Hack a Snap Sever 1000?

[cycology]

I just got a Snap Server 1100 from work. We think it dumped the HD, so my boss let me take it home to tinker with it. I landed an 80G HD for it, but not sure how to do the swap, seems just dropping it in doesn't work - and now I have a dilemma...

Seems I may have tossed the original drive, and now I'm reading that I needed to copy some stuff off it to make the new one work? Maybe I read wrong, If not, is there a way to make the new HD work?

I've got the user CD that came with the Snap, as well as the IP for its web tools stuff as well as a disk w/ DataKeeper stuff on it.

I'm running Mac OS X.3 on my other machines, and although I'm not proficient w/ UNIX, I do have access to it if I need it (seems I read something about using the "dd" command somewhere.

Anyway, I'd like to make this thing work if at all possible - sure would be a great addition to the SOHO network!

Any help and advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-c

[KAO]

The fix to my Snap upgrade was not in the size of the drives, but the speed. My 2000 would recognize anything up to ATA100, but not above. That one went from a pair of 8 gigs to a pair of 80s if I recall. My server did not recognize a pair of 120 gig maxtors in ATA133, but got along well with a pair of 80 gig western digitals in ATA100 fine.

If anyone has information on the cpu fan in a snap 2000, I need one urgently. Please email me Pete@Ricksplumbing.com if you know of an aftermarket drop in or an oem retailer.

[otoc]

http://www.alltronics.com/fans.htm has a 40mm 5vt assembly

http://2cooltek.safeshopper.com/69/cat69.htm?958 has 5vt 40mm

no idea if these will fit w/o modding.

http://www.mouser.com/catalog/618/1114.pdf for 5 and 12vt chipset coolers (caution high prices)

The fan is on a temp sensor and will only run when required, it cycles on and off by design. The first time I opened one, I thought the darn thing was dead. I pull them every so often to blow out the dust and lube the bushings. Just a thought.

You might want to check the OS version you are running, I have no problem with maxtors with ATA133 other than the snap runs pio and not ata it seems. Did you start with a freshly low level formatted drive? Curious...

[wren337]

This forum has been great, there aren't a lot of Snap resources out there.

I picked up a Snap 4000 2U server on Ebay with no drives in it. I couldn't get my browser attached to it since it had been config'd to a custom IP address and had a changed admin password. The tech guides from the snap appliance site show how to reset the server to the factory defaults by booting with the reset pin depressed. When I first read it I assumed "reset all factory defaults" would clear the IP address and SU password but you have to do all of the reset steps, they are each seperate.

Once I got into the console I didn't have any trouble getting everything working. I tested it out with a 40GB western digital drive I had laying around, then I dropped in 4 120GB Hitachi 180GXP drives. It formatted them out and created the RAID partition over them in about 6 hours (I think, I went to bed).

Pretty sweet overall, I got about 25Mb/sec write speed and 50Mb/sec read speed at 100bT with a crossover cable. Over 802.11b I can stream audio/video to several systems at once no problem.

[yvette176]

here's the results from my snap 4000 upgrade:

the log showing the 24h19m process that took four maxtor maxlineII 300gb drives and formatted them into an 842Gb raid5 array is attached, and the "view disk status" display showing the 842Gb raid5 array is also attached. before allocating them to the raid5 array they showed as a 1.2Tb JBOD, which was quite cool.

pertinent 4000 info:

bios 2.0.252
os 3.4.805(us)
h/w 2.0.1

notable events:

--> the process took a weekend, between the experimenting with the correct cabling options (use cable select when you jumper the drives!!!), the "do i need to copy the first 50,000 disk sectors from the old drive 0x10000 or is the image in flash?" analysis, et al.
--> do not try to use assist to reload the image - the opsys in flash memory will drop itself down onto the new array just fine.
--> after the first reboot, it only saw two drives. i formatted those and rebooted again, and it found all four on the next reboot.
--> before you start the process, make sure you have turned off the option "auto-correct disk errors at startup"; otherwise, it will run the "check" option on each new drive, which takes forever.
--> be sure to mark which old drive is which ("front top, front bottom, etc.) before you forget, in case you have to go back to the old drive setup for some reason.

