Borrowing 4TB?

[ddrueding]

In a late-night moment of stupidity about 6 months ago, I converted my array to a dynamic disk. It hasn't been a big deal, because Server 2003 doesn't care.

Now I'm moving to Linux, and it can't see dynamic disks.

The only way I've read to "convert" back to a basic disk is to copy the data elsewhere, remove and recreate the partition, and copy it back.

It is a RAID-5 array with ~4TB of data on it currently.

I'd rather not purchase and return a handful of drives because I don't approve of gaming the system in that way, but I'd rather not have to pay full price for drives that will be in use for about a week.

Does anyone here have suggestions? Some 1TB drives I could borrow?

 

[Fushigi]

C'mon, you know you'd use the space anyway. And Maxtor TB drives are only $170 at Fry's this week.

 

[ddrueding]

C'mon, you know you'd use the space anyway. And Maxtor TB drives are only $170 at Fry's this week.

For later integration in my array, I'd stick with 750GB drives.

4000/750 = 6 Drives @ $120 = $720 + Tax = $777

...and I just got a $1200 gas bill (just my car).

I'd like to avoid that for now.

 

[LunarMist]

Why must you keep upgrading constantly? Didn't you just change to flash drives?

Is it $1200 in one month for fuel? Maybe a more economical vehicle is a better choice than more hard drives.

 

[LunarMist]

I have a great plan for you, David. Please buy 4 of the new 1TB drives for the backup and I"ll buy them back from you afterwards for the price of 3.

 

[LiamC]

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5956&highlight=dynamic



DiskProbe is your friend

 

[ddrueding]

Why must you keep upgrading constantly? Didn't you just change to flash drives?

Is it $1200 in one month for fuel? Maybe a more economical vehicle is a better choice than more hard drives.

Flash drives are for the OS and APPs, the RAID-0 of 74GB Raptors are for scratch and games, and the massive chunk of 750GB drives are for data.

My car averaged 33mpg, and gas averaged $4.12. About 9700 miles in 2 months. (I was in Russia when the intermediate bill came).

 

[ddrueding]

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5956&highlight=dynamic



DiskProbe is your friend

Scary! I'll do some more research before I do the deed.

 

[LiamC]

It's not that scary. Just open the disk MBR and change 1 hex digit. What could possibly go wrong? :eek

 

[ddrueding]

I'm chickening out on that. The bit that is supposed to be 42 for dynamic, that I'm supposed to change to 07, is showing as EE. Not sure what that means, but I like my data too much to be fooling around with it. I'll just hold off for a while.

 

[Bozo]

How about sending your data to an online storage facility?

Bozo :joker:

 

[LiamC]

I'm chickening out on that. The bit that is supposed to be 42 for dynamic, that I'm supposed to change to 07, is showing as EE. Not sure what that means, but I like my data too much to be fooling around with it. I'll just hold off for a while.

According to this article, that's a GPT partition: GUID Partition Table. Did you use XP-64, W2K3-64 Server, W2K3 SP1 (32 & 64), W2K8 server or Vista to partition the disk? I'm betting yes.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457122(TechNet.10).aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

 

[ddrueding]

According to this article, that's a GPT partition: GUID Partition Table. Did you use XP-64, W2K3-64 Server, W2K3 SP1 (32 & 64), W2K8 server or Vista to partition the disk? I'm betting yes.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457122(TechNet.10).aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

Yup. It has to be a GPT, it is >4TB. Unfortunately, it is also dynamic. I don't know how that trick would play out.

 

[LunarMist]

Is there no backup that you can restore the data from? Or are you paranoid not to have a backup for the time it will take to copy the data to the rebuilt array?

 

[ddrueding]

Is there no backup that you can restore the data from? Or are you paranoid not to have a backup for the time it will take to copy the data to the rebuilt array?

My backup scheme is complex. A friend on the east coast has a matching array, and we agree to store each others data for security (replicating changes over a VPN). So yes, there is a backup, but it would take weeks to get all the data back.

Your proposal is actually looking to be the most attractive:

I have a great plan for you, David. :grin: Please buy 4 of the new 1TB drives for the backup and I"ll buy them back from you afterwards for the price of 3. :smile:

Although the margin seems a bit steep.

 

[LunarMist]

Arrrrggggh! I will have a large bill soon, too.

 

[ddrueding]

Arrrrggggh! I will have a large bill soon, too.

Well, we'll both just hold off for a while, and talk about it another time. I'm having enough issues with WINE that I'm not ready to move just yet, anyway.

 

[Chewy509]

Now I'm moving to Linux, and it can't see dynamic disks.

Umm, Linux has supported GPT and Dynamic Disks for a while now? (GPT was added in when the Linux Kernel started to support Itanium based systems, and Dynamic Disks has been in for at least 3-4 years).

