NAS Drives moving to PC but they are RAID ?

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
10,512
Location
Behind you... Naked!
I have a pair of 1TB Drives that are in an ICYBOX IB-4220B

Yesterday, the ruddy thing failed on me.

Its half heartedly powering up but the PC cannot find it at all, and it simply does not fully boot up.

After some messing about, I find that if I have one drive connected, either one, it matters not, or even no drive, then it does powerup just fine. Obviously of course with no drive, it says as much and with only one of the drives it says new disk found and I have to format it before use.

The snag is that its over 95% full and I cannot really lose that data.

Now, can I move these drives into a PC and use them as RAID as-is, or will they need formatting?

What is the best, most safest way that I can get at the data?

I think simply buying a new power supply would be easier I suppose, but is there a UK supplier?

Any help would be great... Thank you.
 
Ok, since I must have asked the question badly, I will try putting it as simple as possible.

I have a pair of Hard Disks in a NAS box that are both setup as a striped RAID.

The NAS has died and the Hard Disks are ( I hope ) fine.

I am trying to access teh data on a PC but the disks are showing up as NONRAID - I dont want to force writing the RAID data just in case that wipes them?

How can I access the drives without resorting to beign forced to waste more money on the NAS box.

For what it is worth, if I simply have the drives connected as normal drives, there is a 128MB blank area either side of a 931GB Chunk of data that the NAS box made.
 
Last edited:
Does your PC have onboard RAID?

If so, there is a chance (remote but possible) that if you configure a 2 disk RAID0 array with the same stripe size and then DO NOT INITIALISE IT, you may be able to see your data again.

EDIT: Reading up it looks like your P7H55 doesn't have a RAID controller - maybe Ebay for a replacement used NAS??
 
PistolPete said:
Does your PC have onboard RAID?

If so, there is a chance (remote but possible) that if you configure a 2 disk RAID0 array with the same stripe size and then DO NOT INITIALISE IT, you may be able to see your data again.

EDIT: Reading up it looks like your P7H55 doesn't have a RAID controller - maybe Ebay for a replacement used NAS??
Click to expand...



No, that Mobo is NOT used for the array.

This NAS box is one of the older ones that I wanted to backup onto my big NAS

At the moment I have been trying the drives on a 965p DS4

I do however have a number of other drives at my disposal.

EVGA 680 SLI
Gigabyte P35C DS3 / 945 DS3 / 965 DS3 / S2H / 78M DS3 ( I like DS3's it seems )

Couple of others also a couple of cards too I think in total I have 12 Motherboards that have RAID on.

I will just have to keep trying but so far its simply not done a thing. I am also of course fully aware that the ICYBOX 4220B was runnign the RAID array as ext2fs and of course I am using Linux to hopefully read the disks.
 
DS4 has a ICH8R, so RAID0 should be fine.
I'd try configuring the array with the same stripe size and see if Linux can see it.
 
Funky?

I connected the Drive to the 2 purple connections and the controler asks me to press CTRL+G to config the RAID, but it does not accept my keypress.

Using two of the orange ports, it does and thats CTRL+I ( IIRC ) to config that array, however there is no way that I can set up RAID without inisializing the Disks.

The purple ports are the Gigabyte ones and the orange ones are the ICH8R Im sure?
 
It's very unlikely that you'll be able to connect the 2 disks to your motherboard and continue to use the RAID array as the controller used in the IB-4220B will be different than those used on your motherboard.

As it's a striped array then you can't try and access the data from the drives individually as each drive will only hold ~50% of each file.
 
Surveyor said:
It's very unlikely that you'll be able to connect the 2 disks to your motherboard and continue to use the RAID array as the controller used in the IB-4220B will be different than those used on your motherboard.
Click to expand...

This is my concern.

It is also the moment that I decided that I am not goign to bother with RAID again.

Its been rock solid for me for a fair while but this is a perfect example of why I should not do it.

Surveyor said:
As it's a striped array then you can't try and access the data from the drives individually as each drive will only hold ~50% of each file.
Click to expand...

Yes, I am aware of that. Utterly gutted.

---

Last night, Iwas trying a few tricks but they didnt seem to work...

Running the NAS box, with the Drives connected to it, but powered from the PC should get me workign enough to access the data but that too failed miserably and I will unable to even see the NAS box at all.

I am now on the hunt for a whole new 4220B ( Oh boy I never wanted one of these crap again, but needs must as they say ) and this will be the last ditch attempt before giving up.
 
Today a replacement 4220B PSU came my way.
I chucked the drives back in teh box and plugged it all up...

BINGO!

Right, time to get myself a new HD and ditch this pile of junk NAS box for good!
 