i'm not sure why the bios+h/w+os combo above accepted the 300Gb drives with no issues - maybe i'm lucky. if you encounter problems, maybe try putting the old drives back in, use assist to install 3.4.805 (and bios 2.0.252, if possible) and try again.

total cost, not including the 4000: about $1000, not bad for a 1.2Tb server!

oh yes - i couldn't get the raid5 allocation process to run in 64mb. i dropped in 256mb and it ran much better. fwiw.

now - only three more to go! <groan>
yvette

[wren337]

1.2TB, that rocks. What are you going to be doing with them all?

I really went out of my way tio get 120Gb drives based on some other posts, I regret not trying 160's now. 360Gb is ok for now but I expect to fill it in a year or two easily.

Originally Posted by yvette176

here's the results from my snap 4000 upgrade:

the log showing the 24h19m process that took four maxtor maxlineII 300gb drives and formatted them into an 842Gb raid5 array is attached, and the "view disk status" display showing the 842Gb raid5 array is also attached. before allocating them to the raid5 array they showed as a 1.2Tb JBOD, which was quite cool.

pertinent 4000 info:

bios 2.0.252
os 3.4.805(us)
h/w 2.0.1

notable events:

--> the process took a weekend, between the experimenting with the correct cabling options (use cable select when you jumper the drives!!!), the "do i need to copy the first 50,000 disk sectors from the old drive 0x10000 or is the image in flash?" analysis, et al.
--> do not try to use assist to reload the image - the opsys in flash memory will drop itself down onto the new array just fine.
--> after the first reboot, it only saw two drives. i formatted those and rebooted again, and it found all four on the next reboot.
--> before you start the process, make sure you have turned off the option "auto-correct disk errors at startup"; otherwise, it will run the "check" option on each new drive, which takes forever.
--> be sure to mark which old drive is which ("front top, front bottom, etc.) before you forget, in case you have to go back to the old drive setup for some reason.

i'm not sure why the bios+h/w+os combo above accepted the 300Gb drives with no issues - maybe i'm lucky. if you encounter problems, maybe try putting the old drives back in, use assist to install 3.4.805 (and bios 2.0.252, if possible) and try again.

total cost, not including the 4000: about $1000, not bad for a 1.2Tb server!

oh yes - i couldn't get the raid5 allocation process to run in 64mb. i dropped in 256mb and it ran much better. fwiw.

now - only three more to go! <groan>
yvette

[jezzer]

My 2000 has:
bios 2.0.252
os 3.4.803

This does not allow >132Gb, and I would certainly like to be able to expand a bit beyond this size (I have 2x160GB giving about 129Gb formatted).

Does the .805 Bios make all the difference. If so, it does not seem to be listed as available for the 2000 despite registering the product with SnapAppliance to get downloads.

Any ideas?
Jezzer

[wren337]

I would not expect the minor revision in OS to make a difference in that. It is more likely a hardware limitation in your snap server. You might be able to look at the screening on the chips if they are exposed and use the brand/model numbers to look up specs for the IDE chipset.

Originally Posted by jezzer

My 2000 has:
bios 2.0.252
os 3.4.803

This does not allow >132Gb, and I would certainly like to be able to expand a bit beyond this size (I have 2x160GB giving about 129Gb formatted).

Does the .805 Bios make all the difference. If so, it does not seem to be listed as available for the 2000 despite registering the product with SnapAppliance to get downloads.

Any ideas?
Jezzer

[OzDave]

I have two Snap 2000:
Snap1
Sw: 4.0.830
Hw: 1.1.0
BIOS: 1.2.180
Snap2
Sw: 4.0.830
Hw: 2.0.0
BIOS: 2.0.282

I have tried to installed drives greater than 132Gb (300Gb) into both of these devices, and it fails. In Snap1, it failed to format, in Snap2 it formated, but had errors. With the errors on the drive on Snap2, it would try to correct them on boot, and boot would fail.

