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Unread 04-27-2006, 01:47 PM   #1
mchattech
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Default Upgrading Snap 4500

Has anyone upgraded, or attempted to upgrade, a Snap 4500?

I have a client with one, but they've maxed out the space on it, so was planning on throwing 4 500gigs in there, instead of the 250s it currently has.

I've got a full backup of the server data, but it would be a huge pain to sit and restore it all.

I've been reading the plans of upgrading a 2200...would I follow the same steps to upgrade to the new drives...do one at a time until all four are updated?

Thanks in advance for any help. And if I'm going into uncharted territory, I'll keep everyone updated.
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Unread 04-27-2006, 02:16 PM   #2
re3dyb0y
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Yeah, you are


Its a Guardian OS unit, and although now we are starting to get some coming through, but most and our main support is the generally older Snap OS units.

Well, just Snap OS units
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Unread 04-27-2006, 02:25 PM   #3
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Oh boy, this will be fun...heheh

I may have to put off this project until this weekend/early next week because of previous commitments (and a lack of desire to interfere with their current operations).

I know I have to upgrade the OS from 3.2.019 SP1 to the latest version, 4.1.061.
Beyond that, I'm hoping that I'll just have to go drive by drive, slapping it in and going from there. Hopefully I won't have to break the mirror or do anything that will make me pull out my hair.
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Unread 04-27-2006, 09:47 PM   #4
blue68f100
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

There was a 12000 that was here last week. He discovered that the power supply was not big enough to boot 4 500 gigs. Better get the specs of the drives, startup surge data, and compare it to your PS. Only had a 120w, needed a 170 to cover the in rush, unless you can do a staggered start.
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1 Snap 4500 - 1.0T (4 x 250gig WD2500SB RE), Raid5,
1 Snap 4500 - 1.6T (4 x 400gig Seagates), Raid5,
1 Snap 4200 - 4.0T (4 x 2gig Seagates), Raid5, Using SATA converts from Andy

Link to SnapOS FAQ's http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=13820
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Unread 04-27-2006, 10:22 PM   #5
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Thanks for pointing out the power issue, that's another aspect I have to keep in mind. Unfortunately I wasn't able to open up the server at the time that I was around it, but Snap tech specs say that there's a 250 Watt PS in there. Maxtor has the drive power peeking at about 30 Watts per drive (at spinup), so if there really is a 250er in there, I should be good.

I'm also going to try and see if there are higher cfm fans that I can throw in there, just to help dissipate some of the heat a little bit better.

The big date has been set for this Sunday, so I can work on it uninterrupted...and so no one will be around to see me if it fails.
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Unread 04-28-2006, 08:32 AM   #6
blue68f100
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Seagate just anounced there 750gig drives. It's using the new perpendicular technology. That would be another boost, with the same power draw.

Just read the speed is close to that of a 10000rpm Raptor
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1 Snap 4500 - 1.0T (4 x 250gig WD2500SB RE), Raid5,
1 Snap 4500 - 1.6T (4 x 400gig Seagates), Raid5,
1 Snap 4200 - 4.0T (4 x 2gig Seagates), Raid5, Using SATA converts from Andy

Link to SnapOS FAQ's http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=13820

Last edited by blue68f100; 04-30-2006 at 09:52 PM.
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Unread 04-28-2006, 08:56 AM   #7
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

how sick are those drives? can't wait for 1 TB drives.
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Unread 04-28-2006, 08:59 AM   #8
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Well ive upgraded 2 snap 4400's pretty much the same as the 4500 as per Snap/adaptec. The problem ive run into is gaining full use of the new drive space.

One snap 4400 came stock with 120 gig drives i uped it to 200 gig drives but it formatted them as 169 gigs total which is incorrect.

To upgrade the server you must have 1 original drive in the first slot. The machine WILL NOT boot up with a new fresh drive in it, The Guardian OS is installed on the drive.

I would reccomend purchasing 1 new drive first to see if you can even see the full capacity of the drive. Chances are it will format the drive to the size of the original one

How old is the unit? It should handle 400 gig drives fine (no power issues or hardware issues) as it ships now with 4 400 gig drives.

