has anyone tried SnapOS v4 ?
 

$199 per snap server for public-domain software?
 

just looked at the snapappliance dot com site. they want $199 *per copy*, and one copy *per server*, to upgrade to snap/os v4. sounds outrageous to me. and the new software *still* doesn't let you install stuff - other than what "they who know what is good for us" dictate.

we've just bought two new x345's from ibm, and once they're in and configed - and we've moved everything off the snap boxes - i'm going to drop linux into a snap box. yes, it'll void my warranty, blah blah blah. the snap software isn't bad, but when someone tells me what can and cannot be run on a paid-for out-of-warranty box that my company owns, well, we take a dim view of that. afa we're concerned, it's a mobo, p/s and four drives. we'll swap in b-i-g *huge* drives, drop in a version of linux that doesn't require a console *and doesn't prevent telnet logins*, and then we'll tell everyone how we did it. if anyone wants to help, we'll be glad to do a "team thing" on this project, and share the techniques.

we've got 4 x 4000's, and they'd make a fabulous cluster, or just four fabulous linux boxes. the hardware is good. imho linux will make them better.

really, this *we know what's good for you* attitude - to not let people run what they want on a box for which they've paid - is absurd and overcontrolling. i understand that they probably don't want to support user-installed software - fine. tell users that if they install their own software, their software support warranty is void. but to prevent software installation on a box that we own? sounds like 1963 eastern-bloc politics to me.

Snap Server 1000 fooled with Diskprobe
 

I managed to get Snap server 1000 booting properly with the help of a free tool called Diskprobe from the NT Resource Kit. The kit is now free to download from Microsoft. basically I used the good HD with the Diskprobe and copied out the sectors 0-4096 and saved them as a file then turned around and wrote them back to a new HD. When the Snap boots it did not go into the maintenance mode but rather booted normally. The only problem was the new drive had the old drive's partition table. Long story short...the answer lies in the partition table. That's why you can't just slap any old drive in. The Snap drive also contains any customizing you mave have done such as failure notification email addresses and such. I only managed to get the Snap to boot and bring up the http interface. The drive was not in good enough shape to format or repair but I'm still working on that.

Chip.

Upgrading the drives in my SNAP has been a partial success. Original 2 16gig drives were replaced with a couple 120gig western digitals. The SNAP fires up fine but only sees them as 38gig or so each. I'm not sure what model number it is, 1000 or 1100 because it doesn't have the markings on the outside of the case that most do.

SNAPs document for the 4100, 4100__disdrive.pdf has some information on pages 7 to 9 on using the reinit command. I tried it but it didn't change anything. It could be that I didn't have the correct information in the config device format 100## /reinit /nocore command line or that this is not the correct command to change the size of the drives.

I plan on another attempt this weekend since the SNAP is down and apart to replace the CPU fan. eMail me if anyone is able to come up with commands that worked or might work for me.

forum@ezend.com

Thanks,
Don

Upgrading Snap! 4000 w/ 4 x 120BG Drives
 

Greetings all,

This is my first time posting here, but I've been reading the forum for a little while now. Thanks for all the info already posted.

I'm having a problem trying to upgrade my SNAP 4000 (SNAP OS: 3.4.803 (US) with 4 x 120GB WD1200's. Interestingly enough, Either of the two channels function perfectly well with two of the drives by them. That is to say that I can successfuly get the Primary IDE channel to detect both 120GB drives and I can get the secondary IDE channel to detect the two 120GB drives, but as soon as I have all four drives plugged into two channels, the SNAP server doesn't detect any of the drives. Could this be an addressing issue?

I've tried all the alternate jumper settings for both CS as well as Master/Slave with no luck. If anyone has run into this scenario, and found a work a round I'd be really eager to hear it.

Thanks in advance.

Wanted to pass on my experience with my Snap 1000. It was one of the 'originals', a 1000 I guess. two 8.5 Gig IBM hard drives. Following the advice on this thread, I installed 2 160 gig drives. The machine booted fine and formated the new drives. Problems: the snap server only sees them as 130gig drives. Also, I turned on mirroring at approx. 10PM last night and this morning at 9am (11 hours) it is 12% complete.

