A failed raid | Sunday, November 20, 2005 |
My first experience with my own RAID array, and I can say that I'm not impressed at a all. Not one bit.
One failed drive = dead array.
Now, I'm open to the fact that I may have done something wrong when replacing the suspect disk, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't press the DELETE EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY button.
So it's taken all night to initialize the disks ready for re-use. This time I'm going to keep one of the six (the replacement for the suspect unit actually) aside for hot spare - a process that's magically managed by the card. It's worth losing 250GB of space not to erase everything again. Additionally, I've bothered to install Dell's storage management software that allows controller diagnostics from within the OS. Now that was a good process - boot into linux, do some basics, then shove in the Windows CD. Rest of install, seamless.
However, this Dell CERC card (a rebadged Adaptec), would seem not to have a stellar reputation according to other peoples bleats. If it happens again, I'll be biting the bullet and going one of the other established RAID players like 3Ware or that German bunch whose name I can't remember, but who won the shootout I saw a few months back. Over a few years, the maybe several hundred pounds that the card will cost kind of vanishes (that'd be the depreciation then I guess) into the background.
Most of the important data is on a pair of regular ATA disks that I stripped out of the two server boxes before skipping them, and we have other copies of photos and thing, but it's a pain to bring them online (no IDE cables for a start). Mind you, at this stage, I have no idea if they're working either, but I left them in a cage enclosure before they went into our suitcases, so fingers crossed.
The whole experience quite spoilt my evening last night.
One failed drive = dead array.
Now, I'm open to the fact that I may have done something wrong when replacing the suspect disk, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't press the DELETE EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY button.
So it's taken all night to initialize the disks ready for re-use. This time I'm going to keep one of the six (the replacement for the suspect unit actually) aside for hot spare - a process that's magically managed by the card. It's worth losing 250GB of space not to erase everything again. Additionally, I've bothered to install Dell's storage management software that allows controller diagnostics from within the OS. Now that was a good process - boot into linux, do some basics, then shove in the Windows CD. Rest of install, seamless.
However, this Dell CERC card (a rebadged Adaptec), would seem not to have a stellar reputation according to other peoples bleats. If it happens again, I'll be biting the bullet and going one of the other established RAID players like 3Ware or that German bunch whose name I can't remember, but who won the shootout I saw a few months back. Over a few years, the maybe several hundred pounds that the card will cost kind of vanishes (that'd be the depreciation then I guess) into the background.
Most of the important data is on a pair of regular ATA disks that I stripped out of the two server boxes before skipping them, and we have other copies of photos and thing, but it's a pain to bring them online (no IDE cables for a start). Mind you, at this stage, I have no idea if they're working either, but I left them in a cage enclosure before they went into our suitcases, so fingers crossed.
The whole experience quite spoilt my evening last night.
