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welding11

welding11

welding11

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After trying to get my 3TB HDD to play nicely with RDM on ESXI and with whs 2011, with some help from here, I gave up and decided to just add my HDD into ESXi and just split them as ESXi only allows 2TB limits.

It worked but now I get the problem where every now and again ESXi reports my hard drives as offline so nothing can access them. I reboot the machine and everything is fine again for a day or so.

I am no expert but I learn and things eventually work but this is just not happening for me. Am I even going about what I want to do the right way.

My aim is to have whs 2011 to backup a few pcs, stream media and access files etc etc. The reason I am using ESXi is I am setting up a CentOS system aswell as I want to have a VoIP system at home. Also it will give me chance to mess around with other systems and learn more.

Could it be my HDD are bad?? Or is it my system I am using as my server as it is just my old comp which consists off:

q6600
asus p5q-e motherboard
4gb ram(I will be getting more)

Any help, even alternate routes I can go down would be greatly appreciated.
 
What drive is it?
If it's a WD Green they have very aggressive powersaving settings that I guess could cause an issue.

When the issue happens, go to 'Storage Adapters' under the 'configuration' tab, and choose 'rescan all'.
Also check the logs and see if there is any relevant entries that might help diagnose further.
 
It is a 3TB Seagate drive.

I did try the rescan all option but to no joy.

I will look when I get home. Its making me wish I just stuck with the smaller hard drives. I had no problems. I suppose that is what you get for being greedy ;)
 
Thanks for the help so far. I checked the logs and all I could find was that it was losing heartbeat to the HDD. However I decided to try something as I don't have anything important on my server as of yet.

I installed WHS 2011 straight onto my server instead of using ESXi, to test the hard drives that way. They show up but only for so long still, as soon as I do any copying to them after a few minutes copying they just disappear from my computer. They are not in computer management or device manager.

So I decided to go a little further and take out my HDD from my server and put it in my pc which has windows 7 on. So far everything is fine and I have copied 200gb over as a test and it is going fine.

I have a feeling it may be more off a hardware or WHS2011 issue than my HDD but I am unsure where to go from here.
 
It won't be WHS2011 because it was happening under ESXi also.

It is either a faulty disk or a faulty controller/motherboard.

- Test with a different disk in the server. If it works, then it could be the 3TB disk, or it could be that your server doesn't like 3 TB disks.

- You've already tested the 3 TB disk in your PC, so that rules out anything being wrong with the disk. See point above about server not liking 3TB disks.
 
Thanks rotor.

I have had other disks in my server and they work fine.

I am in agreement about my board not playing nicely with the 3tb.

A friend is going to lend me a PCI controller card to try the HDD on. It's worth a go I will report back whichever way.

2 other questions when I have been researching are:

1 - what version of Intel rst works with WHS 2011 as that fixed someone's issue.
2 - ever heard of NCQ and if so how do you disable it as I saw that recomended to try
 
WHS 2011 is based on Windows 2008 R2, so the latest RST should be fine. As long as it says Windows 2008 R2 you should be good to go.

NCQ is very desirable, and has absolutely nothing to do with your predicament.

Bottom line, if every other drive works in the server except for this 3 TB one, either it's the drive (and you've proven it isn't by running it successfully in your PC), or it's the server's support for large drives (it supports smaller drives without problem).

If your fundamentals aren't right, faffing around with tweaks is unlikely to solve your problem.
 
Thanks rotor. I totally understand and appreciate but there is nothing wrong with adding to my knowledge.

An update on my situation, I got hold of a SATA PCI card and my hard drives are now performing as I would have hoped. I am not even going to bother to find out why or what caused them to stop all the time. I just know it is something to do with my hardware and using the card has now fixed it :D.

Appreciate all your input. Finally get on with my server again.
 
@Semple - Yes that is correct I believe. However it is definitely a board issue so if I want to go back to ESXi I can.

@rotor - Sorry probably didn't expand on that enough and it sounded a bit sharp. I meant the fact that I asked the questions even though the answers would not have solved my problem. At least if I come across anything to do with either question I have an answer and clarification on what I thought. Hope that is clearer :)

Thanks again
 
welding11 said:
@rotor - Sorry probably didn't expand on that enough and it sounded a bit sharp. I meant the fact that I asked the questions even though the answers would not have solved my problem. At least if I come across anything to do with either question I have an answer and clarification on what I thought. Hope that is clearer :)
Click to expand...
Thanks for clarifying, that makes more sense! =)

My comment about NCQ was that it wasn't related to your problem. By all means google it as it is nifty technology that can improve random disk access significantly.
 
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