HUGE headaches with FlexRAID's tRAID

[IVB]

Good god am I suddenly having HUGE headaches with tRAID. I copied over 3.5TB of data (all my movies and recorded TV) from my 5x1TB HW based array to a 4x4TB tRAID array. And now twice in 2 days the storage pool has failed to start, and I can't access my data.

I know there's lots of benefits to SW based RAID that HW based RAID doesn't have (mixed drive size ability, pull independent disks online if the controller crashes), but first & foremost is access to my data. And right now FlexRAID/tRAID is doing pretty badly on that account.

I'm hopeful my data isn't lost, but I'm also seriously considering giving up on this experiment and just using the RocketRAID card. I don't have time to spend babysitting my damn hard disks.

http://forum.flexraid.com/index.php/...6.new.html#new

[hugenbdd]

Maybe switch to the RAID-F, which is the finalized / old flexraid. I think he has more than two years of development and defect fixing on that version. I am still running an old flexraid/raidf version and plan to upgrade to the raidf 2.0rc12 (or the final one).

With RAID-F, if flexraid fails, I can just remove a disk from the pool and treat it as a normal individual disk.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by hugenbdd

With RAID-F, if flexraid fails, I can just remove a disk from the pool and treat it as a normal individual disk.

Is it normally "offline", so you put it "online"? Thats how tRAID works too, but then the parity needs to be rebuilt.

I really really want SW based RAID to work, primarily for that reason. My highpoint card is approaching 5 years old (maybe older), and I've heard horror stories about highpoint tech support lately so I don't know if I want to get a new one. Plus with HW based RAID I can't do that.

But first & foremost, I need the damn thing to work.

[Skirge01]

Are you recording directly to tRAID? If so, I'd advise against it. That was causing me lots of headaches, but everything seems to have smoothed out once I went to a separate drive for recording and a batch job to copy the files over to tRAID every morning. I haven't given up on recording to the array, but I haven't had a chance to revisit my SageTV issue and I'm curious if another user is bumping into the same thing.

[IVB]

no, I'm recording to a 1TB stored elsewhere. Right now I'm manually copying it as life has been a little too psycho to analyze your script (thx for that).

Basically, the service isn't reliably starting up when I reboot the machine. I need to manually log in and start it, otherwise the pool and hence array isn't visible. (I think, thats whats fixed it, might not be the root cause)

[Skirge01]

Have you tried setting the service to delayed start?

[jerryt]

I had a number of issues with tRaid (Dropped disc), but they were resolved with a power supply upgrade. It has been rock solid for me.

I was recording directly to the tRaid array, but found when doing more then three recording at the same time, the record would get corrupted.

So I also went to a separate recording drive.

tRaid has been the first product that can put all the drives to sleep properly for me.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by IVB

... I'm also seriously considering giving up on this experiment and just using the RocketRAID card. I don't have time to spend babysitting my damn hard disks.

You wouldn't be the first

I gave up on RAID 5 along time ago. I am only mirrors now. Sure I have a disk farm, but my data is backed up as a result. I swap out mirrors periodically.

But as Skirge01 recommend, a delayed start might help.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Have you tried setting the service to delayed start?

OY! There's a delayed start option? Brahim didn't mention that at all on my two forum threads. Hell, he didn't comment at all on one of them.

BTW, I *really* want to find a way to make this work as I grow concerned about my HW. That guy is aloof & not really very helpful even on his own forums, but the promise of the software keeps me coming back. Thank god its only $100...

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

You wouldn't be the first

I gave up on RAID 5 along time ago. I am only mirrors now. Sure I have a disk farm, but my data is backed up as a result. I swap out mirrors periodically.

But as Skirge01 recommend, a delayed start might help.

RAID1? Damn. how much space do you have? Doesn't that suck up a lot of power?

I'm now at the $0.40/Kwh incremental level, so power is a big concern.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by IVB

RAID1? Damn. how much space do you have? Doesn't that suck up a lot of power?

I'm now at the $0.40/Kwh incremental level, so power is a big concern.

The power is not that bad. I let the drives spin down and have a staggered start.

I have three four bay cages that take up 3/5.25 bays at a time, populated with 3T seagate enterprise drives. My next move is to an external drive case so I can house Hot Spares as well.

I lost 3 drives from my flexraid system while on vacation and I lost everything. Now I pull the mirrors and only put them back to replicate. It's much easier now, and I am backed up at the same time. I use Acronis for the boot drives. Couldn't be easier, for me at least.

[IVB]

Interesting idea, I wonder if I could RAID1 on the RocketRAID, yank a disk out, and have it be readable on another PC.

On the one hand its overkill just for TV & movies (i have my mission critical data on a single disk but with a 500GB DropBox account to protect against fire/earthquake), but this took me FOREVER to rip 500 movies, I really do not want to go through all that again.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by IVB

OY! There's a delayed start option? Brahim didn't mention that at all on my two forum threads. Hell, he didn't comment at all on one of them.

