BlackArmor NAS Network Storage Server

[Blang]

I just purchased a BlackArmor 400 with 4 2TB drives. So far, I'm very happy with the unit. I've been slowly moving my entire life over to it (work files, personal files, entire media library, etc). I have also connected my old 1TB Seagate FreeAgent drive for additional backup of the vitally important files.

My main question is... What happens in the event of a server failure? I'm talking about more than just the fan; maybe something happens to the internal board or CPU rendering the server completely useless. I bought this thing to put my mind at ease when it comes to hard drive failures. My RAID5 configuration gives me the piece of mind that if a drive fails, I won't loose any data (2 drives failing at the same time is a completely different matter and a discussion for another time). But what about the server itself?

It would make sense to me that I could just buy a new BlackArmor server and place all 4 drives into that unit then continue where I left off. But after talking to a Seagate rep, it sounds like you can't do that. It seems a little ridiculous to me that it wouldn't work that way. If you buy a faulty unit, store all your files on it, then a week later it bricks for some random reason, are you telling me that all files on the drives are completely lost?

I've searched through the forum and haven't found this question asked (or answered) so I hope I'm not repeating someone else's question.

Thanks in advance for any and all responses.

[Blang]

Does no one have an answer to this? Someone out there must know what happens in the event of a server failure. Can you just replace the NAS unit itself and put all the old drives into the new unit then continue on like nothing happened? It makes sense to me that you should be able to move the entire RAID from one BlackArmor 400 to another without the RAID having to re-build.

Anyone?

[scpcom]

If the HDD itself and the data are intact, it is no problem to access the data. The RAID is a linux standard MD RAID containing a LVM volume. So you can connect the HDDs to linux PC an access for example like this: mdadm --assemble /dev/md3 /dev/sdb4 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdd4 /dev/sde4 vgscan mount /dev/vg0/lv0 /mnt After running the commands you can find the data under /mnt I don't know what happens if you simply plug the HDDs into a new BlackArmor NAS, but it should work. If you are not sure you can use the method above to backup your data before plugging the HDDs in the new BlackArmor NAS.