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PostPosted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:44 am 
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470 server from the early days. 500MB system drive and 500 MB, 1 TB, and 1 TB data drives.

Yesterday, I got a couple of pop-ups stating something to the effect of a data integrity problem with a file(s) in one of my user directories (not a system file). Server then performed one backup without issue and then hung in the middle of a backup for my main system (which would have had the source file for the problem file(s) on the server). Lost connectivity and couldn't connect with the console. Did a forced power off and restart ending up with the oft-reported situation where the server partially boots and ends in a state where the power and network lights are solid blue, the health light is flashing blue, and the drive lights are out.

I've read all the threads I can find on this problem. The "fixes" seem to be widely varied and none seem to work for me.

No difference with pulling the data drives out. Recovery can't find the server. I can't RPC into it. The latter two are likely failing because my router doesn't show a DHCP address assigned the server. I hadn't been using a static address so it should show up in the client table. Without an assigned address, I can understand why the recovery disk can't find the server and I can't connect via RPC.

From some of the threads, it seems that despite the solid blue network light, there may be a failure of the network circuitry? Is that a part/board that can be acquired and replaced?

Other things I can try?

My goals are to:
1) have access to some of the data on the server's drives (little, if any, is irreplaceable, but much is collected and organized in a manner which would take quite a while to recreate
2) have a functioning server for backups, archiving and shared data
3) retain the investment in the current server (last priority...willing to buy a new server)

Any advice on remediation and/or way to move on will be appreciated. Thanks.


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 3:01 pm 
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First the blinking blue health light is an indication that the server has not completed booting. This can happen for a wide variety of reasons, corrupt or failing hard drive, the server could be performing a CHKDSK during boot up with in of itself can be a lengthy process. I have written how to troubleshoot this many times indicating to remove the drives from the server and install them on another computer either internally or externally in an enclosure or docking station. If you can see the drive then you can simply run CHKDSK /r on the drive.

Since some have many drives on their server it would be a lengthy process to check every drive and it only takes one drive to create an issue for WHS while booting. Easiest way to find a problem drive is simply a boot and reboot process where you simply backout and or disconnect all the storage pool and non-pooled drives leaving only the system drive then simply turn the server on and see if it boots.

Booting a server with missing drives will cause the server to flag a bunch of errors which you will need to ignore for the time being. The errors show up only because of missing drives. The erros will indicate failed or missing drives, file corruption, corruption of your backup database and WHS will also recommend running things to correct these issues but you will need to ignore them for the time being as they are expect to occur.

Simply put this is a process of ellimination and your looking for the drive that causes the flashing blue health light to occur so if you can boot successfully then shut the server down by taping the power button or connecting to the console and instruct the server to shut down.

Next plug in another drive and boot the server. If the server stalls then power it down and install the drive in another computer at mentioned earlier and run CHKDSK /r on the drive. Continue the boot/reboot process until you have gone through all the drives. Then when the drives which you pulled for CHKDSK /r are done then simply reinstall them and boot the server to see if the problem is resolved or not.

Again the problem will most likely be with only one drive. It could very well be a problem with the system drive itself which you would discover when attempting to boot the server with only the system drive connected.

Now for the network connectivity issue and how to determine if the network port is actually working properly. What you do here is simply diconnect all your drives from the server, internal, external, and anything connected eSATA or USB. With nothing attached to the server turn it on and observe the health light. It will take about 2-5 mins for the server to notice no drives are connected and will boot itself from the SMI Area which will place your server into recovery mode and confirmation of this can be seen two ways. The first is with the health light as it will blink PURPLE and RED which is the status the EX470 and EX475 displays. The second is to logon to your router and check the DCHP listing and look for the device starting with the name MININT followed by other things. Each time the server boots into its recovery mode it announces itself with the name starting with MININT but the stuff after that is always different.

So if you see MININT followed by other things on your DHCP listing then you will know your servers network port is working perfectly and that your server can enter its recovery mode but with the drives connected you need to press the Status/Reset button. Personally I like to pull the system drive and make certain nothing is connected to the bottom rear USB Port and turn the server on to force it into its recovery mode mostly because its simple and keeps me from having to search for a paper clip or destroying a functional binder clip just to get something to push the button in that little hole. Timing is important here in that the minuted you see the servers health light blink Purple/Red simply plug in the system drive and run the recovery software and your good to go.

