Degraded Raid Help

[linger]

I put together a new server last week and i've been setting it up/moving things over to it since then. Its been running fine since i put it together, but today i shut it down to put some new fans in there and when i boot it up i get all kinds of warnings stated that array 1 & 2 are degraded, i have 3 raid 1 arrays. I'm not sure where this came from, as i've been checking the arrays religiously and never seen a problem. I don't know much about raid, but what confuses me is that when i saw this problem i shutdown the computer and rebooted it into the controller bios where it tells me that array 1 & 2 are rebuilding, which i thought only happened when i replaced the bad drive.
My mobo is a supermicro x7dbn, the controller is a aoc-usas-s8ir, the drives are ST3750640NS (750gb seagate Enterprise Series).
If you have any advice i would really appreciate, also if any of know how to determine which drive has failed within the array that would be great (the controller uses adaptec software)
Thanks alot
James
oh, i have no hot spares set up yet either

 

[linger]

Update:
I checked the status of the rebuild, and it said the arrays were degraded and i was able to tell which drives they were. However this brings me to my next question, what kind of backup systems could i setup to help protect me from the data loss of 2 drives in the same array failing.
Thanks
James

 

[sondo2121]

I don't know why your setup is doing that, but I'd recommend another type of RAID level for redundancy. I use RAID 5. Some people don't like RAID 5 due to the overhead, although I'd rather pay in overhead then to not have my data one day.

 

[linger]

another question. I have a 750w sliverstone psu running a supermicro x7dbn with 2 intel xeon 5405 (quad cores), 6 hard drives, and 4 fans (120mm). There is nothing else running on this, but i didn't have enough sata connectors so i used 3 of these 1 molex to 2 sata connectors to hook up the hdds, http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16812189161. Do you guys think that the drives could have not been getting enough power because of this setup?

 

[linger]

I don't know why your setup is doing that, but I'd recommend another type of RAID level for redundancy. I use RAID 5. Some people don't like RAID 5 due to the overhead, although I'd rather pay in overhead then to not have my data one day.

I thought raid 5 was less redundant than raid 1... but it is very likely i'm wrong. Either way, the controller i have doesn't do raid 5 because i figured i was never going to set it up in 5, i guess that could hve been a stupid decision.

 

[Drudenhaus]

another question. I have a 750w sliverstone psu running a supermicro x7dbn with 2 intel xeon 5405 (quad cores), 6 hard drives, and 4 fans (120mm). There is nothing else running on this, but i didn't have enough sata connectors so i used 3 of these 1 molex to 2 sata connectors to hook up the hdds, http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16812189161. Do you guys think that the drives could have not been getting enough power because of this setup?

750W is sufficient.

If you want the ability to recover from two drive failures you will want to move to RAID6 (or 10 I suppose). RAID5 can tolerate a single failure and RAID6 can tolerate two.

 

[linger]

750W is sufficient.

If you want the ability to recover from two drive failures you will want to move to RAID6 (or 10 I suppose). RAID5 can tolerate a single failure and RAID6 can tolerate two.

I see, but i don't think my controller card can handle 5 or 6... I was looking more for some kind of external backup, i'm thinking maybe a large external hard drive that i would use to backup the unimportant stuff (movies,music...) every month or so and two smaller drives that i would use to backup important stuff & run them in a rotation where on one day ext. drive 1 is used & day 2 its drive 2 & day 3 its drive 1... or maybe use 3 or more dirves, but i just dont know what to do

 

[Dan_D]

I thought raid 5 was less redundant than raid 1... but it is very likely i'm wrong. Either way, the controller i have doesn't do raid 5 because i figured i was never going to set it up in 5, i guess that could hve been a stupid decision.

RAID-5 is less redundant than RAID-1. The reason why it is popular is because it gives you more disk space and fairly adequate redundancy. RAID-1 is the generally the way to go The problem with RAID-1 is that it requires you to double your hard drive capacity for redundancy where RAID-5 doesn't.

 

[linger]

RAID-5 is less redundant than RAID-1. The reason why it is popular is because it gives you more disk space and fairly adequate redundancy. RAID-1 is the generally the way to go The problem with RAID-1 is that it requires you to double your hard drive capacity for redundancy where RAID-5 doesn't.

Thats what i thought, but now i won't be able to sleep at night until i have some sort of data backup, seeing as how i feel i was lucky that the two drives that failed weren't in the same array...

 

[Dan_D]

Well you should never have considered RAID a form of backup because it isn't. RAID is redundancy. All that does for you is maximze up time. This is critical for mission critical servers but it doesn't do anything for you if too many drives fail or you get a virus or data corruption. A corrupted file copied to the array corrupts all copies of the file equally.

You need to implement RAID and a good backup solution with a plan for offsite storage. Anything less for critical data is foolish.

 

[linger]

Well you should never have considered RAID a form of backup because it isn't. RAID is redundancy. All that does for you is maximze up time. This is critical for mission critical servers but it doesn't do anything for you if too many drives fail or you get a virus or data corruption. A corrupted file copied to the array corrupts all copies of the file equally.

You need to implement RAID and a good backup solution with a plan for offsite storage. Anything less for critical data is foolish.

This is what i have read, but it just never really sunk in before. Luckily this is just a home server that only has movies on it right now, and not a server for some company. However i had planned to use this to store the majority of our data for the ease of having it located in one central place. An idea i'm thinking about right now is to keep everyone's files on their computers and then do nightly backups to the file server, and if its really important the files could be burn to a cd. As for the movies & music i think those could just be left on the server and backed up to an external hard drive (would have to 1tb+) every couple of months.
Do you think something like this would good idea, or should i keep thinking?
Also i just wanted to thank you for the help, i really appreciate it.
James

 

[Dan_D]

This is what i have read, but it just never really sunk in before. Luckily this is just a home server that only has movies on it right now, and not a server for some company. However i had planned to use this to store the majority of our data for the ease of having it located in one central place. An idea i'm thinking about right now is to keep everyone's files on their computers and then do nightly backups to the file server, and if its really important the files could be burn to a cd. As for the movies & music i think those could just be left on the server and backed up to an external hard drive (would have to 1tb+) every couple of months.
Do you think something like this would good idea, or should i keep thinking?
Also i just wanted to thank you for the help, i really appreciate it.
James

You are on the right track now I think. As for the help, you are welcome.

 

[linger]

You are on the right track now I think. As for the help, you are welcome.

Alright, Well i'm glad this happened this early because if i would have gone on with the idea i had, i would have been setting myself up for a big let down. And again, i can't thank you enough, your help is greatly appreciated.
James