Also tried to buy some of these on Ebay but I guess word is out on such an easy hack that the prices are very over inflated so buying used ones really isnt too bright, especially since there is a device called reByte (found it while searching for the snap server hack) for only $150. Also, it is so easy to build your own with a pentium/pentiumII/AMD and FreeBSD or Linux. But the snap has the appeal of being quite and small in size. But anyone that happens to have a snap laying around can give it new life.

Follow: Successful Snap 4000 Upgrade 4x120GB
 

Well, I just wanted to followup and pass on my experience successfuly upgrading a SNAP 4000 server. I had nothing but problems with the first Western Digital EIDE drives I tried. I RMA'd them back to the vendor in exchange for 120GB IDE (non-EIDE) Seagate drives (model# ST3120022A). I installed all four drives in Cable Select mode and to my suprise and relief the were immediatly recognized and formated.

There were no problems with the OS or any data on the HDD's. The OS on the 4000's seem to be completely in ROM, and I've got tape backups (and my old drives) to restore my data from.

Total cost to upgrade from 120GB to 480GB: $432. I'd say it's worth it.

Good luck to all of you.

Jawzzz

I have also had trouble trying to get my snap server 2200 working properly. One of my drives failed, but not the one with the OS on it. The problem is, the disks were set up for striping and I can't delete my failed stripe off the working disk so even when I replace the other disk I still have 80 Gb of wasted space I can't do anything about!!!

Does anyone know of any way to edit the partition table on these things so I can take out the reference to the failed stripe and reclaim the space once again (this time for a mirror ;-) )

Hi all,

Have anybody succeeded in replacing disks on a Snap Server 2000 with Deskstar disks (7K250 here) ? They are just not recognized, the Snap gives warning : "File System : MakeNewLabel(): Requested partitions exceed drive size", then error "LCD Message : FAILED: Disk 1" and "Disk Driver : Cannot Read Device 80070007 Block 13"...

Any idea please ?

Bilbo69

How to Upgrade harddisk in Snapserver 1000
 

Ye recipe -
First backup all contents - this method destroys all data !!
Make a byte for byte image of existing disk with utility in winhex or g4u ( copydisk ) to put image of existing disk onto new larger harddrive .
Install the new harddrive physically back into the server and reattach to network.
At this point the harddrive should function normally but will only accomodate the same amount of data as the original .
To update the software to take account of new harddrive size -
Enter into http://"snapserver ip"/config/debug
type into command line " config devices format 10000 /reinit "
Reboot and be patient - it can take a long time to format a large drive .
If this command fails then double check the logical id of your drive is 10000 ( mine is ) by typing " config devices info "

Have upgraded using this method from 20gig to 40gig to 120gig
also downgraded from 20gig to 8gig ( just to experiment )

Pass this knowledge on as it is certainly not widely available . Comiston

You say they were nonEIDE drives but looking up that part number they show as EIDE drives?
Seagate Barracuda ST3120022A 120GB Hard Drive
(EIDE ATA-100, 7200 RPM, 8MB)

Is that the correct part number? Want to be sure before I go plunk down $350

HI CM,

Really? I just looked on the Seagate website on the part number page ( http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...t3120022a.html ) , and I don't see EIDE anywhere. The drive is an Ultra ATA/100 standard, but the term EIDE is a term coined by WD, and loosely accepted throughout the industry. Either way, I know this drive works with my SNAP server. I've now been running for a couple months without incident. If it helps, I bought my drives through CDW ( http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/def...spx?EDC=467103 ). They have a fantastic return policy if they don't work.

Good Luck!

Jawzzz

Max HD Size
 

What is the max size hd that a snap server can handle? Are there any bios upgrades to get around this limitation?

Snap server 2000 repair notes
 

I must admit that I'm just now looking at drives over 120GB to purchase and own none at the moment. I would think that Quantum will never supply us with a bios upgrade to handle larger drives. That's not what they would like for us to do. Instead, were supposed to buy their next over priced and under engineered product.