At this point in time I would urge you not to perform a Server Recovery because for it to work properly WHS will need to see all your storage pool drives if you desire to preserve your data. If you just want to start over and your data is not important then fine run the Factory Recovery and WHS will simply reformat all your drives but for this task I would leave the drives out of the server and then add them one at a time since you may have a storage pool drive with an issue that may cause you some grief. I believe its a much simpler process to simply identify the drive or drives which are a problem and correct the problem and you will be back in business.

Now back to the network port. One of the reasons why you have lost connectivity to the server is because the server has not loaded the NIC drivers and so without that the NIC may not be active. But forcing the server into a recovery mode will confirm if the NIC is working properly or not and if so then its a booting issue and finding the cause as detailed above should correct that issue once the server is able to fully boot itself as you will soon find out.

Good luck and please let me know if you should require additional assistance or wish for me to explains something I have written here or elsewhere. Most people I help out get there servers running in 1-3 days others sometimes take abit longer often because they attempted to perform a server recovery and something prevented the recovery from completion.

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 4:42 pm 
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Comp1962: Thanks for the detailed recovery plan. I'd already tried the pull-one-drive at a time option without success. I've got an external SATA drive mount coming from Amazon so that I can test/chkdsk the drives (and, if necessary, recover files from the from the storage drives. That'll be Wednesday at the earliest.

However, the suggestion to pull all the drives to force it into recovery mode using the "SMI Area" (?) DID cause it to show up on my router's DHCP cleint table so the NIC appears to work.

So, I think the way forward is to:
1) chkdsk /r each drive on another computer when I get the external mount
2) replace the chkdsk'd drives in the MSS and try booting
3) run System Recovery (not Factory Restore) if it still doesn't boot; this mode says data on the storage drives won't be lost?

If this doesn't work then I'll copy some data which is unique on the MSS (all replaceable, but not neatly organized elsewhere) and then do a factory reset.

Does this sound like a reasonable plan?

Thanks.


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:40 pm 
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If you tried booting with just the system drive connected to the server and it did not boot I would concentrate on that drive first as it only takes 1 drive to prevent WHS from booting.

Now I am not certain what type of a device you purchased but if its a docking station or just a USB-SATA cable I would also recommend you place a fan next to the drive to blow air over to help keep it cool because sometimes running CHKDSK /r can take a very long time. Also know the system drive has 2 partitions names SYS which is the OS partition and DATA which is part of the storage pool and since you would be working on the drive I would run CHKDSK /r on both partitions.

After that you can see if the booting issue is resolved but also keep in mind that when you want to power the server down with the servers power button just press and release it and the server should shut itself down. Holding the power button in will force the server to shut down and if it were writing to the drive it could corrupt the drive.

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 4:26 pm 
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Comp1962 wrote:
If you tried booting with just the system drive connected to the server and it did not boot I would concentrate on that drive first as it only takes 1 drive to prevent WHS from booting.

Now I am not certain what type of a device you purchased but if its a docking station or just a USB-SATA cable I would also recommend you place a fan next to the drive to blow air over to help keep it cool because sometimes running CHKDSK /r can take a very long time. Also know the system drive has 2 partitions names SYS which is the OS partition and DATA which is part of the storage pool and since you would be working on the drive I would run CHKDSK /r on both partitions.

After that you can see if the booting issue is resolved but also keep in mind that when you want to power the server down with the servers power button just press and release it and the server should shut itself down. Holding the power button in will force the server to shut down and if it were writing to the drive it could corrupt the drive.


SATA drive frame arrived today (open mesh sides...lots of cooling).

The good news is that I can see/access/copy off the data drives.

Bad news is that it mounts the system drive as two drives, both of which it claims are empty or not formattted (RAW). Seems like something detroyed the root level directories.

If I reformat the drive, what parameters should be used or will the Server Recovery process handle the formating/partitioning? The guide implies that a System Recovery will just rebuild the system drive and lose all system settings but not the data on the data drives. If that's correct, I can live with reconfiguring all the system settings. I'd think it would also be a good idea to run chkdsk on the data drives while they are out and accessible?

My plan therefore is:
1) chkdsk the data drives
2) reinstall all drives in the MSS
3) run Server Recovery (not factory reset) on the MSS to rebuild the system drive (do I need to reformat the partitions first?)
4) reset the system settings
5) live happily ever after, or at least for a couple of years

Suggestions?


