We have this NAS server setup at our church and I’ve been working on this issue for many days now with no progress…
It started when the 4th drive failed on the 4 3TB RAID5 volume which hung things up until it got restarted and then became accessible again in degraded mode as I had taken the failed drive out. I purchased a 3TB WD Red NAS drive as replacement but it didn’t recognize it and said “invalid drive”. I’ve also since contacted WD on this for support but no progress yet. I need help finding the exact replacement drive and where to get it from as that compatibility drive list on the website isn’t helping me to find exactly what drive to get and from where.
The other issue we have in addition is lack of space on C:. Who designed only a 60GB C: partition and 8TB for D:. I cannot expand our C: partition to use the many free TB on D:. I’ve been doing lots of searching regarding clearing up the WinSXS folder but no luck there either, I’ve tried the disk cleanup and other methods but cannot seem to delete the 20GB of WinSXS, very frustrating. All is so very slow since I have 10MB free space left on C: and have been working for days trying to find something to delete so at least it becomes somewhat usable again.
We’ve been having many OS issues (probably because of lack of C: space?) like not being able to login with RDP (since its headless design that’s the only way to connect), Explorer.exe crashing when right-clicking or going to System properties and the Server service keeps stopping which then prevents users from access the server share).
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated at this point!.
You cant purchase replacement drives anymore so WD released a drive enabler patch. I honestly have no clue what it does. As in if it will just show your red drive as a new letter or allow it to go in a raid 5. That said Red drives are not recommended for raid 5.
I like windirstat to find what is using the space. Since your c: is full you need to install it on D: I assume you have not installed any apps on c: ?
Thanks for your quick Gramps.
Ok I didn’t know that. I’ll download and install it. Does installing this drive enabler patch on the Windows Server 2008R2 OS affect how the RAID controller sees the drives? As it said on the LCD screen “invalid drive” when I tried initially.
We’ll give this a try.
Why are RED drives not recommended as they’re high-end NAS drives we use for our RAIDs usually.
Thanks again.
Well I can’t find any info one way or another now. I know when the red drives first came out the only compatible devices were raid 1. I have not found anything from WD that says what raid levels now. Perhaps it changed or perhaps I was always wrong
All I know about the “patch” is what that page says. I have never used it
Ok, interesting.
I am not onsite so haven’t put new drive in but it should still say “invalid drive” unless I am succesfully able to install this drive enabler patch on the OS. From the Dashboard and Compatible hard drives tasks it shows the WD3009FYPX-09AAMB0 drive which is the drive that failed and needs to replaced.
Just when I run the WDSentinelDriveEnabler.exe it says “config file not found!”,only option is to click OK.
Any thoughts on utilizing all these free TBs on the D: partition for the small 60GB C : partition? This is probably causing all kinds of these issues we’re having with the OS currently because it has no space?
Thanks
Thanks for your reply DTMtech.
I’ve seen your response post before (in other topics) several times in doing the research but no help there;
C:\Windows\temp has already been emptied
C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\cbs.log file has been moved to my D: partition already (it was originally around 800MB)
Every time I manage to free up a few 100MB to function something fills it up again seems like…
As mentioned as well I really want to clean up the 20GB of WinSXS data but haven’t been successful.
As mentioned I did run the WD Drive enabler but get the “config file not found” message.
I misunderstood and thought the error was on the lcd after you ran the enabler.
My box is not on now but perhaps @DTMtech can look at his. There should be a whitelist.xml file somewhere. Perhaps in the c:\wd folder I suppose if it is missing you might get that error. Or it may just be a by product of your low free space
If you can copy everything off of D: and delete the partition you may can expand c: There are 3rd party programs to do that but I think you need a monitor
If you disable windows updates does that help with winsx?
That’s strange, the above ticks worked almost for everybody having similar problems. Then I think the best way would be to make a full O/S recovery with the last version 1.7.21.6 which among other things is compatible with some extra disks which might be still available (probably not the red one though). You will loose all W2008 configurations like users etc. but at least you will have clean system to start with. I would of course advise to make a data backup first even if the process, if done properly, shall not affect data on D:
Thanks for the input.
