Recommended Posts

I just learned the hard way not to trust New File System Technologies, and wanted to share my experience with you all, in hope you can learn from my mistakes.

I received two new drives in the mail yesterday, and after 24 hours of stress testing in a seperate system, I went to put them in my Server case. My server consists of the following:

LSI 9260-8i raid controller

Intel RES2SV240NC sas expander

4x Supermicro 5 in 3 drive cages

4x Samsung HD204UI 2TB drives (RAID 10)

5x Seagate 3TB drives (RAID 5)

The Samsung drives were formatted as ReFS, and were used solely for my virtual machines (Email, nzb downloads, etc). When I went to insert the two new drives, something happened, and the drive lights lit up on all bays occupied. I rebooted the server, and when it came back up, it said the cache was lost but the controller recovered, and it came back up fine, except Hyper-V would not load any VMS. I checked in windows, and drive E (my VMS /ReFS drive) did not have a full/empty bar. I clicked it, and got a message saying that the drive repair was unsuccessful.

So what does this mean? Something happened to the supposedly "Resilient" file system, it couldn't repair the issue, and it basically wiped my drives (well not wiped, but it thinks it's empty, and won't let me access it" see image:

post-26332-0-93795900-1360985609.png

the only fix is to reformat and restore from backup, which in my case is about a month old.

Moral of the story? Don't trust ReFS yet, and keep better backups. My two other Volumes were fine, both of which are NTFS volumes. I have reformated the RAID 10 volume as NTFS instead of ReFS, and will be investing in a battery backup unit for the LSI controller, just in case this happens again.

http://redmondmag.com/articles/2012/05/11/microsoft-offering-improved-chkdsk-utility-in-windows-8.aspx

?

Also, I find it highly annoying that most (big) backup providers have not even come out with a solution yet.

  On 16/02/2013 at 03:32, Tech Greek said:

http://redmondmag.co...-windows-8.aspx

?

Also, I find it highly annoying that most (big) backup providers have not even come out with a solution yet.

I tried chkdsk, but STUPIDLY enough, it won't run, giving a message "This volume cannot be checked because it cannot be accessed", yet diskpart works fine at selecting it, and even says that the volume is healthy. I posted a shot showing that diskpart thinks the volume is completely empty

  On 16/02/2013 at 03:48, Tech Greek said:

Did you try any software to recover the partition information? I've got almost all of my servers running on 2012 now and haven't had any issues (most are on RAID1 though)

I didnt. Fortunately it was only VMS, and since I had a backup from 20 days ago, I only lost about 80 emails worth of data. I've got a RAID 1 offline box that is only powered on to backup VMS and other critical data, so I'm fairly protected. I also found out the cause of the original issue, one of the pins in a molex connector that powers the SAS expander came out of the connector, thus cutting off power to the SAS exapander and bringing all drives off at the same time.

In your server 2012 instance, are you useing REFS?

  On 16/02/2013 at 04:24, SirEvan said:

I didnt. Fortunately it was only VMS, and since I had a backup from 20 days ago, I only lost about 80 emails worth of data. I've got a RAID 1 offline box that is only powered on to backup VMS and other critical data, so I'm fairly protected. I also found out the cause of the original issue, one of the pins in a molex connector that powers the SAS expander came out of the connector, thus cutting off power to the SAS exapander and bringing all drives off at the same time.

In your server 2012 instance, are you useing REFS?

I've got a mixed environment right now for the most part. The mission critical ones (exchange - sharepoint) I keep on NTFS just because I didn't want to be a test pig with over 500 employees worth of data.

The power will do it in a heart beat, but doesn't the expander have a battery on it as well?

  On 16/02/2013 at 05:01, Tech Greek said:

I've got a mixed environment right now for the most part. The mission critical ones (exchange - sharepoint) I keep on NTFS just because I didn't want to be a test pig with over 500 employees worth of data.

The power will do it in a heart beat, but doesn't the expander have a battery on it as well?

Nah, the expander receives power directly from the motherboard, or in my case, a 4 pin molex cable (which in this case had a pin come loose) no BBU for intels expanders, HP's may have one. I suppose in hindsight it's a good thing it was power to the expander that failed, since if something happened to say, 2 drives in the RAID 5 array, or 2 in one of the RAID 10 arrays parts, since then I'd probably have lost EVERYTHING.

