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PostPosted: Tue Mar 09, 2021 10:03 pm 
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This one has probably been done a few times over the years. But a lot of the solutions point to pages since moved or deleted.
My backup cleanup has not been working for some time and backups have been gradually growing in size. Manually instigating backup cleanup just produces the error message and turns backup service off.

What I have tried:-
-numerous chkdsk scans. All clean
-Homeserver SMART reports all disks ok and scans are clean
-reinstalled connector on all PC's

Configuration
EX490 with 4 x 2Tb WD red drives. 8Tb total
Backing up 3 PC's and holding backups from 1 retired PC. All running Win7 Pro (ok I know).
Storage shows 40% shared folders, 40% backups, 20% free

I've run out of ideas and formatting/restoring to factory defaults is not an option.
Any ideas?


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2021 11:35 am 
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If some of the backups are run manually they will never delete until you manually select them to be deleted.
But is sounds like your os may be corrupted.
Possibly due to a bad drive in the bottom bay.
Do not trust the console to tell you it is healthy,

Only way is either the smart addin or yank the drive and connect it to your pc and run chkdsk.
If the os is corrupted I doubt you will see a error that makes sense.

But there is a option to just fix the os drive using the cd.
When you run it , there are two options.
Reset- Will reformat all the drives and make the system as it was when purchased.(you don't want this option)
Recovery- This will just reformat the os and re-install same.
But it also will delete all client backups , plus some other settings such as clients.
So you would need to reinstall the connector on the clients
But it is designed to preserve the data on the drives.
If you have backups that you want to keep.
Try WHS Backup Database-Backup (BDBB)
At
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/add-ins/#WHSBDBB

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2021 12:39 am 
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Thanks for the reply.
I was hoping it wasn't the system disk. I have replaced one before and it was a PITA. I'll pull it out and run the chkdsk from the PC.
I have tried some thing else in the meantime. I had quite a lot of backups marked manually to delete at next cleanup. I have changed them all to manage automatically to see if it makes a difference and run a cleanup manually.
It doesn't seem to be failing the same way as it was before and the EX490 seems to be doing something when you RDP in and check the processes and performance on the taskmanager. Its chewing on something. I might let it run a while and see what happens first.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2021 11:12 am 
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Not knowing how much data you have to process it could take days.
You just have to be patient.
Remember it is a server not a desktop.
Since you only have 20% free that means you are using some space in your os drive in the d:/data partition.

But if you need to replace the os drive.
Using the recovery not reset it will rebuild your data there providing you are using folder duplication.

Even if it is not the case after you replace it.
Keep your old os drive connect it to the pc and open file explorer.
Select to show hidden files and you can copy the data from that drive back to the server again.


I really think you just need to replace the os drive and do a recovery.
I know you do not want to do that.
But who knows what has happened to that drive's files over the years.
If you are looking for a new drive I suggest the wd red plus not the regular wd red.
Remember to not exceed 2tb.
You could go with the wd red pro but they get hot and the performance increase you would not even notice.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 15, 2021 6:53 pm 
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No the cleanup is still failing at about 5%. Cleanup repair says it is successful but only takes about 5 minutes to complete.
I have since deleted a heap of old files from the shared folders and added a usb SS drive to add some capacity. I now have 35% free space. Cleanup still fails. Backups still appear to be working normally.
I have pulled out the system drive and re-run the chkdsk in a PC. It still reports no issues.
I have ordered 2 WD red plus 2tb drives just in case. Not easy. The 2tb drives are getting harder to find.
Where do i check file duplication?