Not in tRAID, but in services.msc you can change the startup type to "Automatic (Delayed Start)". I'm wondering if that might give the system enough time to complete whatever is preventing the auto start of tRAID.

BTW, I *really* want to find a way to make this work as I grow concerned about my HW. That guy is aloof & not really very helpful even on his own forums, but the promise of the software keeps me coming back. Thank god its only $100...

I couldn't have said it better myself. It's a shame, really.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by IVB

Interesting idea, I wonder if I could RAID1 on the RocketRAID, yank a disk out, and have it be readable on another PC. ...

I also use a RocketRaid, I don't think you can use the disk else where though. The mirrors pairs are marked master/slave as a pair and import them would over write that flag.

On the one hand its overkill just for TV & movies (i have my mission critical data on a single disk but with a 500GB DropBox account to protect against fire/earthquake), but this took me FOREVER to rip 500 movies, I really do not want to go through all that again.

I didn't either and thats why I went this route, believe me it took months to get the movies back in place and some I didn't bother with again.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

I also use a RocketRaid, I don't think you can use the disk else where though. The mirrors pairs are marked master/slave as a pair and import them would over write that flag.

so I take it you're not that concerned about a controller failure? Which is admittedly much more rare than a HD failure.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by IVB

so I take it you're not that concerned about a controller failure? Which is admittedly much more rare than a HD failure.

Not really, that can be replaced and back up in no time. I mean if you want to take even further, what about the mother board etc? Other then a drive failure I am reasonably safe with how I am doing things. I can easily put the controller in another computer and be up and running in no time (if it came to that).

Your NOT safe with RAID 5 at all, unless you have enough spares to cover you, and that may not really help. And/or you mirror your raid, which is what a lot of buisnesses do. Running RAID 5 just gives you more economical space, not safty and reliability.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

Not really, that can be replaced and back up in no time. I mean if you want to take even further, what about the mother board etc? Other then a drive failure I am reasonably safe with how I am doing things. I can easily put the controller in another computer and be up and running in no time (if it came to that).

Your NOT safe with RAID 5 at all, unless you have enough spares to cover you, and that may not really help. And/or you mirror your raid, which is what a lot of buisnesses do. Running RAID 5 just gives you more economical space, not safty and reliability.

Have you researched whether you can replace one RocketRAID with a newer model? Or would I have to hunt down another 3540?

[panteragstk]

This discussion reminds me of why I decided not to go the RAID route. If my drive dies I lose one drive. All data is easily recoverable. No arrays to re-build. I would love to have a RAID 10 setup. No downtime, but you have to have tons of drives. Not practical.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

This discussion reminds me of why I decided not to go the RAID route. If my drive dies I lose one drive. All data is easily recoverable. No arrays to re-build. I would love to have a RAID 10 setup. No downtime, but you have to have tons of drives. Not practical.

IIRC you're just JBOD right? How is "data easily recoverable"? Isn't it gone forever upon death?

I'm currently at 3.5TB of data so I quickly ordered a 5th 4TB so I can copy it all to that. I'm most likely going to go the RAID 10 route myself, i'll start with 4x4TB to have 8TB of space, but then just pop in drives 2 at a time.

[Skirge01]

I'm just throwing my 2 cents in here because I've had this debate with myself many times over the years. For me, it came down to the fact that if the array fails for some reason, beyond the level of failure (i.e. 1 drive in RAID5, 2 drives in RAID6), I lose everything in the array, not just the data on the failed drive. The same possibility exists if the HW RAID card itself fails and a replacement fails to recognize the array. Additionally, if an expansion or contraction of the array fails, you likely lose the entire array.

With SW RAID (such as tRAID), you only lose data up to the point of failure. If my parity drive fails, I lose no data. If a single HD fails, I can restore from the parity. If two HDs fail, I only lose the data from those two drives.

I do real backups of my important data (photos, etc) and don't count on the protection I get from tRAID for that. But, with the amount of recordings and rips I have, losing the entire array is unacceptable. I'd much rather lose just 1 or 2 drive's worth of replaceable recordings. It's still work to replace the data, but it's significantly less than if the entire array was lost. I had this very thing happen only a month ago when my parity drive died, followed by a data drive, and I lost ~3TB of data. This was actually self-inflicted because I chose not to replace the parity drive right away and got bit when a data drive died. Thankfully, I only lost a bunch of ripped music, several Blu-ray rips, and a ton of recorded TV. I now keep a spare drive lying around to immediately replace any failure.

A tip for everyone: As you upgrade the size of your drives, keep those old drives around and store copies of data which is a pain to recreate (e.g. music rips, Blu-ray rips, etc).