The entire box has a 1 hour UPS on it, and until I get a BBU for the card, I've disabled write-back on all VD's, as an added precaution.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • This guy is just salty that Waymo is about to get buried by a company with cars that cost significantly less, charge significantly lower fares, and will soon dramatically outnumber their fleet. Waymo made the mistake of not reducing their vehicle cost quick enough and not overcoming their route limitations. Unless they start allowing their cars to use the freeways and have significantly wider geofencing, they're going to soon join the list of discontinued Google products. If Tesla wasn't the one to make them irrelevant, somebody else soon was. There's a long list of companies designing robotaxis right now.
    • LOL. Hard to believe people still fall for this. If you are having some sort of issue, I would work on fixing that instead turning off these settings.
    • That is a great option for compatibility, but in my opinion, that isn't the future. Xorg/Xserver is outdated with massive security holes and limitations built into the core design, which cannot be easily fixed. The reason Wayland exists is because it was apparent that no one had the resources/will to revamp Xorg, so it was basically put into a support only mode until it was eventually abandoned. Yes, X11Libre has taken up the mantal, but I don't expect to see anything from them other than basic support.
    • I agree with your frustrations, but after nearly a decade of Wayland ideologs debating how software they don't write should work...its time to rip the band aid of X11 off and let Wayland sink or swim on its own. Its not like Linux can just fail at this point, so devs will flock together to find solutions. It is my opinion that a lot of these silly debates about things like window decorations take place because they can. People feel like they have time to have these academic conversations to "get it right." However, the conversation will change very quickly when the issue is "###### don't work." People will quickly find fixes once we are forced into that mode. I draw a parallel to the infancy of the internet going public in the late 1980s. It became quickly apparent that IPv4 really wasn't up to the task. The ivory tower response to the issues was basically "your doing it wrong, you shouldn't want that" while debating long-off solutions like IPv6. Then some rando cames along and invited NAT, the standards people saw it as an abomination and absolutely refused to include it. He didn't care, sold the product anyway under the name PIX, which he later sold to Cisco. It was not only a massive success, but it changed the entire concept of the internet, basically inventing the idea of public and privet addresses, which totally reformed the way the internet works. The standards guys were forced to adopt it once they realized it was impossible to put the cat back in the bag.
    • Download How to Engage Buyers and Drive Growth in the Age of AI (worth $22.95) for free by Steven Parker Claim your complimentary eBook worth $22.95 for free, before the offer ends on July 1. Develop stronger, more profitable relationships with your buyers in the digital era. Right now, how we buy and sell is evolving dramatically. People have fundamentally changed the way they do business. To put it simply: buyers no longer interact with sellers in the same way. To ensure a profitable future, sales leaders and teams need to embrace this transformation. In the face of globalisation, ecommerce, subscription services, and new digital tools for buyers and sellers alike, you need new strategies to generate successful sales and better bottom lines. Deep Selling shares the cutting-edge sales model you need to create a buyer-obsessed, high-performance culture. Your team urgently needs to embrace the growing suite of digital and AI technologies. But new technologies alone won’t solve all your selling problems. To really maximise your success, you need to evolve your selling frameworks and behaviours. You need to use these new tools in smart ways, embedding them into your sales execution models. In this book, you’ll discover how to: Audit the current sales techniques and cycles in your organisation Transform your sales execution models Achieve organisational buy-in through new performance measures and shared goals for success Use data to drive strategy, and revolutionise your selling with the latest digital and AI tools Build deeper buyer relationships that create more value and improve buyer outcomes With Deep Selling, you and your team will learn how to meet buyers on today’s real-world terms — and engage them more fully and successfully than ever before. This free to download offer expires July 1. How to get it Please ensure you read the terms and conditions to claim this offer. Complete and verifiable information is required in order to receive this free offer. If you have previously made use of these free offers, you will not need to re-register. While supplies last! Download How to Engage Buyers and Drive Growth in the Age of AI (worth $22.95) for free Offered by Wiley, view other free resources The below offers are also available for free in exchange for your (work) email: Excel Quick and Easy ($12 Value) FREE – Expires 6/24 The Inclusion Equation: Leveraging Data & AI ($21 Value) FREE – Expires 6/24 Microsoft 365 Copilot At Work ($60 Value) FREE – Expires 6/25 Natural Language Processing with Python ($39.99 Value) FREE – Expires 6/25 How to Engage Buyers and Drive Growth in the Age of AI ($22.95 Value) FREE – Expires 7/1 Using Artificial Intelligence to Save the World ($30.00 Value) FREE – Expires 7/1 Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, [...] ($18.00 Value) FREE – Expires 7/2 The Chief AI Officer's Handbook: Master AI leadership with strategies to innovate, overcome challenges, and drive business growth ($9.99 Value) FREE for a Limited Time – Expires 7/2 The Ultimate Linux Newbie Guide – Featured Free content Python Notes for Professionals – Featured Free content Learn Linux in 5 Days – Featured Free content Quick Reference Guide for Cybersecurity – Featured Free content We post these because we earn commission on each lead so as not to rely solely on advertising, which many of our readers block. It all helps toward paying staff reporters, servers and hosting costs. Other ways to support Neowin The above deal not doing it for you, but still want to help? Check out the links below. Check out our partner software in the Neowin Store Buy a T-shirt at Neowin's Threadsquad Subscribe to Neowin - for $14 a year, or $28 a year for an ad-free experience Disclosure: An account at Neowin Deals is required to participate in any deals powered by our affiliate, StackCommerce. For a full description of StackCommerce's privacy guidelines, go here. Neowin benefits from shared revenue of each sale made through the branded deals site.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      fredss earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Dedicated
      fabioc earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • One Month Later
      GoForma earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      GoForma earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      ravenmanNE earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      652
    2. 2
      Michael Scrip
      226
    3. 3
      ATLien_0
      219
    4. 4
      +FloatingFatMan
      146
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      137
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!