January 6, 201313 yr This is a quick cheap laptop build from common commodity used parts. It's purpose is to help me recover hard drives since the loss of all my personal belongings in hurricane Sandy. In case you didn't know I was in the Far Rockaway area. There was over 6 feet of water submerging my whole ground floor apartment. I put my 20 drive server as high as I possibly could while trying to escape the electrified water. I lost probably about 25% of the drives on the monster server and all of my other servers. So begins the long road to recover. Hopefully the backup drives at the top of the server are intact. I could only get out with a few laptops, hence the reason this is a laptop build. I.E. until I begin to build a new server. In any case this is an interesting cheap, quick build until I have a new lab to work with. OS at time of building: 5.xrc CPU: Core 2 Duo Mobile 1.8ghz Motherboard: Dell D630 RAM: 2gb Case: laptop with Dell PD01X docking bay Drive Cage(s): monoprice - Dual SATA HDD Docking w/ Card Reader & 2 Port USB Hub (USB+E-SATA) Power Supply: 90w laptop SATA Expansion Card(s): SYBA SD-SATA2-2E2I PCI SATA II Cables: Fans: Flash Drive: elago Mobile Nano II USB 2.0 microSDHC Flash Memory Card Reader with a SanDisk Ultra 32 GB MicroSDHC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card. Parity Drive: none yet Data Drives: Cache Drive: Total Drive Capacity: Recovery mode Primary Use: Recover data, drive diagnostics and initialize new drives Likes: Compact, cheap Dislikes: Larger then I would like to work on. 20x30 table is enough. Add Ons Used: Dell PD01X, PCI SATA Card, SANS DIGITAL TR4UTBPN 4Bay USB 3.0 / eSATA Hardware RAID 5 Tower RAID Enclosure Future Plans: Needs a USB Fan Boot (peak): Idle (avg): Active (avg): Light use (avg): This is the Dell D630 on a Dell PD01X Dock. PCI SATA card in Dock connected to Mono Price External USB/ESATA Dock. Notice how the Dock has a HDD Caddy with an Additional 2.5" sata drive. You can put a floppy, DVD-RW, SATA Drive or a Bay battery for charging. eSATA 2.5/3.5" Dual Drive Dock. Needs a eSATA connection capable of Port Multiplier Support. Another close up of the HDD Caddy. Other side of Laptop. Notice the HDD Caddy can also be placed in the Media Bay replacing the DVD drive. The edge of the PCI card is in the dock showing the eSATA cable attaching to the dual eSATA/USB dock. This is the back of the dock, Shows where the PCI card gets inserted. Close up of the PCI card. I choose the SYBA PCI card due to it's small size. Once I got a look at the dock, I realized I could have used a larger card, thus I could have used the 4 port SIL3124 cards that are common. In the mean time this card does well, plus there are two more internal SATA ports. I could always rig a temporary SATA to eSATA connection if needed. Close up of the dual dock and back of Dell Dock. I put it near the exhaust fan hoping to move some air over the drives. The USB Card Reader is so small. Takes the SD Micro cards on the inside of the USB connection. All nice and neatly stored away. This shows the dock and the bay area. The caddy can also be used in an external D/DOCK Bay which uses a custom USB connector for power and signal. This connector is found on the docks, PD01X and PR01X. It is NOT on the D630, but it is on the Dell D830 if you go that route. The D830 and D630 share the same basic motherboard and specs. The D830 having a 15.6" screen. Yes, I do have a pile of these machines. D630, ATGD630, XTGD630, D830. What it looks like closed up. I plan to put this on the monitor stand showing up next. In the meantime this is how for I've gotten. I purchased this all used on ebay for a song and a dance. The Dock hooks in under the monitor stand. Once I set this all up I'll be putting the San Digital 4 BAY eSATA/RAID device on top of it so I have more to work with. I choose to use the D630 and PD01X Dock since the Dock supports 1 PCI card. This let me use a SIL3124 PCI card which also supports port multipliers. With the eSATA dock and the Sans Digtal array, I should be able to do the most basic of hard drive administrative tasks that I need. The D630 also supports removable BAY devices as does the dock. This lets me install up to 3 1tb 2.5" drives to store data temporarily until I move it to other 3.5" drives. The D630 is pretty cheap on the used market as are the bay devices and docks. Makes a good all in one lab machine. If any one knows of a PCMCIA SIL 3132 card that is recognized by unRAID please advise so I can acquire one. Thanks! ((more to follow))
January 6, 201313 yr Sorry to hear about your loss, good luck with the rebuild. I hope it goes well for you. Fingers crossed that you have plenty of data left on the backup drives at the top.
