Re: Removing removable ATA hard drives
Hi, I'm reluctant to experiment any more than I have done: the server the drive bay has been fitted to is our live fileserver, with 120GB of user data on two drives on the other ATA channel. I know I would take time to install the drive bay in a test machine, with an old disk and play with it until I am 100% confident on the way to mount and dismount your disk... Whatever others can say. Olivier ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Removing removable ATA hard drives
On Thursday 05 October 2006 10:38, Olivier Nicole wrote: Hi, I'm reluctant to experiment any more than I have done: the server the drive bay has been fitted to is our live fileserver, with 120GB of user data on two drives on the other ATA channel. I know I would take time to install the drive bay in a test machine, with an old disk and play with it until I am 100% confident on the way to mount and dismount your disk... Whatever others can say. Yes, so would I normally but I'm under pressure for a quick fix to this and a number of other issues, as you might guess from the OS version on the server: I'm trying to impose order on a bunch of inherited and undocumented servers running (at least) 4.7-release, 4.9-release, 4.9-stable, 5.2-release, 5.4-release-p6, plus Red Hat 6.0 and WinNT 4.0 SP6a. Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Removing removable ATA hard drives
I'm reluctant to experiment any more than I have done: the server the drive bay has been fitted to is our live fileserver, with 120GB of user data on two drives on the other ATA channel. I know I would take time to install the drive bay in a test machine, with an old disk and play with it until I am 100% confident on the way to mount and dismount your disk... Whatever others can say. Yes, so would I normally but I'm under pressure for a quick fix to this and a number of other issues, as you might guess from the OS version on the server: I'm trying to impose order on a bunch of inherited and undocumented servers running (at least) 4.7-release, 4.9-release, 4.9-stable, 5.2-release, 5.4-release-p6, plus Red Hat 6.0 and WinNT 4.0 SP6a. Unless you need to move that disk from one machine to another, fix it in your server, keep the tray for future testing when you will have more time... (if we ever have more time in the present life :) Olivier ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Removing removable ATA hard drives
On Thursday 05 October 2006 11:00, Olivier Nicole wrote: [Power down a drive bay using its built-in keyswitch and pull the disk without dropping the whole box] Unless you need to move that disk from one machine to another, fix it in your server, keep the tray for future testing when you will have more time... (if we ever have more time in the present life :) I should probably have said: we don't currently have offsite backups (we've exceeded the capacity of our tape device and our budget), and the quick-fix solution is dumping to this hard drive and then pulling it out and taking it home. As such the removability is key to its intended function. I can't keep dropping the main fileserver to fiddle with it, and the alternative in terms of testing is to set up another box with the particular 4.9-STABLE snapshot running on this server (to eliminate OS version-related variable effects). I'm hoping some kind person here will save me the trouble by saying, from experience, either ``yes, you're on the right track but you need to do x, y and z before pulling/replacing the drive cassette'', or ``no, run away screaming before your server room goes down in flames''. Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Removing removable ATA hard drives
I should probably have said: we don't currently have offsite backups (we've exceeded the capacity of our tape device and our budget), and the quick-fix solution is dumping to this hard drive and then pulling it out and taking it home. USB box? At least it is known to be hot plugable. With the drawback that it will be slower and USB has no data integrity check. Olivier ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Removing removable ATA hard drives
On Thursday 05 October 2006 10:34, Jonathan McKeown wrote: I recently bought a drive caddy for an ATA hard drive. The unit is in two parts: a cassette, into which can be fitted a standard ATA hard drive, and a carrier permanently fitted into a standard drive bay. The carrier includes a power keyswitch for the drive bay. I installed it, brought the box (running 4.9) back up, and then switched on the power to the drive. FreeBSD didn't recognise the drive even after an atacontrol reinit of the channel. I then dropped the box and brought it back up with the keyswitch for the drive in the ON position. It now recognises the drive (could this be BIOS-related?). OK, having got to this point and with some trepidation, I started fiddling. The removable drive is on ATA channel 1 along with a CD writer. Is it safe to simply switch the power to the drive off using the keyswitch and then remove the cassette with the server running but the drive bay powered down? Do I need to do anything other than ensure that the drive is unmounted at the time? And having done that, if I replace the drive and then reapply power using the keyswitch, would I need to do anything to get FreeBSD to notice the return of the device? So far doing an atacontrol detach 1, powering down the drive with the keyswitch, removing it and doing an atacontrol attach 1 to get my CD back, seems to work without problems. Adding the drive back in, powering it up and then doing an atacontrol reinit 1 also seems to work without problems. Potentially slightly less safe, I guess, simply powering the drive off and doing an atacontrol reinit 1 seems to work. Does anyone have any horror stories or awful warnings before I make this part of my backup procedure? Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Removing removable ATA hard drives
On 5/10/2006 7:31 PM, Jonathan McKeown wrote: I should probably have said: we don't currently have offsite backups (we've exceeded the capacity of our tape device and our budget), and the quick-fix solution is dumping to this hard drive and then pulling it out and taking it home. As such the removability is key to its intended function. I can't keep dropping the main fileserver to fiddle with it, and the alternative in terms of testing is to set up another box with the particular 4.9-STABLE snapshot running on this server (to eliminate OS version-related variable effects). I looked into these options, and in the end opted for an external firewire hard drive for *ONE* of my offsite backup systems. I initially looked at USB, but found it to be somewhat flakey and didn't feel comfortable relying on it. I installed a firewire add-in card in the backup server, and am then using GELI to encrypt the data on the drive. I have a script which automates the attaching to the geli volume, mounting the filesystem, rsyncing from various sources, and then unmounting the filesystem... after which I can turn off the drive and take it offsite with me. This is on FreeBSD 6.1, so I don't know what, if any, firewire support is available on 4.x... ATA hotswap, from what I gather, is only possible with specific hardware support, and even then is not something that it was originally designed for (as far as I am aware)... Hope you or others find some of this helpful! --Antony ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
