Advice Hard Drive Hnnnghh? Raid Hrrrmmpph?

[Poag]

I think hes stuffed two new drives into the server, then set the BIOS to raid. Then tried to boot into the old Win2012 OS.

Which wont work as its going from an IDE install to a raid install?

 

[Trem]

No I didn't @Deebs, I went the cheaper way and just got 2 drives instead, seemed silly to not use the server for what it's there for.

Yes @Poag what you just said, that's what I did. Like I said I have no idea about raid, on boot it says to press ctrl and f to enter raid config but that does fuck all so I will go and try the F6 option shortly.

Let me clarify though, I have a drive with the OS on, I have a drive with my stuff on and I have these 2 new drives so in total I have 4 drives in the server. Obviously the OS drive will stay there, once the 2 new drives are sorted I will copy stuff over from my old drive onto the new WD raid set up and remove the old drive. Throughout all of this the OS drive will remain in place and untouched (in bay 1, first bay on the left).

Edit - Windows server 2011 not 2012 in case that makes any difference. I hate this server bollocks and I wish I could use Linux

 

[caLLous]

Use Linux then. I had no experience with it when I set my server up but put Ubuntu on it and haven't looked back since. Now I have Xubuntu on my ancient laptop as well and several Linux-y VMs. There's so much help available on the internet it's hard to mess it up*. You can always set it up in a VM with VirtualBox or whatever to start with so you can tinker and mess around in a non-destructive way.

*no that's not a challenge.

 

[soze]

I do not think you can do it that way. You have installed on Non Raid so your OS can only be seen in Non Raid. When you turn Raid on you are losing that disk as it is not part of your Raid. The easiest solution is probably to turn Raid off and then just use Software Raid in Windows to Raid your two new disks.

I have no idea if a Fix MBR would work with Hardware raid enabled as I think you need to install the Raid driver?

I read this as you have changed the Controller from AHCI to Raid which would break it If I have read it wrong I am sorry.

 

[Trem]

Yeah that's what I did @soze

So what software do I go with then?

It is all meant to be very straightforward on this HP microserver but I can't get into the set up screen on boot :/

 

[soze]

Switch it back to AHCI and boot back into Windows. Then you Right Click on Computer and select Manage. Then in Disk Management you can select the new drives and Raid them inside Windows.

 

[Trem]

It does seem it isn't me having this problem, definitely others having the ctrl+f issue on boot and someone did mention turning AHCI off or something.

I am in the process of checking all the drivers and firmware is up to date but the HP site IS A PILE OF FUCKING WANK SO I'M GETTING CUNTING FUCKING PISSED INSTEAD!£!£&*&$&*% I fucking hate dealing with HP and this server is the only decent fucking thing they've done that I've had and that's only because I haven't had to use their site until now

 

[soze]

Have your turned Raid off again and seen if it boots back into Windows?

 

[Trem]

Yes chumlar, it's hunky dorey with raid turned off, boots fine.

 

[soze]

Then just raid your new disks inside of Windows then like @Deebs suggested and save yourself the hassle

 

[Trem]

But that means buying an enclosure

 

[soze]

Nah you can do it with them connected into the MicroServer just use Windows Software Raid.

 

[Trem]

To create that do I need to make a new VHD? The option for a new RAID 5 volume is greyed out. I know I want RAID 1 but any RAID would be nice right now

 

[soze]

You should not just delete the two empty volumes and you should be able to build a Raid then.

From looking at your picture Mirrored Volume is what you need.

 

[Trem]

You should not just delete the two empty volumes and you should be able to build a Raid then.

From looking at your picture Mirrored Volume is what you need.

Righto, I shall do that tomorrow great mate. I've lost the will/eyesight to do it now.

Thanks @soze will report back.

 

[TdC]

if you mirror the disk (RAID1) you effectively get one disk back for it: the data is copied to both disks at once causing the system to become fault tolerant. if, for example, the two drives are 2TB, and you destroy the partition on your 2TB D: drive, the parity stripe (RAID5) option will become active unless Microsoft needs you to have a specific version of windows for that. In the case of RAID5, you offer up a "disk" to the parity data so you get N-1 disks for your stripe. In the case of 3 disks of 2TB each, the max size of the volume will be 4TB (slightly less after formatting).

 

[Trem]

Wow thanks for that teedlebra now I just need Stephen Hawking to decipher it for me.

 

[soze]

haha if you have 2 3tb Red drives and put them in Raid 1 you will be able to lose one disk but you will only have 3tb of usable space. But if you bought a third 3tb Red and added them in Raid 5 you would then get 6tb usable and only lose 3tb to your fault tolerance again. Raid 1 makes your data safe(r) but you lose an entire disks worth of capacity.

