Anyone know RAID Arrays?

jrdavid68 · 06-23-2007, 07:51 AM

Long story short.. My wife's office has recovered data on an 80 pin SCSI Ultra 320 drive. I have it at home with no way to connect it to anything that I have. My desktop and drive enclosures are all for IDE.

She has a new server in the office with a RAID5 setup. The array has a couple open slots. Anyone know if it is possible to slap this drive in to an empty slot and configure the software so it sees this drive and "extra" drive outside the RAID setup? We need to move the data on this hard drive to the Array.

legion · 06-23-2007, 07:53 AM

I don't know anything about RAID, so I can't comment on that.

However, you could get an external USB enclosure for the drive and hook it up to any PC. It would look like a thumb drive. Do a search on Amazon, they have dozens...

Joeaksa · 06-23-2007, 07:56 AM

Same thing that Legion is referring to but there is also a cable adapter that Fry's sells that is a USB harness that plugs into just about any drive and allows you to access the hard drive.

Cost was less than $30 a couple of weeks ago and it worked on SATA, IDE, SCSI and so on, both 2.5 and 3.5 drives.

Copy the data to a CD or other drive on any computer then save it.

jrdavid68 · 06-23-2007, 08:03 AM

Thanks guys. I spent a couple hours last night looking for a drive enclosure that would work for a SCSI drive. I had no luck. I could find enclosures, but they still needed to connect as external SCSI drive - not through USB or via a PC Card.

Joeaska - any chance you have a link to what you bought?

Mr_Wizard · 06-23-2007, 08:08 AM

I have a Adapted Snap Server 4400 that I use to store all of my backups at work in a RAID5 configuration. I added a separate SCSI drive to the server outside the RAID configuration by configuring it as a separate volumn.

kaisen · 06-23-2007, 08:09 AM

We heard you the first time Bill

Jus kiddin!

Mr_Wizard · 08:12 AM

My damn browser froze!!!!
There deleted all the duplicate posts

Joeaksa · 06-23-2007, 08:15 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jrdavid68
Thanks guys. I spent a couple hours last night looking for a drive enclosure that would work for a SCSI drive. I had no luck. I could find enclosures, but they still needed to connect as external SCSI drive - not through USB or via a PC Card.

Joeaska - any chance you have a link to what you bought?

JR,

Normally yes but am out on the road and cannot remember the name or company.

Just searched on Ebay and found something close to what what I have. This one does not say SCSI so not sure it would work but its a step in the right direction.

Ebay item number 300119584786

Have used this on both laptop and desktop drives, plugging the adapter in the bare HD and copying the data to the computer. Have also used it to "clone or ghost" drives for laptops when upgrading.

Hope this helps.

Joe

Halm · 06-23-2007, 08:33 AM

It has been a while since I worked with a stand alone SCSI drive, but. . . Buy a cheap SCSI PCI board and plug it in that way. Don't forget to get the cable and terminator. I did a quick GOOGLE and found one for under $10 (used) at Prime Electronics. www.primelec.com

HTH

jrdavid68 · 06-23-2007, 08:44 AM

Hi Halm, I considered that too. However, I am confused on how the two drives would work. My primary drive would be an IDE drive in a normal PC and I would want the SCSI drive to be a secondary drive, not the boot drive.

I found some more information on this and it appears that I would need an additional Hard Drive interface card in order to tell which drive I wanted to be what.

jrdavid68 · 06-23-2007, 08:47 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mr_Wizard
I have a Adapted Snap Server 4400 that I use to store all of my backups at work in a RAID5 configuration. I added a separate SCSI drive to the server outside the RAID configuration by configuring it as a separate volumn.

Mr_Wizard,

Did you place the hard drive in an empty slot in the RAID or did you mount it in the system as a separate hard drive running on a separate SCSI card?

beepbeep · 06-23-2007, 10:03 AM

Connect it to RAID-array, boot up RAID BIOS and configure the drive as JBOD drive. (single)

If you don't know what you are doing, let somebody else do it or you might wipe out both RAID array and your disk

jrdavid68 · 06-23-2007, 10:14 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by beepbeep
Connect it to RAID-array, boot up RAID BIOS and configure the drive as JBOD drive. (single)

If you don't know what you are doing, let somebody else do it or you might wipe out both RAID array and your disk

beepbeep - that's my hesitation. I have been in the tech support world, building PC's since the 386 world (yes, almost two decades!), but I have almost zero experience with RAID arrays.

