Terastation died

[shmokes]

Ugh . . . I knew this day would come.  Over a terabyte of (mostly pirated) media (likely) gone.     It's a RAID 5 array, so theoretically I have no problem.  But I think people have had fairly poor luck with rebuilding Terastation arrays.  We'll see how it goes.  No time to address it now.  Maybe this weekend.  I wonder how easy 500 GB IDE drives are to come by these days.  SATA ones are going for like $60, I think.  Anyway, we'll see.  I actually think it's the box and not a drive, unfortunately.

[danny_galaga]

wow. i have a 120 gig hard drive and its not even half full. and even then there is quite a bit of crap on it!

just think of the positives though. seeing the same pron over and over gets boring. you needed to update that collection sooner or later 

[saint]

3.5 TB on my server, mostly full -- all of it legitimate media. I PVR a ton of stuff, and rip all of my DVDs to the hard drive. Also use the server to backup all the other computers in the house. Something like 45 Gigs of family photos alone.

[shmokes]

Yeah . . . there's not a lot of porn on it.  It's mostly movies and TV shows.  The movies are ripped and encoded to Xvid files, so they take up about 1.5 GB apiece.  I just have A LOT of them.  It's really a shame, though, as I haven't seen at least 30% of them yet   My wife watches them while I study.  It was a very big collection.  In addition to the movies I had every episode of a whole slew of TV shows, many of them ones I wanted to see.

Oh well.  Easy come, easy go.  Though, temporally speaking they went much easier than they came.  That collection was many years in the making 

[ark_ader]

Yeah . . . there's not a lot of porn on it.  It's mostly movies and TV shows.  The movies are ripped and encoded to Xvid files, so they take up about 1.5 GB apiece.  I just have A LOT of them.  It's really a shame, though, as I haven't seen at least 30% of them yet   My wife watches them while I study.  It was a very big collection.  In addition to the movies I had every episode of a whole slew of TV shows, many of them ones I wanted to see.

Oh well.  Easy come, easy go.  Though, temporally speaking they went much easier than they came.  That collection was many years in the making 

Coveting is not good for you Shmokes. 

Be happy with what you have.   

[saint]

Yeah . . . there's not a lot of porn on it.  It's mostly movies and TV shows.  The movies are ripped and encoded to Xvid files, so they take up about 1.5 GB apiece.  I just have A LOT of them.  It's really a shame, though, as I haven't seen at least 30% of them yet   My wife watches them while I study.  It was a very big collection.  In addition to the movies I had every episode of a whole slew of TV shows, many of them ones I wanted to see.

Oh well.  Easy come, easy go.  Though, temporally speaking they went much easier than they came.  That collection was many years in the making 

Yeah, I'm in the same boat potentially. Lots of tv shows I want to catch up on (like I'm a full season behind on both Dr. Who and BSG), movies I've PVR'ed for future watching, etc... I'll cry if I lose them. How do you backup 3.5 TB of stuff? 

Answer: I'm putting a couple of drives in the machine in the basement as a secondary storage. But I'm waiting for the 2TB drives to come to market at a reasonable price before I buy...

[shmokes]

Well . . . I'm temporarily heartened.  It looks like a dead drive.  Theoretically that just means replacing a single drive and rebuilding the array.  I checked and I don't know why I thought the thing used IDE drives.  It's SATA.  So I may be out of the woods for a mere $60 or so.  Here's hoping.

Also . . . I don't know what you're talking about Arder.  I had hundreds of media files that I was VERY happy with.  The only coveting that went on is when other people came to my house and got a look at Xbox Media Center and all the media center it had access to.   

[Hoopz]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat potentially. Lots of tv shows I want to catch up on (like I'm a full season behind on both Dr. Who and BSG), movies I've PVR'ed for future watching, etc... I'll cry if I lose them. How do you backup 3.5 TB of stuff? 

