DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

fulcrum · 2008-01-06 11:33:17

Hi all,

A customer of mine who is a long distance from here, had his DNS-323 die due to a power spike. I have sent him a new one and he is hoping to pop his old drives in there and be back up and running.

The drives were 2 x 500gb seagates running in a RAID 1 setup.

Has anyone had to do this before? Any ideas of the steps to take?

From memory when I set this up for him originally, the unit formats the drives when you choose the configuration. We need to retain the data on the drives.

Thanks for any help/advice (trying to get it sorted before he gets it and rings me for help).

fulcrum

fordem · 2008-01-06 21:11:07

Had I been in your situation, I would have installed a pair of drives in the replacement unit, created a RAID1 array and formatted them and then removed them - purely out of an abundance of caution.

However - I do believe that the disk configuration is read from the disks on every startup - and if that is right your customer should not have a problem.

Another thought - if the problem were caused by a power spike, there is a possibility that the power supply is damaged and not the DNS-323 itself - so perhaps he could try swapping the power brick as step #1.

Last thought on the subject - and this based on experience with a customer who had faulty wiring - if you're using the DNS-323 as a print server, make sure the DNS-323 and the printer are both fed from the same power outlet - it's theoretically possible to have the DNS-323 protected by a UPS and a laser printer being powered from a wall outlet with no protection and a surge travel through the printer, through the USB cable and take out the DNS-323. In a situation like this use a surge strip between the outlet and the laser and feed the UPS from the surge strip.

Final word - - BACKUP

fulcrum · 2008-01-06 23:10:30

Thanks fordem.

He only got the replacement unit late yesterday or early today. I am on the east coast of Australia and he is in Vanuatu (told you he was a long way away).

Anyway, if the settings are on the drives then all should be well. Fingers crossed

We know that the supply is dead, he is going to try that first. He was just worried about whether it took the unit with it, hence the whole new unit. I had to meet a guy at the airport and give him the unit to get it there quickly.

He also does not use it as a print server. I didn't tell him about that ability.

I think that on the next sea freight shipment we send him, I'll suggest he gets a few 1000VA or bigger UPS systems. I don't think he has any at the moment and power is pretty dodgy over there. I'll also suggest an extra drive in a caddy and suggest once a week he backs the DNS up to it.

He was using this system in RAID1 assuming in that way he was covered for backups except for the place burning down or the unit being stolen, but I guess it is always best to have too many copies of your data than not enough.

fordem · 2008-01-06 23:26:28

I'll run some tests on mine when I get back from church - let you what I find later

fordem · 2008-01-07 03:15:33

Well - the results are not as I had hoped - but all is not lost.

I created a RAID1 array using a pair of Seagate 250 GB drives and wrote some data to them, and then pulled them out and put them aside - after some futsing around with a couple of other disks testing throughput and what have you, I reset the unit using the pin switch - that's as close as I can get it to an out of the box configuration - and re-installed the RAID1 pair of disks and powered it up.

It did not ask me to format the disks, BUT, the status page shows two separate disks - and Windows explorer shows that they both contain the same data, which I have been able to verify as intact.

SO.... your customer should be able to retrieve the data, but he'll probably need to recreate the array after backing up the data.

fulcrum · 2008-01-07 04:10:36

fordem,

Thanks so much for doing the testing. I contacted the customer this morning and he had already had one of the drives popped on a linux box (finding one of them in Vanuatu would have been fun) and backed up to another drive. He had then popped the drives in the new unit and found the same result as you... two drives with identical data.

I am getting him step by step instructions to recreate the RAID1 (since he has the data on another drive) and have suggested an additional backup and UPS's in the future.

Thanks again for taking the time to help.

fordem · 2008-01-07 05:29:28

Always willing to help, but not always in a position to do so and there are some folk here who know waaay more than I do about how this thing works.

HaydnH · 2008-01-07 13:28:58

Unfortunately I rebooted my dns-323 over the weekend and ssh hasn't restarted so I can't login to have a look around at present. However, as the process for setting up the mirror is done through the web based gui, the steps to take to recreate the mirror should be in the code contained in the firmware.

Be aware that I doubt if just running mdadm (if that exists on the 323) to set up the mirror will work as the settings will be lost after the next reboot - there will probably be a command run afterwards to store the fact that it's a mirror to the rom - again the code for the web gui should tell you this command.

DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

Announcement

#1 2008-01-06 11:33:17

Unit failed - inserting RAID drives in new unit

#2 2008-01-06 21:11:07

Re: Unit failed - inserting RAID drives in new unit

#3 2008-01-06 23:10:30

Re: Unit failed - inserting RAID drives in new unit

#4 2008-01-06 23:26:28

Re: Unit failed - inserting RAID drives in new unit

#5 2008-01-07 03:15:33

Re: Unit failed - inserting RAID drives in new unit

#6 2008-01-07 04:10:36

Re: Unit failed - inserting RAID drives in new unit

#7 2008-01-07 05:29:28

Re: Unit failed - inserting RAID drives in new unit

#8 2008-01-07 13:28:58

Re: Unit failed - inserting RAID drives in new unit

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