Here's my situation. My employer is buying a piece of aerial surveying equipment that apparently stores the data it collects on a RAID 5 array, which is connected to its host Windows PC via USB 3.
The boss guy from the vendor claims that the proper procedure for extracting the data from the instrument is to remove the five bare disks from the RAID enclosure, and plug them into another identical RAID enclosure, which will recognize them as a configured array. I'll admit my experience with RAID systems is limited, but in my 15 years in the IT world, I've never heard anyone actually endorse doing this as a standard operating procedure before.
This is the enclosure they're using. There's a manual available for download, which doesn't seem to say whether or not it's supposed to support this.
http://ain.mediasonic.ca/store/product_info.php?cPath=71&products_id=257
I've always heard from more experienced folk that messing with configured RAID arrays is a really bad idea. My limited experience agrees. I have some LSI controllers that support exporting the array configuration, so you can replace the controller, but I've never been able to get it to work right when I tried it.
My suggested fix is to make the entire RAID box removable, with the drives inside. Between flights, we'd simply swap out the entire box, like any other external hard drive. They dismiss this as too difficult, because it's "too late in the game to be making changes."
Am I wrong in thinking that this is a really half-assed solution?
The boss guy from the vendor claims that the proper procedure for extracting the data from the instrument is to remove the five bare disks from the RAID enclosure, and plug them into another identical RAID enclosure, which will recognize them as a configured array. I'll admit my experience with RAID systems is limited, but in my 15 years in the IT world, I've never heard anyone actually endorse doing this as a standard operating procedure before.
This is the enclosure they're using. There's a manual available for download, which doesn't seem to say whether or not it's supposed to support this.
http://ain.mediasonic.ca/store/product_info.php?cPath=71&products_id=257
I've always heard from more experienced folk that messing with configured RAID arrays is a really bad idea. My limited experience agrees. I have some LSI controllers that support exporting the array configuration, so you can replace the controller, but I've never been able to get it to work right when I tried it.
My suggested fix is to make the entire RAID box removable, with the drives inside. Between flights, we'd simply swap out the entire box, like any other external hard drive. They dismiss this as too difficult, because it's "too late in the game to be making changes."
Am I wrong in thinking that this is a really half-assed solution?