Kariya21 - thanks for the reply.
As I understand this, duplication of a folder forces that folder to be on seperate disks.
More accurately, it stores 2 copies of each file in that share on 2 different hard drives (but not necessarily everything from that share is on the same 2 drives).
The photo folder has roughly 1.55TB of photos. When I started uploading the HP server had the native 750GB primary disk and 2 2TB WD green drives I added. Formatted, those are roughly 1.8TB each. This means (I think) that each of those 2 WD disks had the photo folder as the primary drive was not large enough to hold it.
It doesn't matter what the size of each drive is. It really depends on how many drives were in the server when you added the data (and whether or not Power Pack 1 had been installed at the time). PP1 significantly changed the way it handles files. Also, since you mentioned you are using an HP MSS, is it a EX47x? If so, those are truly "bare minimum" specs in terms of RAM.
Additionally, I'm backing up 6 pc's, 5 home and a work laptop.
The primary disk formatted is 698 GB and shows 28% full. Backups are 361GB which means that at least some of these files/images are on the WD drives as well, so those are jammed full, which is why I added the 3rd WD 2TB drive. Below are the 2 WD drive dumps plus primary disk.
Name WDC WD20EADS-00R6B0
Physical Disk 1
Serial Number W -DCWVA0Y039798
GUID 6ba59581-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Role StorageDisk
Status Healthy
Failure Predicted False
Temperature 42 C / 107.6 F
Contains Backups True
Capacity 1863 GB
Used Space 1763 GB
Shadow Copy Size 0 GB
Free Space 99 GB
Connected True
Interface IDE
Controller Intel(R) ICH9R/DO/DH SATA AHCI Controller
Path Slave
External False
Name WDC WD20EADS-00R6B0
Physical Disk 2
Serial Number W -DCWVA0Y030807
GUID 6ba59580-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Role StorageDisk
Status Healthy
Failure Predicted False
Temperature 41 C / 105.8 F
Contains Backups True
Capacity 1863 GB
Used Space 1748 GB
Shadow Copy Size 0 GB
Free Space 114 GB
Connected True
Interface IDE
Controller Intel(R) ICH9R/DO/DH SATA AHCI Controller
Path Unknown
External False
Primary disk
Name ST3750630AS
Physical Disk 0
Serial Number Q92K5BZ6
GUID 44cb72a0-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Role SystemDisk
Status Healthy
Failure Predicted False
Temperature 43 C / 109.4 F
Contains Backups True
Capacity 698 GB
Used Space 195 GB
Shadow Copy Size 0 GB
Free Space 502 GB
Connected True
Interface IDE
Controller Intel(R) ICH9R/DO/DH SATA AHCI Controller
Path Master
External False
Added the 3rd WD disk last week. It shows virtually empty using the disk management plugin. I assumed that the WHS balancing would be smart enough to move the backups off the two full WD's and onto the 3rd, but that has not happened.
WHS doesn't "balance" anything. The term "Balanced" in the Console is a misnomer (and, IMO, needs to be changed). "Balancing" in WHS means that when it checks for files to be duplicated (which happens every 60 minutes), it duplicates any file that is in a share marked for duplication that is not currently duplicated.
Name WDC WD20EADS-00S2B0
Physical Disk 3
Serial Number W -DCWVA0Y566972
GUID 1974afa3-85f3-44cf-a4b1-497a0b8103c9
Role StorageDisk
Status Healthy
Failure Predicted False
Temperature 43 C / 109.4 F
Contains Backups True
Capacity 1863 GB
Used Space 5 GB
Shadow Copy Size 0 GB
Free Space 1857 GB
Connected True
Interface IDE
Controller Intel(R) ICH9R/DO/DH SATA AHCI Controller
Path Unknown
External False
I'd like to continue to use the duplication option but need access speed. I'm assuming that the fact that these disks that have the photos are full is the main problem and I'm enough of a ludite to worry about chkdsk "mounting and dismounting" and what that is doing.
The dismounting of a hard drive is normal. Just run chkdsk /r (don't use the server at all while it's running) and let it do its thing. :) Once the chkdsk is complete, reboot your server.
Does this make more sense with the additional info?
Thanks,
John
