Redshirt 1487 Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 i would not mess or hack around until you know for sure what to do. Definitely. The machine is off until Adaptec responds to me. Buying a new raid card would be a welcome alternative to losing everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfnetwork 514 Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 (edited) yeah... you lived my worst fear... This was why I chose FlexRAID-F.... no logical drive, all independant so I can't lose them all in theory. It it wasn't for the pooling issues, it would really be the perfect solution (well for this kind of data). But you should be able to rebuild the logical drive since I presume the RAID was hardware based (depending on what actually happened I guess). Good chance you can get it back based on what you explained.... Edited June 24, 2014 by sfnetwork Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 Yea in his case though, what makes this tricky is that it was in the middle of a resize operation. Hopefully it works out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfnetwork 514 Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 yeah.. Let's hope... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aphid 212 Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 One of the main reasons I'm using DrivePool (or some of the linux equivalents) is to avoid this kind of thing. If the pool dies, each drive is still readable as a standard NTFS drive, and there are no risky operations like resizes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 Yea, resize operations are the worst. Better to setup a whole new array and copy over. Granted that requires some extra hardware, but it's worth it. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redshirt 1487 Posted June 25, 2014 Author Share Posted June 25, 2014 So about a week ago I bought 8 4TB drives to replace all the 2TB drives in my raid array. I'd swapped over the drives and was in the process of expanding the array to its new size. 3 days in, the process was nearly 50% done. I woke up this morning and the logical device was just gone. The controller can see all drives, but the logical device is just gone. I've emailed adaptec but at this point it looks like I've lost my entire media collection. Has anyone else had this happen, any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arche 176 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Somewhat similar, but my issue helped with updating the firmware. Doubt it will help, but just throwing ideas out there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 I have an Areca, and while this exact situation has not happened to me, I do know it has functions to reconstruct an array - for example - suppose your raid card dies and you need to move all the drives to a new card. obviously, you shouldn't have to sacrifice data. so i would see if you can do that with adaptec. but most of all, i would not mess or hack around until you know for sure what to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redshirt 1487 Posted June 25, 2014 Author Share Posted June 25, 2014 Well Adaptec got back to me. They were happy to inform me that my support period ended in 2012. The troubleshooting link they supplied didn't yield any results. I don't trust the controller card anymore, It's saying 6 of the 8 drives have medium errors and they all came out of static bags a week ago. Looks like I'll be plugging the drives directly into the motherboard and going the flexraid route. I don't want to ever loose EVERYTHING again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wraslor 70 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Just an fyi on flexraid you can still lose a whole lot. I've had issues with that in the past, in raid f if the array isn't updated you're only supposed to lose whatever is new since but if you have any data corrupt at all you could end up losing most if not all because it can't rebuild. T-raid had issues too, terrible performance. I'm with Aphid drive pool all the way, it has it's own disc monitoring software and reports if there are problems, then gives you the option to move data off the drive and swap in a new one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
genro 4 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Unraid is another option that I can recommend that is software based and easy to expand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37112 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 well first i would try to recover some data. i would just buy a new card (same model), see if you can recover your stuff, and then return it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14929 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 Unraid is another option that I can recommend that is software based and easy to expand. But the data is only accessible by Unraid. This is why I moved to FlexRaid. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfnetwork 514 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 Unraid is another option that I can recommend that is software based and easy to expand. The choice between Unraid and FlexRAID IMO is more about what existing server is in the environment (that has the HDs). For users, like me, with Windows server already in place, Flexraid is the choice... No Windows, I would have probably chosen Unraid... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve1977 67 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 I would not "touch" anything and not even run recovery software. Depending what the collection is worth to you, I would just pack it and bring it to an expert. For sure, it can be recovered, but may be pricey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
genro 4 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 (edited) But the data is only accessible by Unraid. This is why I moved to FlexRaid. Fair enough, for me I just wanted a NAS type appliance. I find with Windows reliability isn't always its strong suit (not that I'm totally bashing Windows, as I have 6+ windows 7 pc's). I've found unraid is reliable, very few issues and most were hardware related and not unraid. I've used it for 5+ years, having built 2 servers for myself and one for a friend. Have replaced a few HD's that died, and never lost any data. I used to have an old adaptec raid 5 card, and would never go back to hardware raid due to the issues/risk OP has described. Edited June 26, 2014 by genro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redshirt 1487 Posted June 26, 2014 Author Share Posted June 26, 2014 The array is gone. Adaptec gave a few suggestions in their email and none of them worked. I've re-initialized a new array and am well into the build/verify stage. Now that I know this kind of thing is more common than I realized, I'm going to be looking at ways to ensure I don't suffer a catastrophic loss again. I'm thinking a second PC with either software raid or similar technologies. Or re-purpose my NAS with a couple of large drives. Back the array up once a month, and NEVER resize with live data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasin 11 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 The array is gone. Adaptec gave a few suggestions in their email and none of them worked. I've re-initialized a new array and am well into the build/verify stage. Now that I know this kind of thing is more common than I realized, I'm going to be looking at ways to ensure I don't suffer a catastrophic loss again. I'm thinking a second PC with either software raid or similar technologies. Or re-purpose my NAS with a couple of large drives. Back the array up once a month, and NEVER resize with live data. Yeah backups are really important, but it is hard when you have large data. I have a QNAP with 8 TB storage. It cost a lot, and I can't back it up locally. My brother has similar. So we use crashplan. It is free for friend to friend. If you know a friend or family that has storage you can back up to each other for free. I also have other family members back up to me since they don't use much storage beside photos. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWebsmith 598 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 this topic has me really thinking now... im at approx 45tb between the tv and movie servers (both unraid)... i need to think/plan a solution to cover some decent % of that.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee 204 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 How have people got this much data? Have you got every film and tv series ever produced??? Sent from my RM-875_eu_euro1_211 using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CBers 6771 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 My brother has similar. So we use crashplan. It is free for friend to friend. If you know a friend or family that has storage you can back up to each other for free Crashplan.com ? Sounds like a good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redshirt 1487 Posted June 26, 2014 Author Share Posted June 26, 2014 I was considering crashplan $4 a month for off site backup isn't bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CBers 6771 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 I was considering crashplan $4 a month for off site backup isn't bad. That's a good price. So have you lost everything ?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
politby 88 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 @redshirt: Sure hope most of it is replaceable. I would not trust hardware RAID as far as I can throw it... Remember hardware RAID was designed for enterprise environments in an era when an entire array was easily backed up to just a few reels of tape. It's becoming obsolete in today's multi terabyte environments. All you need is a RAID card failure causing garbage to be written to the array and you are SOL. Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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