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2021 11:39 am 
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It is in the whs console in the shared folders tab.
You right click on each folder to get the option.
But bear in mind if duplication is off and you turn it on it will take away more storage space.
As for cleanup still failing remember it does write the file to a temp file before deleting. You need space for that also.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2021 7:42 pm 
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I went back and did another chkdsk and it was clean.
Just to see if anything had changed before replacing the system disk I did a disk self test on all the disks in Homeserver Smart Classic.
One of the storage disks is coming up as test failed: read element. Ran chkdsk on it again. Shows up as clean. Is this a coincidence or more likely to be the issue?
Its currently in the process of removing the disk. I will swap it out and try the cleanup again.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:11 am 
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Ok its been a few days. As far as I know its still removing the disk. If its not one thing its another.
Connector interface in RDP locked up after a few hours and I got a message saying C: was getting low on space. After a day or so I closed the RDP window and haven't been able to RDP, connect or ping the EX490 since. Health lights are all good and the network lights are blinking. I am assuming it is still working on it, just very slowly. It was working with a gb of usb disk which can be slow. It's not really worth the risk of re-booting halfway through a disk removal. Do I let it run (if thats what its doing) or forget it and reboot?


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:59 pm 
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That is going to be a coin toss on what to do.
I do know it takes forever to remove a full drive so as I said before it can take days.

If it were me I would have used one of the new 2tb drives instead of a gb usb drive, that is way to small.

Think about it you have 4 2tb drives and they are close to full and you remove a drive you need 2 tb to provide that space plus some space for a temp drive.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 15, 2021 4:37 am 
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Long time between posts.
Since the last post I let the process go for a couple of weeks ( I was away anyway). No luck.
So I purchased a 2 bay E-Sata dock and added a 2tb drive. First I removed the 1tb SSD from the pool then added the 2tb hardrive. Then attempted to remove the suspect drive again. After 3 hours or so it doesn't seem to be progressing any further than the last few attempts. I'll let it run overnight, but what other options do I have if the drive removal fails? Can I pull it out and clone it on to a new drive? Or will that potentially just copy errors?


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 15, 2021 10:35 am 
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Originally you stated you have
EX490 with 4 x 2Tb WD red drives. 8Tb total
Storage shows 40% shared folders, 40% backups, 20% free
Now you say you have a 1tb ssd in the mix.
Where did that come from?
And what is the suspect drive?( is it in a bay or external usb. if a bay what bay)

What are the current stats and config you have now for your drives.
Meaning system, data and free , number of drives ,size etc.

I really think you need to bite the bullet and run a recovery at this point.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:17 am 
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Ruben,

Wasn't there an issue related to filling up the server and if the OS drive became full the server went wonky? This may be one of those situations that drive balancer would help remedy.

If OP is still here:
1) When you started using the MSS did you have all the drives installed or did you add them one by one as needed?
2) Can you pull each dive & report back how much free space you have left on each?
3) Could you clarify what your drive setup is?

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:16 pm 
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You only get 20MB for the OS whatever is left over becomes part of the drive pool.

From my understanding older units only , had what was called a landing zone.
They had a behavior that when adding data to the drive pool it was sent to the landing zone which was the residual drive space of the OS drive.
Then DE would eventually move that data to the other drive pool drives.
The landing zone was not intended to be permanent storage space.
But sometimes the data never moved until the space was completely full.
Hence somebody created drive balancer.

But I have seen new units with the same symptom.
Usually because they had only one drive and when they finally add a second drive, still DE would not move the data evenly to the other pool drives until the drive was full.
So Drive Balancer would help spread the data evenly among the drive pool drives.
Not sure if you can find it anymore.
But what it does is write 0 data files to the drive till it is full and then DE starts moving data to other drives so there is a tremendous amount of thrashing going on in the drive head.

So if it is a old drive it may cause the situation to be worse by making the drive fail completely and loosing all data on the drive.

I have used it twice many years ago on my ex490

As we all know a full drive can cause havoc on file integrity.
And since it is the os drive it could corrupt the OS or the data.

Since this person says they have 20% storage left it means nothing as to where the spare 20% is.
Split evenly among all 4 drives or just in one drive that may or may not be the OS drive.
I believe as I recall Drive Balancer will provide that info.