As far as the Snap 2000 goes, I think the 120's are all that you want to do. The temperatures inside get way too hot with the faster and larger drives. I just completed repairs on my 240GB Snap 2000 because someone put two 7200RPM 120GB drives in and cooked the CPU fan AND the disk that was positioned immediately over it in a short period of time. If I had known what was going on, I'd have done something before I lost 200GB of data in a (default) RAID 0 configuration. Do not save data in this fashion if you value it. Make backups. Thankfully, (and fortuitously) I've recovered most of it. There is also some suspicion that the RAID 0 configuration does not give better performance in this device. Use the QDL option instead and adjust memory/buffers.

I struggled for a while to re-invigorate the dead disk, but no amount of trips to the freezer would make it spin again. I found a new WD 120GB for $60, plopped it in and read web pages like these to learn about this device. Everyone talked about upgrading these things, but not about repairing them. Ergo why I've posted this drivel. The new disk came up fine, but the logs constantly complained about the old disk. It kept seeing the old 240GB 'drive' and it's shares from the earlier RAID 0 and consequently would not allow for the creation of anything until that was resolved. The 'configure disks' menu pick led to a error message that ended with a vapid suggestion to contact technical support. It seems that all the documentation brings that one up a lot. I will not go quietly into that good night. I've found the meat of the information here. Another good reason to contribute. So others can see and read another variation.

I finally understood that I simply had to wipe the older healthy drive from the old configuration. I had initially been afraid to do this for fear of losing O/S data. Fear not, it's all in flash. I then used a wipe program to erase the disk and simply reattached it. Voila! The old 240GB disk was gone and the disk was now free to join the newly installed one in a proper RAID 1 configuration. I use this at home for live backup storage.

It is worth noting that a heavier or beefier CPU fan needs to be mounted before installing a 7200RPM disk. Unfortunately, there is precious little clearance for this. The cooler 5400RPM disk are much better suited in this application. If you can mod the case with an extra fan that would be even better. I replaced my CPU fan with one off a P-II 300. A bit fatter, but functional.

In my reading, discovering the debug prompt was the greatest boon (http://192.168.0.x/config/debug - replace x with your correct #). I'd really love to discover the telnet switch. This article was great:

http://www.procooling.com/articles/h..._joe___10_.php

You may email me if you think I can help or if you want to send me v4 of the SnapOS. ;~P Thanks to all the others for their insightful posts and for Google for steering me here. Now, if we could just fit it with a gigabit interface...

DS

deadsenator -- i think i can help you out but I do not have your email. drop me a line at abombss at hotmail

Larger drive size
 

Has anyone tried putting a larger that 120Gb drive into a Snap 2000? I was reading the specs of the new Snap Appliance devices, and the 4200 model can provide up to 640Gb. If the 4X00 series devices still have 4 drives, then that would be 160Gb drives, ie larger than 120Gb. I am wondering if the SnapOS v4 provides this capability. If I installed SnapOS v4, could I install 2x 300Gb drives? (aside from the heat problem pointed out by deadsenator). I would love to give it a go, but I don't want to shell out the $99 just to find out that it doesn't work.

I'm running the latest version of OSv3 and all it sees on a 160 is 130. Other than that, it initializes the drives just fine. I have some 2000s with a slightly higher bios version and may try putting them in one of those to see if it makes a difference.

I have no plans to put out for OSv4, so I can't say if that will do it.

Just as an FYI, I did try installing OSv4 and my Snap Server 2000 is now dead.
I installed with the Assist software. It finished the first upgrade file, then it reported that the upgrade was complete, but there was a problem. It can not reconnect to the server.
Looking at the server, I saw that both the power light and the link light were on solid, and the Disk light flashing very quickly.
When trying to reconnect to the drive, I saw the Net light flash, but it failed to connect. Assist also failed to find the server. I rebooted the drive. I noticed when I turned the power off, the server turned off straight away (normally, it went through some shutdown process). After the reboot, same situation occured, ie solid power and link light and rapid flashing of the drive light. Watching the server, I noticed that the drive light would turn off after while, then it would start the rapid flashing again. Leaving the server running for a while, I saw that it rebooted it's self. The server then returned to the same state.

All I can recommend to those who were thinking of upgrading:
DON"T UPGRADE TO SNAP OS v4

Here some info which might interest you. There is a drive limitation on all OS which are = or smaller the OS3.4.803. to a Ca 120 GB. OS 4 will increase this limit but apparently not on older servers. You need to have a new bois version. I'm not sure if you can flash it but if not you are stuck to your currant limitation. I'm still in the process to research the issue but will keep you posted once I have more info.