If your in warantee you might want to call adaptec and tell them youve lost 2 drives in the array and just happen to have new drives laying around. and see if they can help reclaim the full use of the discs.

Does any one know if there is a way to adjust partition sizes in linux? You can get to a command prompt on these devices via the serial port.
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Unread 04-28-2006, 11:56 AM   #9
blue68f100
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

There are some utilities that can read MBR tables and correct them. The Ultimate Boot CD (UDBC) is one CD that has all utilities collected together. It is Unix based, so it may work. I used it on repairing my LT when I setup a dualboot and lost access to one of the partitions. I done think Partition magic reads the XFS system.
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1 Snap 4500 - 1.0T (4 x 250gig WD2500SB RE), Raid5,
1 Snap 4500 - 1.6T (4 x 400gig Seagates), Raid5,
1 Snap 4200 - 4.0T (4 x 2gig Seagates), Raid5, Using SATA converts from Andy

Link to SnapOS FAQ's http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=13820
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Unread 04-30-2006, 08:21 PM   #10
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Well, if anyone is interested still, I'm working on the server now. I was hoping to start much, much earlier in the day, but got word early this morning that my grandmother had a pretty bad stroke and her condition was not looking great. Needless to say, family definitely comes before work.

Anyway, once I finally got to the office, I discovered that the server backup had not been run in 2 days because someone turned off the machine that handles the backup (Retrospect to an external drive, with a once weekly backup to a Snap 2200) and I was not going to do a thing before I had the most complete backup set possible. So once that was run, I decided to shoot for the moon and threw one of the 500 gig drives right in.

No problems booting up, or accessing the web GUI once it started. It did not see the drive as part of the RAID5 set initially, so I'm currently adding that drive and resyncing. It's reading the drive as the local hot spare, but I'm hoping and praying that it will miraclously add it as just another drive in the RAID set. I should know in about an hour, once the sync has completed, if it's going be kind to me or if it's going to be one of those 3 packs of smokes kind of night.
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Unread 04-30-2006, 11:13 PM   #11
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Update: After waiting hours for the first drive to sync up, it went through and took its new place in the RAID set. I figured I wouldn't get too eager, and just go drive by drive, rather than pulling all the old drives out (now that one is synced) and putting the other 3 new ones in. That, and I'm unsure how doing that might affect the integrity of the RAID set and the data on it. No sense is risking it with someone else's files.

I'm eager to see, once all the new drives are in, if the Snap automatically reconizes their capacity, rather than adopting the old drives' size. So far it does see the first new drive as having the correct size (about 446 gigs).

And the truly best part? If I play my cards right, I might get to walk away with 4 free 250 giggers....mmmm, I'm smelling a FreeNAS box to call my own.
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Unread 05-01-2006, 08:30 AM   #12
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Sorry to hear that about your grandmother.

It's nice when they work as design.
You will need to fail 1 drives at a time if you want to maintain the data on the unit. If you lose 2 you will be sol. Drive 1, I would wait till the last, the OS resides on it. I havn't a clue on how it will handle it. If you can swap out drives hot with out powering down, it shouldn't be a problem.

Can you send me a list of the debug cmds avaliable for the Guardian OS. I would like to compare them to the Snap OS.
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1 Snap 4500 - 1.0T (4 x 250gig WD2500SB RE), Raid5,
1 Snap 4500 - 1.6T (4 x 400gig Seagates), Raid5,
1 Snap 4200 - 4.0T (4 x 2gig Seagates), Raid5, Using SATA converts from Andy

Link to SnapOS FAQ's http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=13820
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Unread 05-01-2006, 08:34 AM   #13
webboy
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Quote:
Originally Posted by blue68f100
Sorry to hear that about your grandmother.

It's nice when they work as design.
You will need to fail 1 drives at a time if you want to maintain the data on the unit. If you lose 2 you will be sol. Drive 1, I would wait till the last, the OS resides on it. I havn't a clue on how it will handle it. If you can swap out drives hot with out powering down, it shouldn't be a problem.

