Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 04:42:12PM +1100, david wrote: Sorry for slightly hijacking the thread.. but my experience of these gadgets has been universally bad (read: didn't work at all). Have they improved in the last year or so? I have one which is a rectangle with connectors on all 4 sides - one for USB, one for SATA, one for IDE 3.5 and the last for IDE 2.5. It works but it's not marvelous. My impression is that heavy data transfers(*) can kill it. (*) Like copying a large filesystem which saturates the USB bus for many minutes. Also doing silly things like hdparm can break it immediately. Nick. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 04:47:54PM +1100, Jake Anderson wrote: I have one, I wouldn't class it as good but it seems to work. the dock style ones I've heard good things about I have a dock style one with eSATA connectors. The eSATA interface is good because it isn't USB-HDD, and is a lot faster than USB. The dock also provides various SD/SIM/MicroSD sockets but they haven't yet worked for me. However, the dock doesn't put any airflow over the disk and so it heats up way too hot after a few minutes. I pointed a small fan at it; kept it at a nice stable temperature. Nick. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 4:42 PM, david da...@kenpro.com.au wrote: Finally for about $35 you can buy USB adapters for SATA + IDE so you can plug one of your new drives into the target computer and bypass the 1.5T backup drive. Sorry for slightly hijacking the thread.. but my experience of these gadgets has been universally bad (read: didn't work at all). Have they improved in the last year or so? I had one I used at my previous place of employment which we bought from Lindy - and it worked flawlessly - plug into HD, plug in power, plug into USB - bingo, external hard disk. PATA, SATA, even laptop drives - no difference. I used it frequently for quick data recovery jobs (from dead PC's without damage to the disk, for example) and for moving data around. I think the most data I moved using it was somewhere around the 280 gig mark. https://www.lindy.com.au/online/arrshop.exe?anonymous=truecat=f0 It's a bit more than $35 ($60 plus shipping) but I know from experience they work. Comes with power supply for the drive as well as the USB adapter. N.B. I must admit I only ever used it with WindoZe machines, not Linux boxen. The specifications say it's only compatible with 'Doze and Mac machines. but I see no reason why they wouldn't work with Linux machines as well. DaZZa -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around
Hi All Apologies for the repost - I asked this a while ago but there is now an additional wrinkle^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hopportunity. I have to do a hard-drive shuffle in the coming weeks. The machine is a HP DL145 G3 which only has interfaces for 2 x hdd's. The current disks are 2 x 80GB set up as /boot on /dev/sda1 and (sda2 plus sdb1) are pooled together to make up /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00. They are running at 97% full. I'm about to replace the 2 x 80GB drives with 2 x 1TB drives which should keep the customer going for a while. Given that I can't attach all 4 hdds to the system at the same time, I have plugged in a WD USB drive (1.5TB) so that we have a transfer mechanism (as well as a second backup online in addition to the tape backup). I would like to have the 2 new disks in a RAID-1 array to give them a little redundancy. What is the easiest way to get from where I am (2 x 80GB as /boot and a log vol) to where I want to be (a pair of mirrored drives). My first thought was simpy to backup everything to the USB connected drive, rip out the 2 x 80GB and replace them with the 2 x 1TB drives. Set up the disks as a RAID 1 array. Do a partial install of the OS and then simply copy everything back where it was. I'm sure there is a better way than this sledgehammer approach, probably involving LVM but given my unfamiliarity with LVM I thought I should ask first. TIA Nigel. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 02:18:39PM +1100, Nigel Allen wrote: The machine is a HP DL145 G3 which only has interfaces for 2 x hdd's. The current disks are 2 x 80GB set up as /boot on /dev/sda1 and (sda2 plus sdb1) are pooled together to make up /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00. They are running at 97% full. Only 160 gigs, hmmm. I'm about to replace the 2 x 80GB drives with 2 x 1TB drives which should keep the customer going for a while. Given that I can't attach all 4 hdds to the system at the same time, I have plugged in a WD USB drive (1.5TB) so that we have a transfer mechanism (as well as a second backup online in addition to the tape backup). I would like to have the 2 new disks in a RAID-1 array to give them a little redundancy. Grub2 is good for that (1.97+whatever). What is the easiest way to get from where I am (2 x 80GB as /boot and a log vol) to where I want to be (a pair of mirrored drives). My first thought was simpy to backup everything to the USB connected drive, rip out the 2 x 80GB and replace them with the 2 x 1TB drives. Set up the disks as a RAID 1 array. Do a partial install of the OS and then simply copy everything back where it was. I'm sure there is a better way than this sledgehammer approach, probably involving LVM but given my unfamiliarity with LVM I thought I should