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PostPosted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:54 pm 
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If you google RAW Drive Format you will find quite abit of information about fully functional drives that for various reasons show up as a RAW Drive and there is also some corrective things which I recall reading to help correct the issue.

As for reformatting the drive you can do that and then insert it into the server and perform a Server Recovery to preserve your data. Just remember after the recovery to be sure to download all the HP and Microsoft Updates and ignore any server alerts regarding the Backup Database being corrupted and needs to be repaired. This message will generally go away after the updates are done.

If after you have downloaded and installed all the updates and you still see the alerts about the backup database then and only then have the server repair the backup database as some of your client backups may have resided on the DATA Partition of the System Drive.

Also any data that did exist on the Data Partition of the System Drive which was not duplicated will be lost. If the Data Partition on your system drive was never used then you will not lose anything. It times like this where I would prefer to just use the System Drive for just the OS and nothing else but then again I have 24 bays to work with and can add more if I desire.

Other than that you have the right idea and it appears your on track to getting your server up and running again. Let me know if you should have any additional question and please let me know how your recovery went.

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 4:14 pm 
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The saga continues...

All three data drives passed chkdsk /r with no problems found.

System drive which shows two raw partitions (20481 MB and 456448 MB...the volumes can be seen through "Device Properties" under Device Manager in the Control Panel) can't be formatted. Windows suggests formating them, but when the option is chosen, the format fails immediately.

When the system drive is mounted in the MSS and forced into recovery mode it shows up on the router table as "minint." The Server Recovery program on the CDROM finds the server, but when Restore is selected, after the warning about losing settings, it fails immediately with no message about the issue.

From the documentation, I though the Server Recovery option was supposed to either rebuild the former drive or build a completely new system on a new drive, but it isn't working with this drive.

My next thought is to fdisk the system drive (I've still got an XP system I can use for this) to do the low low format and partitioning. I assume the smaller partition that is currently set at 20481 is the SYS partition and the remainder is DATA. Any reason to enlarge the SYS partition? I saw the earlier recommendation to dedicate the system drive to SYS which would't be a problem. The other 3 drives total 3.5 TB and that exceeds my needs by almost two-fold.

Thanks for the continuing suggestions.


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PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 5:46 pm 
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Try deleting the two partitions then formatting the drive. If the format fails then I would opt to get a new drive 80 GB or large but use a 7200 RPM drive. Even real good drives like the WD Blacks are cheap so its not a major expense. For me any drive that I find to be a pain I push to the side and move on because I only want fully functional drives in my systems.

Of course this is your system we are talking about and so what you chose to do is upto you and only you can determine what the best course of corrective action is but for me any drive that causes too much grief will continue to do so.

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 16, 2011 3:47 pm 
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Alas...

Former system drive resisted all attempts to communicate with it or reformat it.

Ordered new drive to replace system drive. Booted the MSS and put it into server recovery. Server recovery process ran to completion. MSS switched from the 2 blue plus red-blue alternately flashing health indicator to flashing blue health indicator. Home Server Connector can't find the server. Tried rebooting the MSS. With just a momentary press of the power button it switched off immediately. On restart, back to the flashing blue health indicator. Removed the new system drive and hooked it up to another computer. It has a single 20GB partition with what appears to be a full installation of the system software including familiar looking files for a bootable drive. Back in the MSS and it still boots to flashing blue.

I'm a short step away from moving on from the MSS to some other NAS solution else unless there are other things I can try.

Thanks.


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PostPosted: Thu Jun 16, 2011 4:17 pm 
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The server recovery can take quite sometime. There is one point in the recovery that will tell you to wait that your server will or may reboot several times. After a short period another message will appear telling you the server recovery was successful then have you proceed to start the setup process. However best I can say about this is it seems more like a timed delay befor the change in the messages.

I have performed more recoveries for various reasons some were to test some recoveries working with USB-LAN Adapters both with v1.x and 3.x. The last recovery I elected to do seemed to take forever with the health light flashing blue forever but the difference for me is I have video on my EX470's so I can see what the server is actually doing.

If I am correct your server is at the point just prior to where you configure the server where it will then reinstall the client connector software onto your computer. So if you were to turn the server back on and let it get to the point where the health light is blinking blue, and then logon to your router and check the DHCP listing to to see if the server is active or not the name of the server may either start with MININT followed by other things or will have a name starting with HP which would be like HPStore or something similar. If you see the server the server with a name starting with HP then I would recommend you run the Client Connector Install Disk on the client your working with or download the version of the Client Connector Software from the server using the link HTTP://Current Name of Server:55000 The current name of the server would be the name of the server you see in the DHCP listing starting with HP and not MININT.