Can you send me a list of the debug cmds avaliable for the Guardian OS. I would like to compare them to the Snap OS.
Debug commands?!??!! Some one found the debug commands? where i havent fount them yet. and there is no /debug directory like the Snap OS.

remember this is a Linux box.

In what slot did you put the 500 gig drive in mchattech ?
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Unread 05-01-2006, 10:22 AM   #14
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

I started with Disk 1 and worked my way up from there. I had to head out while the 3rd drive was syncing, and am on my way back to take care of the fourth drive. I was powering down the 4500 before I replaced a drive, just because I was very tired and extremely paranoid that I would fsk it up.

In between drives 2 and 3 I was able to access data on the server without any problems (reading and writing) so I believe it's all good. I'll let everyone know in about 3.5 hours, when the last drive syncs up.

As far as debug commands, I haven't found them on GuardianOS units. This was actually the first time I had to do ANYTHING with a 4500 and only got in about an hours worth of playing around and gettting familar with the GUI before jumping in....but the whole story isn't worth digging up at this point.

I'll take a quick look and see if I can find debug commands for it.
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Unread 05-01-2006, 02:46 PM   #15
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Well, hit a big bump in the road. The drives formatted properly, synced nicely, everything's pretty except it sees the drives as having the original capacity. Not good or fun.
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Unread 05-01-2006, 04:32 PM   #16
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Wait ..... Was this is a repeat of a problem reported earlier ??????

Do you have your data backed off where you can play????

I think that happen since the array was built with 250 gig. The array was bassed on it. The size is bassed on the smallest drive.

Did you upgrade to v4.1 like you mentioned earlier????

Set to JBOD (4 x 500) then back to Raid 5.
Check to see if it reconize the drives as 480 gig.

Then I would do a re-format of the drives, making sure no hidden markers from breaking the raid to jbod.

The set the raid 5 array up.

I think this is a repeat of what happen earlier.........

Looks like this is going to be a learning exercise for us. New to Guardian OS.
What works with Snap OS does not seam to apply to the Guardian OS.
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1 Snap 4500 - 1.0T (4 x 250gig WD2500SB RE), Raid5,
1 Snap 4500 - 1.6T (4 x 400gig Seagates), Raid5,
1 Snap 4200 - 4.0T (4 x 2gig Seagates), Raid5, Using SATA converts from Andy

Link to SnapOS FAQ's http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=13820
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Unread 05-01-2006, 11:12 PM   #17
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Yeah, I think someone was having a similar issue with a 4400..stupid hard drives. With this though, the drives show up as having 460 some gigs, but within the RAID set only the original amount of space is available. And that missing space doesn't show up anywhere.

I've got full backups of everything, and the original hard drives (250s). I just got the upgrade (don't ask) so that wasn't done before I started syncing the new drives. I'm not sure if that would have helped the situation at all; it seems like they've got those drives locked up pretty good, forcing you to get their upgrades. Nothing like paying $500+ for one FRU

I've been scratching my head try to figure out how do get around this, and the best I can figure is that there's something within the OS limiting/restricting hard drive size. I think I might try running a fresh install (reading up about on adaptec's site) with the new drives in place. Has anyone tried this on a 4200, 4500, 4400, 14000, 15000 or 18000?
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Unread 05-02-2006, 01:41 AM   #18
re3dyb0y
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

As we've said in other threads

We only have really had 1000,1100,2000,2200,4000,4100 and such which are Snap OS

We are getting Guardian units cmoing through now, but neither me or david (blue68f100) have any hands on experience...

Anyone fancy buying us a small 4200 each :P
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Snap Server Help Wiki - http://wiki.procooling.com/index.php/Snap_Server

Snap Server 2200 v3.4.807
2x 250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9
w/ UNIDFC601512M Replacement Fan

"Did you really think it would be that easy??"


