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Tech question RAIDs

Discussion in 'General' started by sheepofblue, Mar 29, 2019.

  1. sheepofblue

    sheepofblue Well-Known Member

    So I 'had' a Lacie 5Big Thunderbolt2 raid that took a huge crap. Pretty sure it is the housing. So for the techies a couple of questions:
    1 If I remove the 5 drives from the bad housing and put them into another 5 big housing will it recognize them? I am thinking the housing has a stripped down linux in firmware and uses md in some form based upon googling and how people claim recoveries.

    2 What drive image formats can mdadm recognize (looked at the man page and it is not clear beyond.img)

    I prefer to do it on my Mac but can create a virtual Linux or <shudder> Windows if I have to (think I will as I cannot find mdadm on Mac). The plan now is to image the five drives before trying to install them in the new housing then try the housing if that fails move onto mdadm. Thought I had a backup but apparently when I upgraded to a new machine I did an epic fail. Lots of old video on the drive including dogs and bikes.

    Oh and lacie is fairly worthless to me as I have not even found a support email address for stuff like #1. Just an 800 number for a data recovery service as if I would use theirs :Puke:

    Thanks for any help and sorry for the geekease to others :beer:
     
  2. Venom51

    Venom51 John Deere Equipment Expert - Not really

    The controller is almost certainly Linux. You have a good shot at that working but for it to work you need to configure the new unit that same way as the previous unit. Move the drives to the same bay location in the new unit.

    Also check the Lacie support site. They may have a migration tool that may be useful. The trick will be getting a unit from the same generation. If Lacie released an updated unit with hardware changes that could bite you in the ass.

    Of course I have to say it out loud. RAID arrays are not a back up mechanism. You should have a copy of that data somewhere else. My other suggestion is that if you don't need an array for performance reasons then there is never a reason to use it. Certainly not for anything connected over a USB bus. Keep it simple for this very reason.

    If all else fails...https://www.lacie.com/products/services/recovery-services/in-lab-recovery/
     
    sheepofblue likes this.
  3. Dave K

    Dave K DaveK über alles!

  4. Kurlon

    Kurlon Well-Known Member

    Everything I'm seeing (very VERY quick google) says Lacie is using vanilla mdadm raids. I don't see any attempts to port mdadm to OS X so... booting a linux of some flavor is going to have to be the path forward.
     
    sheepofblue likes this.
  5. sheepofblue

    sheepofblue Well-Known Member

    :beer: yep when it failed I thought fine I have a backup and was surprised when I did not. Thanks for the input. I will image the drives before putting them in anything for sure but am really hoping that it will reassemble in the new housing. Both are set at the default of RAID5 so that is the same. Same model but as to firmware etc there is no telling as the old one is dead as can be, lost it and I think a monitor at the same time (no biggie on the monitor as it is ancient and a second display.

    Oh and not USB, thunderbolt2 with the new raid that will replace this being thunderbolt3 WAY faster. I have rather large storage needs between video, pictures and programs.
     
  6. Sabre699

    Sabre699 Wait...hold my beer.


    upload_2019-3-29_13-32-33.jpeg
     
  7. sheepofblue

    sheepofblue Well-Known Member

    So for anyone caring when I put a single raid drive into a dual bay drive caddy my Mac recognizes it as part of a raid with info. So while I am still going to image them before trying it appears the mac may reassemble them if in a housing with all five... more to come (takes a while to image 10TB)
     
  8. GRH

    GRH Well-Known Member

    Better watch Lacey around the caddies
    [​IMG]
     
    sheepofblue likes this.
  9. I don't expect you will have problems with the RAID group being recognized. Usually you would only have a problem if the new enclosure is down-rev from the old one.

    BTW, I run a big NAS in my place, and I back up critical data to another NAS. Always good to run two.
     
  10. sheepofblue

    sheepofblue Well-Known Member

    Oh when this started I thought it was backed up, I thought wrong. It will be now. I tend to go overboard on fixes so no problems come back :dead: <--imagine the horse is the problem.
     
  11. Kurlon

    Kurlon Well-Known Member

    Seeing a raid signature on a disk is VERY different from being able to assemble and mount the RAID FYI...
     
    sheepofblue likes this.
  12. Not being able to recognize a RAID array from drive metadata is an EMC fault. No one else has that problem :D
     
  13. sheepofblue

    sheepofblue Well-Known Member

    True the goal is to duplicate the drives then throw them in a new (read unsmoked) Lacie that is the same model and hope. If that fails I plan on attempting to use mdadm to reassemble. That fails I might send them off as there is some old video of dogs that are gone on it.
     
  14. sheepofblue

    sheepofblue Well-Known Member

    So for anyone cursed with this disaster (like Venom51 says do backups) I finally got everything duplicated just in case before I worked on reassembly. There was no need (other than precaution) I swapped the new drives out and put the old drives into the housing and it is recognized. Next up to assemble and init the new raid and get the entire system back to normal just in time to flood it with telescope pictures :cool:
     
  15. Venom51

    Venom51 John Deere Equipment Expert - Not really

    Rule number 2, after you get this back online, is to remember that a recovery plan that has not been tested and proven to work is nor a recovery plan.
     
    sheepofblue likes this.
  16. sheepofblue

    sheepofblue Well-Known Member

    I have tested and used Time Machine. My problem was I thought this was included and it was not. I also have the original tapes the oldest videos were made from though at some age they would become brittle.

    Life is good time to reorganize cable hell will adding another drive enclosure, oh and set up the new telescope mount. Though it might be nice enough to ride Sunday and now that emergencies are coped with.....
     

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