Team,

 

I have ran unraid for probably 5 years, about 8 months ago my server died, and I just have not had time to fix it (will not post). I am looking at fixing it now, and I am left with a few choices (i have replaced ram, cards and memory, nothing worked, either the MB or CPU is dead).

 

Choice 1) Buy the same motherboard and a new CPU and bring the system back up as it was

Choice 2) Upgrade to something affordable now but more than likely much higher performance

 

The major problem i have is that I am using 4 PATA drives and a supermicro SATA card. I am not sure if there is anyway to save my current data without getting a MB with a PCI slot (for my rosewill card) and PCI-E x4 slot for my SATA card, or having 2 IDE and 8+ SATA ports on board.

 

Basically I am looking for suggestions of the best way to save my data and get back up and running without completely breaking the bank. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, here is my current rig:

 

Motherboard: ASUS P5B-VM DO (either this or the proc is dead)

Processor: Intel Pentium E2180 Allendale 2.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor + ZALMAN CNPS9700 (Proc might be dead)

Memory: Team Xtreem DARK 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit

Drives: 2x Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB 5400 to 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

IDE Controller: Rosewill RC-208 PCI IDE (ATA) Silicon Image Host Controller un-RAID Card I (i will either need this, 2 IDE slots, or a replacement card)

Case: Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS

HD Bay: 2x ICY DOCK MB455SPF-B

Powersupply: CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W

 

Please ohh wise unRaid gurus, find the best board+proc+ram combo for me to buy that will let me save my data, or tell me there is no choice but try and buy another P5B-VM DO (for like 65$) and a LGA 775 proc!!!

 

Thanks,

Tom

I am sure that there will be more knowledgeable responses than mine, but at first glance I don't think you are in that bad a shape.

 

Many current motherboards still have at least one PCI slot, so that isn't a big deal as you can at least mount 2 PATA drives at a time.

 

My thinking is that as long as you don't overwrite any of the data on your drives, then all your data is good (obviously). If you were to start all over on a new motherboard/cpu you could install the same drives (provided you had the ports available) and UnRAID should just boot back up. If you are running UnRAID 5.0 this shouldn't be an issue, but if you were still running 4.7 then I don't know if there are any issues.

 

I guess the real question is whether you want to mount the PATA drives long enough to pull data from them, or you want to keep them in your UnRAID server. Given that they are PATA, and likely older you can assume they will be slower than any SATA drive you buy today. Also, you can buy 3 or 4TB drives, which would clean up a lot of the smaller drives you have (though with a 2TB parity drive at the moment you would need to upgrade this).

 

If you want to basically retain your data, but move to newer hardware/drives then you could look at buying 3 new 3TB or 4TB drives (depending on budget) and then on your new UnRAID server mount 2 of the PATA drives (which from your sig and notes look like they are 1TB) and mount one of the 3TB drives on a Windows box. Then you can copy the data from the PATA disks to the new SATA disk and get rid of the PATA drives. You can then mount 2 of the 3TB drives in UnRAID - along with your other PATA drives and move the data back from the Windows slave drive to your new 3TB UnRAID drives.

 

It would be a bit of work as you are moving data around twice, but it would get all your data on 2 new 3TB SATA drives, and once done, wipe the Windows partition on the last drive, pre-clear it and mount it as your parity drive.

 

Again, this is assuming you want to move your entire UnRAID server into the current. If you only want to try and re-use your existing PATA drives you are likely going to have issues getting them all mounted on a newer motherboard. Personally, for the potential cost/headaches to make your new server backwards compatible I would just invest in the new 3TB drives.

 

Again, more knowledgeable people than me may have other thoughts, but I don't think you are in that bad a shape overall - you just have some cost and work ahead of you.

 

My recommendation would be to abandon the PATA drives if you are moving to new hardware. A single modern 3TB or 4TB dive would easily hold all their data and perform better.  It would also vastly simplify your requirements on the motherboard.

 

To get the data off the PATA drives you could use a USB/IDE adapter (they are very cheap).  This can then be used to temporarily mount each of the PATA drives in turn (outside the data array) to copy their contents to a new drive that is part of your new array.  This takes advantage of the fact that under unRAID each drive is a self-contained filing system so can be handled individually for retrieving data.

Definitely agree you should scrap the PATA drives.  Buy an inexpensive IDE -> USB bridge [e.g. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002 ];  install the free Linux Reader [ http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/ ] on your PC;  and then copy the data from your PATA drives to a new UnRAID array one-at-a-time.    This will take a while; but it's a safe way to restore your data that doesn't require worrying about IDE interfaces in a new system.

 

Definitely agree you should scrap the PATA drives.  Buy an inexpensive IDE -> USB bridge [e.g. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002 ];  install the free Linux Reader [ http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/ ] on your PC;  and then copy the data from your PATA drives to a new UnRAID array one-at-a-time.    This will take a while; but it's a safe way to restore your data that doesn't require worrying about IDE interfaces in a new system.

I have one of these...works great!  (note that a Mac won't mount ReiserFS disks...you need a PC)

Use a USB adaptor and mount the drive on the server using the SNAP add-on.

Guys,

 

Thanks for all the help, so my plan would be to upgrade the MB+CPU+RAM (making sure i have a single pci-e 4x port for the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 card). Then I will grab a pair of new SATA drives (2+ TB) and basically rebuild the system. I have 2 subsets of questions:

 

1.) Technical: From a technical standpoint when I rebuild the system and boot it back up, as long as the MB is unRaid approved, it should boot right back up with the Array down, it has been a long time, what steps would I take to unsure I don't lose any more data?

[*]Replace Hardware (do not install new drives)

[*]Remove PATA drives

[*]Hookup single PATA drive via USB

[*]Boot system

[*]? here: what order of actions do i take here to get the array back up minus the PATA drives so I can start copying the data over from them

[*]Copy data from PATA drive to the array

[*]Repeat for each PATA drive

[*]System should now have a valid array with all data again

[*]? here: should I  build parity once before I add the new drives (assuming they are bigger than my current parity drive)

[*]? here: finally this is outside of the scope of thread, and probably answered in another post but what steps do I take to upgrade the current parity drive to a bigger one?

 

2.) Hardware Advice: Any suggestions on a good priced/power consumption MB+CPU and which Drives are the best affordable for performance/power (2TB or more) -- I am going to start a new thread in the hardware forum as well.

 

Thanks guys, I just don't want to buy the wrong hardware, build it and get started on my own then find out a took a wrong turn and lost all of my data. (I believe I am using unRaid 4.6ish, I'll have to check the usb when I get home)

 

Thanks,