ask first. You can use pvmove to move the physical extents on LogVol00 from one physical drive to another, but (1) it takes a long time and (2) you have no redundancy while you are doing it. I've done it and sometimes it's the best option. Also USB connected drives are not as reliable as IDE/SATA - I have found the interface can somehow overload and the device becomes unusable until unplugged/replugged. So I would never use pvmove to move an active filesystem from a directly connected disk to a USB-connected disk. In your situation I would: - copy the filesystems to USB - format+RAID1 the two new drives how you like it on another computer - copy the filesystem from USB to the new drives on another computer - swap new drives for old - make the new drives boot on the target computer This setup makes sure you always have a working system to fall back to (the original drives) or a backup (USB 1.5T). Also if you can't get both new drives onto another computer at one time, you can format one drive and create a RAID1 array with a missing device; copy your data onto one disk, and when you put both drives into the target machine you hot-add the 2nd disk to the array and it will sync up all your data automatically. Finally for about $35 you can buy USB adapters for SATA + IDE so you can plug one of your new drives into the target computer and bypass the 1.5T backup drive. Nick. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around
Nigel Allen wrote: Hi All Apologies for the repost - I asked this a while ago but there is now an additional wrinkle^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hopportunity. I have to do a hard-drive shuffle in the coming weeks. The machine is a HP DL145 G3 which only has interfaces for 2 x hdd's. The current disks are 2 x 80GB set up as /boot on /dev/sda1 and (sda2 plus sdb1) are pooled together to make up /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00. They are running at 97% full. I'm about to replace the 2 x 80GB drives with 2 x 1TB drives which should keep the customer going for a while. Given that I can't attach all 4 hdds to the system at the same time, I have plugged in a WD USB drive (1.5TB) so that we have a transfer mechanism (as well as a second backup online in addition to the tape backup). I would like to have the 2 new disks in a RAID-1 array to give them a little redundancy. What is the easiest way to get from where I am (2 x 80GB as /boot and a log vol) to where I want to be (a pair of mirrored drives). My first thought was simpy to backup everything to the USB connected drive, rip out the 2 x 80GB and replace them with the 2 x 1TB drives. Set up the disks as a RAID 1 array. Do a partial install of the OS and then simply copy everything back where it was. I'm sure there is a better way than this sledgehammer approach, probably involving LVM but given my unfamiliarity with LVM I thought I should ask first. TIA Nigel. Personally I'd create a degraded raid 1 array, DD the whole system onto it then expand it to fill the space. Assuming the mdadm on the machine is modern it should pick everything up and go from there with no changes to the host OS. There might be some fenangling to tell mdadm its ok to run the array in a new machine or something like that. 2 reasons for starting with the degraded array, 1, your mainly limited by the USB transfer rate so your only going to hit 25mbytes /sec max rather than the ~80+ you should be seeing. 2, the USB bandwidth is probably going to be shared on the 2 ports on the back of the machine, so if you try and run the full array its going to take twice as long. Your looking at around 2-3 hours to do the transfer this way (the degraded array). Your other option is to setup the raid array in another machine, as a full array. (that's going to take HOURS btw, it has to synch the 2 disks, copying all the 0's over ;-) Then once the array is healthy power down the other machine, stick the disks into the temp machine and DD away, should take around 30 minutes. While your in the other machine you can expand the volumes and file systems as well if that needs to be done offline, otherwise power up on the new drives and expand them online. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around
Nick Andrew wrote: On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 02:18:39PM +1100, Nigel Allen wrote: snip Finally for about $35 you can buy USB adapters for SATA + IDE so you can plug one of your new drives into the target computer and bypass the 1.5T backup drive. Nick. Sorry for slightly hijacking the thread.. but my experience of these gadgets has been universally bad (read: didn't work at all). Have they improved in the last year or so? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Moving hard drives and data around
david wrote: Nick Andrew wrote: On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 02:18:39PM +1100, Nigel Allen wrote: snip Finally for about $35 you can buy USB adapters for SATA + IDE so you can plug one of your new drives into the target computer and bypass the 1.5T backup drive. Nick. Sorry for slightly hijacking the thread.. but my experience of these gadgets has been universally bad (read: didn't work at all). Have they improved in the last year or so? I have one, I wouldn't class it as good but it seems to work. the dock style ones I've heard good things about -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