Behind a full season of BSG?  Damn, that's not good.  Get through the fluff from last year and get into this season.  It's finally get back to being good and is culminating soon.

[gnateye]

let me just chime in and say:

xbox media center rules! i use the same type of setup (not a raid tho) in my house with 2 xboxes on different floor runnin xbmc.


awesome.


good luck with your raid

[Hoopz]

I know I'm in the stone age compared to you guys, but I've been real pleased with a $25 DVD/Divx player and burning things to DVD-Rs.  Even picked up some slim line double DVD cases that are still wide enough to read the spine, but only occupy half the space of a regular DVD case.  Most hour long TV shows clock in around 300-400MB, so you're easily going to fit a season on 2 discs max.

Gives you something tangible you can cart around, loan out, skim easily on the shelf, and you don't bog down your network or pray your hard drive doesn't fail. 

Since you have the 360 now, have you considered networking it to stream media?

[mr.Curmudgeon]

Shmokes,

Dude...http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm
Raid Reconstructor and Captain Nemo...

I lost a drive in a RAID 1 setup, yes an 'effin RAID 1 setup (don't ask)...and I was able to virtually mount the Raid array and DE-STRIPE the data and move it to another drive.

Don't bother with anything else. I was told by forensics people that Raid 1 recovery was virtually impossible, and likely unbelievably expensive. I saved everything I needed to grab. Rare Tranny porn is safe! Phew!

[ahofle]

But I think people have had fairly poor luck with rebuilding Terastation arrays. 

Seriously?  What's the point of having a RAID array if you can't easily recover from an HD failure? 

[shmokes]

I lost a drive in a RAID 1 setup, yes an 'effin RAID 1 setup (don't ask)...and I was able to virtually mount the Raid array and DE-STRIPE the data and move it to another drive.

I suspect you mean RAID 0?  Losing a drive in RAID 1 (mirrored) shouldn't be an issue from a data standpoint.  Thanks for the tip.  I just ordered a replacement drive.  Hopefully the array will just rebuild itself with little to no data loss.  Otherwise, what was the point of giving up 1/4 of my capacity for a RAID 5 array?

@ ahofle:  I feel ya . . . but that's the reality of the RAID world.  Indeed, that's the reality of any backup plan.  You never know how good it is until the catastrophe happens.  I know a network admin who lost a drive in a high-end RAID 5 array.  Should have been no big deal.  When he replaced the drive his RAID controller malfunctioned and went about destroying all the data on all the other drives in an attempt to rebuild the array.  At any rate, some RAID solutions have a better reliability track record than others, and the Terastation does not seem to be high on the list.

[Ummon]

I know I'm in the stone age compared to you guys, but I've been real pleased with a $25 DVD/Divx player and burning things to DVD-Rs. 

In a few years, perhaps, but almost definitely in ten, there won't be removable media. 8gig thumb drives are relatively inexpensive, already.

3.5 TB on my server, mostly full -- all of it legitimate media. I PVR a ton of stuff, and rip all of my DVDs to the hard drive. Also use the server to backup all the other computers in the house. Something like 45 Gigs of family photos alone.

Hell, how much storage is AC?

[saint]

3.5 TB on my server, mostly full -- all of it legitimate media. I PVR a ton of stuff, and rip all of my DVDs to the hard drive. Also use the server to backup all the other computers in the house. Something like 45 Gigs of family photos alone.

Hell, how much storage is AC?

Umm.. not sure I understand the question

[shmokes]

I think maybe he means to ask how much of that 3.5 TB server is taken up by this website.

[patrickl]

Like ahofle I fail to see how a single broken disk can be a problem. You remove the damaged disk and insert a new one. Of course if the hardware fails exactly at that moment you might have a problem, but that can't hardly be the norm.

Maybe you had 2 broken disks? I broke two disks on RAID configurations twice.

In the first instance it was one some self built server with a server SCSI RAID card that no longer had supporting drivers. It was a nightmare and in the end I simply went back to a back up.

