Hack a Snap Sever 1000?
 

I encountered Joe's article on hacking a Quantum Snap Server 2000 < http://www.procooling.com/articles/h...oe___10_.shtml > while looking into the possibility of doing the same to my model 1000. A cynic (which I am not) would point out that happily it's a pretty modest hack: Joe took out the old Western Digital 7 Gb drives, dropped in new WD 40 Gb units, booted the box (which runs Linux in flash) and it just took off, formatted the new drives automagically, and said "fill 'er up, boss!" A nice piece of robust engineering, and an interesting bit of investigation on Joe's part.

Looks like My Mileage Does Vary, though. My model 1000 is not NEARLY as accommodating. I tried replacing the original Quantum Fireball CX (10Gb) with a Western Digital Caviar 30Gb I had on hand. No joy: system wakes up OK but lapses into a 1-sec LED blink that means entering (but not =IN=) maintenance mode. Tried all the reasonable and unreasonable jumper settings on the drive: same result. Tried updating the flash software from v2.1 to v3.1, which gets me FTP server capability among other things, but no improvement on the disk situation. Tried slapping an ancient Quantum ProDrive LPS (with a staggering 340 Mb) just to see if it liked the flavor of a Quantum drive better. Nope.

Joe indicates that three other folks have attempted an upgrade to a model 1000 with similar dismal outcome. Has anybody out there tried it and succeeded? Any references to other hack sites covering this?

Had some luck
 

If you replace the hard drive cable with a cable that you can connect two drives too, you will be able to have two drive in the unit, eventhough they don't fit. This is how to do it....

Leave the existing hard drive as master and your second drive as slave. Power on unit go to web admin page, you will see that the second drive is formatting.

I have been unable to upgrade the single drive in my snap 1000. I have noticed that there is something odd about my drive in my snap on the top there is a plate that cover some kind of a ribbon cable that goes to the inside of the hard drive. I have been able to upgrade the drives on a snap 4100 at work. I did notice that these drive don't have that little cover covering a ribbon cable. If anyone can upgrade the single drive in a snap server 1000. Please let me know. I think that I have tried just about every combination of drives and jumper settings.

After the Snap 1000 finished formatting the second drive, did you try installing it as the single master drive? (Sounds like you did, but I want to be sure.)

Reply for snap 1000
 

Yes, I tried installing new drive as master with no luck. I also tried installing new drive as master with old drive as slave with no luck. There must be some portion of system info stored on primary drive. They must have changed there way of thinking with other models.

Interesting hypothesis, worth pursuing. FWIW, I mounted the original disk in my NT system, then used PartitionMagic 6.0 to look at it. Though the disk is recognized at the hardware level, PartitionMagic did not recognize it as having any partitions on it. (PM 6.0 knows about Linux EXT2, and Linux SWAP, but that seems to be it. Any suggestions for other disk-sniffing or low-level-copy utilities that I can run from an NT system?

Snap 1000
 

I was thinking down the same thin line....So I took the disk that the snap formatted. I installed in a Windows 98 machine, and am unable to see any information on it. I don't have a program like partion magic or ghost, so I will be unable to try something like that. What ever utility that you use, it must copy bit per bit from the orginal disk to the new one...which brings up more queastions...I should have spent a little extra money and bought a snap 2000.

Yeah, well, 20-20 hindsight is a given for all of us. I still think the 1000 will be crackable somehow. The key is to figure out what low-level format the drive is set up in.

Snap 1000
 

I tried using Norton Ghost 2000, with no luck. If anyone is able to accomplish, let us know.

Snap 1000
 

I also tried DiskCopy with no luck.

I tried mounting a drive (from a Powervault 701n) containing data with Paragon's Ext2FS Anywhere running on Win2000... no luck, either. Has anyone tried the drive in a Linux box?

Proprietary OS and FS? Pics of 1100/2200 boards?
 

Hi-

I tried to send an email to the author of that Snap hack article, but it bounced. I thought you might be interested in my 2 cents (attached letter below). I know a bit about Linux in case you I can help there- let me know.

I was also wondering if anyone has looked inside other Snap models (the 1100 and 2200). If you can send me some digital pictures of those boards, I'd really appreciate it. I just read that the 4100 uses a Pentium 266 and 128MB of RAM.

Regards,

Roy

---------------------------------------------


Joe-

I read your October 16, 2001 hacking a Snap Server with *great* interest. I don't have one yet, but have been wondering what makes them tick.

Your article states that the OS is Linux. Following that, the discussion chain that follows says that they've tried mounting a master disk with various flavors of Windows, including looking at it with a tool that can see Linux's extsfs- all to no avail. They've left it with wanting to try a mount from a Linux machine, but my guess is that they'll not have luck there either since they couldn't even see the partition before.....

I think that the answer is that the low level format may be proprietary.
http://www.snapserver.com/products/os/index.asp

Is there a chance it is proprietary?

* More important question to me: Would you happen to have any photos inside the newer generation boxes, or do you know where to find them? Models 1100 and 2200 in particular?

Many Thanks,

Roy Hensley
972-371-3858 (day)

Using the debug commands and some research, I've learned the 701n (Dell's NAS) uses BSD, not Linux.

I have not tried putting up a BSD box and mounting the drives, yet... has anyone else?