Ps. As far as I know old model like the 2000 and 4000 are not supported anymore so no joy on this end.

I've never seen a bios posted on the support site. I'm running six 2000's (all hardware version 2's--different than the article Joe posted) which have 2 different bios versions all told. Come to think about it, I've never found a way to do a file dump of the bios either.

Thanks for the info, give a yell if you find something.

Here's what I've found.

A 2000 can be told it's a 4000(for raid 5 with 4 drives) just as this thread mentions the 1000 to 2000 upgrade. The internal powersupply, while piddling, seems to run the four 7200rpm maxtors I've been testing with just fine. The HWrev2 2000's use pc100 dimms which show a speed improvement (slight) when upgraded to 256MB from the stock 64MB when benching file copies.

Pretty neat, it doesn't all fit in the case (next project before I electrocute the family cat), but it works. It's not a speed demon, for these things never showed anything but a speed downgrade when using any of the raid features over jbod, but it makes for a cheap and safe stand alone file server running raid 5.

Another experience I've had is no problems running 7200rpm maxtors in the standard 2 drive snap2000 housing from heat related issues. Just have to blow out the cpu fan every now and then as it gets pretty gummed up. hmmm. water cooling on a snap?

Now if we can find a way to get these out of pio mode through the old changes made to freebsd, we be screaming.

it is possible to break free of the 137 GB limit of LBA 48. The xbox used to have the same problem that the snap server seems to be having too. I'm not saying it would be easy because the xbox scene has a lot more attention then the snap server scene :)

it would require a complete re-write of the snap server's bios, plus a way to load it. For those who are interested, here's how they did it on the xbox.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.p...97997&hl=lba48

where to get a disk image?
 

Does somebody have a disk image of the os area of an original disk? i accidentally mixed up the two disks :cry:

thanks

what version snap server you got?

I just installed four 250gig maxtor drives in my snap 4100 and upgraded to OSv4.0.830(US) and the drives formatted fine, but they are only being seen as 128,470meg each. I am running bios version 2.4.437. Is there anyone that has had any luck yet getting up over the 137gig limit?

I think I have found a use for the 16GB Snap 2000 that had a hard drive failure last year!

I have an extra 120GB Western Digital w/8MB cache that I could stick in the Snap, but from reading this thread it seems like that drive might be a bit overkill due to the hardware limitations of the older Snap Servers. Would it be better to just buy 2 - 5400 rpm drives with capacities less than 137GB?

i have a snap server 1000 and lost the "magic data" in the beginning of the disk...

well, i'm about to upgrade my snap 1000 to a larger drive, so i can keep a copy of the image for you. Let me know how you'd prefer transfer it.

I'm currently in that same situation I have installed (4) 200GB Maxtor drives
in my 4100 originally a 240GB model and its reading all drive at 128-130.
with SNAP Version 4

I think its a bios thing because the 2200 supports higher drive capacity for example they have 2x250 configured model.

I been doing some research and it seems that the system will need to be "Flup"
a term they use to upgrade the bios. I'm researching to see how I can perform this.

If I had a box to play with I would load the Guardian OS to see what it does on a 4100. lol

Anyone with any suggestion regarding this issue me and musicgreg has please inform us.

Thanks

Hi,

I've read the whole thread but can't find any links to webpages containing "leaked" software upgrades or custom Java applications. Are the any pages of this sort out there? Almost any other hardware has this.

I have a Snap 1000 (found it as a "leftover" from work last week)
Original disk (haven't filled it up yet, will change for a 80 if I do find some cool apps for this snap)
Thinking about a hardware mod of the 40mm fan. Changing it to one from Papst 17dbA :) Have anyone done this or any other modifications like this that they want to share info about?

As I sad, I found the hardware, just the box, had to buy a power supply. So I don't have any "standard" software for it, but from what I have found, this isn't free software from the manufacturers site either, with I find strange.

Regards
/rbt

can anyone share instructions on how to open the snap 1000 ? after I remove the bottom cap it is hard to take out the inner metallic case plus the on/off button sticks through the plastic case.

I have a snap1000 with a 30GB and want to upgrade it with a 120GB drive.

jaime