CHKDSK on Windows Home Server

[neonplanet40]

Hey guys my server spec is in my sig.

Lately I have been having a lot of trouble with it (it has always gave me trouble if im honest) where when im copying files from it to my computer the transfer would stop responding and the server would become unresponsive and I would have to give it a cold reboot. very annoying to say the least when all my music is on this server and I can't get any of it onto my new MP3 Player.

So I ran CHKDSK using this guide http://wiki.wegotserved.com/index.ph...ver_For_Errors

However CHKDSK has been running since 11 this morning and while I did see a drive finishing fine (I assume it opens a CMD window for each drive?) two drives are still on now one stuck at 18% and another stuck at 15%.



What do I do now? Do i keep waiting or what?

Kinda lost and really hate this server if im honest. Full of bugs.

Mark

[Splash]

You let it finish. Out of interest... what disks are you using, and what temperatures are you seeing in SMART properties for the disks?

[neonplanet40]

Hi Splash it just finished thankfully! It didnt tell me if there was any problems. BUT

I have just tried to copy 60GB of files from it to computer and its stopped again just like before. Useless seriously

Im not sure if you can install smart on windows home server?

All drives are saumsung bar 2 500GB western digital drives. I dont know why it keeps crashing in the middle of data transfers which can only be fixed by a cold reboot.

[Splash]

How are you copying the data? Copy and paste in Explorer, or command line? Perhaps worth trying something like Robocopy?

[neonplanet40]

Copy and paste in explorer mate. Its been working fine until now really. Theres times when it works perfectly but every now and then things like this happens. A bit annoying for noobs at servers like me.

[12GaugeShotty]

Are you running CHKDSK /F to fix any file system errors? Note that it only repairs file system errors and cannot repair actual physical hard drive problems.

[neonplanet40]

Yea i ran CHKDSK /F /R

[killie99]

I've been using WHS for about a week now and find it very unstable. Previously I've been backing up systems to a NAS with no issues at all and my music server has been running for months without problems (XP Pro). Put WHS on the music server and I'm lucky if the system stays stable for any more than 12 hours before it needs rebooted. I'm also experiencing numerous failed backups for all sorts of problems - system unavailable, corrupt files, network failure etc. It's the evaluation version of WHS I'm using, surely MS can't be so stupid to give out a bug ridden trial (build 3760 service pack2)? Like you, not impressed with the stability of WHS.

[neonplanet40]

Least you didnt pay £100 for it like I did a year and a half ago..... I wouldnt even know where to start with Limux thats why I got this.

[Splash]

On an entirely different note I found it pretty stable when I put it on a VM on my ESXi box on release, so I'm wondering if the instability is down to general poor hardware testing. The reason I was asking earlier about temperatures is that most WHS boxes I've seen are crammed pretty tight, and if your disks are getting extremely hot (as they might well do when copying large volumes of data) it could cause issues.

I don't have my WHS VM any more, so I couldn't test (and it'd be pointless for virtual disks anyways ) but would it be possible to install the WHS Disk Management addin from http://www.tentaclesoftware.com/whsdiskmanagement/ and see what kind of temps you're seeing while you copy?

[neonplanet40]

Yea i can add that mate. Although I built the server myself into a soolermaster stacker case. its well cooled with 3 120mm fans

[BluePhoton11]

Hi -

Was there ever a resolution of this problem?

I have about 18TB of storage attached to my WHS (an Acer H340). I am getting the exact symptoms described in the original post (copying files to the server causes it to disconnect and only a cold boot will bring back).

I am currently running the chkdsk process as described in the original post... it's very slow... The issue I have is that the first time I ran it, something caused me to disconnect from the server... which means I would have no way to monitor activity... so I tried again...

BTW: going through the error logs, I saw an error about x.224 protocol problem and the client was disconnnected. I wonder if that is a cause or an effect of the problem?

This is a two year old server - it had been rock solid up until now (I recently added lots of external hard drives to enable duplication of all of my files...)

I have spent the past 48 hours pretty intense on this - I need to resolve it!

Regards...

[watercooled]

Sounds similar to a problem I was having but for me just the network was locking up, solved by a reboot. Turned out to be bad Realtek drivers, Intel NIC solved it at the time but updated drivers for the onboard Realtek NIC seem to have solved it too.

[neonplanet40]

This was quite a while ago. I took all my files off the server by physically removing each hdd, putting it in my main computer and taking the files of the disks. I then changed the motherboard (Needed one with more sata slots), bought an intel NIC and reinstalled windows home server. Since then its been ok . . . .

[BluePhoton11]

In my case, the Acer H340 is a pre-built box, so there's not really a way to switch out components... I did look at the NIC adapter driver yesterday - it's a Marvell Yukon 88E8071 (I think that's right). The driver was not the most recent one... thought about changing that...

(BTW: It's a pain how the Microsoft Toolkit gives the fake error message about mismatched connector software... spent a bit trying to fix that before it was confirmed to be a bogus message).

Also tried switching ethernet cables, the physical port being used on the switch, moving USB hub away from the server box (interference??)... Nothing seemed to work...

I was up late trying to configure everything and was pleased that it was still visible this morning. I only isolated the problem to writing files when I tried to transfer some pictures to the shared directory and it disconnected...

I've invested a good amount of time in money making the WHS a central part of my home infrastructure - it's a pain when it's not working!