My main concern is the ability to retrieve data WITHOUT having to send the things back to Quantum or Dell. . . particularly, when we've all voided the warranty by "upgrading" the drives.

To enter debug mode:

http://nas/config/debug

then type "?" (without quotes) for a list of commands.

I just picked up a snap server 1000 - 20 gig (on the basis of Joe's article - also on the basis of not having read this thread).

I want to upgrade the snap and it appears that I need to keep the original disk and add a second. Has anyone actually done this and how well does it work?

Thanks

Works fine as long as you don't need to keep any data from your original drive(s) ...

Just replace the drive(s) ... and reboot. It should automatically begin formatting the drives. You can then configure w/ the web interface.

The kicker is the potential for lost data... and no one seems to have the solution for data recovery.

Just a thought, seeing as how they used to make "field replace" drives for some of the Snap! servers: Has anyone considered that it might not be data on the hard drive at all that prevents you from swapping in other drives?

What I'm thinking is it might use a serial number or a certain drive identifier (i.e. when you boot drives on normal PC's, you can usually get them to respond with a model name like Maxtor 5T040H4 or some such) to restrict what kind of hard drives it will allow to be used.

Also, another thing which would help with all aspects of hacking Snaps: Quantum makes available for free their Snap OS to registered customers at www.snapservers.com. The understanding of what lies in this would greatly assist any current or future hacking efforts. The two ideas I would have would be opening up the file and looking at it with a good editing program, or installing it over the network (I assume that would be the only way to install it to a Snap) through a packet sniffer to see what it passes to the Snap during installation.

Just a couple ideas from someone who would like to get into modifying Snaps in the future.

swapping drives isn't the problem...
 

Upgrading drives isn't the issue at all... that procedure works just fine. See the above posts.

It's salvaging data and/or cloning drives that has yet to be accomplished. Good tip on the Snap OS, though... which I have discovered is really a variation of BSD.

Two, two, two threads in one!
 

Au Contraire, MSWNOVL. There are actually two threads running in parallel here at the moment:

1) how to upgrade the hard drive in a Snap Server 1000 -at all-.

2) How to upgrade any other Snap device while perserving the original contents. (From my perspective, this issue actually seems profoundly simple. Back up the original contents to another system first, replace the Snap drive(s) and let the Snap itself format the new drive then copy the original content back. What could be simpler? Or am I missing something?

To MESWARTZ

1. Keeping data. I agree that a back up sounds like the simple solution.

2. Upgrading the drive. I haven't received the snap drive yet (delivery expected this week). Have you actually added a drive to the 1000 series before? I gather there is no mounting slot for the additional drive. Any thoughts?

Also, why couldn't I back the original snap drive (including OS) onto a new drive and then install the new drive?

Please look back at my first posting, which started this thread. To summarize, it seems like the Snap 2000 (and above) will boot properly if you install a new bare naked drive, and will format it. It also appears that you can add a second spindle to any 1-spindle Snap 2000 (or above) and format it using built-in utilities.

What NOBODY has so far figured out is how to install a larger hard drive into a Snap 1000 and get the silly box to boot at all. I have a Snal 1000 with a 10Gb drive that I would =love= to be able to upgrade using a $100 40Gb drive. I'm less sanguine about paying Quantum $500+ for a whole new unit of that capacity.

My response was about the possibility of the Snap 1000 using something other than boot info stored on the primary master HD to lock out other hard drives (mounting the hard drives on another system never really seemed like a big issue to me, it seems to me it would be far easier to copy your data over the network and then restore it). Although, the cable buck6919 mentioned sounds interesting...anyone toyed around with it or have any ideas about it? Pictures might also be helpful.

From the posts so far though, my guess would be that the Snap 1000 isn't using data stored on the hard drive itself. Since a slave device will be recognized and used properly by the server, I'd wager that during boot the system does a simple check on the master drive involving either the odd shaped cable mentioned earlier, or something involving data passed from the hard drive such as a serial number or model number as I talked about in my previous post. If the check fails, then it just attempts to go into maintenance mode (but, for some reason, fails as a result of the drive swap).

Also, does anyone know whether the 1100 model is affected by this same problem? Although I don't own a Snap yet, my plan was originally to buy a 1000 and swap in two 160GB drives before I saw this thread. I can get an 1100 for not too much over the 1000, so it would be interesting to me as to whether it's possible in that model. Sadly, I don't really want to invest around the $1k total to find out if it will accept the drives and then have it not function properly.

i found that my raid bios on my abit kt7 will mirror everything so far, maybe try that put both drives on a raid controler and mirror them. hope it helps:)

You will need my help to succeed at this
 

send email to dfullersnap@yahoo.com with questions

Here is something I got in my email, enjoy:

and

Merdian Snap Server 2000
 

Just recently bought used Merdian Snap Server 2000 from a seller on Ebay. I was able to replace both drives..Took it from a two 4 gig drives. too two 40 gig drives...

Snap 2000
 

I have a snap 2000 and I have been unable to upgrade it. When I disconnect the two old drives and attach one new drive (Western Digital 1G drive is what I had on had), and started the server - it would start OK but it would not detect the disk. I tried all the jumper settings and could not get it to work. I have tried setting it as a master and plugging in the old slave and it would not recognize either. I then tried moving it to slave and using the old master. It would detect the master but still refuses to detect the slave.
Any ideas?
David