I am having the same issues. With the original drive, no problems. Adding a 1TB drive, I get the perpetual balancing issue and one notice of a "failing" drive over a 3 month time period. I added another 1TB drive-- same manufacturer, and the frackin unit is CONSTANTLY telling me any of the 3 drives has failed or is in danger of failing. I've pulled both the 1TB drives out and checked all sectors and reformatted them... thinking this would solve the problem, but to no avail. I see that HP has the home server line of products categorized as "discontinued"... I wonder why????? It's clearly up to Microsoft to FIX this monster. What good is this thing if it is riddled with problems? How hard can it be, it's not like it is a PC or something... it's just a server!

Hello,
I too continue to received failed drive messages. The first time I replace the drive(note: I have three drives). But now about every week one of my three drives shows failing. A re-boot makes the error message go away. Is this a known issue and I should not worry? Also one of my slots will not acknowledge a new drive. Could this be a simple connector issue with my server?
Thanks,

Scott

Scott

HP MSS 2 TB Hard Drives, 2 GB RAM
HP x280n Media Connect Receivers (4)
HP PC Vista Home Premium

Hi John,

Thanks for such a strong reply, and I apologize for not getting back to you until now. I fixed the problem-- sort of I think since it hasn't happened now for a while.

A little background on me... I'm a professional programmer of 15 years so I have a very technical bend to me. I've been playing with computers since I took apart my first commodore64, and at present probably have more electronics interconnected in my house than a typical Best-Buy store...

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "enterprise" drives (!), but right now I have the original plus 2 of these: Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB 5400 to 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM -- currently around $179 on newegg. Note that these are "green drives" and are variable-spinners (I almost said "sinners" lol)

And like Scott, it was ALWAYS the topmost drive which was constantly "failing" though after taking it out and verifying it, the drive is perfectly fine.

I got "failing" drive messages just about anytime I did any moving of files. Swapping the drives around, it was always the top one. Extremely annoying. I pretty much just stopped using the thing and left it off... that is until...

I don't get that anymore, BUT there are several reasons as to why and I don't know which one or what combination did it... but I am also no longer doing POINTLESS DAILY BACKUPS.

On a sidenote, that HP/MS would have this thing do daily backups is just plain STUPID!!!! In a home environment, even mine with every file saved from the last 20 years (22,000 docs/spreadsheets), every pic (16,000 at present), all my MP3 files (18,000 at present) and video (5.8 TB of video)... there is absolutely, positively, indisputably NO REASON to do a daily backup. Unless there is a valid BUSINESS justification, there is no legitimate use for a daily backup of any home PC.

I wish I could automate to just a weekly or monthly... but alas I cannot drop the "1" down to a "0" for the daily backup like I can for weekly or monthly... so I just back up when I feel like it.

OK, that said... what did I do to make the "failing" drive problem go away? After reading a couple of well-written blogs and instructional webpages, I...

1) got sick and tired of rebooting it and ignoring the health messages, so I opened it up and upgraded with the following:

2) finally switched my entire network over to gigabit using all D-Link Green products (PCI cards and switches) from newegg. (network terminal ends detailed below)

3) removed the paltry (and overpriced as it was) RAM and replaced with Patriot 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory Model PSD22G6672 - Retail, including aluminum heat spreader. (again, newegg rocked)

4) removed the also paltry processor and replaced it with AMD Athlon 64 LE-1620 2.4GHz Socket AM2 45W Single-Core Processor Model ADH1620DHBOX - Retail (will someone at newegg throw me a bone here?)

5) updated the virtual memory page file

6) updated to the BETA release/update and then had a nice long-island iced tea on the front porch :)

7) removed most of the addins (not that I had many)-- though they may work, few are designed by seasoned professional programmers so there can be much in the way of poor coding to bog down your WHS... you get what you pay for!

8) Once all backups were shut off, I purged and cleaned and deleted anything, including old backups, until things were like they were on day 1.

