35 replies to this topic

[edamiga1]

I have been using 2TB drives for offsite backup of my data, but have begun to run out of space. I just upgraded to a 3TB drive and expected it to only format 2TB of it, but it went ahead and created the full 3TB of space. I set all my backups up and it has been running for almost 2 weeks without issue, so I just wanted to make sure that I will NOT run into any issues with this.

If I look at the drive I see basically on VHD file for each of my drive backups, so I think I will be fine as long as none of them grow beyond 2TB. Is this correct or is there something else that I will get hit with.

By the way I am running all of this on a Windows Server Core install along with 5 other virtual machines. I am passing in all of the hard drives as direct pass through and I have 2 sets of the drives configured and running in RAID. This has been working for over a year without issue, I used V1 for 3 years prior to this and Once I figured out how to work around the limitations for 2011, I love it. I

Virtual Home Server:
i5 processor 4 cores
3 Nics
7 hard drives + 1 Backup that I switch out every few weeks.
2 1.0TB drives in Mirror - Documents
2 1.5TB drives in Mirror - Photos and Video
3 2.0TB drives for movies. -
I have another set of 3 2.0TB drives that I periodically bring home and sync with these. I use SyncToy.
1 3.0TB drive for Backup that I take offsite and swap with another 3TB drive. I always have my data offsite.

[jmwills]

So WHS see the entire 3TB as one single volume? You could make several VHD's on the drive and work like that but if you can see a single 3TB volume from WHS, that's news to me. I thought 2TB was it.

[edamiga1]

It sees it as 3TB. This also suprised me, which is why I want to make sure that nothing bad will happen.

Capacity 2794.4 GB
Used Space 1886.8 GB
Free Space 907.6 GB

[jmwills]

Nope, it only sees a 2TB volume to use for backups. The other 907.6 gigs is free.

Are using WHS in a Hyper-V setup?

[edamiga1]

The numbers I showed are from the HWS Dashboard, I couldn't find a way to post a picture in the forum. It sees the full 2794.4 GB as part of the backup drive. The free space is just what I have not filled up yet, but is showing as available as space I can use for backup.

I am using WHS as a Hyper-V client, but am passing the HD directly through, not as a vhd. All my drives are passed directly through.

[jmwills]

I will stand corrected but I think you will only be able to use 2TB for backups, could be wrong, but you will be one of the few ( the proud, The Marines...sorry old habit) that I have heard of who can present a 3 TB for full use, albeit in 2 volumes. However, I still think it will only use the 2TB volume and ignore the other, even though it recognizes the 3TB drive.

This was one of the little things that frustrates people with the Server 2008 backup mechansim. VHD's have a 2TB limit.

[edamiga1]

I undestand the 2TB VHD limitation. What gives me hope is that if I look at the contents of the drive I see 5 vhd files, one for each of the drives that I am backing up; System Reserved, Operating System, D, H, and J. I think that as long as these stay under the 2TB limit, I should be fine and none of them are even at the 1TB size yet.

This is the basic question that I am asking and where I think the backup drive can be larger than 2TB, but wanting to verify.

[jmwills]

AFAIK, 2TB is the limit for a backup drive volume,

[pcdoc]

I have been using 2TB drives for offsite backup of my data, but have begun to run out of space. I just upgraded to a 3TB drive and expected it to only format 2TB of it, but it went ahead and created the full 3TB of space. I set all my backups up and it has been running for almost 2 weeks without issue, so I just wanted to make sure that I will NOT run into any issues with this.

If I look at the drive I see basically on VHD file for each of my drive backups, so I think I will be fine as long as none of them grow beyond 2TB. Is this correct or is there something else that I will get hit with.

By the way I am running all of this on a Windows Server Core install along with 5 other virtual machines. I am passing in all of the hard drives as direct pass through and I have 2 sets of the drives configured and running in RAID. This has been working for over a year without issue, I used V1 for 3 years prior to this and Once I figured out how to work around the limitations for 2011, I love it. I

Virtual Home Server:
i5 processor 4 cores
3 Nics
7 hard drives + 1 Backup that I switch out every few weeks.
2 1.0TB drives in Mirror - Documents
2 1.5TB drives in Mirror - Photos and Video
3 2.0TB drives for movies. -
I have another set of 3 2.0TB drives that I periodically bring home and sync with these. I use SyncToy.
1 3.0TB drive for Backup that I take offsite and swap with another 3TB drive. I always have my data offsite.