What I expect to happen if the servers name starts with HP is that after you install the client connector software the recovery or setup will continue where it left off allowing you to configure the server. The health light at this point will continue to blink blue until the the server is configured and can finish its boot process after which the health light will change colors be it solid blue or red and the hard drives LED would also turn on and be solid blue.

The reason I mention the health light being solid red is because the server software would not be upto date as it was when it was running previously. The server will report the client backup database as being corrupt and recommend you repair it but ignore this warning and just proceed to download and install all the HP and Microsoft updates after which the backup database alerta should go away and if not then and only then have WHS repair the client backup database. If you do it before the updates are installed then you will lose some or all of the Client Backup Data and so its important you know this while your recovering your server.

Do not give up the server during the recovery process today has a lot more work to do then it did back in 2007 when it was first released. I performed my first recovery in 2008 and it did not take very long but more recent recoveries seemed to take forever so patience is in order but the good news is you should be able to pick up where you left off just by installing the client software which is similar to the first day you turned the server on only your just doing a recovery where your preserving your data.

Good Luck and lets get that server humming again so you can resume enjoying it.

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 2:02 pm 
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Comp1962 wrote:
The server recovery can take quite sometime. There is one point in the recovery that will tell you to wait that your server will or may reboot several times. After a short period another message will appear telling you the server recovery was successful then have you proceed to start the setup process. However best I can say about this is it seems more like a timed delay befor the change in the messages..


First, Comp1962, I very much appreciate the time you've taken to write detailed replies. This case seems to be headed to failure, however.

I've rerun the server recovery because when it gets to the point about proceeding after the finalization of the recovery, it says in none too prominent text not to continue until the blue light stops flashing. I hadn't noted this text the first time. So, this time I left it in the blue-flashing-do-not-continue mode overnight and much of today...6 hours or so. Still flashing blue. Per you last reply, I've checked the router log and it still shows as "minint," not "hp." The drive lights NEVER come on (except briefly as red when I've disconnected the power cable and then rebooted).

I tried rebooting (actually, powering down as it shuts down instantly on pressing the power button, not a forced reboot) with all the data drives pulled...no difference.

I see one more approach before I give up and get a different NAS: server factory reset. If successful, I can copy the data off my smallest data drive using the external SATA mount and then add it to the MSS to be reinitialized. Then I'd copy the data off my mid-size drive using the SATA mount before installing it on the server and copying the data back, and so on.


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PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 5:08 pm 
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In the past I have recommended to people to remove all the server drives and then install a test drive into the server 80 GB or larger and attempt a Factory Recovery to confirm the recovery is possible. In your case you can just use the new drive and perform a Factory Recovery but you may want to delete the current partitions off the drive then insert it and perform the recovery.

If you are using the original v1 software that shipped with the EX470 I would strongly recommend using a 32 bit client to perform the recovery. My prefrence for recoveries has always been WIN XP as the process has always worked well but with Win 7 for me the recovery has always been bumpy.

Some will have differing opinions on this of course but I always stick with what I know works best. If your using the 3.x upgrade software for your server then Win 7 is not suppose to be an issue but even then I have felt using a Win XP Client to be the best for me.

Good Luck and please do not give up because once you get it you will have a much better understanding of the process but also while blind recoveries are done everyday having a debug cable to provide a video output does help because you can actually see what mischief the server is upto...

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 6:26 pm 
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I'm using a Win XP host computer. As you point out, nothing lost in factory restoring the new drive since there is nothing on it I care about. I'll clear the partitions before doing so.


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 7:11 am 
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Final resolution: factory reset worked and I'm now moving TBs of data from the old MSS data drives to a host computer so that I can then return the data drives to the MSS and have them reincorporated. Then I'll get to move the TBs back. Fortunately, the data moves are fire and forget type operations so I canget on with life in the meantime.

Thanks for all the support and suggestions.


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 8:22 am 
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Good to hear your server is backup up and running. Copying data can be somewhat time consuming and the duplication another time consuming process but the real hard part is over. Sometimes just starting the server over can help with say a degraded performance for which the resolution is difficult so there can be good in doing this.

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