9) Filled it up right as rain again-- WOW DOES THIS THING SCREAM NOW!!!!!! It was like going from a moped to a corvette... I understand that HP would try to make a hefty profit selling these things as they SHOULD be shipped (i.e. with the right RAM and processors) so they'd be way too expensive (figure they'd try to make $100 on the RAM upgrade, and $200 on the processor alone)... which is why they ship with such crappy processors and poor memory. Just because an engineer gives a minimum recommendation, doesn't mean the brass utilizes it... unless they are trying to squeek out as much profit as possible while keeping sales turned up.

I can't believe they EVER let these things out of the company with such UNDER-PERFORMING CRITICAL COMPONENTS!!!! It's like buying a new car but the dealer giving you old, bald tires and then letting out some of their air too!!! Sure the car still drives and it is new... but c'mon HP!!!! At least offer the option to get the correct components!

Anywho, now I have to figure out how to get some of these other components to actually use the files on the WHS.... most notably the AppleTV and Neuros products... to date I haven't been able to get them to access the WHS and I'm a programmer!!!

PC's:_________________________________
1 Compaq 10-yr old PC (wireless) with XP SP2 in the basement, 22" CRT
1 Panasonic battered laptop for the kids to destroy
1 Gateway core-2-duo XP SP2 with 3TB storage, maxed-out RAM, dual 26" HDTVs
1 Gateway more except has Media Center and is newer, with 2TB USB portables, 32" HDTV
1 Acer laptop 120GB/maxed, maxed RAM
1 WHS 3.5TB
1 eSata port-multiplied 5TB drivepool/storage
1 Square-One Media/Print/FTP/Backup server 500GB ($300 seemed like alot at the time...)

Media devices______________________________
2 160GB Apple TV's, 1 connected to the 32" monitor and the other to my non-component-video 52" projection television from 1993 :)
1 40GB Apple TV in guest room with 26" HDTV
1 Neuros video recorder liked ad-hoc and to 3 160GB portable drives
2 networked DVD recorders
2 DVR cable units

At some point I'll figure out how to get the ATV's to actually "mount" or whatever the stupid Apple term is, to the WHS so I can actually watch all that video I have. I've already "patched" them so they can read any file and not just apple files.

My advice to anyone having these issues is to stop using daily backups, first and foremost. If you don't put MP3's or do anything like that on your server, turn off firefly using the remote access connection. Lastly, if you can afford to, even if its just one upgrade... GIVE IT MORE RAM AND A BETTER PROCESSOR!!

I will have to make room for storage lol and maybe only backup the main drives, but I can try turning backups on again.

Another thing I'm going to do is stop Firefly and install iTunes directly on the the WHS as my main library (it'll be a pain but worth it I think). I will use it to scan my local pc's, pulling up everything and auto-organizing into the WHS music folder. I think it will give me much more flexibility. I will have to work out how to sync things down to individual pc's or not...

I'll also enable duplication for the music folder and see what happens once there are about 20k files in it.

At this point I have data redundancy everywhere and I'm willing to experiment and try to get the disk failure error again. If it proves stable, I'll be able to remove files from my pc's and truly centralize them...all of them :)

I was thinking about the backup process and cluster changes. That might be causing some of the problems as it is writing only certain ones while, say, disk management or whatever that utility is happens to run.

Storage can be an issue... why would you want to take a nightly backup unless you kept 2 or 3 days of dailies? Prudence suggests keeping 3 weeks worth of weekly backups, and at least 2 monthlies. So it goes to figure to keep at least 2 or 3 daily backups... I just don't get the point of a daily backup if you are just going to back it up again that night (even if it is just for cluster changes).

I'm old school I guess and can't tell you how many times I've had to rebuild vast libraries of files, only to fill them with duplicates or triplicates... so losing a week's worth of history won't phase me.

If it's that valuable of data, it should be stored offsite :)

Hey, do you have any good ideas on where to find info on getting AppleTV's and the WHS to actually connect to one another? I think my xbox was also having difficulty if I remember correctly (it's in the shop).