Legacy Network Products

[Oleg]

Hi,

I can't find any documentation on how to restore the RAID 1 in case of the disk failure.

Is it just a matter of replacing the failed disk with the new one?

Thank you,

Oleg.

[RAsg]

Hello,

If the MSS II 1TB drives fails the only documented option is to get an RMA to replace the complete unit. 

Using the MSS for backup means the same data is on the computer and on the MSS at the same time.  It is not likely that the computer and the MSS will fail at the same time.

A USB drive can be connected to the MSS II and the Advanced Web Page has an option to backup the Accounts on MSS to the USB drive for added protection and can even be scheduled.

The MSS drive was done as raid with two drives to make the drive 1TB in capacity.  The raid with this device is not for speed.  Speed is based on network bandwidth anyway. The raid 0 option does not split the data to both drives it is spanning.  One drive fills up then it starts on the next. 

I hear there may be changes on the newer MSS devices when they come out like the option to replace a single drive if one of the two drives fails. 

Regards,

[DDG]

Your response is specific to RAID 0 disk spanning.  The question was about RAID 1 disk mirroring (500 GB total capacity mirrored instead of 1 GB).  The point of RAID 1 mirroring is to save your data on two drives in case in case one fails.  The Shared Storage II is advertised to and allows you to setup RAID 1 mirroring but does not document the recovery procedure when one of the drive fails.  Please advise!

[duschdas]

I have just found out that I also have a RAID 1 Problem (I cant acces the harddrive)...when you go to your RAID-Settings it says "Status:Error". I made a Diagnostic but it seems that didnt help much...it didn't even find the error. There is no Documentatin how to solve this Problem anywhere. The only option I know is to backup all the files (which I dont know how to do since i cant acces my files), format Shared Storage and put it back to RAID, put back all the files and hope it works again properly.

Help about this problem would be appreciates.
Duschdas


Message Edited by duschdas on 12-09-2007 06:24 AM

[kkkwj]

I started a new thread with the diagnostic code in the subject line. My progress is described there.

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=mss&thread.id=98

[trunksy]

My shared storage ii actually had the controller fail. Or at least, that's what the technician said when I called and told them that the power LED was blinking green and then amber every few seconds.

If it is just a hard drive failure and I'm running it in RAID 1, couldn't I just pull the good hard drive and install it in a USB enclosure and load it into Windows using ext2fs?  Has anyone actually used this method to verify it works before I void the warranty? Since he only service that Seagate will do is a complete replacement, it looks like I have to figure out a way to get my data off first.

I know someone else in this thread actually reformatted from Ext3 to NTFS but I'm not trying to fix the failed NAS. I'm just trying to recover several hundred GB's of data to put onto a Buffalo Terastore server since it seems to have better performance, more size and better reliability. It doesn't hurt that they have a rackmount version either.

[merwin]

They are not telling the entire truth   That particular flashing pattern actually means one of the drives went out of sync and was disabled.

There is alternate firmware on the internet(s) that allows telnet access into the Shared Storage, but that is not supported by Seagate and will most likely void your warranty.

Basically, the RAID is done in software, not hardware, and that means that sync issues are more likely to happen. They use mdadm to build the RAID. Mine has had it happen 3 times now, and all 3 times I've logged in via telnet and used the mdadm rebuild command, and everything goes green again after a reboot.

These drives have the potential to do a heck of a lot once you have telnet access into it (for example, you can install a bittorrent client on it and have it download directly to the MSS).


Message Edited by merwin on 03-20-2008 05:18 PM

Message Edited by merwin on 03-20-2008 05:27 PM

[trunksy]

OMG! You rock. I was ready to take apart my Maxtor Shared Storage II.

I haven't gone over the community rules enough to know if you can mention the actual name of the unsupported firmware and where instructions to load it if your MSSII is already out of sync but PM me if you can't post them here.

You'd be a lifesaver, figuratively speaking.

[trunksy]

I think I figured it out for myself but you need to be familiar with Linux to get into this since it involves VI and familiarizing yourself on how to use MDADM. For those planning to go this route because, 1) you don't have your data backed up because RAID 1 is supposed to be failsafe and 2) you'd rather not lose all your data by sending it in to Seagate without paying a nice chunk of change to their data recovery division, let me warn you that going beyond step 2 will invalidate your warranty. Given that caveat, here goes how I did my rebuild:

First, I initially thought that the the web server was not loading since I wasn't able to talk to the the IP address and the computer name that I previously used to access my MSS II. After checking my DHCP tables, I saw that it had picked up a dynamic IP on my network and reset it's name to a generic name like MSS-XXXXXX. I had totally forgot that I had performed a reset when I was talking to the Seagate/Maxtor tech which couldn't offer me any more that that and to send it in for warranty service and lose all my data. So you gotta' find out the IP address of your MSS II and log into the advanced settings screen with your web browser.

Second, after getting into the web interface, you can start by upgrading to the most recent firmware to reduce any problems if you are still on older firmware. The latest firmware is 3.1.28 at:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=mss2-fw&vgnextoid=331f8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM1000...

Third, load the open-source version of the firmware that has SSH included at:

http://www.openmss.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=787#p3883

Fourth, SSH into your MSS II and follow the installation instructions included with the readme on the open source firmware to change the root password.

Fifth, fix the "can't access tty: job control turned off" error during login:

http://openmss.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=838&hilit=tty#p4053

Sixth, start the rebuild using MDADM:

I used "mdadm --detail /dev/md0" to view my array information. Make sure that you have one active device and that it's working. If you have a failed device, you'll need to check whether you need to actually replace it rather than attempt a rebuild.

The drive that was still active for me was /dev/sdb6. Thus, /dev/sda6 is my drive that is probably out of sync. If the other drive failed on yours, you'll obviously use the other drive in these commands (/dev/sdb6 rather than /dev/sda6). To double-check that the problem is a sync problem, I did a "mdadm --query /dev/sda6" and it reported that this drive is not in the array because of a "mismatch". Then, I did a "mdadm --examine /dev/sda6" to see that the state is "clean".

To rebuild the array, I did a "mdadm --manage --add /dev/md0 /dev/sda6". This will put the drive back in the array and start rebuiding.

I did a "mdadm --detail md0" at this point, to see that the drive is added back into the array as a spare, the state of the array is "clean, degraded, recovering"  and gives the rebuild status.

Seventh, after the rebuild was completed, I then checked the MSS II RAID settings status in the web interface says "healthy" before closing SSH and configuring my network settings back to the way I had it before. Voila, good as before without sending it to Seagate and losing all my data!

To clear the error light on the front panel, just reboot. If you want to fix everything, you can also fix this typo:

http://www.openmss.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=787#p4279

Message Edited by trunksy on 04-07-2008 02:46 PM

[Morten]

I managed to restore my RAID1 by taking out the disk, plugging it into my Windows PC and use the free "R-Linux" recovery program to restore it.

What the hell was Maxtor thinking when they gave us RAID1 without any way of recovering the data? What was the point of running RAID1 in the first place without it???


Message Edited by Morten on 07-17-2008 10:31 AM