The second time was on my NV ReadyNAS. I repaired the two disks with some Seagate utility (after hooking them up to a PC), put them back in the ReadyNAS and the RAID repaired itself. Obviously I swapped out the broken disks after the RAID 5 was restored (Actually I replaced all disks).

[saint]

I think maybe he means to ask how much of that 3.5 TB server is taken up by this website.

OH. Heh, zero.

[mr.Curmudgeon]

I lost a drive in a RAID 1 setup, yes an 'effin RAID 1 setup (don't ask)...and I was able to virtually mount the Raid array and DE-STRIPE the data and move it to another drive.

I suspect you mean RAID 0? 

Doh!  yeah, RAID 0.

[Donkey_Kong]

I think I may have warned some folks about the Terastation...maybe no one was listening.

You may want to do what I did...if it's covered. Send it in for warranty. Next, battle with them over email for a few months until they send you a new/refurbished one...then SELL IT and never look back!

Good Luck!

[shmokes]

Like ahofle I fail to see how a single broken disk can be a problem. You remove the damaged disk and insert a new one.

Forgive me, but that's like someone complaining about car with a historically unreliable starter and responding to them with, "I fail to see how your car isn't starting.  You put the key in and turn it."

Of course that's how the RAID array is supposed to work.  How things are supposed to work are oftentimes not the same as how things in fact work. 

[patrickl]

Like ahofle I fail to see how a single broken disk can be a problem. You remove the damaged disk and insert a new one.

Forgive me, but that's like someone complaining about car with a historically unreliable starter and responding to them with, "I fail to see how your car isn't starting.  You put the key in and turn it."

Of course that's how the RAID array is supposed to work.  How things are supposed to work are oftentimes not the same as how things in fact work. 

Lol, don't you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Would you keep on using a car that doesn't start reliably?

It's even worse since by using multiple disks in a unreliable RAID configuration you have actually increased the chances of losing your data and als that you will lose ALL your data. Simply putting a number of extra harddisks in a PC (in JBOD configuration) would be a better option already.

If Terastations are indeed this crappy then I can only agree with Donkey_Kong. Try to get rid of that thing.

I'd suggest getting a Popcorn Hour A110. It's a file server, it can play HD content right on your TV and it can download stuff from torrents or usenet right on the box. Since it only uses a single disk it's safer than your Terastation.

[saint]

Did you really just suggest that RAID was *less* reliable than a single disk?

*boggle*

edit OK - I just re-read that, and I'm going to take it you meant that the Terastation RAID was unreliable, not RAID in general.

[patrickl]

Did you really just suggest that RAID was *less* reliable than a single disk?

*boggle*

edit OK - I just re-read that, and I'm going to take it you meant that the Terastation RAID was unreliable, not RAID in general.

Yes indeed I meant

an unreliable RAID configuration

Apparently a single disk failure on the Terastation can cost him the whole array. A single disk would seem a lot safer in that situation.

[shmokes]

edit: Patrick responded while I was writing this, so there are some redundancies.  Sorry.  I'd edit, but I gotta get to class. 

Well . . . it's an exaggeration of my position, but he means that if my chances of rebuilding my array are virtually nonexistant, then a single hardware failure is tantamount to all four of my hard drives failing.  Thus by raiding the drives together I have multiplied the danger.  Had I mounted the drives individually and one drive died, I would only lose up to 25% of my data, but if RAID isn't going to do it's job and any one of the four drives fail, I lose 100% of my data.

Of course, that's not my position.  Terastations have a bad track record, but that just means I'm nervous.  Obviously they work a lot of the time.  Otherwise Buffalo would get sued out of existence.  Additionally, when I made my first post I did not know whether it was a controller failure or a drive failure.  I actually suspected controller because the web interface did not work (though I could ping the address) and the physical power button on the drive wasn't functioning.  Cutting the power and rebooting corrected both of those problems, though.  At any rate, my exact words when it began to look like merely a drive failure were, "I'm temporarily heartened . . ."  I.e., okay . . . if it's just a drive failure I may be alright after all.  I'll replace the drive and cross my fingers.