Other NAS's
1x NSLU2 w/ 512mb Corsair Flash Voyager
Running Unslung 6.8b

1x NSLU2 w/ 8Gb LaCie Carte Orange
Running Debian/NSLU2 Stable 4.0r0


250GB LaCie Ethernet Disk
Running Windows XP Embedded
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Unread 05-02-2006, 07:57 AM   #19
blue68f100
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Like we said, (re3dyb0y & my self) only have experience on the SnapOS.

Here is the other thead http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=13093
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1 Snap 4500 - 1.0T (4 x 250gig WD2500SB RE), Raid5,
1 Snap 4500 - 1.6T (4 x 400gig Seagates), Raid5,
1 Snap 4200 - 4.0T (4 x 2gig Seagates), Raid5, Using SATA converts from Andy

Link to SnapOS FAQ's http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=13820
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Unread 05-02-2006, 09:13 AM   #20
webboy
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

There is no limitation in hardware or software as per Adaptec Ive called and am having many email threads with techs. But what were attempting to do they havent tried or will support.

I wonder how they are imaging HD in the lab???

The drive space you lost is there its just an unallocated partition on each drive.
It would seem that the OS is retaining the drive size and partition tables of the original drives (that was the case for me). Breaking this is the key. Adaptec says in theory it can be done. At this point im tempted to see if i can find a replacement drive with the os on it as this seems to be the only way. Id like to try and expand the partitions to recover the lost space but i currently have no where to dump all this data too.
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Unread 05-03-2006, 07:32 AM   #21
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Quote:
Originally Posted by webboy
There is no limitation in hardware or software as per Adaptec Ive called and am having many email threads with techs. But what were attempting to do they havent tried or will support.

I wonder how they are imaging HD in the lab???

The drive space you lost is there its just an unallocated partition on each drive.
It would seem that the OS is retaining the drive size and partition tables of the original drives (that was the case for me). Breaking this is the key. Adaptec says in theory it can be done. At this point im tempted to see if i can find a replacement drive with the os on it as this seems to be the only way. Id like to try and expand the partitions to recover the lost space but i currently have no where to dump all this data too.
I'm getting the same thing from them. I have to go out of town this weekend on a business trip, but I'm planning on taking one of the original drives with me to see what I can dig up on it.

In the meantime, I've started setting up a FreeNAS box. If it's going to be a huge hassle to upgrade Snaps in the future, I'd love to over people a much cheaper route to go.
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Unread 05-03-2006, 08:00 AM   #22
blue68f100
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

You my try JBOD and see if you can use the whole drive.
Then re-format all.
Then build a NEW RAID5 Array.
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1 Snap 4500 - 1.0T (4 x 250gig WD2500SB RE), Raid5,
1 Snap 4500 - 1.6T (4 x 400gig Seagates), Raid5,
1 Snap 4200 - 4.0T (4 x 2gig Seagates), Raid5, Using SATA converts from Andy

Link to SnapOS FAQ's http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=13820
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Unread 05-03-2006, 09:41 PM   #23
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

I'll have to double check tomorrow, but I don't remember seeing JBOD as an option...just RAID 0, 1 or 5.
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Unread 05-04-2006, 08:46 AM   #24
webboy
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Quote:
Originally Posted by mchattech
I'll have to double check tomorrow, but I don't remember seeing JBOD as an option...just RAID 0, 1 or 5.

There is no option for JBOD Just raid on these boxes (4400 and 4500 dont know about higher models yet)
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Unread 05-04-2006, 08:30 PM   #25
mchattech
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Default Re: Upgrading Snap 4500

Quote:
Originally Posted by webboy
Debug commands?!??!! Some one found the debug commands? where i havent fount them yet. and there is no /debug directory like the Snap OS.

remember this is a Linux box.

In what slot did you put the 500 gig drive in mchattech ?
found the debug commands for Guardian. Here's a link for them: http://www.image78.com/guardian_debug.htm

Looked at an original HD (250) on a Windows box...couldn't see much, just looking with Disk Manager. There's 5 or 6 partitions on the drive. Maybe I can get away with scaling up the partitions for the 500 gig drives (wishful thinking). If not (or i don't get the chance to), I plop it into a box and fire me up so Knoppix. Should have enough time this weekend to do that.
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