• From: Cambridgeshire, UK
  • Registered: 2007-01-27
  • Posts: 6,226

Topic: Lightening strike blew out my NAS backup

<begin rant>
We had a bad thunderstorm yesterday (bolt of lightening struck outside my office window!) and when I got home the power had gone out.
I have APC UPS units on my tower system and my Home Server (which saved my a$$ many times) but my NAS drives have an external power-brick and they weren't connected to the UPS.   My NAS is only used as a secondary backup to the WHS so it's loss is not that critical.  The drives appear to be OK, but because the NAS was RAID-1 and the drives married to the on-board controller, the data is gone.
I'm giving up on NAS and RAID. sad
<end rant>
So now I'm in the market to buy a new 3TB drive to use as my off-site backup drive.  (Backup on the weekends, then take the box to work during the week in case of theft/fire at the house).
I'll also be selling all the drives I was using in the NAS.  They're just not big enough for my needs.
2x Seagate 750GB ST3750640AS
4x WD 1000GB (1TB) WD10EARS

3500MGB-Raid Pro - NAS (2-drive) (still works, but doesn't recognize drives. Makes high-pitched piezo even without drives installed)
4500MGB-Raid Pro - NAS (4-drive) (works fine, doesn't like the WD drives above)

Make me an offer.

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  • Helmi
  • Moderator & Translator (German)
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  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2006-05-27
  • Posts: 1,799

Re: Lightening strike blew out my NAS backup

Just in case you haven't considered it, yet:
Whith drives/partitions > 2 TB, you may encounter strange bugs and incompatibility due to the fact that MBR only addresses around 2 TB (you'd have to use GPT on the drive) and some controller drivers may be bugged (Intel had such a problem with their AHCI drivers in the past - using MSAHCI instead worked fine).
Of course, XP will totally crap out on anything larger than 2 TB as in cannot use GPT and drivers may not be updated by manufacturers.

As you do not want to boot from the drive, obviously, you will not have to worry about EFI - otherwise, you'd need an EFI-compatible mobo and OS (such as Win7 x64).

Just saying...

I could pass you more info, but it's mostly in German, so...

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  • From: Cambridgeshire, UK
  • Registered: 2007-01-27
  • Posts: 6,226

Re: Lightening strike blew out my NAS backup

None of that mattered with these Helmi.  All the drives in the arrays were formatted EXT2 and were non-bootable anyway.  No MBR or GPT to worry about.
And they were mounted as network drives (\\server\share\folder).
I ordered a few SATA to ESATA/USB2 cases and a couple 2TB drives for them.  Then I'll have two backup drives I can swap out every weekend (keep the other at work) in case my house burns down or is burgled I'll still have my data.

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  • Helmi
  • Moderator & Translator (German)
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  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2006-05-27
  • Posts: 1,799

Re: Lightening strike blew out my NAS backup

Alright then.
Just wanted to make sure. smile

Experience has shown, not many folks know about this >2 TB barrier.
Then again, not many seemed to know about the 127 GB one, either...

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Coming up next - useful links:
• If you like this project, please support it with your donation!      • Grab your HW info (HWIDs) here!     
• If you are a newbie, be sure to check out the DriverPacks tutorial!     • Here's how to create your own DP!