My friend died, leaving wife with raid6 media center


Everend

Recommended Posts

My friend died last year, leaving his widow with two 24TB RAID6 servers running linux.  I think one server was a mirror of the other (but not sure). One of the servers went down a few months ago, so she unplugged it and has left it setting.  I'd like to help her get setup on unRAID (since I've had one for a couple years, I want to set her up with this instead of a setup I know nothing about).  Unfortunately, we don't know the passwords (the ones he had written down don't seem to work).

 

  I'm going to take the machine that has been off, to see if I can get anything off it, before converting it to an unraid system.

 

Any suggestions or guidance?

Link to comment

Thanks for the responses. 

 

One server is running, yes there are read-only shares on that one with data she wants to keep.  I don't know if there is data on the server that is shutdown, I don't know if it is duplicate of the server that is currently running. I don't know if there is more data that is not currently shared. If I knew all the data was shared on the running machine I'd quickly reuse the hardware of the 'off' machine to build a new unraid server and start copying it over. 

 

For the 'off' machine, I'll first start with turning it on and using the passwords he left written down. If it doesn't start up or if it doesn't recognize the passwords, can the drives be read by another computer (or do they have to be in the original raid 6 array config?)

 

 

Link to comment
11 hours ago, Everend said:

can the drives be read by another computer

It's hard to say for sure until you get into that machine, but the fact that you are describing them as RAID-6 is concerning.  RAID-6 would typically be implemented as via a hardware RAID controller or something like ZFS on freenas.  And both of those implementations stripe data across the disks...  If you believe that there's important data on the downed machine you should try to recover the array intact (on the assumption that some other component may have died).  If this is getting gnarly, you might want to contact a systems integrator for help.

Link to comment

It would be easier to assess this situation with a detailed description of the specific hardware in the two systems -- motherboard, CPU, any add-in controller cards, and the exact complement of disk drives in the machines.    Clearly this take a bit of disassembly - be VERY cautious that you don't change or disconnect anything, as you don't want to mess up the currently running server, and you don't want to make things worse in the 2nd (non-functioning) server.

 

This info might suggest a method of recovery for the old server.

 

One thing you might want to consider -- 24TB can be backed up on just 3 modern 8TB drives ... e.g. Best Buy currently has WD external 8TB units for $169.   Before doing ANYTHING -- especially on the running server -- you might want to copy all of its data to a backup drive.     You could also, instead of using the backup drives in their cases, simply build a small UnRAID server with 4 8TB drives with single parity and then you'd have 24TB of protected space to back up all the data to.

 

Link to comment

GREAT NEWS!   The down machine was only down because she plugged an external drive bay PS2 power supply into the keyboard port. So when I unplugged it I was able to start it right up and it presented shares to the network!  Almost everything that was on the down machine was also on the up machine, so we are copying things over tonight, so in a few hours, everything will be on the up machine. Then sometime in the next week or so I can take the downed machine to rebuild it as an unraid machine.

 

  I also suggested she create external backups.  Thanks for your support!

Link to comment

Sounds like there's enough space on each of the machines for all of the data -- apparently her husband had a good backup strategy :)

 

So ... I'd suggest that after you create an UnRAID machine and copy all of the data from the other server to it (with verification to be sure they're all good copies), that you then turn the 2nd machine into another UnRAID system for backups ... and copy all of the data back to it.    You could set it up to run the backups automatically;  or it could simply be kept OFF most of the time; and just turned on periodically to sync the backups [It sounds like there's not a lot of changes likely on the systems].    I'd use dual parity on the main machine, and probably just single parity on the backup.

 

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.