You may just need to recompile your kernel to support those options. (It's under the filesystems area in the kernel configuration, look for GPT under Partition types, and the Dynamic Disks support is called LDM, and NTFS support is funny enough called NTFS).

If however you want to install Linux onto the same array, then you may have problems due to GRUB/lilo not handling GPT correctly. (But if it's just a data array and you're install Linux onto a different array, then no problems).

 

[ddrueding]

Umm, Linux has supported GPT and Dynamic Disks for a while now? (GPT was added in when the Linux Kernel started to support Itanium based systems, and Dynamic Disks has been in for at least 3-4 years).

You may just need to recompile your kernel to support those options. (It's under the filesystems area in the kernel configuration, look for GPT under Partition types, and the Dynamic Disks support is called LDM, and NTFS support is funny enough called NTFS).

If however you want to install Linux onto the same array, then you may have problems due to GRUB/lilo not handling GPT correctly. (But if it's just a data array and you're install Linux onto a different array, then no problems).

Sweet! I have never compiled a kernel, or even looking into it. And the places I was reading said otherwise, but I believe you.

I'm using a standard build of Ubuntu 8.04 x64, so I guess that support isn't included? I'll go read up on it.

Thanks!

 

[LunarMist]

C'mon, you know you'd use the space anyway. And Maxtor TB drives are only $170 at Fry's this week.

Interestingly, the retail Maxtor 1TB drive is made in China and has a shorter warranty than the Seagate drive. Are the Maxtor and Seagate drives different in design and construction?

 

[LunarMist]

C'mon, you know you'd use the space anyway. And Maxtor TB drives are only $170 at Fry's this week.

Interestingly, the retail Maxtor 1TB drive is made in China and has a shorter warranty than the Seagate drive. Are the Maxtor and Seagate drives different in design and construction?

 

[ddrueding]

5*129 (750GB Seagate) = $645

It is coming down...perhaps I'll wait.

 

[Fushigi]

4*180 (1TB Seagate @ BestBuy this week) = $720 with less space, heat, and power draw. Perhaps the benefits aren't enough to overcome the price delta but at least the premium is only $75.

 

[ddrueding]

4*180 (1TB Seagate @ BestBuy this week) = $720 with less space, heat, and power draw. Perhaps the benefits aren't enough to overcome the price delta but at least the premium is only $75.

Except that the extra 250GB per drive would be wasted when the drives were added to my RAID-5 Array of existing 750GB Seagate drives.

 

[sechs]

Maybe I can trade my four crappy-but Seagate 750GB drives to you for three 1TB drives of some reasonable ability.

 

[LunarMist]

I have a couple of the old 750GB Seagate IDE drives which are working fine. There is no easy replacement as there are no larger PATA drives available and too many SATA drives in the computer already.

 

[ddrueding]

Maybe I can trade my four crappy-but Seagate 750GB drives to you for three 1TB drives of some reasonable ability.

I would be interested. Why are they crappy?

 

[ddrueding]

I have a couple of the old 750GB Seagate IDE drives which are working fine. There is no easy replacement as there are no larger PATA drives available and too many SATA drives in the computer already.

Unfortunatly, my RAID card is only SATA.

 

[LunarMist]

I have no RAID card, just a bunch of controllers with 2 SATA ports and a good number on the motherboard. I wish there were a simple PCI-E card with 4 internal and 4 external SATA ports.

 

[Mercutio]

Unfortunatly, my RAID card is only SATA.

IDE to SATA converters only cost about $10.
I'm not sure they're reliable enough to run drives in RAID5, though.

 

[LunarMist]

I tried a converter on the Seagate 750GB drive. Sometimes the data was corrupted, e.g. greek letters and symbols appeared in the folder names.

 

[sechs]

I would be interested. Why are they crappy?

They just seem so unresponsive compared to the Hitachi drives that they replaced.

They're in a NAS. Response time is mostly what I need out of them.

 

[sechs]

I tried a converter on the Seagate 750GB drive. Sometimes the data was corrupted, e.g. greek letters and symbols appeared in the folder names.

I've been using a pretty cheap adapter on DVD drive for some years, and, except for Windows complaining that it can't read discs' tables of contents, it's been perfect.

 

[ddrueding]

Well, I just bought a handful of additional 750GB drives. I'm still trying to determine the best RAID configuration for them. There are 12 now, so RAID-50? That should be decently fast...

 

[CityK]

I know nothing about DiskProbe, but I successfully used TestDisk tonight, from within Linux, to non-destructively (i.e. preserve the existing data without backing up to some other disk first) convert a dynamic disk with 2 volumes to a basic disk with two primary partitions. It didn't work exactly like is highlighted in this tututorial, but it was close enough and easy to use.

Now playing ... some Neko Case songs

Later