Drive Balancer may help but my opinion is run recovery and it should clean it all up.

The hardest part of recovery is to get the server into recovery mode.

Easy peasy, I have run recovery several times over the years.
Yes you need to re-install the connector to the clients
Yes you need to edit folder permissions for clients.
Yes you need to start from scratch on backups.

But in the long run you have less errors to run down due to a corrupted OS.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:39 pm 
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Ruben Rocha wrote:
You only get 20MB for the OS whatever is left over becomes part of the drive pool.

From my understanding older units only , had what was called a landing zone.
They had a behavior that when adding data to the drive pool it was sent to the landing zone which was the residual drive space of the OS drive.
Then DE would eventually move that data to the other drive pool drives.
The landing zone was not intended to be permanent storage space.
But sometimes the data never moved until the space was completely full.
Hence somebody created drive balancer.
It's coming back to me now.... Landing zone was a v1 software design that was replaced with either pp1 or pp2.

Ruben Rocha wrote:
But I have seen new units with the same symptom.
Usually because they had only one drive and when they finally add a second drive, still DE would not move the data evenly to the other pool drives until the drive was full.
So Drive Balancer would help spread the data evenly among the drive pool drives.
Not sure if you can find it anymore.
But what it does is write 0 data files to the drive till it is full and then DE starts moving data to other drives so there is a tremendous amount of thrashing going on in the drive head.
I was lucky to find a copy of the most recent version (v1.06) of it back in '18. Surprisingly the link is still live. It can be found with a pretty good usage thread with it's author Beefcake as OP here:
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/whs-users-drive-balancing-tool-now-available.1120520/

Ruben Rocha wrote:
So if it is a old drive it may cause the situation to be worse by making the drive fail completely and loosing all data on the drive. I have used it twice many years ago on my ex490

As we all know a full drive can cause havoc on file integrity.
And since it is the os drive it could corrupt the OS or the data.

Since this person says they have 20% storage left it means nothing as to where the spare 20% is.
Split evenly among all 4 drives or just in one drive that may or may not be the OS drive.
I believe as I recall Drive Balancer will provide that info.

Drive Balancer may help but my opinion is run recovery and it should clean it all up. The hardest part of recovery is to get the server into recovery mode.

Easy peasy, I have run recovery several times over the years.
Yes you need to re-install the connector to the clients, Yes you need to edit folder permissions for clients, Yes you need to start from scratch on backups.

But in the long run you have less errors to run down due to a corrupted OS.
Good point about drive balancer working older drives making failure a potential risk. If its an old drive that has the issue, it would be better to move the primary drive data to a new drive before running. Probably a good idea at replace all drives at 30 - 35k hours anyhow. But the all the data it's moving around is on a different partition than the OS is on.

Since doing a recovery only rebuilds data on the C: drive without touching any data, do you think a recovery would help rebalance the D: partition?

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:04 pm 
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It has been at least 10 years since I used Drive Balancer.
So I can't say for sure.
But if the os is corrupted or the 20 MB partition is full then the DE function could be at risk.

So possibly yes if it was stalled maybe it would start migrating off of the primary drive.
But as I said we have no idea of how much space is left on each drive.
So possibly the only space left is on the primary drive.

Also the point of this topic is that:
The backup cleanup does not work.

At least with a clean os from a recovery would rule some items out.
As well as erase all the backups.

Everyone says it is a PITA to recover .
But I find it is the process of getting the server into recover mode that is the hard part.
The rest is nothing just a few settings and connector installs after the updates complete.

But then you know you have a clean OS and can look on to other items of concern.
If it were me I would replace the OS drive before recovery if the drive had any age to it.

Some people look at attempting to clone the os drive.
My 2 cents , it is more work than just doing the recover process and you don't have to worry about garbage in garbage out.

Today at amazon you can get a wd red plus 2TB for $79.99
And are in stock, In fact I can get one in two days.
I remember when they were closer to $200.00 for a wd red.

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