Spanned disks under w2k3

[egd]

I have 5 identical Hitachi 400GB SATA hard drives installed in one of my PCs' running Windows Server 2003, SP1. Two of these drives are spanned to form one logical drive letter. I've not had any problems with the spanned volume, however, whilst installing a SCSI card to install a tape backup unit (sic), I unplugged all the SATA cables to enable installation of the card. I'm guessing you know where this is headed - I didn't pay attention to which cable was connected to which drive. Consequently, I'm not sure whether I risk losing the data if I reconnect these drives in a different / incorrect order - does W2k3 automatically identify which drives belong to a spanned volume or is it essential I reconnect the drives to the same SATA ports on the motherboard, in which case I'm screwed.

Your assistance is much appreciated.

 

[Mercutio]

No. You're fine. The information is held on the drive itself, and does not depend on the controller or its interface. The worst that might happen is that you might have to re-import your drives.

One other thing: If you're doing the software RAID thing to get large volumes on 2k3, you might as well do RAID0, since there's essentially zero difference between spanned and striped, except striped has better STR sometimes.

 

[egd]

... The worst that might happen is that you might have to re-import your drives.

One other thing: If you're doing the software RAID thing to get large volumes on 2k3, you might as well do RAID0, since there's essentially zero difference between spanned and striped, except striped has better STR sometimes.

Thx for the advice. I spanned as a temporary measure, bought a Tandberg 420LTO on Friday to backup the data and kill the span. In my infite wisdom I got ahead of myself.

I'm going to boot using a Knoppix livecd first to see wheter I can discern the non-spanned drives from the spanned pair. That way at least I'll be able to boot up w2k3 with only three drives running - the boot hdd, and the two striped disks.

 

[egd]

You were right, when I booted up w2k3 without the drives attached it noted them as missing in Disk Management.

I then re-cabled the lot and the spanned disk pair was recognised on reboot. Perhaps it was dumb luck that I managed to cable them correctly or otherwise w2k3 knew what to do with the disks when it saw them - worth noting that I used Knoppix to recognise the non-spanned drives and that enabled me to ensure that both drives in the spanned set were re-cabled and brought up together ie I did not boot w2k3 with a member of the spanned drive pair on its own - both drives in the pair were brought back online together.

Man, it strikes me as pathetic and downright scary just how vulnerable one's data is to loss, why would ms bother to develop spanned disks when a single trashed drive means lose *.*?

I'll have to buy a few more tapes tomorrow to complete my backups. Thx again for your help.

 

[Bozo]

MS spanned disk are no worse than RAID 0 :-?

I wouldn't trust my data to tape either. Tapes stretch, break and lose their data after a while. Tape recording formats are proprietary, meaning you must have the proper software to read them. And don't count on MS Backup. If I remember correctly, they have chnged their format at least once. As long as you keep backing up on a routine basis and use new tapes each time, you might be alright.

You could always burn your data to a DVD. And with dual layer burners now in the $50 range, you can put ~8GB on one disk. Because the burning process is a file copy, you should be able to read the data with most OSs far into the future.

Blue-Ray and HD-DVD will be out next year. 50GB on a DVD!!

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

The media and labor cost for dual layer are too high.
8GB is a pathetic amount of data anyway.
Hell, 50GB is a pathetic amount of data.

 

[egd]

... Tape recording formats are proprietary, meaning you must have the proper software to read them. And don't count on MS Backup...

Have a look at http://www.lto.org/newsite/index.html and http://www.ultriumlto.com/ - proprietary issues solved. With my Tandberg I can go cross platform and cross backup package, as long as the backup program is LTO capable.

I would hate to try and backup 2TB of data on 8 or even 50GB media. With my Tandberg 420LTO (http://www.tandberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=173&Itemid=245&sid=1&paction=7) I can get up to 400GB on a single tape.

 

[Bozo]

Hmmm....learn something everyday

But, man, that sure is a lot of prOn to backup :wink:


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[LiamC]

You could always burn your data to a DVD. And with dual layer burners now in the $50 range, you can put ~8GB on one disk. Because the burning process is a file copy, you should be able to read the data with most OSs far into the future.

I don't think this is a good idea. After the kids started using their DVD's for skates, I invested in a burner and now make copies. The kids play the copies and the originals are stored where they can't get them.

But here's what I've noticed. The copies fail after six or eight months.

I used to use a Liteon 1653S, now I use an NEC 3540. I have used TDK-R 8X. I could never get the disks to burn at 8X without error. I always burn them at 4X. I have used a Taiwanese knock-off ("Hello Tech" or something) that was dismally bad. I even tried Taiyo Yuden, and these worked the best, but I've still had media failures after a few months--though not as many as the TDK's. The failures aren't due to scratches on the disc surface, but failure of the recording media.

At work, I work for the archiving team. One reason we don't use DVD is concerns raised by the country's National Archives body over the logevity of DVD media revealed in their testing.

I'd be wary of trusting DVD for long term backup. I am sure that certain media with certain drives work well, but for how long? And by the time you find out, will it be too late?

 

[Bozo]

I presumed that DVDs had the same shelf life as a CD.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

Just like with floppy disks, when CDs were expensive, they were higher quality.