I would love to have a more robust storage solution.  I took a risk with the Terastation cos it had just hit the market (i.e., no track record), and it cost about 1/3 what it's nearest competitor was charging for a similar feature set.  I'm now a student with no income.  I can't just up and say, "Hmm . . . I'm not very satisfied with my 2 terabyte network attached storage solution, I'll think just buy another and then sell this on Ebay."  The reality of my situation is something more along the lines of, "Okay . . . it's the beginning of the semester so I haven't burned through all of my student loan money yet.  A new drive for this will cost me $60-70.  I think I can swing that. I hope to god it works . . . cos there's no way I can sink any more money into it at the moment."

[patrickl]

Still, it does sound damning that the array doesn't work.

I had a similar problem with the ReadyNAS when two drives were damaged. It simply wouldn't start the array. It makes sense though since if two disks are broken, it should not keep running. It simply indicated with leds which drives it deemed were broken. Since there were two disks broken though, I had to get one to run again to be able to recover the array.

So I'd say it doesn't bode well for the array, but then I'm unfamiliar with RAID solutions that are so unreliable that they might malfunction from a single disk failure. My problem has been more that they function perfectly fine with one disk broken ... until the second disk goes.

BTW drives don't usually die completely. More often they start to show bad blocks. So in a 4 disk JBOD configuration where one disk "dies", you generally only lose several files on the damaged disk.

[Ummon]

I think maybe he means to ask how much of that 3.5 TB server is taken up by this website.

OH. Heh, zero.

No, I figured he had it on a separate server. I was curious how much storage it takes, period.

[boykster]

I'm just going to take this moment to mention I just added the final 4 1Tb drives to my 12 port 3ware RAID card for a total of ~10Tb of storage in RAID5.  Nope, RAID5 isn't a 'backup solution' but damn it's nice to know that its there...

 

Oh, and for those doing the math - a WD Green 1Tb drive is approx 931gig of storage space, - 1 full drive for RAID5 = approx 10Tb for 12 drives....

[shmokes]

I'm just going to take this moment to laugh at you that you're finally running out of capacity.  It goes to show that no matter how big a hard drive you buy it has only two states, new and full.   

[drventure]

Good info about the TeraStation. I'd considered it a while back, but it was kinda $$$ for what I was looking for.

I ended up getting a decent deal on an Iomega dual drive NAS, that so far has worked pretty well, though its definitely not the fastest boat in the water.

That "RaidReconstructor" though, holy hell. I'm bookmarking that link. All the years I've worked with RAID and I've never heard of it. For 99$, if you really had a prob with a striped array, that could be a godsend...

Reminds me of SpinRite, a little disk validation utility I absolutely used swear by (only marginally valuable these days with HD's basically a commodity.

[ahofle]

The end of unreliable, crap storage solutions is near:
http://www.buy.com/prod/cavalry-pelican-64gb-sata-ii-and-usb-2-0-2-5-internal-external-solid/q/loc/101/208410821.html?

150 year 'mean time before failure' FTW!

[shmokes]

Well, I replaced the drive.  The array has been rebuilding for hours.  I've got my fingers crossed.   

[shmokes]

   Yay!

[ahofle]

Good deal.
Guess we know what you'll be doing with your spare time now. 

[patrickl]

Ha, cool.

[shmokes]

As an aside, here's a nice thing about RAID 5:  When I bought this thing, 500 GB was the largest capacity available.  Fast forward to today when I have a drive failure and I pick up a replacement drive for 60 bucks shipped!  So when factoring the total cost of ownership of a RAID 5 setup, it's worth considering that by the time you actually have to deal with any maintenance costs the prices of replacement parts will have dropped substantially.

[patrickl]

BTW if the drive is still under warranty. Send it in and you will get a free replacement.