Jay Lagare

Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse. We were almost done with the restoring of files to the RAID server when two more drives failed. We had to hurriedly buy extra drives from Gilmore and rebuild the RAID server. This effectively negated one week’s worth of backup restoration.

And that’s not all of it. Later in the evening, as I was connecting the backup drive to the newly arrived Buffalo Terastation Pro 2, the drive suddenly started smoking! I was able to quickly disconnect the power. It turns out the AC adapter failed and was probably feeding a higher voltage to the drive.

I needed to see if the drive is okay so I tried mounting it on Windows. It can see the disk but since it has a Linux EXT3 filesystem, Windows couldn’t see the files. Still it was a good sign. I then tried mounting it in on Linux but it really can’t see the disk!

Why is this happening to me?

UPDATE: Hallelujah! It works! I brought Selene, my now-Linux-based Thinkpad X22, to the office to see if it can mount and read the drive.  And it did! I’m so glad and relieved. Whew!

Just before the holidays, the RAID server at the office suddenly died. Not one but two drives failed. The server has RAID Level 5 so the loss of one drive should have been easily recoverable. But no, two drives had to fail. Fortunately, Alex was able to resurrect the two dead drives but it seems there were corrupted files and possible longer term problems so we had to reformat. But first we must back up everything. The next problem then comes up: The external backup drive is also dead! So, we had to use a spare drive. Guess what? The SATA-to-USB adapter was also dead! I had to bring my personal SATA-to-USB adapter so we can backup. And that’s why I’m here at the office with Alex and Aby (misery loves company) on a nice Saturday morning when I should be soundly sleeping in bed. Not looking like a good year. Tsk.