Dell PERC 6i failed?

[MaxBurn]

Not my week. Got some disks not showing in my server now. I tried moving power cables around and I didn't see any changes. But when I swapped the two SFF-8484 connectors on the card I did see my drives show up in the other location.

Sounds like a bad controller card, agree?

 

[ddrueding]

Sounds right.

 

[Mercutio]

Well that's just a kick in the nuts.

 

[time]

Or bad cable.

 

[ddrueding]

Or bad cable.

I don't think so. If I read the OP correctly, the cable moved with the drives, and the port stayed bad.

 

[time]

Duh! Sorry, I posted for relief from really bad stress. Brain is gibbering, I'm trying to ignore it.

 

[MaxBurn]

Phew, got another PERC 6i in. All exactly the same firmware revisions which I thought odd. Dropped it in and loaded the detected foreign config and was up and running in seconds.

The config utility isn't asking for anything and seems happy. Run a consistency check anyway?

 

[BingBangBop]

Yes! Even if everything is now happy, it does not mean that data was not corrupted when it was less than pleased. Definitely at least run a chkdsk, just in case.

 

[MaxBurn]

Ah, check of the log says background initialization started. I guess I am running without parity at the moment. Funny I didn't get a more obvious warning, would think that is a bit of a big deal.

 

[Mercutio]

RAID cards should have air horns as standard equipment.

 

[MaxBurn]

You would think. As annoying as the intel raid manager is on this same machine popping up and saying hey everything is fine peace out on every single login you would imagine the LSI software should pop up and say you need to look at this.

I'm just happy I didn't give merc an I told you so moment regarding failed RAID controllers.

 

[Stereodude]

The LSI software doesn't even actively alert you when a single disk fails in a RAID-6 array. :frusty:

 

[Mercutio]

I'm just happy I didn't give merc an I told you so moment regarding failed RAID controllers.

It's been a decade or so, but I've definitely run into "Controller firmware is different so the array is unreadable even though it's the same controller" before. I think caution is justified, especially when it's your personal stuff.

I very well might move back to using hardware RAID now that I have a decent backup system, just to get some performance back.

 

[MaxBurn]

For backup I want to attach a bunch of 2TB drives via USB, however many it takes to cover the backup data size.

Looking for suggestions on what backup solution to use that will backup this large amount of data on one big drive to these multiple disk targets.

 

[Stereodude]

A second RAID-6 array in another system that synchronizes itself nightly.

 

[BingBangBop]

USB is not a good choice for multiple TB's of data because of bandwidth limitations unless you have access to USB3. Look at external SATA as a better alternative.

 

[Mercutio]

A second RAID-6 array in another system that synchronizes itself nightly.

Does Drobo advertise in mass market or something?

I've had three of my customers in the last couple months tell me that they wanted to get a Drobo system for backups. I keep wanting to yell at them that there's no functional difference between having a RAID setup that's built directly into their server and one that's a NAS. And either way, there still needs to be a real backup and not just an extra copy of their data sitting someplace.

Extra copies are all well and good and I certainly appreciate stuff that's faster than USB2, a big ol' box of delicate non-portable storage is still, y'know, delicate and not portable.

 

[LunarMist]

Drobos are very popular for the higher consumer market that is beyond the single drive or dual drive enclosure and has large needs for photos or A/V. Most of the users know just enough about computers to be dangerous. The appeals of the Drobo are that it implements several different RAID levels to squeeze the maximum redundant capacity out of mismatched drives and has a bunch of interfaces (FW for Mac, eSATA, etc.).

 

[Mercutio]

It's a NAS. It's used for all the craps that NASes are meant to be used for. Which is not the same thing as backup.

Even when I was relying on keeping my file servers rsync'd for redundancy I was never deluding myself that doing so was the same thing as a backup, but that appears to be what my customers think. Since I've never suggested anything like that, I'm thinking this is coming from some kind of retarded marketing someplace.

 

[LunarMist]

Sure, but people often use it as a backup or sometimes as primary storage connected to one local system. I'm not saying it is a good idea, but you can read on the interwebs about people who use and abuse the Drobos. Posts like "Oh, gee I lost all my Lightroom catalogs and 1,238,612 photos from the last 8 years. I was using two 1000GB drives and two 2TB drives. How do I get my files back?" are not uncommon.

 

[Mercutio]

So where are people getting the notion that using NAS for backup somehow represents a good idea?

 

[Stereodude]

Does Drobo advertise in mass market or something?

I didn't say anything about a Drobo. I meant another server similar to the first one.

 

[Mercutio]

I didn't say you did. You just reminded me of something I have been meaning to rant about.

 

[MaxBurn]

So you all don't like my USB drives and some sort of file copy idea? Till now that's all I have done with it, only manually drive by drive.

 

[LunarMist]

How are you planning to span those USB drives or are you diving data into folders? It seems like a nightmare. At use eSATA for usable speed.

 

[ddrueding]

You could make the USB drives Dynamic Disks and then make them a RAID-5 array, but Lunar is right, that is a sub-optimal solution.