No problem with the client backup but you cannot recover the server on a 3T as it is formatted as a GPT. Windows backup cannot restore from GPT. If you remap you clients to a 3T no issues, I even did mine to a RAID. The server needs to stay on MBR partition in order to be able to restore. I would recommend that you move you clients to the 3T and put in a separate drive for the server backup.

[edamiga1]

Confused.

I only have the 3TB drive for my backup drive, and do not use it for anything else. I am not clear on what you are saying with the recovery option. Basically I would never expect to recover the HS if it failed. It is running as a VM and I keep that file backed up seperately. If my WHS fails I would simply build a new machine and then copy the image for my virtual machine over and restart. all of my data is on seperate drives. I know that I can basically open the files that I have backed up and restore them to a machine if I need to.

I am basically asking if I can use a 3TB or larger harddrive as the backup drive and then backup to it without any adverse affects. It has allowed me to assign the entire 3TB drive as a single volume in my backup and has been backing up to it without any issue. I have less than 2TB of backups currently, so I just want to confirm that nothing bad will happen when it goes beyond 2TB.

[ikon]

Confused.

I only have the 3TB drive for my backup drive, and do not use it for anything else. I am not clear on what you are saying with the recovery option. Basically I would never expect to recover the HS if it failed. It is running as a VM and I keep that file backed up seperately. If my WHS fails I would simply build a new machine and then copy the image for my virtual machine over and restart. all of my data is on seperate drives. I know that I can basically open the files that I have backed up and restore them to a machine if I need to.

I am basically asking if I can use a 3TB or larger harddrive as the backup drive and then backup to it without any adverse affects. It has allowed me to assign the entire 3TB drive as a single volume in my backup and has been backing up to it without any issue. I have less than 2TB of backups currently, so I just want to confirm that nothing bad will happen when it goes beyond 2TB.

As long as you're not planning to recover the server from a Windows backup, it sounds like you're good to go.

[pcdoc]

Confused.

I only have the 3TB drive for my backup drive, and do not use it for anything else. I am not clear on what you are saying with the recovery option. Basically I would never expect to recover the HS if it failed. It is running as a VM and I keep that file backed up seperately. If my WHS fails I would simply build a new machine and then copy the image for my virtual machine over and restart. all of my data is on seperate drives. I know that I can basically open the files that I have backed up and restore them to a machine if I need to.

I am basically asking if I can use a 3TB or larger harddrive as the backup drive and then backup to it without any adverse affects. It has allowed me to assign the entire 3TB drive as a single volume in my backup and has been backing up to it without any issue. I have less than 2TB of backups currently, so I just want to confirm that nothing bad will happen when it goes beyond 2TB.

Yep. For clients no problem. You should be able to access for recovery. The clients use many parsed up files that make up the backup. Unless a client gets so big that by itself will not fit within 2T, you should have no issues.

[ikon]

Yep. For clients no problem. You should be able to access for recovery. The clients use many parsed up files that make up the backup. Unless a client gets so big that by itself will not fit within 2T, you should have no issues.

Just for extra clarification pcdoc, that's 2TB per individual client, not for all clients in aggregate, correct?

[pcdoc]

Just for extra clarification pcdoc, that's 2TB per individual client, not for all clients in aggregate, correct?

Correct. Thanks.

[edamiga1]

My Clients are no larger than a few 100 MB each, I keep them small with SSDs and keep all the data in the cloud or my home server. Given this I should be fine as long as the vhd files stay under 2GB, which they are. This is what I see working.

So the 2TB limit does not really apply to server backups, this is great news and I will convert to 3TB offsite backups.

Looking forward to 3TB and 4TB drives coming down in cost. They are too expensive....