Depending on the data on the disk I do not always bother with Riad anymore. I have a 5TB external disk. I backup pictures and documents to OneDrive and the rest of the data like media and music I backup to the USB drive once a month and then I leave it under my desk at work. All the other media is re downloadable so it is not a big deal if I lose a months worth.

 

[caLLous]

@Trem see here.

RAID0 stripes data so your 2x 3 TB disks will be shoved together to give you 6 TB of space and higher read/write performance with no redundancy or parity. Risky.

RAID1 gives you 3 TB of space but each disk is a mirror of the other so you have 2 copies of everything so you can recover your stuff if one disk dies.

RAID5 needs at least 3 disks to work. With 3x 3 TB disks you sacrifice a disk (and a lil bit) to parity information so you will be left with ~6 TB of space and you can lose any of one of the 3 disks and still recover your stuff. Known as RAIDZ in ZFS circles.

RAID6 (RAIDZ2) is the same as RAID5 but uses 2 disks for parity so it needs at least 4 disks, double the parity means you can lose 2 disks and still recover.

All of the other RAID levels (apart from maybe RAID10, which is a combination of RAID1 and 0 - ie a mirror of striped disks) are largely irrelevant.

RAID5 and 6 really start making sense when you have bigger arrays.

 

[Trem]

Cheers @caLLous @soze. I can't spend anymore money on another disk though (for RAID 5) so I need to sort this shit out. I need to get a new mSata disk for my laptop so the spending has to be kept low(ish) on the server. I just really hate working with WS 2011 because I'm a bit shit at stuff and that OS doesn't fucking help. I guess it would all be sorted if I could get into the RAID BIOS setting on boot, but I can't.

Got nans visit in a bit then I will have an hour to mess about with it when I get back.

It just seems like everyone else does this stuff straight away

Edit - the whole point of this is I'm lazy and I want to forget about it (hence my cloud comments earlier) and if it goes tits up I want to know one of the disks is (hopefully) there to have my stuff on. I do have my pictures all over the place so they are fine but I would hate to lose my music which I have got from this year and last which (theres a trend here) I just can't be arsed to back up in more places than on my server (I know, I know).

 

[soze]

You just want to add your two new Disks into a Mirrored Volume then. This will give you one 3TB drive that can survive the death of one of your disks. That is the easiest and quickest solution. Setting up Hardware Raid would more than likely mean a reinstall of Windows as you need to inject the Raid Driver into the Windows install. So a Mirrored volume (software raid) is your easiest option.

 

[Trem]

A new thing my server is doing is shutting down randomly since all of this started. What the fuck? Power problem? Surely not? It ran fine for 48 hours then I did the BIOS raid thing and now the server shuts down, only thing I can link it to for today is I downloaded an NZB on it then went my nans, come back and it's shut down.

 

[Trem]

Does this look right? Got a yellow exclamation mark over the first drive (disk 1) but I'm hoping that's because it's resynching.

 

[soze]

I would not worry until it is built just see what you get when it is done.

With the shutting down. You will need to check the Event Logs, Check the System Logs and look for a Shutdown event around the time it shut down.

 

[Trem]

Fuck @soze, it is looking like it might be the power supply chum

 

[caLLous]

Get something like HWiNFO on there to monitor temperatures, if the CPU gets too hot it will shut down.

It does say kernel power though so it might be a PSU thing... Do you have one you can switch it out for to test?

 

[soze]

Kernel-Power just means the power was lost you will need to go into the System and Application logs and see what is being logged right before you get these restarts. Not shutting down cleanly mean a crash but you might see something before or maybe the blue screen codes after.

If it is temp related which is a good shout it should warn you and say it will attempt a shutdown.

Check c:\Windows\Minidump too if there are dmp files in there it will help diagnose what is going on.

 

[Trem]

I've left the old hard drive out to see if it shuts down while the new drives resync (how long does that take, no progress bar and refresh didn't reveal one). Both new drives have the yellow exclamation mark on them now.

What a pissing nightmare this is turning out to be.

@caLLous I don't have another PSU but I do have another poota which I might chuck god damn Linux on and give that a try.

@soze I will be gutted if it's a temp issue, only just put a second huge fan in it

 

[Jupitus]

@soze I will be gutted if it's a temp issue, only just put a second huge fan in it

Did you a) let your kid install the fan or b) do it yourself?

If b then try a

 

[soze]

I've left the old hard drive out to see if it shuts down while the new drives resync (how long does that take, no progress bar and refresh didn't reveal one). Both new drives have the yellow exclamation mark on them now.

What a pissing nightmare this is turning out to be.

@caLLous I don't have another PSU but I do have another poota which I might chuck god damn Linux on and give that a try.

@soze I will be gutted if it's a temp issue, only just put a second huge fan in it

Raid in mine took hours I would say leave it overnight.