January 6, 201313 yr Author The flash drive I am using is the elago Mobile Nano II USB 2.0 microSDHC Flash Memory Card Reader with a SanDisk Ultra 32 GB MicroSDHC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card. I choose this as it is really small and a card reader. If the flash goes bad I can replace the memory card without dealing with a GUID change.
January 7, 201313 yr Oh god that sucks.. Sorry about your loss.. I like your mobile lab... next time.. pull the drives and take them with you!!!
January 7, 201313 yr Author Oh god that sucks.. Sorry about your loss.. I like your mobile lab... next time.. pull the drives and take them with you!!! The water rose way too fast. No one in my neighborhood thought it was going to be this bad. I was getting shocked while the water was rising. All I could do was disconnect and throw it on top of something as high as possible. When I went to escape out the window, the water was up to the middle of the window as it was seeping under the foundation and shooting out the toilets and drains 2 ft into the air. The server was just too heavy to lift it above my head, climb out the window and wade through the water. As I was attempting to escape, the refrigerator floated up and fell on me and the step stool. By time i got it off and free'ed the step stool, the water was covering 80% of the first floor window. At that time it's open the window and swim for your life. I swam around the house to the stairs leading to the porch on the 2nd floor and escaped. My apartment was on the ground floor. It wasn't even underground. There wasn't all that much I could do to save it. When I got upstairs and looked out the back window, I saw an orange glow of houses on fire. Blocks and blocks of houses went on fire. It boils down to no one in my neighborhood thought it was going to be that bad. The whole neighborhood was destroyed. As were many others near the coast line. Next time. I move the server inland!!! Actually now I'm in an apartment building and I'm 3 stories up!
January 7, 201313 yr Not a nice situation to be in, its a good job your server wasn't bolted in a rack or you may have lost the lot. Although I have a river running next to my house were 20 minutes from the coast. I suppose living in England does have a few advantages, except for all the rain. Good luck and as John says its a neat little setup.
January 7, 201313 yr Author If I could find a eSATA PCMCIA card that was compatible with unRAID I could ditch the dock. Until then, this works with really cheap parts.
January 7, 201313 yr I would rice bag all those drives for a week before plugging them in. Glad you hear/see you are getting back to "normal" life. It will likely be a while before true normal returns but your on your way back.
January 7, 201313 yr Author Glad you hear/see you are getting back to "normal" life. It will likely be a while before true normal returns but your on your way back. Thanks. Getting back very slowly. It's odd when you move into a new place and realize you don' have a fork, plate or glass to use for food. At least now I'm starting to assemble a home piece by piece. I would rice bag all those drives for a week before plugging them in. Explain more please. They have been dry for almost 2 months now. What else should I do?
January 7, 201313 yr Jesus H. Cripes! I hope you and any friends and family got out safely? Data is important, but people are more so. Good luck with your recovery. In every sense of the word.
January 25, 201313 yr The flash drive I am using is the elago Mobile Nano II USB 2.0 microSDHC Flash Memory Card Reader with a SanDisk Ultra 32 GB MicroSDHC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card. I choose this as it is really small and a card reader. If the flash goes bad I can replace the memory card without dealing with a GUID change. Hi, I just wanted let everyone know that this usb reader did not work for me with a plus or pro version due to non-unique GUID. I purchased one for a very good price, it is tiny, looks super cool, but when I contacted Tom, I found out that the same GUID is already registered to somebody else. One possibility is that the reader somehow uses the microSD card's GUID and the only microSD cards I had were the same brand and model, therefore they might have the same ID. But more than likely, the reader has a non-unique GUID I had to go out and get a Kingston Mobilelite G2, which worked without problems. Thanks
January 25, 201313 yr Author The flash drive I am using is the elago Mobile Nano II USB 2.0 microSDHC Flash Memory Card Reader with a SanDisk Ultra 32 GB MicroSDHC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card. I choose this as it is really small and a card reader. If the flash goes bad I can replace the memory card without dealing with a GUID change. Hi, I just wanted let everyone know that this usb reader did not work for me with a plus or pro version due to non-unique GUID. I purchased one for a very good price, it is tiny, looks super cool, but when I contacted Tom, I found out that the same GUID is already registered to somebody else. One possibility is that the reader somehow uses the microSD card's GUID and the only microSD cards I had were the same brand and model, therefore they might have the same ID. But more than likely, the reader has a non-unique GUID I had to go out and get a Kingston Mobilelite G2, which worked without problems. Thanks Well that bites! I ordered two of them and was going to register them. Dam!