[OzDave]

I installed new fans into my Snap 2000s. I wanted quiet ones. I installed these ones:
http://www.quietpc.ca/acb/showdetl.c...D=163&CATID=34
My servers are in a room that is cool, so I believe that it is safe to install fans with a lower cfm than what was installed. I did have to cut the connector of the old fans and solder them onto the new fans as the fans in the Snap had connectors.
The new fans are _much_ quiter than the ones that the server came with.

Originally Posted by otoc

http://www.alltronics.com/fans.htm has a 40mm 5vt assembly

http://2cooltek.safeshopper.com/69/cat69.htm?958 has 5vt 40mm

no idea if these will fit w/o modding.

http://www.mouser.com/catalog/618/1114.pdf for 5 and 12vt chipset coolers (caution high prices)

The fan is on a temp sensor and will only run when required, it cycles on and off by design. The first time I opened one, I thought the darn thing was dead. I pull them every so often to blow out the dust and lube the bushings. Just a thought.

You might want to check the OS version you are running, I have no problem with maxtors with ATA133 other than the snap runs pio and not ata it seems. Did you start with a freshly low level formatted drive? Curious...

[cyrusuncc]

ok, i have a snap 1000 upgraded to a 120 gb

my question is how can i utilize 2 drives? do i have to "trick" it into thinking its a 2000 first?
do the two drives need to be on the same cable or different ones?

what jumper settings are needed on both drives?

thanks

[jimeu]

can anyone share a "dd" for dummies instructions ?
I have no unix experience.

I got a FreeBSD machine that I can use, and have the FreeBSD bootable drive as the primary drive, and attahced the old 30GB HD as the secondary primary and the new 120GB HD as the secondary slave.

With this in mind, what would be the command to clone our use the dd command.
if you can share a complete dummy experience I will greatly appreciate.

pd. also how to mount the drives so that the dd command will recognize the command and execute correctly.

thanks a million

Jaime

[Marvin_pa]

My Snap 1000 has just booted up with a new 120gb replacement unit in it, thanks to the great work of those gone before. However a few little gotcha's that I came across that might be of interest.

I used DOS rather than Linux. I started by trying the Diskpro software available at http://www.e-mart.com/www however the original drive had a number of bad sector's and Diskpro didn't seem to like that. I then tried Dolly, which worked a treat.

Dolly has changed location to http://sac-ftp.externet.hu/utildisk6.html and the zip file includes a txt manual which is worth a read. My steps to success were -

1. Create a Win9x boot disk and copy dolly.exe to it.
2. Set up my 2 HDD's on the same IDD channel
3. Make the original 40gb HDD as master and the new 120gb HDD as slave
4. Boot from your diskette.
5. Check the BIOS to ensure it can see both HDD's.
6. Run a:\Dolly xhd128: xhd129:
7. Wait HOURS till you're back at the a:\ prompt
8. Set the jumpers on the 120gb HDD back to master and reinstall to the Snap housing
9. Boot up and "find" the IP address using the Assist program (if you're running DHCP)
10. Browse (http) to http://ipaddress/config/debug
11. Type in the command box - config devices info
12. You should get a reply on the device # 1000
13. Again type in the command box - config devices format 10000 /reinit
14. Reboot and wait till the new drive has been formatted
15. Bingo ! a nice big Snap drive :-)

Now to consolidate the data and sell the spares ;-)

Cheers guys !

[jimeu]

In between your steps 8 & 9
my snap goes to formating... and I have stoped it after about 4 hours,guessing that something was wrong., so I am back to the forum.

-How long will this process take ? and I should wait whatever (the new HD is 120 GB)
- After all that waiting, I should run the reinit command, it will go at it again and have to do the long waiting again ??

- Since we cann't browse to the snap when the formating or the reinit commands were issued, is there any other way we can monitor the process ?

thank you.