 

[MaxBurn]

Right now I am just copying stuff in folders manually till the drive is full = PITA

Looking for "something" that will automate this and span the attached drives.

On the windows raid array span won't it complain when I shut off the drives and remove them for storage? The idea is to save them somewhere else.

Too bad a tape solution is way too expensive, don't want to be swapping tapes forever either.

 

[Handruin]

So where are people getting the notion that using NAS for backup somehow represents a good idea?

Why is it a bad idea? I use my NAS as one of several backup locations.

 

[Mercutio]

Why is it a bad idea? I use my NAS as one of several backup locations.

It's not, as long as it's not your only backup.

 

[MaxBurn]

My important data is stored in three places, all hard drives, some is even burnt to disks. This stuff is just the movies and stuff I collect which represents a large enough PITA to rerip that I want a backup.

No one can think of backup software that will take my big disk and put it on several smaller oneS?

Alternately if I just soft raid this will windows complain if I remove it? Or because none of the member disks are there it wouldn't know about them being missing?

 

[Bozo]

Can you use a RAID 1 array of two drives and remove one and put it in a safe place, replacing it with another and let it rebuild? Then in a month or so swap the hard drives?

 

[ddrueding]

Alternately if I just soft raid this will windows complain if I remove it? Or because none of the member disks are there it wouldn't know about them being missing?

I don't know, but I'll be able to tell you in a few days. A customer's multimedia data needs are growing darn quick; he now has 3 3TB USB drives and is beginning to worry about backups. He still has the originals, so backups aren't strictly necessary, but he's beginning to appreciate the time he's put into it.

 

[MaxBurn]

Well crap, I didn't research the external enclosures good enough and they won't take my drives, only handles 2TB total. That would have been handy to have in the amazon product description.

Read some colorful reviews of the drobos, shan't be doing that. Huge price on those things too.

Given I can't really find a good way to easily back up my big drive to many small ones I guess I should put some sort of RAID together for the backup disk.

Now I am thinking about doing a different motherboard so i can have more than one PCIE slot, add a PERC 6e and find some sort of SATA external enclosure that can accept between 5 and 8 drives that works with the PERC 6e. Not sure how it would handle not having the backup drives off, I suspect not well and it would interrupt boot?

Alternately I could build a second Machine to do backups, don't really want to but it might be the best way.

 

[Mercutio]

Before I had my tape setup, my standard practice was to build a JBOD or RAID0 on some machine I could stuff full of drives for as long as I needed to move data around.

If you're using a decent backup program, you can tell it to store backups as chunks of arbitrary file size. That's not all that helpful unless you also have the ability to pause backup file creation and move the files you're making to another location.

 

[MaxBurn]

Lol, got an email from the amazon vendor they are sending replacements and aren't requiring me to send the enclosures I have back.

Before I had my tape setup, my standard practice was to build a JBOD or RAID0 on some machine I could stuff full of drives for as long as I needed to move data around.

What do you have for tape? Affordable? Not opposed to this but from what I glanced at the prices were higher than just getting a bunch of drives.

If you're using a decent backup program, you can tell it to store backups as chunks of arbitrary file size. That's not all that helpful unless you also have the ability to pause backup file creation and move the files you're making to another location.

Exactly my thoughts.

Right at this minute one of these things isn't sounding so bad:
http://ain.mediasonic.ca/store/product_info.php?cPath=26_51&products_id=235
http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-eS...-SU3S2/dp/B003YFHEAC/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
I have USB3 on my desktop machine and according to an intel page I glanced at the ICH9R in both of my machines supports Port Multiplier but I don't think it is needed for this particular one presenting one drive to the controller.

 

[Mercutio]

I have a Quantum Superloader library with an LTO4 drive. The setup has a very high startup cost (mine was lightly used) but tapes are cheap and will last, relatively speaking, forever.

 

[Bozo]

My important data is stored in three places, all hard drives, some is even burnt to disks. This stuff is just the movies and stuff I collect which represents a large enough PITA to rerip that I want a backup.

No one can think of backup software that will take my big disk and put it on several smaller oneS?

Alternately if I just soft raid this will windows complain if I remove it? Or because none of the member disks are there it wouldn't know about them being missing?

How about a basic .bat file xcopy g:\pictures1 n:\
xcopy g:\pictures2 m:\
xcopy g:\pictures3 L:\

N,M,&L are the smaller hard drives. Run the .bat from scheduled task.

 

[MaxBurn]

Meh, going to take the easy way out

http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid-plus/tr5utbp.html
http://www.amazon.com/Sans-Digital-TowerRAID-Hardware-TR5UT-BP/dp/B003YDZE0Q
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=16-111-145

Seems reviewers didn't like the included card, I won't be using it. Will either connect straight to ICH9R or USB2 or 3.

Getting one additional drive to complete the set and nearly match the capacity of my array. Looks like you guys called it, the non advanced format versions are climbing in price. I'm going to try to go as close to the same model number as I can to what I have.

 

[MaxBurn]

Damnit

Anyone know how to get this Dell/LSI utility to cough up a drive serial number?

 

[BingBangBop]

Pull the drive and look at the label