[pcdoc]

My Clients are no larger than a few 100 MB each, I keep them small with SSDs and keep all the data in the cloud or my home server. Given this I should be fine as long as the vhd files stay under 2GB, which they are. This is what I see working.

So the 2TB limit does not really apply to server backups, this is great news and I will convert to 3TB offsite backups.

Looking forward to 3TB and 4TB drives coming down in cost. They are too expensive....

Just to be clear, 2T does apply to server backups, and each client but you can aggregate multiple clients to a larger drive.

[ikon]

My Clients are no larger than a few 100 MB each, I keep them small with SSDs and keep all the data in the cloud or my home server. Given this I should be fine as long as the vhd files stay under 2GB, which they are. This is what I see working.

So the 2TB limit does not really apply to server backups, this is great news and I will convert to 3TB offsite backups.

Looking forward to 3TB and 4TB drives coming down in cost. They are too expensive....

Just to be clear, 2T does apply to server backups, and each client but you can aggregate multiple clients to a larger drive.

The current VHD format is limited to 2 TB - no way around that. Until Win/Server 8 is released, with the new & improved VHD spec, that won't change.

[kayache]

Windows backup cannot restore from GPT....

I have a similar scenario so I want to make sure I understand "Windows backup cannot restore from GPT":

I installed an internal 3TB drive and selected it as the destination for server backups, upon which WHS formated it as a full 3TB. I am now backing up this server, which is only about 600GB for everything, to this 3TB drive. Are you saying that I will not be able to restore from this backup?

thanks

[pcdoc]

I have a similar scenario so I want to make sure I understand "Windows backup cannot restore from GPT":

I installed an internal 3TB drive and selected it as the destination for server backups, upon which WHS formated it as a full 3TB. I am now backing up this server, which is only about 600GB for everything, to this 3TB drive. Are you saying that I will not be able to restore from this backup?

thanks

Let me try to clarify. First in order to get the 3T you had to format it using disk manager not the dashboard. The dashboard does not support formatting over 2T as it only handles MBR not GPT partitions. You can using the disk manager format 3T or more (like my 12T Raid volume) without issue. The catch is there are two types of backup. One location is for clients which "can" use larger than 2T locations such as your 3T or a RAID partition, and the server backup drive which can not. The server backup looks for any empty drive and uses the whole drive when you designate a server backup drive. If you put a 3T drive for "server backup" it will prompt you and just format it a 2T drive. Just to clarify, the backup location that is in your dashboard is only for clients only not the server. That being said, as long as each client is less than 2T, you can store and use more than 2T on your server but you are limited to 2T for each client. In addition, in order to do a restore the "server" the drive that was designated as the backup drive has to restore only from an MBR formatted drive (2T or less). If somehow the "server backup drive" was reformatted to 3T, it will not work as that is a GPT partition and WHS will not restore the "server" from a partition larger than 2T. As an example, I could install a 4T drive in my server, got to the disk manger and format that to the full 4T. I could into the dashboard, and move my client backup location to that drive with no issues as long as each client is 2T or less. I could then grab a 3T drive and go into the "dashboard" and designate that drive for server backup and will format it to only 2T leaving the rest of drive unused.

Hope that clears it up.

[kayache]

I could then grab a 3T drive and go into the "dashboard" and designate that drive for server backup and will format it to only 2T leaving the rest of drive unused.

I will do it all again to verify, but I'm certain that I did not format the drive via disk manager and that WHS formatted it when I added it as the server backup HD. I took a brand new 3TB drive, initially added it to the WHS as storage, upon which it formatted it to a 2TB partition and a 756GB partition if I remember correctly. I then decided I would rather use it for server backup and via disk manager I deleted the volumes leaving it as "unallocated" space. Then via the dashboard, I selected this unformatted drive as the destination for server backup upon which WHS promptly reformatted it as a single 3TB partition and assigned it to be the server backup hard drive. Out of curiosity I will remove this drive, delete all formatting again, and reinstall to reconfirm. But I assume it will not allow a restore according to your statements. Can't figure out how to add a picture or I would show a screenshot

Edited by kayache, 30 July 2012 - 10:03 PM.