect to be the reason your D: partition is full; when your primary drive is being used for duplication, and your secondary drive is much larger, your primary drive will fill up with duplicates long before the secondary drive fills up.
My recommendation would be to replace your system drive with one of approximately the same size as your secondary, then reinstall Windows Home Server. When you do this, choose the "server reinstallation" option, which should be available to you as long as setup detects all your secondary drives. This will preserve your shares and the data in them. It may lose backups (if components are stored on the primary drive), and will definitely lose users, add-ins, and other OS customizations.
There are two primary reasons reinstallation is frequently recommended. The first is that there's a desire to get the user back up and running quickly. Since a standard Windows Home Server installation won't be heavily customized, a reinstallation should require less time (and be more likely to succeed) than trying to tweak the server "behind the scenes". Since this is a home server, a couple of hours to reinstall, more time while the server validates tombstones and shadows, and then a few minutes recreating users and reinstalling add-ins is probably faster than other answers.
The second reason is that you are at least somewhat correct, I think, when you imply that Windows Home Server is more fragile than a normal Windows Server 2003 installation. This is partly because of the additional components that make WHS what it is. It's also partly because many of the "home built" WHS PCs are not built on server-grade hardware, and often have a lot of additional software installed, all of which may not be particularly "friendly" to the WHS environment. Whatever the specifics, it's sometimes not possible to solve a problem with a customized server without reinstalling and (again) it may take less time to reinstall and reconfigure than researching and fixing the problem.
