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    Hi

    I have had quite some issues with bad blocks and I am hoping for some input to track down the cause.

    I built a WHS shortly after it became retail and it ran quite smoothly until about 1½ months ago.

    The problems started as I installed and tested a trial version of perfectdisk 2008, after a few days I got strange noises from the drives coupled with file conflicts, reviewing the event viewer showed two drives (of 11), each 750 Gb Seagtae ES drives, to have bad blocks, they were removed and sent for replacement (Seagate). Shortly after the same happened with a western digital 1 Tb drives (FYPS version).

    Now I am worried.

    To keep up space I input two drives I had lying around, after carefully checking with seatools for DOS for bad sectors (none found) a few weeks later one of them has bad blocks.

    Now I am more worried.

    I get the two replacement drives from seagate (certified repaired), after a weeks use one has bad blocks.

    Now I am even more worried.

    I figure it might be a controller problem, since the same pci controller (sil3114) was used for all drives except the western digital one. So I replace it with a new one (sil3132).

    I receive my replacement 1 Tb drive (brand new) and put it in use, no problems for a few hours, then it begins having timeout errors and loads of corruption messages (bad blocks are then also found)

    Now I am panicking.

    The issue is that something is apparently very wrong, this number of harddrives would never fail just by chance.

    Perfectdisk I believe is without fault, it likely just dug the problems to the surface by moving around files that had not been used for a long time.

    I have tried checking the RAM without detecting any errors.

    By the way bad blcoks are confirmed in another computer, when detecting bad blocks I remove the harddrive physically, then remove it in whs, and the copy the contents off the harddive while attached to another computer, that way I will know exactly which files have been lost.

    What I do not understand is how this can happen, and therefore I am unsure what to do, since most of the errors I can envison, e.g. bad RAM or a faulty controller, might cause corruption, as is needing to run chkdsk and having ntfs errors. But I cannot see anything that would cause bad blocks to appear.

    Any ideas?

    Regards
    Kurunir


    Monday, March 16, 2009 5:25 PM

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    Kurunir,

    Your problems could be the result of a faulty the power supply? AFAIK an unstable or failing power supply can cause the kind of trouble you describe. If this is the case, it seems to be deteriating slowly which would explain the problem becoming worse over time.

    Theo.
     

    No home server like Home Server
    Monday, March 16, 2009 7:43 PM
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    Kurunir,

    Your problems could be the result of a faulty the power supply? AFAIK an unstable or failing power supply can cause the kind of trouble you describe. If this is the case, it seems to be deteriating slowly which would explain the problem becoming worse over time.

    Theo.
     

    No home server like Home Server
    Monday, March 16, 2009 7:43 PM
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    Hi Kurunir,
    besides internal causes as Theo assumes also external reasons may cause damaged blocks. Do you from time to time have microcollisions with your home server case? (I tend to move my chair sometimes that much, so that it crashes with a PC positioned below my desk.) Or is there heavy traffic in the area of your house? Sometimes thes may cause also vibrations, which may have effects on the harddisk. I have also read about situations, in which a mobile phone located on top of the computer case could damage the disk.

    I don't think, that software like Perfect Disk is necessary on WHS, since the bottleneck of a server is the network. So it does not only create another bottleneck, while it is running, but also adds a level of stress to the drives.
    Best greetings from Germany
    Olaf
    Monday, March 16, 2009 7:50 PM
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    Unstable power supply sounds like a reasonable possibility, although not sure if there is any way to test it directly?

    In terms of vibration it is very low, I live at the end of the road in a suburb, with minimal traffic, and learning from previous crashes with under the desk PC's, they are now at a far wall.

    Regarding perfectdisk I was originally of the same opinion, however after having tested it I found many files was very fragmented, e.g. many music files were in 50+fragments, and that high level of fragmentation must also be hard on the drives, of course it only needs to run rarely (about once a month) to defragment whatever new files are on the server.

    Kurunir

    EDIT

    I went with the "panic" solution, a new power supply, motherboard, processor etc. is on the way, I will do a WHS reinstall and let it rebuild the library. That should be a fix all solution, so I can again trust in WHS to keep my files safe.
    Monday, March 16, 2009 8:22 PM
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    Kurunir said:

    Unstable power supply sounds like a reasonable possibility, although not sure if there is any way to test it directly?
     

    As your server had been running without problems for a long time I assume it has enough capacity to supply all your hardware? [EDIT] Did you check your drives operation temperatures? Overheated drives will eventually fail, don't know if this can result in bad blocks however...

    Except from the use of special equipment (and knowledge on how to use it) I would not know of a way to test the power supply. You could use a tool that can monitor the systems power voltages. But unless it shows levels outside the normal operation range (indicating failure) normal voltage levels do not rule out unstable operation.

    The best option would be to replace the power unit. I would also recommend replacing any additional power cabling you use to connect the drives.

    Theo.


    Btw: As running a defragmentation utility like perfectdisk does stress the drives (and thus it's power usage) I would not be surprised to see a relation between the usage of perfectdisk and the occurence of bad blocks (due to power problems).
    No home server like Home Server
    Tuesday, March 17, 2009 8:54 PM
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    I have regularly checked the drives operating temperature, as most have been Western Digital Green drives that run quite cool, and the cabinet has a very large side fan, they generally show temps in the 40's (Celcius).

    I will replace the power supply, and cabling so that should help.

    Very good point regarding perfectdisk and its use of system resources, I run it once a month only anyway, and have shut down all automated features.

    I used to run the harddrives with sleep mode so that they would shut down after 20 min of non use to conserve power, but I wonder now if that might be bad for the harddrives?

    Kurunir
    Wednesday, March 18, 2009 4:07 PM
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    Sending harddrives to sleep is not part of the default server configuration and may or may not badly interact with the Windows Home Server components (which expect instant response). But this should not lead to defect sectors, in worst case to missing harddrives in storage pool or similar experiences.
    Best greetings from Germany
    Olaf
    Wednesday, March 18, 2009 7:19 PM
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    Kurunir said:

        I will replace the power supply, and cabling so that should help.



    Of coarse there is no guarantee that a new power supply will solve your problem, but it is certainly worth a try!
    Good luck!
    Theo.

    No home server like Home Server
    Wednesday, March 18, 2009 9:04 PM
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    I have now been running with a new power supply etc for  a few days (basically copying stuff back to the server, adding harddrives to the pool etc), and the good ol' WHS stability seems to be back.

    When removing the old power supply I also noticed that it stated a max of 150 W for 3,3 & 5 V combined (out of 560 W), given that I have for periods used up to 12 hdd's most of which where of older and more power hungry types, this might also have pushed the electronics it over the edge. Now that most of my hdd's are WDD Green drives I am at a max of about 90 W for hdds out of 180 W for 3,3 and 5 V, which should also be an improvement.

    Thanks for the help guys.

    Kurunir
    Sunday, March 22, 2009 10:15 AM