WHS and Western Digital Advanced Formatting
#1
Angry

Anyway, after an entire weekend of "remove drive" taking out the drive, installing jumper on pins 7/8, putting the drive back in, and adding it to the pool, I think I finally got to the bottom of my transfer speed issues I had been having when moving files to/from my WHS on a GigE network.

I am currently running the drive balancer utility to redistribute all the data so that an equal % of all hard drives are filled up. After that I'm going to run the defrag utility; and then I'm going to go to town with some testing.

Anyway, this issue w/ the network transfer speeds has been plaguing me for ...well for quite some times (4-5 months?). I was first introduced to the possibility that it could be due to the western digital drives I have in there on this forum, so I wanted to say a big thank you to the knowledgeable users of this forum that got me pointed in the right direction...

Seriously though, do you know how long it takes to prepare a 2 TB drive for removal, that has advanced formatting set, and there are another 2 TB drives w/ the advanced formatting also installed in the system to slow things down? It takes a long frickin' time. I started this project Saturday morning ... and as I said, drive balancer is running right now, Monday morning...

If this fixes my transfer speed issues, I would say that WHS is the PERFECT file server storage solution for XBMC users. I suppose I should consider doing a writeup and configuring a WHS to be used with XBMC.

Ogi
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#2
I'm also a WHS user... it is as you say absolutely great... but sorry to be the bearer of bad news.. Advanced Format Drives with or without the jumpers are a no no!

Microsoft say this and countless people on the WHS forum say the same. slow transfer speeds and data loss are problems...

Who said to use them? every post for WHS in here I've always said avoid them... Huh

Seagate make 2TB drives that dont use AF - the editor of "We Got Served" WHS forum recommends only these...
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#3
I wrote exactly that here:-

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...hlight=WHS

Then loads of people that as far as I know dont use WHS recommend drives that I know will cause problems.....

Huh

We Got Served wrote:-

"WGS readers were finding caused performance and incompatibility issues on Windows Home Server v1. At the time we advised against using these drives and selecting a standard drive instead"


Microsoft advise:-

it is critical that you make sure that the drive you are purchasing is not an Advanced Format drive if you are running Windows Home Server v1. Before you purchase a disk drive, review the product specifications or visit the manufacturers Web site to ensure that the drive is compatible with Windows Home Server. Be aware that Advanced Format drives are not always clearly identified on the retail packaging.


Personally my WHS holds backups, photos, documents as well as Movies and Music all of which I would be devastated if I lost and I wouldnt risk it on someone who hasn't used WHS saying "this is my favorite drive - use that one, just wack on a jumper!"
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#4
I had those drives long before I came here to these forums, I have had slow transfer speeds but haven't had any kind of data loss problems...

Given that I have 3x 2TB drives in the WHS and the only issue to date has been slow transfer speeds (and frankly, that might go away w/ the advanced formatting disabled), I'm not going to be so quick to toss them out. I have data duplication on everything except the videos (I have about 5TB of videos, loads of bluray rips which I have the disks for so should I lose some, I'll recover).

That said, it seems as if installing that pin 7/8 jumper seems to do the trick:
http://homeservershow.com/wd-ears-drives.html
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