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Honey I broke the XserveRAID! PDF Print E-mail
Xserveraid_broken.jpgSo I decided to power up my XserveRAID to copy some files over from the Tour de France Xsan. Image my horror whilst I was pouring a cup of tea to hear the internal alarm of the XSR going off. Now this has happened before and usually it is something really trivial. This time though, one of the disks was flashing orange instead of the normal green/blue. I knew it was going to be bad news, even though my XSR has been through some really rough times it was going to require fixing. Only one thing to do, run the RAID admin utility and have a good look at what was going wrong.
raid_admin_fail.jpg
It was bad news! Drive number 4 on the RHS of the XSR failed. If this happens, because the disks are set at RAID 5 it means that although there will be a slowing down in performance, no data is actually lost. So, rather carefully I pulled the disk in its enclosure out of the XSR chassis.
Xserveraid_blade.jpgMy XSR is a 5.6 Terrabyte model which means you get 2.2 Terrabytes per side. It is made up from 14 400Gig Hitachi drives mounted in these cradles. I did look at buying the spares pack when I bought the RAID, but at around $3000 it looked expensive.

Could I find a replacement 'blade' on the Apple Store? No. Could I find any info after an afternoon of Googling? No. One thing for it, phone a friend.

"Try Maplin" was the answer from an office behind Regent Street. Which is exactly what I did, which would have worked if they had had any 400G drives.
Xserveraid_disk_IDE.jpgThe problem is that every where now seems to stock Serial ATA (SATA) drives. These are great for stuffing in a G5 or MacPro but pretty useless for an XSR as it uses AT Attachment (IDE) drives. After more Googling I finally found a place in the UK with some spare drives and immediately ordered one and to my joy it arrived the next day. After swapping the drive out of the cradle and replacing it with the new drive, I was confronted by a new problem. What the hell do I do now?
Yeup, you guessed it, phone another friend! "It should automatically rebuild itself" was the advice and thats exactly what happened.
raid_admin_rebuild.jpg
It took about 8 hours for the RAID to rebuild itself completely but I was amazed at the ease in which I could repair the storage beast. I didn't lose a single frame of video either. Oh, the cost? $100.





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Comments (10)
are you sure
written by reco on April 08, 2008

everywhere i go i hear that the disk itself need to have the apple firmware on it.




...
written by Peter Wiggins on April 08, 2008

Well my XSR is still running fine after a lot of use. I did actually ask Apple what I needed and they suggested buying a disk from the cheapest place that offered a 400G Hitachi drive.

Peter

I was so hopeful!!!
written by Philip Richardson on June 10, 2008

smilies/undecided.gif

Hello Peter

I got very excited when i googled and found you. I hoped my recently deceased 250GB drive would also be straightforward. But no. I did exactly the same, got an equivelant drive that was part of the same family of Hitachi's as in our raid, but it was not recognised at all. Blast!

I have a part used drive coming from th states to the UK which may hold on for a while. Maybe the firmware issue is not such an issue with larger capacity drives?

Anyway, thanks for the story!

Phil
MD
pogofilms.com



Media Director
written by Alex on September 03, 2008

Peter:
I too have a down drive, mine is only a 250 gb. I did buy one from apple and it wasn't cheap.
So your saying to buy the same make and size and install to it's cradle and let it rebuild?
i just want to be sure about this, i wanted to do it the first time around but other friends said "No You'll blow it up".. I know i have to find a hitachi- 250gb . could it be an issue with just the small drives? i am really on the fence with one..


Alex


how about the cradles?
written by beenthere on February 03, 2009

Guys,

How about getting the empty cradles? I have quite a bunch of slots free on my Xraid, and the problem now is that it's hard to get the drives from Apple since it's discontinued!!!

Do any of you know where to obtain apple or 3rd party disk cradles that can fit into the Xraid? Also, can you use any disk size (1TB or 500GB IDE) when building a new raid set with the Xraid and the new cradles? This, if possible, would certainly be the holy grail.



Where did you get the $100 drives
written by Deyson on April 10, 2009

Been looking, and not having much luck in finding those drives...



...
written by Peter Wiggins on April 13, 2009

I think I found them here

http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/cat.php?search=Hard Drives&nav=3

Was a while ago now though

Peter




XO
written by Rich on February 27, 2010

Wonderful adventure, Peter. I especially like theformat: black text on dark grey. Challenge well met.

Systems Engineer
written by Meg on March 08, 2010

I just wanted to throw something out there for you all. It might be helpful or not, but I believe I found the carries/cradles for the xServe RAID for ATA drives. www.gainsaver.com

Here is the exact link
written by Peter Wiggins on March 09, 2010

Spare cradles for XserveRAID

http://www.gainsaver.com/catalog/Detail.aspx?&Keyword=ata&PageIndex=0&PageMax=40&cICode=63222


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