One little nuggest of information came out of our monthly MVP call with the WHS Product Team tonight.
The data corruption bug you’ve been hearing about will not occur on home servers running with just a single drive. Home Servers with multiple hard drives are at risk of the bug occurring (once again, check the KB article to understand the exact circumstances of the bug occurring), but home servers with a single drive appear to be safe.
The team is continuing to work on a fix for the bug.
More as we get it….
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:46 am
The trouble is that WHS is really only any use WITH multiple drives and therefore allowing data duplication!
So the “you’re ok if not really using WHS properly” message is not much comfort to someone who has just put a huge amount of family stuff on to a two drive system bought just before Christmas
(Haven’t actually seen any files corrupted yet, but this issue is not a confidence booster).
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:19 am
Hi Ian,
I have a two drive system too - here’s my advice.
1. Read the KB article if you haven’t already
2. Back up those family files to an external hard disk (I’d give you that advice bug or no bug)
3. Don’t edit those files directy on the server. If you need to edit them, copy them to a hope computer, edit them, and copy them back
And please bear in mind that I’m just the messenger, here. Thanks.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:51 am
Different Ian here but I have to agree the primary reason in my mind for WHS is to have multiple drives and if one fails then you get a safety line with folder duplication. Without folder duplication on multiple drives why not just run file server Linux or XP this is NOT a beta version now and the only people wanting WHS would be people who understand and value their data.
Having said that it makes a good print server and backup device until the primary function of duplication actually works. I am still concerned that even when Microsoft Products are working with WHS will other software like Quicken and many other applications you would want duplicate data? This corrupt data thing is not new and if you look in the Beta forums people have brought it up quite a few times with little interest from Microsoft.
Anyone want a 4 door car that is missing the driver’s seat, it’s comfortable to sit in
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Ian: I don’t think you understand the problem here. It’s not that duplication doen’t work. That part of WHS works perfectly. It’s when editing files directly on the server that causes this problem.
Having said that, I do agree with Terry here to make offsite backups also, be it on another computer, or on a seperate USB or NAS drive, or even burn them om cd/dvd.
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
It may sound harsh but I find this totally unacceptable. I have the trial version running and have been pretty happy with it but this has just completely halted my purchase and made me seriously re-consider this product. This is a major black mark on the product and I now question what other problems were overlooked, missed and not fixed. .
I thought MS really nailed this one and was very excited….
-B
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 pm
If the advice is to edit files only when they are residing on a separate PC, Windows Offline Folders (Synchronisation) comes into its own. You’d just have to remember to go offline from the shares first. As far as I can tell this facility works perfectly well.
What backup application is recommended to back up WHS shares? Can that application be installed on and run from the WHS device itself or does it have to be another computer on the network? The former is preferable. Has anyone used the native Windows Backup that comes with WHS for this purpose and with what results?
Thanks.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:04 am
GaMeR I am talking about storing all my documents and data on the server in folder duplication and editing them while they are in those shares. I am not sure why that would not be considered intuitive and logical, this is what you do with a raid drive array and much has been promoted about the reasons WHS shared duplicated folders are a better idea, well at least it seemed that way. Am I missing something?
January 4th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Does anyone know of any software you can run on WHS to backup to a USB drive on a daily basis. Jungle disk online backup and others are fine if you have pleanty of upload capacity but I and many do not have that capacity for uploading.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:16 am
So let me get this right, our friends at Microsoft designed an operating system (which is their core competency) for people that have little or no IT experience or understanding of computers (their words not mine) the unsuspecting individuals make sure that they have at least two Hard drives on their system to ensure data security in case the inevitable happens and they loose a HD ,these same individuals then store their precious files on the WHS, they then start editing these precious files with wait for it
Windows Vista Photo Gallery
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
Microsoft Office OneNote 2003
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
Microsoft Money 2007
SyncToy 2.0 Beta
Various Bittorrent applications
Intuit Quicken
QuickBooks
with any of the first seven applications in the list and promptly corrupt their precious data. Whats more Microsoft have known about it since Beta.
Well done Microsoft why change the habit of a lifetime I would expect nothing else from you
Regards
Home Server User
January 4th, 2008 at 9:19 am
And the original Ian again!
Sorry if it sounded that I was getting at you Terry - the message I paraphrased I thought came from Microsoft, and it was them I was getting at
Agree about backup (and I do it myself on a regular basis - Acronis is good), but try telling that to teenage (and even post-teenage) kids. So getting them to copy back, edit and return files stands little chance.
Maybe I need to return to enforcement - the original idea was to have all their stuff in a huge version control system and lock down the laptops - that rather makes the WHS purchase redundant, though.
Another option is to forget about server folders and just rely on the backup system.
And the last option, Microsoft just need to get their promises on folder duplication securely delivered!
January 4th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Hi Original Ian
No worries - feel free to rip into MS as much you like (they’re old enough and ugly enough to take it :)), but do know that they’re desperate to fix this issue as quickly as possible. From what I know, it took three people working solid right over the Xmas holidays *just to reproduce* the issue - whilst it’s had a lot of press over the last two weeks (Most of which was instigated by MS being up front and shouting about it to anyone who’d listen), apparently it’s relatively difficult to reproduce consistently.
Now they that understand the issue, a fix shouldn’t be too far away, although that will have to be tested internally to make sure a. it works and b. it doesn’t break anything else. There’s a lot of plumbing within Driver Extender and a pretty high risk of mashing the whole thing up, I’m sure.
Direct quote (no paraphrasing) from Todd Headrick at Tuesday’s MVP call, “If it affects one person, we have to take the bug seriously”.
I’m meeting up with sonme of the MS team next week at CES, so fingers crossed I can give you an update then.