January 28, 201313 yr Glad you hear/see you are getting back to "normal" life. It will likely be a while before true normal returns but your on your way back. Thanks. Getting back very slowly. It's odd when you move into a new place and realize you don' have a fork, plate or glass to use for food. At least now I'm starting to assemble a home piece by piece. I would rice bag all those drives for a week before plugging them in. Explain more please. They have been dry for almost 2 months now. What else should I do? They may be dry on the outside, but possibly not on the inside. packing the drives in something that absorbs moisture can't hurt. Most of us can't get a tub of silica desacant, but a 25 lb sack of rice will substitute. I'd also keep them in a warm area if possible, to allow evaporation to occur as best as possible. (I'm assuming we are talking the drives that ended up under water) If the water was salt-water, and you see any evidence of salt deposits on the drives, then you might actually want to wash the drives in desalinized/distilled water to remove the salt on the electronics. then dry them.
January 28, 201313 yr Author 5 of the 20 were wet when I took them out of the server and junked the server. They are dry now and do not show any signs of salt. In any case, if I see salt upon closer inspection, I'll wash them for sure. I'll move them next to the heater just for the sake of it. It's pretty dry in my new apartment. So dry, my sinus is having issue and I'm getting static shocks everywhere! In any case, I'll take all advice I can get with these. So far one disk has shown it's still operational. This allowed me to access my tax records for the last 7 years. A clear case of why unRAID's single filesystem per drive works best for archiving large sets of disparate data.
January 28, 201313 yr As Joe L. said above, the rice will server in removing any last vestiges of water that might still be around. Put the drives in a some rice, let it sit near a heat source (but not to close) and let it go like that for a little while. Once that is done inspect the drives and go from there.
January 29, 201313 yr In any case, I'll take all advice I can get with these. So far one disk has shown it's still operational. This allowed me to access my tax records for the last 7 years. A clear case of why unRAID's single filesystem per drive works best for archiving large sets of disparate data. I had a big argument with someone on the SageTV forums about this. He was a big proponent of hardware raid cards and enterprize drives (they don't overheat ). After dropping drives and loosing multi Terrabytes of data on 2 occasions I switched to unRAID. I had a 12 drive drop from my unRAID array when I had a fan failure and they got up to 60+c temps on a parity check. I was able to transfer the data to new drives without any data loss. That would have been just a dream with the hardware raid card.
February 15, 201313 yr The flash drive I am using is the elago Mobile Nano II USB 2.0 microSDHC Flash Memory Card Reader with a SanDisk Ultra 32 GB MicroSDHC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card. I choose this as it is really small and a card reader. If the flash goes bad I can replace the memory card without dealing with a GUID change. Hi, I just wanted let everyone know that this usb reader did not work for me with a plus or pro version due to non-unique GUID. I purchased one for a very good price, it is tiny, looks super cool, but when I contacted Tom, I found out that the same GUID is already registered to somebody else. One possibility is that the reader somehow uses the microSD card's GUID and the only microSD cards I had were the same brand and model, therefore they might have the same ID. But more than likely, the reader has a non-unique GUID I had to go out and get a Kingston Mobilelite G2, which worked without problems. Thanks Well that bites! I ordered two of them and was going to register them. Dam! Thank god i looked back I was about to order one.
April 1, 201313 yr Author As Joe L. said above, the rice will server in removing any last vestiges of water that might still be around. Put the drives in a some rice, let it sit near a heat source (but not to close) and let it go like that for a little while. Once that is done inspect the drives and go from there. Some of them are covered in salt and silt. I don't have much hope for them. So far the top RAID0/RAID1 drives are good and I was able to get all my source code off them. Those lil HP Microservers are awesome cheap lil boxes! The next row of 5 drives has been accessible. Sometime next week I start on Row 3 which is all movies, then Row 4, which chances are.... slim. At least those drives are not covered in salt. I guess it all dripped down since they were vertical. In my other server the drives were horizontal and 2 are just covered in the white stuff. I was able to rsync most of that data to the top drives in the unRAID server. That rsync_linked_backup script I wrote saved my ass. It backed up a few servers pretty rapidly before the heart of the storm hit. I probably lost a few VM's but it looks like my most critical data is accessible.
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