Win Server 2012 R2 drive spanning major malfunction

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Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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I've had this running as a media server for months without issues. It contains 4 5tb hard drives and uses Windows drive spanning. Today, during a copy operation, one of the drives vanished. gone completely. Not visible in either Windows or HD Sentinel. I removed the drive and put it in a usb drive bay connected to another computer and it showed as "invalid" in Disk Management. I deleted the partition then recreated it and after a long format the drive is healthy and HD Sentinel reports it as perfect with no errors.

At this point I'm sorry I trusted Windows drive spanning with my data. I didn't lose anything as it's all on another server also but still, it's a major inconvenience. If it was a legitimate problem with the HD, wouldn't something show in S.M.A.R.T. ? also HD sentinel in notorious for showing problems that other diag programs don't. This is why I think it's strictly a Windows brain fart. I'll do more testing tomorrow. I'll switch to Drivepool when I load the media back on it.
 

realtomatoes

Active Member
Oct 3, 2016
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i like running stablebit after hd sentinel. can't be too paranoid with data.

*edit the scanner i meant.
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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Well hell. Had another drive, a different one, drop out in the middle of a copy operation. I suspect a bad breakout cable and just replaced it and started all over again. This is a bit bizarre as I had another breakout cable in another box go bad a few days ago. Both cables were the Supermicro turquoise foil cables. I replaced both with flat breakout cables. I don't deserve this. :(
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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Yea, it's a SuperChassis 721TQ-250B which contains a 4 bay drive cage.
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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Yep. There's only one drive cage. I'm transferring a little over 14TB of data to the pool. So far so good.
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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drive spanning as in dynamic disks?

Chris
Yep. But now I'm using Drivepool. This happened suddenly after about a year of troublefree operation. So far I've copied about 3TB. Never got that far on the last 2 attempts. Still looks like the breakout cable to me but I have been known to be wrong.:confused:
 

i386

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Mar 18, 2016
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Yea, it's a SuperChassis 721TQ-250B which contains a 4 bay drive cage.
What you you have decribed so far sounds like a dying backplane to me (had this last year with a cheap chieftec backplane)
I would suggest to take a look at the backplane (front and back side) and check if you could see small burn marks.
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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It made it through the night and it's still going so it still looks like it was the breakout cable. The case is only about a year old so I doubt it's the backplane. I've never seen a bad Supermicro backplane.
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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The saga continues. During the night a HD dropped out again. This morning I replaced the HBA. If it does it again, all that's left is the backplane.
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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I believe I can finally put this issue to rest. At the end of the day it appears that the 250w PSU in the Supermicro CSE-721TQ-250B case just wasn't up to the task of powering 4 5TB HD's and a Dell H310 HBA. I ended up putting both HD's in question in another box and proceeded to fill them both twice without incident. Both drives that kept dropping out were Seagates, the other 2 were a Toshiba and a WD. I have no idea why only the Seagates were dropping out, maybe they're older and draw more power, who knows. Anyways, I'll look for a beefier PSU for this case.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Wow ! Did not expect that the 4 drives would be ~50 watts or less, maybe the psu is a bit flakey rather than the 250w model being the issue.
Either way it's satisfying to have found and answer I am sure even if it's not really the answer you wanted.
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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It very well could be that the PSU is flakey, It worked just fine for a little over a year and then this problem cropped up. I hate problems like this. I was able to copy several TB before a drive would drop out.