Can’t imagine how tricky the teenager thing must be!
Many thanks for your comments,
Terry
January 4th, 2008 at 11:22 am
What a nightmare.
I have severe data corruption on my WHS.
There is no way back anymore.
My WHS keeps load balancing.
I have now turned of file duplication on all shares.
I have stoped avast antivirus to scan certain shares.
I have 4 hard drives 4 x 500 GB i only use 375 GB at this moment sindce i stopped coping files to my WHS.
Should i turn of 3 disks to avoid further data corruption?????
January 4th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
One thing I haven’t firgured out from all this, is the corruption bug only an issue when folder duplication is turned on?
I am running:
2×320GB raid1 for the OS, photos, and music
5×500GB raid5 (ICH9R) for video storage and folder duplication of photos and music..
I’m thinking it would be safer to use scheduled tasks to backup fodlers if the official folder duplication app is buggy…
January 4th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Hi Ryan
No, it can occur if folder duplication is switched on or off, unfortunately.
Terry
January 4th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Terry can you answer my question, should i remove three of the four disks?
January 4th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Rob - you’ll be best trying the MS Forums with your question.
http://forums.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver/default.aspx?siteid=50
You’ll need to explain how you think data corruption has happened - it’s unclear from your post. I have not experienced any data corruption myself, so am not best placed to support you. Someone on the forums may have a similar experience to your own, so may be able to help.
Best of luck with it
Terry
January 5th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Terry,
Thanks for the follow-up - I will be watching for updates on the issue. Further migration on hold…
The Original Ian.
January 5th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Hi All
I have a HP MediaSmart 475 with 2 disks and have now had my second, data corruption incident! It shows as an CRITICAL NETWORK Error on the WHS console and recommends that you run the repair utility, which says that it runs ScanDisk (??) and then a rebuilt. Interestingly it is the secondary drive, not the system drive.
On the second occasion, I logged on to the server and had a look at the state of the “faulty” drive in the disk management tool and all looked OK, so I’m guessing that the issue is in the software duplication.
Or I have a drive failure in progress!!
I’ll keep you informed. Any comment or other info required, let me know.
Dave
January 7th, 2008 at 12:46 am
agent86oz
I use a programme called SecondCopy on my WHS box it is available from http://www.centered.com/. I have found it intuitive and simple to use, it is Server 2003 compatible and to date it has not caused me any problems, save my own stupidity when I tried to copy from the nethood folder instead of the shares folder.
If you decide to give it a try install it on the WHS then make a remote connection from the computer with the external drive.
Brian
January 7th, 2008 at 2:03 am
Keep in mind that you don’t notice a file is corrupt until you try to open it (for example an mp3 won’t play anymore).
So if a file has been corrupted 3 days ago, and you did your automatic share backup every night, then your “backup” holds the same corrupted file.
What I’m trying to say is that there’s no safe way to automatically backup your shares, so keep your original files on the place you had them before transferring them to your WHS till there’s a fix.
January 7th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I have severe data corruption on my home server with Visual dataflex.
I used to run this on a old win 2003 server which i replaced with a state of the art WHS.
This morning i went back to my old server and turned off my WHS, i virtually lost my complete database and days of work down the drain.
I think this also might be an issue for databases on WHS.
http://www.dataaccess.com/whitepapers/opportunlockingreadcaching.html#Disabling%20Read%20Caching%20on%20Windows%20Workstations
January 13th, 2008 at 7:11 am
So I just got the Eval of WHS. So far I get alot more preformance over my NAS drive so I’m happy. There. I have three drives installed and fouind this about multi drives and wondering if WHS does any sort of Raid option. Raid 5 would be what I’m looking for. I can already do that on my Dells with the Perc2 card but I read that WHS has better preformance if I don’t use Raid from the hardware.. Which.. doesn’t make alot of sense but whatever. My guess is that WHS has some sort of software raid that would work me also. But the OS should be able to know that you installed another drive would ask you what you want to do. Mirror.. or something. Maybe it does have it.. I havent been that far into it. Or lets just say.. You have two 73gig 15lk RPM drives running raid 1 for the OS and then 5 73gig 15k drives running the storage drive.. That would work much better.. Thats how I would typical setup a home network server. But WHS seems to want to take all the drives into account. Using Hardware raid the OS would think it’s one drive and you shouldn’t have any probs.. Well.. Thats my two cents..
January 13th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Daveolso,
WHS does not use RAID, but it’s own “special sauce” called Drive Extender, which allows for really efficient file mirroring when you use more than one drive. For more, check out: http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/C/2FC09C20-587F-4F16-AA33-C6C4C75FB3DD/Windows_Home_Server_Drive_Extender.pdf
Terry
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:47 am
Recently my system’s hard disk was crashed and i was very tensed how to recover my database .My business was also suffering due to data loss .
Petter Smith
http://www.hdrconline.com
March 11th, 2008 at 5:58 am
After reading today’s announcement and explanation, I finally built my first WHS box. I put in a single drive, the largest that I had laying around. As far as I can tell, a completely “safe” WHS can be built by using only a single drive. This gives me the client PC backups that I need (which, as an IT service provider, is the single most important feature of WHS, and still gives me space for file storage.
I’ll be using external USB drives for backups of the data files (not the backups). I’d be making external backups anyway, since I see FAR too much data lost on “safe” RAID arrays. Whether you use redundant RAID or Microsoft’s Drive Extender technology, you STILL need offline backups.
My advice to folks is to pick up a 500GB or 1TB drive ($100 to $240 USD) and use that for their new WHS. By June, MS will (hopefully) have the bug fixed and you can throw in all those other miscellaneous drives to add to the drive pool But you’ll still need to make those offline backups….