I do have a call in to the vendor that supplied the server this time around to make sure I do it correctly. Haven't heard from them yet and probably won't until Monday. However, the wife had planned on getting the data in place over the weekend so everything could be back up and ready to go by Monday.

beepbeep · 06-23-2007, 10:44 AM

Most of modern SCSI RAID arrays can self-configure JBOD drives. You can try to just connect the drive, boot the OS and see if it recognizes the drive w/o reconfiguring anything in BIOS.

Give us the vendor of your SCSI RAID card and I might be able to help you.

Other than that, just can buy a PCI Adaptec U320 card, install it in your PC and you'll be able to access it. Pity that you don't live here, I have lot's of those cards on the shelf.

jrdavid68 · 06-23-2007, 10:57 AM

beepbeep - if I buy the PCI card, won't I also need some sort of Hard Drive controller to tell the system that I want to boot from the installed IDE drive and just look at the SCSI drive as a secondary drive?

jrdavid68 · 06-23-2007, 10:59 AM

beepbeep - I don't know the manufacturer of the SCSI RAID card, I can tell you that the server came from Dell in case they use a particular brand/model.

beepbeep · 06-23-2007, 11:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jrdavid68
beepbeep - if I buy the PCI card, won't I also need some sort of Hard Drive controller to tell the system that I want to boot from the installed IDE drive and just look at the SCSI drive as a secondary drive?

It's configured in your PC BIOS.

Boot device: IDE or SCSI. As long as it's IDE it won't boot from SCSI.

svandamme · svandamme's Garage

don't mix match different scsi disks within the same stripe set
the raid 5 will be bottlenecked by it's slowest disk

i would also hesitate to slap it on the same scsi channel, because it will eat away bandwith from the raid5

if all you want to do , is migrate the data to the Raid volume
i'de either connect it to a second simple scsci controller, or even better, copy it over the network from another pc

i've done data recovery and migrations and what not from back in the days with compaq IDA raid, till these days with Fiber channel SAN's and what not.. and it's been my MO ,

to A
not eff around with the redundant, fault tolerant hardware, by not plugging in disks that don't belong there, leave the raid machine as is...

and B
not eff around with the hardware holding the data that has to be recovered, by plugging it in to raid controllers that often have automated logic that goes "hey ,new disk, initialize now"

which can happen if "somebody" configured the raid to consider a free slot as an online spare, and Murphy's law kicks in , and kills a live disk , just 2 minutes after you just plugged in the data disk ...

data to be recovered : freshly installed machine, with Antivirus and correct drivers, dedicated controller for the disk that has to be recovered, and then duplicate the data as fast as possible before doing anything else

i've never lost data... ever...
i've seen lot's of others loose data...

jrdavid68 · 06-23-2007, 01:35 PM

Thanks. I'm at the office now and the RAID (SAS) connector is smaller than the 80 pin on the hard drive, so won't be effing with that at all. Headed to Frye's in a bit to work out one of the other solutions.

This drive is the one back from the data recovery service. It was used a the target drive. We had sent it along with the server as the tech that first troubleshot this bought a new drive to try and re-build the RAID with no success. So, this drive was a spare.

Had I known it's origin at the time, I would have asked for the data on DVDs instead of on that hard drive and we would not have any issues. I "assumed" the spare disk came from somewhere else and was an IDE drive which I would just hook up to my External IDE drive enclosure or to my achine at home or to one in her office as a secondary drive as I have done 100's of times in the past.

Mr_Wizard · 06-23-2007, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jrdavid68
Mr_Wizard,

Did you place the hard drive in an empty slot in the RAID or did you mount it in the system as a separate hard drive running on a separate SCSI card?

4400 has 4 slots for HD's. 3 drives for the RAID5 and the 4th slot for the other hard drive as a stand alone volumn. Sorry took so long to reply, been at a BBQ and swimmin in the cement pond