Failure of main recordings drive...Advice?

[Slack]

Tried to remote into my Sage box from work...got the remote desktop thingy on the top of the screen yet it never asked for credentials.

Next I tried Sage web front end. It asks for creds, but never launches the GUI in my browser.

So I quit racquetball after work early to arrive in my office and hear an unfamiliar buzz coming from Sage box. I try to remote desktop to Sage box locally...same behavior as before outside lan.

I attach I monitor to Sage box - no signal.

Reboot....takes for ever..Eventually comes up and after a lot buzzing and a sound reminiscent of the click of death. It seams my main recordings drive has succumbed. 500gigs...pretty full. Luckily I recently added a 250 gig, and American Idol is on there ( wife ) and I relaunched Sage in time to get the results. (Recently retired all my RTVs that were doing backup duty! Oy!).

In any case I extract the failed HDD from Sage box. And it sits in the freezer now hoping that I can extract all the shows later tonight.

"IF" I can hopefully extract the content from dead (or soon to be) 500gig, any "sage" advice on how to marry up those recording with whatever is left of wiz.bin.

At the very least if I can extract some stuff I could move them somewhere on the lan and import that to 'My Videos' Right?


Edit: I am screwed. Drive is dead.

[Skirge01]

I'm sure you're pretty ticked, so don't take this the wrong way, but... backup, backup, backup. In all seriousness, with this type of setup and how critical we each consider our recordings, we all need to think about some sort of safeguard. Personally, I'm using FlexRAID and you'll find others will mention unRAID. I'm okay if I'm out a day or so of recording, but, beyond that, I need to be prepared or there will be a mob waiting for me with pitchforks in hand when I come home from work!

[stevech]

It's not "if", it's "when" for hard drives.
Simple RAID1 is what I count on, plus Second Copy backups up wiz.bin every day, and keeps the last 12

[Djc208]

Was this recording drive the same as your boot drive? It doesn't sound like it since you said the system booted, if so your wiz.bin should be OK, other than not being able to find those recordings any more.

The only consolation is that Sage will try and record all the un-watched shows again when available.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by Slack

I love this HTPC / Sage hobby of mine....there is ALWAYS something to do. Last weekend it was re-positioning of my antenna and server box. Before that is was getting the second HD-200 to drive my plasma. Before that it was getting the first HD-200 to see my ReadyNAS in standalone mode. Before that it was...well I'm sure all of you know.

Yes, it's the same with antique cars. Everyone admires and complements the results, but few understand or see the busted knuckles, puzzling problems, or regular maintenance. I do it because I enjoy the work as well as the end result, but when you look at it in writing it seems crazy and borderline stupid, but I've been called worse.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by Slack

The Sage box was built in a small form factor case, and two drives is all that will fit in it. So RAID was NOT in the plans when I put it together. Since relocating to my office closet and going server/client I guess I could look into it (I recall reading good things about unRAID, that's the lime tech thing right?), plus lately I've been thinking about a more standard case, as the small form factor case has a really odd-ball power supply. Time to hit new egg.

You are correct about unRAID. My primary reason for avoiding unRAID was because it requires a secondary computer. So, for someone like me, who's using a client/server setup, that means I'd need my server PC, an unRAID PC, plus all my client PC's. I decided I did not want to go that route, so I went with FlexRAID instead. I just made sure I got a huge case for the server with tons of empty drive bays.

[Slack]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

You are correct about unRAID. My primary reason for avoiding unRAID was because it requires a secondary computer. So, for someone like me, who's using a client/server setup, that means I'd need my server PC, an unRAID PC, plus all my client PC's. I decided I did not want to go that route, so I went with FlexRAID instead. I just made sure I got a huge case for the server with tons of empty drive bays.

Yeah, so after looking at unRAID and flexraid I think I came to the same conclusion. Not pretending to fully understand the flexraid tutorials I just watched, I'm gonna give that a whirl. I decided not to wait for new egg - got a cheapo case and a new 500gig on the way home today.

I initially though the flexraid would somehow fool the OS into thinking a new HDD was there (that HDD being an amalgam of other HDD and files/folders specified in flexraid setup) [Outside of the ReadyNAS I have only set-up RAID once - nVidia flavor, perhaps you can tell?].

But after watching the flexraid tuts, it seems it's a service that runs in windoze and creates parity data whenever you specify, and can reconstruct the source data should something happen. The OS still sees all the disks attached just like always. Do I have that right?

Thank god for the web gui, cuz I doubt I would have had the fortitude to use the command line.

Well, time to operate.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by Slack

Yeah, so after looking at unRAID and flexraid I think I came to the same conclusion. Not pretending to fully understand the flexraid tutorials I just watched, I'm gonna give that a whirl. I decided not to wait for new egg - got a cheapo case and a new 500gig on the way home today.

Check out the forums over there, too. Brahim is really good at helping people work through any issues. I actually worked with him to remote into my WHS box and check some things for me when I had an issue with the GUI not coming up in Firefox. Are you running WHS?

I initially though the flexraid would somehow fool the OS into thinking a new HDD was there (that HDD being an amalgam of other HDD and files/folders specified in flexraid setup) [Outside of the ReadyNAS I have only set-up RAID once - nVidia flavor, perhaps you can tell?].

With WHS, the OS will see all the drives you install. It's up to you to decide whether or not to add them to the drive pool. If you keep them outside the pool, WHS won't touch them, which is precisely what you do with the parity drive(s) for FlexRAID. For a non-WHS box, it's similar, but you avoid the whole drive pool thing. You just wouldn't be storing anything but parity data on the drive, so you wouldn't add that drive to Sage.

In WHS, you won't be pointing FlexRAID to actual, entire drives, rather to specific shares in very specific folders. Take a look at my posts over there (same username) and you'll see how it works. Make sure you read through the entire thread of my discussions before doing anything, since the first posts went in one direction and then we totally changed how we were setting it up (much easier the route we took).

If you're not using WHS, then you WILL be pointing FlexRAID to entire drives and disregard everything I just said in that last paragraph!

But after watching the flexraid tuts, it seems it's a service that runs in windoze and creates parity data whenever you specify, and can reconstruct the source data should something happen. The OS still sees all the disks attached just like always. Do I have that right?

It's not a service, unless you do some tweaks to WHS to force it in as one. I've chosen not to go that route just yet. Instead, I just log in as an admin, have the host and client FlexRAID sessions opened up, and close WHS without logging off.

For a non-WHS setup, you could just leave the command lines open. It might be easier to get it running as a service in a non-WHS environment.

Thank god for the web gui, cuz I doubt I would have had the fortitude to use the command line.

Well, time to operate.

I started that route, too, but quickly decided the GUI is where it's at. It's MUCH easier to use when you're used to Windows.

[Slack]

Im using Windoze XP pro. Not WHS.

So I think I got. Tell felxraid to create parity drives for the folders or drives that I tell it to protect.

I was planning....
500 gig recordings (Sata)
250 gig recordings (Sata)
250 gig parity (Sata)
200 gig parity (IDE)

Is that enough parity? I assume flex raid is smart enough to let me know.

In any case while moving my motherboard I found a dead frog in my HTPC case!

Although I doubt he had anything to do with the dead drive.

[Skirge01]

Yep... you got it. You just need a minimum of one parity drive that's at least as big as your largest storage drive. I *believe* you can use multiple drives to equal that, but I'm honestly not certain of it, since I never looked into it. In your example, you have 750GB for recordings, but only 450GB for parity, so you're 300GB short for parity.