I’ve read somewhere about this whitelist.xml file but will have to do more searching how/if this is related or missing for this drive enabler to work properly. Am overall really disappointed in how complex and confusing the support is for this compared to our “normal” physical & VM servers we manage but that doesn’t help me much in this case.
I might have to copy all data (about 1TB) off D: but this includes also the several workstations backups. Should I worry about these or just have it create/continue these backups again once D: is back online?
Is it possible to connect a keyboard/mouse/monitor to this DX4000?
Not sure if disabling the updates would clear WinSXS? I doubt it but is worth to try as I currently am not able to run any updates anyways.
Instead of windirstat I’ve used SpaceMonger & TreeSize to quickly and easily see what’s taking up most of the space, that’s easy and is this WinSXS folder! How to clean it up is the real problem.
Thanks
Thanks for the follow up.
A full OS recovery is the last thing I hope to have to do… and this still wouldn’t support a RED NAS drive? What’s the deal with these RED NAS drives?, that’s what they’re build for but they cannot be used in a WD NAS? We’ll loose a lot of config and user setup etc. if we were to do a full OS recovery.
If required how would I go about doing this full OS reinstall?
Thank you.
your choice on the client backups. I think I would copy them off just in case, but not actually put them back.
You can hook a mouse and keyboard but no monitor. A USB video will work, but you have to load windows, so that is really is no help
This box is old (2008R2) oldie but a goodie HP had made a headless Home Server box that was very popular though it did have pins where you could take it apart and connect a monitor. WD jumped on the wagon, but then never made another headless Windows box.
Best to contact WD for the ISO to do a full reinstall. Though it will be a more complex procedure with a failed drive. My vote would be to replace it with a Thecus W4000 from Newegg for $400 and you can use your 3 good drives and the red drive no problem.
In general I agree with Gramps. If you would like to stick with the DX4000 with a full recover I think you will have chances to successfully install the utiliy which removes the limitation on the drive type and furthermore you will get rid of the issue on C: (full). With regard to the install process there are several threads in this forum which discuss the procedure.
for your information with the very latest firmware 1.7.6.21 the following drives are also compatible:
Western Digital WD Se 4TB Datacenter Capacity HDD, WD4000F9YZ (also 2 or 3Tb version) - This I can confirm by personal experience
In principle you can upgrade to 1.7.6.21 without a full re-install (tried this myself) as you can choose between the full re-install (several Gb to be downloaded) or a much smaller package which can be used for the upgrade via the upgrade tab of the dashboard. With the smaller package you do not loose any configuration.
This way you will have compatibility with these drives which can still be found and bought on Amazon or other online shops. However if you do not manage to get rid of the files which are filling your C: drive I am not sure whether you will succeed with the upgrade, but you can try at least. Needless to say you need to spend extra money for this drive.
Thank you DTMtech for the follow up, appreciate the effort.
The current software version is 1.2.19.381, a bit outdated I know.
We’re currently leaning towards replacing the unit altogether we we’re just having too many issues (software & hardware) and too much at risk and difficult to support.This unit was also used for remote access occasionally but isn’t really designed for it looks like.
We’re looking for something like a NAS again and Windows server OS that supports Remote Desktop (light use).
Thank you and I’ll keep you posted.
Seagate and Thecus are the only vendors today with a Windows OS that supports remote desktop to the client PC’s. The Seagate is a headless unit and I would steer clear of that.
Gramps,
Ok, do you mean Remote desktop from the NAS to client PC’s? Or simply having (a few) users Remote Desktop in to the NAS to run some basic applications as how we’ve used our DX4000 before and worked ok.
I agree, we don’t want a headless unit anymore like the DX4000, to many issues and limitations that way.
Thanks
Actually any kind of remote desktop. The Linux NAS do not have anything.
With a server Essentials product you get the remote website. So from afar (outside the LAN) You point IE to the domain name or public IP and log into the remote web site. From there you can click connect to computers and get to the desktops (Pro and above, home version do not apply)
If you mean remote to the server desktop from within the LAN you can also do that up to two connections at a time for maintenance Well that is the licensing intent.