Originally Posted by Marvin_pa

1. Create a Win9x boot disk and copy dolly.exe to it.
2. Set up my 2 HDD's on the same IDD channel
3. Make the original 40gb HDD as master and the new 120gb HDD as slave
4. Boot from your diskette.
5. Check the BIOS to ensure it can see both HDD's.
6. Run a:\Dolly xhd128: xhd129:
7. Wait HOURS till you're back at the a:\ prompt
8. Set the jumpers on the 120gb HDD back to master and reinstall to the Snap housing
9. Boot up and "find" the IP address using the Assist program (if you're running DHCP)
10. Browse (http) to http://ipaddress/config/debug
11. Type in the command box - config devices info
12. You should get a reply on the device # 1000
13. Again type in the command box - config devices format 10000 /reinit
14. Reboot and wait till the new drive has been formatted
15. Bingo ! a nice big Snap drive :-)

[Marvin_pa]

jimeu -

If your cloning of the original disk went ok then you *should* have the private/hidden OS in the first couple of partitions. When you boot the Snap, it should be able to access those. The Snap will still think the HDD is the same size as the original (mine thought it was only 40gb) so will boot up ok, but not "see" the whole disk size.

Step's 10 onwards "forces" the Snap to recalulate the size and it only shows up after a reboot. In the process of rebooting it needs to format the whole drive, so does take a little while, but not more than an hour (well mine didn't). I was able to http to the Snap and watch the reformatting process - about as fun as watching paint dry !

The really time consuming part for me was the "dolly" copy - hours - I means hours !

Once that was done I was sorted :-)

Perhaps give it another go, it's worth the effort.

Cheers,

[jimeu]

Yes,
I can make a copy of the original drive with Dolly without problems.
it took about 80 minutes to do the cloning, even though the original drive is empty, I deleted all files and reformated on the snap, before the cloning to minimize the time on cloning and rechecking.

I then install the new 120Gb on the snap1000 and it does boot up and I can see the drive. with status OK in green. Assist can find it and I am able to browse.

my problem is that after this point.

I visit snap/config/debug/
and enter: "config devices info"
I can see that the server has recognized the drive as a 30Gb and its device 10000.

I then enter "config devices format 10000 /reinit"
and it prompts for me to reboot
so I enter "reboot" on the command prompt.

The drive goes into formating mode (two blinks on the system and orange steady on the Disk) and for more than 24 hours it has been at this.

Usually when you format or check the drive, even though the drive is offline, you can still browse the snapserver web page, and I know it is boring to see the progress... but you are able to see it.

When I issue the command and for those 24 hours, I am unable to ping or to browse the snap to check on progress.... so at least I know it is doing something.

Any ideas / suggestions on how to proceed from here...??
its a Maxtor diamondplus9 120GB ATA 100

Thank you again for your help.

[shch]

Originally Posted by jezzer

My 2000 has:
bios 2.0.252
os 3.4.803

This does not allow >132Gb, and I would certainly like to be able to expand a bit beyond this size (I have 2x160GB giving about 129Gb formatted).

Does the .805 Bios make all the difference. If so, it does not seem to be listed as available for the 2000 despite registering the product with SnapAppliance to get downloads.

Any ideas?
Jezzer

In my Snap2000(former 1000) soft4.0.830 hardw3.1.2 bios2.1.366 I have two 200GB ATA100 WesternDigitals. They show up as two 190GB after -reinit. I would upgrade the system and try to -reinit disks. And I think I got bios update with the system4.

[shch]

Originally Posted by jimeu

Yes,
I can make a copy of the original drive with Dolly without problems.
it took about 80 minutes to do the cloning, even though the original drive is empty, I deleted all files and reformated on the snap, before the cloning to minimize the time on cloning and rechecking.

I then install the new 120Gb on the snap1000 and it does boot up and I can see the drive. with status OK in green. Assist can find it and I am able to browse.

my problem is that after this point.

I visit snap/config/debug/
and enter: "config devices info"
I can see that the server has recognized the drive as a 30Gb and its device 10000.

I then enter "config devices format 10000 /reinit"
and it prompts for me to reboot
so I enter "reboot" on the command prompt.

The drive goes into formating mode (two blinks on the system and orange steady on the Disk) and for more than 24 hours it has been at this.