I read the words IcyBox, NAS and RAID and cringed... I had an icybox nas awhile back that would completely randomly out the blue reformat the drives completely of its own accord :S and then it bricked itself, the replacement would randomly stop seeing the discs at all.
 
Essexraptor said:
what does the 16TB NAS in your sig run in then ?
Click to expand...

The others are only 3x2TB Drives ( he says Only ) but they are Software RAID in a PC, not a NAS. I put 16TB in the Sig to annoy a mate... We are permanently in a state of getting one up on each other. I am only resorting to B/S cos Im losing.

I'll change it.... Maybe!
 
Rroff said:
I read the words IcyBox, NAS and RAID and cringed... I had an icybox nas awhile back that would completely randomly out the blue reformat the drives completely of its own accord :S and then it bricked itself, the replacement would randomly stop seeing the discs at all.
Click to expand...

I got 2 of these given to me.

I should have taken that as a warning in teh first place, but it worked lovely with teh 2x320GB that I threw into it, and soon filled up.

( Dont you find that when you have the space, you can fill it surprisingly quick )

So, I got 2x1TB and then used this for my ISO storage but the thing was so painfully slow that I decided that I would only use it for the torrents ocne they had finished downloading and its been fine doing that for well over a year now.

Its got all the Linux Isos as well as all my ISOs for my various Windows versions including a few custom installs and all the drivers for all my PCs... All teh stuff that is not needed every 2 minutes.

I then setup a faster access storage in my File Server with a single 2TB Drive, but that soon filled up and then I decided to go the Software RAID route with another drive and next thing I know, I have 3x2TB drives ( filled up with utter junk I know )
 
FatRakoon said:
The others are only 3x2TB Drives ( he says Only ) but they are Software RAID in a PC, not a NAS. I put 16TB in the Sig to annoy a mate... We are permanently in a state of getting one up on each other. I am only resorting to B/S cos Im losing.

I'll change it.... Maybe!
Click to expand...

Cool :D

I've got a couple of Icybox (+steelvine clones) "RAID" NAS boxes here but use them in JBOD for back ups etc only

Now I've seen this thread I won't bother with any sort of RAID array on them

;)
 
To be fair ( And this is a biggie given what we all know about these things ) but I have used that thing with a single 400GB drive, a pair of 320GB Seagates and a pair of Samsung 1TB Drives ( Current ) and it has been a fairly solid setup.

I am absolutely dead set against the utter lies that they say its a Gigabit box. I can transfer data over Serial port quicker than this, so thats a complete lie as far as I am concerned, but if you accept that its in Pre-Dialup speeds then its been ok.

---

I do have a few standard external drives but I like the idea of being able to leave the things running and those things, while faster, get pretty darned toasty very quickly.

I am soon going to be looking for something that lets me use 2 or more drives, but will let me keep them seperate, NAS is preferable, but of course USB is fine but I need to know that I can leave them on 24/7
 
yes ... you can leave them on 24/7

leave my microserver and little Syn NAS on all the time, unless I'm moving them, the power pull when in idle is very low.

frankly, your 3 x 2TB drives would better utilised in a standalone server or NAS than stuck in a rig.

it's my opinion and of course it "horses for courses" :)
 
Those drives ARE in a standalone PC... My file server.

That PC is a Q6600 and it spends all day serving files and folding... Nothing else.

It has an old 40GB for C: and the TB Drives are D: with Windows' own spanned RAID junk on it.

I really should have it as I used to...

What I did previously, was to share a folder and have the drives as a folder within that shared folder. This allowed me to keep the drives seperate and yet seen as one.

Now they re in teh same boat as the NAS box in that if anythign goes iffy, the lot is gone.

But Im a hoarder... I could get rid of so much... but I dont want to
 
Sorry to bring this one up guys, but I have just bought a new PSU for the spare NAS

I have also found that I kind of like the Seagate GoFlex Desktop thing. Its USB sure, but the LAN version has a slightly wider base and I have just bought myself 2 of the USB 2 ones

Anyway...

I have been toying about with the NAS boxes and one of them, seems to be perfectly fine with a 2TB disk in it... Id love to try a pair but cash aint my best buddy right now... Nor is the wife actually cos she just seen how much I have spent this month, but anyway.. One will do a 2TB Disk, the other will not, however, when I put a pair of 320GB Drives in and use SPAN then I still get access to the disks if I bring them back into the PC.

Does that sound right?

I mean...

The whole cause of my big issues this time, was that I had them stripped and I just could not get them to work in a PC without initialising them, but this way they still remain independant disks in their own right, but should the NAS actually fail, I could still put the disks into a PC and get at the files without needing RAID?

Cool.

Had I bloody known this in the first place.

Now, what is going through my head, is to put both my spare 1TB Drives into the Seagate Flex things, but to also put the 2x2TB into the NAS to have a 4TB storage disk!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom