Is there any Windows based software available or recommended for cloning a drive or doing drive diagnostics. I have some tools here for surface scanning and Zero’ing a drive.
If I remove all drives from my 5N and plug them in to a PC is there software that will let me read the files from the drives (incase the 5N unit stops working). Or what options do we have for data recovery if we have a multi drive fail like a 2nd or 3rd drive crashing during a rebuild. (which happened to me in the past with a PC based Raid5)
Sorry about the multi posts, but so many questions I thought best to keep threads separate.
I think I will enable to dual redundancy when I can.
Once all lights are green can shutdown the unit and remove the drives for testing?, and this might seem a silly question, do I have to put the drive back in the same slot they were removed from?. My ICH10 controller on my PC doesn’t seem to care if the order is changed, not that I will take a chance and test this on the Drobo.
If your Drobo dies, the only way to recover the file is to put the disks into another drobo (the same model, basically); there is no way to mount the drives on a PC and recover the files.
Yes, as long as drobo is shutdown you can remove and test the drives (but obviously nothing which writes to them); they will probably appear totally blank to your PC/Mac. What tests do you want to run? (since Drobo scrubs the disks on a monthly basis)
It does not matter, Drobo doesn’t care about disk order.
I use a tool called HDtune to read the SMART and do a read only surface test, and if the drive I test is clean I do a benchmark if I have time. Fairly good for tool for the free version. If it shows errors I usually wipe the drive with LLFtool v2.36 also free, then retest again.
I didn’t know the Drobo scrubs drives. I have wondered why some time the unit is active when no one is access it instead of being in sleep mode.
(it could also be doing a bit of relayout and data shuffling if data was recently added to it, or reclaiming some free blocks if data was recently removed from it)[hr]
also, id probably refrain from taking out drives just to surface scan them (unless you really needed to) and then ideally only when you have a backup of your data.
if you needed to, and if you were not able to back up your data, then at the very least, i would check that the drobo status was all healty, and then to only try scanning just 1 drive at a time, (via the power off procedure) so that just in case your scanning tool somehow wrote over some data on the drive, then you would have only lost 1 drive (which the drobo should be able to recover from) - if you were able to enable DDR dual drive before any removals, then even better.
also, you probably already are aware, but when you finished testing a drive, it should be put back into the drobo when drobo power is still off.
Yeah, drobo fully backed up and cross checked with a MD5 verify. Powered off, removed drives, scanned, smart checked, all clear, reinstalled, new drive added, powered back on and now at a 15 hour rebuild.
5x 3TB, 1 drive redunancy @ 50% full. Scares me hearing a drive can be trashed for days. Just hope these Seagate NAS drives hold up.
12mins left on the rebuild as of posting this.