Usually when you format or check the drive, even though the drive is offline, you can still browse the snapserver web page, and I know it is boring to see the progress... but you are able to see it.

When I issue the command and for those 24 hours, I am unable to ping or to browse the snap to check on progress.... so at least I know it is doing something.

Any ideas / suggestions on how to proceed from here...??
its a Maxtor diamondplus9 120GB ATA 100

Thank you again for your help.

I suspect that you have DiamondMax Plus9 disk and it is ATA133. If it is so it will not work in your Snap1000, I had chance to experiment on my system. But I was able to use WD200JB instead.

[jimeu]

Hi shch,

The Maxtor diamondmax plus 9, has printed on the HD as being ATA 133.

I was convinced that it was a ATA100 since this is what the PC where I was clonning the drive displayed for the drive.

Please tell me what is the biggest drive i can jam on the snapserver 1000 for a single disk operation and what is the ATA that I should get.

but it is weird that the 120 GB will work thinking its a 30GB but I can't expand it.
so maybe if we can get our hands on the image of a 120GB my 120GB ATA 133 will work ?

thank you.

Originally Posted by shch

I suspect that you have DiamondMax Plus9 disk and it is ATA133. If it is so it will not work in your Snap1000, I had chance to experiment on my system. But I was able to use WD200JB instead.

[shch]

Originally Posted by jimeu

Hi shch,

The Maxtor diamondmax plus 9, has printed on the HD as being ATA 133.

I was convinced that it was a ATA100 since this is what the PC where I was clonning the drive displayed for the drive.

Please tell me what is the biggest drive i can jam on the snapserver 1000 for a single disk operation and what is the ATA that I should get.

but it is weird that the 120 GB will work thinking its a 30GB but I can't expand it.
so maybe if we can get our hands on the image of a 120GB my 120GB ATA 133 will work ?

thank you.

I can only talk from my experience with Snap1000 20gb. The biggest HD I was able to use successfully were two WD200JBs (did not have anything bigger than that on hands). Maxtor 200gb ATA133 did not work. Non of ATA133 disks worked.
I can not explain why your 120gb clonned into 30gb disk booted up but freezed on reinit. My ATA133s would not boot up at all. Different bios or system?

[HLouie]

Questions, what's the largest drive I could install in the 4100 and has any upgraded this model to SnapOS v4?

Software: 3.4.803 (US)
Hardware: 2.2.1
Bios: 2.4.437
Framework: 1.2
VM 14.3

Thank-you

[itsmeagain]

got snap 1100 today ( new ) took case off and upgraded to 120 gig


used jisk jockey (www.icoffice.co.uk)jisk jockey info) to copy drive then run hd format though web broser works fine

with ata 133 hard drive will try 200 gig drive next ( disk jockey only takes about 1 hour to clone 120 gig drive .

[itsmeagain]

yes used my disk jockey and cloned to 200 gb ata133 maxtor and formated lovely just remember to change jumper to cable select .

i followed the earlier post
I visit snap/config/debug/
and enter: "config devices info"
I can see that the server has recognized the drive as a 30Gb and its device 10000.

I then enter "config devices format 10000 /reinit"
and it prompts for me to reboot
so I enter "reboot" on the command prompt.


very happy bunnie now

[itsmeagain]

swapped out 80 gig drive upgraded to 200g maxtor ata 133 ( set to master for this upgrade

worked great

had 120 ata133 maxtor swapped out ide lead to double ide ata 66

changed 2nd drive setting to slave

now got over 300 g


( note 120 drive clone from orginal 80 gig drive )

[WirelessDJ]

I have two Snap server 2000's -- they are great!!

I hacked them to work with 2 - 100gb drives and the other with 2-120gb drives

QUESTIONS:

1. Has anyone gone above the 137gb barrier with a Snap 2000 server??
2. Does the OS4 allow larger drives?
3. Both of my CPU fans are SHOT. where can you get the exact same fan (that sits inside the heatsink?

WirelessDJ

I have a snap server 2000 with two 100gb drives (200gb) for sale
email me if interested before i put it on ebay