Unfortunately no one can be told what fun_plug is - you have to see it for yourself.
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Hello,
I just got a DNS-323 and have two drives in it. When I first got it, I put two drives in, Western Digital 320 GB, and set it up as RAID 1. It has been running well for about a week and now I am ready to put actual data on it(there is test data on it now), and wanted to simulate a drive failure. I turned off the device, and pulled out drive number 2. I then turned on the device and went to the config web page, went to status, and expected to see something about a drive failure. Instead, I just saw the same thing I saw before which was that it was still RAID 1 but not in a failed state. I then turned off the device, put drive number 2 back in, powered it on, went back to the status page but saw nothing about resyncing. What am I missing? Am I doing this wrong? Is this expected behavior? How can I check the reliability of the RAID 1 by doing a test?
Thanks,
Doug
douwei@hotmail.com
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1) Put data on the mirrored pair
2) Remove either mirror disk
As long as you can still retrieve your data the mirror works - if you have email reporting configured, you should receive an emailed alert about the drive failure.
3) Either place removed disk in a PC and remove existing partitions before reinstalling or install new disk - power up and go to the admin page and you should be prompted to format after which it will resynch.
Note - if you install a drive with existing partitions in this device, you may get unpredictable results.
Last edited by fordem (2007-09-03 02:56:20)
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Fordem,
Thanks for the reply. If you do not have email reporting working(they do not let you configure a port in the email settings), will the status page show that the drive is gone or in a degraded setting? Also, if you put the same drive in the DNS-323 that you removed, but did not change anything on the remaining drive, is the mirror still okay? You mention that it may have unpredictable results. Is that because it cannot see the existing partition? Thanks in advance.
doug
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I don't think I've ever seen the status page show any sort of disk error - I don't recall what it shows for a failed disk in a RAID1 configuration, and I don't recall if it changes, I do know that if you have two separate disks and you remove one, it will simply no longer appear in the status page.
Also - for what it's worth - I have never seen the disk LED go amber as the manual says it will when a disk fails, even if you "hot-un-plug" the drive.
I believe if you remove a drive and reinstall it without writing to the remaining drive, the mirror will remain intact, but I have no way of verifying this - I do know that if you install a "clean" disk, the unit will resynch, eliminating all doubt.
The reason why I said the results will be unpredictable is that some users here have posted horror stories of losing data when installing previously used drives containing data - although the unit is supposed to format only the one desk, it has been reported that it may format both. I have not personally experienced this with the DNS323 because many years ago I developed the habit of wiping disks before reusing them - the mirrored systems of the early '90's could & would sync from either drive if they both contained data.
Question for you - why should/would you need or want to change the SMTP port - the default (25) works fine
Last edited by fordem (2007-09-03 18:32:25)
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Hi Fordem,
Where does it show on the status page the two separate disks? Also, have you successfully resynched the DNS-323? The horror stories scare me that I would lose data but would feel better if someone had successfully done a re-sync. Also, I was the victim of a spammer bot and my ISP, Comcast, changed my email port to another port..
Doug
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There is only one STATUS page - if you have separate disks, you will see both of them shown on that page.
If you have a single RAID volume, either 0 or 1, it will show a single disk, and if you create a RAID1 disk using less than the total space available, a JBOD will be created utilising the remaining space, and two disks will show on the status page, one is the RAID disk and the other the JBOD.
Yes - I have successfully resynched the DNS-323 and done so on more than one occassion - to the best of my knowledge, you will have no problems as long as the disk you are installing is (a) the same capacity or larger than the one removed and (b) has no data or partitions on it.
A very important point - one 80 GB drive may not have the same capacity as another 80GB drive, even when it's the same make & model - it's not unusual to see one with a few hundred megabytes more or less than the next, if the one you are installing has less capacity, it will not resync. This of course holds true for whatever capacity drives you may be using.
For the sake of completeness, I should point out here that I have never had a disk failure on my DNS-323, and that any data loss experienced has been solely as a result of my fiddling - I have hot swapped drives, installed known defective drives and generally poked and prodded the unit to determine the extent of it's capabilities (or more likely the extent of mine - since I am no linux guru).
I consider it a fine piece of equipment, bearing in mind the price paid - it does have it's weaknesses, which as you have already discovered, include a lack of adequate disk failure reporting mechanisms.
With regard your ISP changing the SMTP port - I find that quite unusual behaviour.
Last edited by fordem (2007-09-03 21:13:24)
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Just a report about testing RAID-1:
I'm trying to simulate disk failure with DNS-323 RAID-1: I removed disk from slot-1 (powered off). After reboot all files available. Next step: I moved disk from slot-2 to slot-1 (see: http://dns323.kood.org/forum/t132-Anyon … ality.html). After powered on the I followed the step to format the disk (no option which slot will be formatted...) and now the sync of 320 GB will take 100 minutes. Temperatur increases up to 55C/131F.
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rotaluclac wrote:
Just a report about testing RAID-1:
I'm trying to simulate disk failure with DNS-323 RAID-1: I removed disk from slot-1 (powered off). After reboot all files available. Next step: I moved disk from slot-2 to slot-1 (see: http://dns323.kood.org/forum/t132-Anyon … ality.html). After powered on the I followed the step to format the disk (no option which slot will be formatted...) and now the sync of 320 GB will take 100 minutes. Temperatur increases up to 55C/131F.
That thread is actually incorrect - you can simply remove the failed drive and insert the new one it's place, doesn't matter which slot it's in.
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