[URGENT] Server has died...


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Right, a check disc is usually your first step in what seems to be corruption in this case. Just need to know if there is a RAID in place to suggest how to run a check disc if he has a RAID - Windows Recovery Console or any other repair disc would need a driver. If a check disc does not solve it, prehaps the MBR is corrupt in which case you can try fixmbr. Just need some additional information.

It reallys sounds like there is so much more than your backups being out of date. Maybe after this disaster situation your management or whoever is responsible will realize where some extra money needs to go...

Obviously if you are getting any sort of BSOD you are past the BIOS post...some people really should stay out before they cause more harm than good.

Do you have a RAID on this server? If you do, right after BIOS post you should see a BIOS for the RAID controller...does it show the RAID as degraded?

Also, the most obvious question: has anything been done to this server, particularly last night?

The server is usually fine how it is which is why i've never really touched it. We have our main server which is up to date intel xeon and is due to be upgraded to windows server 2008. the damaged server is used only to host ISA for our firewall... we even manage the ISA through our main server. so i don't even need a backup of files, all i need is the access rules from ISA, we have lots because we are a school and use it to determine different groups of computers and what they can and cant access.. however, the accounts have been working fine, even with isa down?

no we dont have a raid, it's a single SCSI drive i believe.

no changes have been made to the server in years.

Uh? Good answer?.... what would a router do? ISA is a firewall for most people only, more then likely they have a router before it if it is coming in through a T1 or other high end business class line... all our networks ISA sits behind a Cisco router before you get to the actual network...

and for not having your filter rules backed up, wow... one of the first things you should do once you got the rules set up is back it up... its just a small XML file you can put on a USB flash drive......

thats correct... i know, i've been kicking myself all day.

It just sounds like you need to get to a command prompt and run chkdsk,that seems to resolve the boot volume error.

i've been unsucessful running chkdsk so far, it wouldnt run from the recovery console?

Right, a check disc is usually your first step in what seems to be corruption in this case. Just need to know if there is a RAID in place to suggest how to run a check disc if he has a RAID - Windows Recovery Console or any other repair disc would need a driver. If a check disc does not solve it, prehaps the MBR is corrupt in which case you can try fixmbr. Just need some additional information.

no raid, but still not managed to run a chskdsk. i downloaded windows 2000 and windows 2000 server boot disks, but they only got me so far before requiring the windows 2000 emergency CD which i dont have... i'm going to try and obtain a disk over the weekend.

thanks for all previous suggestions, i'm up and running with ipcop.

I bet the drive itself is toast, Does it make any weird sounds? The day you have spent trying to recover the data should probably be spent rebuilding the ISA server properly. (raid 5 and automatic backups)

You keep saying its just your ISA firewall so its not a big deal, but its still a critical piece of equipment for your network to function properly.

i'm having trouble running a simple chkdsk... i downloaded windows 2000 bootdisks, they boot me into "windows 2000 setup" so i can only use recovery console from here, chkdsk doesnt work.

i used an ms-dos startup disk but get 'bad command or file name'

loading a windows 2000 safemode command prompt blue screens

i have a windows 2000 disk now, do you think its safe to re-install, get into ISA, backup, then do a clean install.

i'm having trouble running a simple chkdsk... i downloaded windows 2000 bootdisks, they boot me into "windows 2000 setup" so i can only use recovery console from here, chkdsk doesnt work.

i used an ms-dos startup disk but get 'bad command or file name'

loading a windows 2000 safemode command prompt blue screens

i have a windows 2000 disk now, do you think its safe to re-install, get into ISA, backup, then do a clean install.

What do you mean chkdsk doesn't work? What is the message given?

What do you mean chkdsk doesn't work? What is the message given?

What kind of HDD does the machine have? SCSI? If so, that's probably why you can't CHKDSK, it doesn't have the right drivers. Make an F6 floppy with the drivers and run CHKDSK.

As far as re-installing, I'd say def. make an image of the disk before doing anything further. That way you can screw up w/e is on there and still go back to the "clean" (as in before you mess with it further) copy of the data. If you can clone the disk, I'd say go ahead and do the repair install and recover the ISA rules, like you mentioned.

But def. try CHKDSK again first.

I'm not trying to be mean but it sounds like you may be in over your head if your asking for all this help. The best thing to do is probably call a consultant and get them to come down and get things working. They charge like crazy so I'm not sure how well your company would like that but it might be your best bet.

What I would do is take the hard drive out of the server and put it as a secondary drive in a computer that works. You should be able to see the drive and copy off any files you need since it sounds like the drive is somewhat accessible. It's probably gone bad but if it's still recognized then you should be able to get files off it. Since you said it was a SCSI drive this might not be very easy so a linux live CD would also work but if you don't have the image then you would have to download and burn it which would take some time. I've never had much luck trying to repair Windows installations as it usually doesn't work and just wastes a lot of time. It's faster and easier to just get the files you need and rebuild from scratch on a different drive.

If you are still unsuccessful running chkdsk, there is another command that checks for critical windows system files to be there. "scannow /sfc" this makes sure all important system files are there. I'm not sure if it's an XP/Server 2003 thing only though. I was where you are right now about a week ago and I have an automated backup that runs at midnight every day not only to a secondary secure server, but to an external 1TB HDD as well. It's very important to keep good backups because when our firewall rules got lost, I spent days making sure they were the way they were before.

Best of luck :)

If you are still unsuccessful running chkdsk, there is another command that checks for critical windows system files to be there. "scannow /sfc" this makes sure all important system files are there. I'm not sure if it's an XP/Server 2003 thing only though. I was where you are right now about a week ago and I have an automated backup that runs at midnight every day not only to a secondary secure server, but to an external 1TB HDD as well. It's very important to keep good backups because when our firewall rules got lost, I spent days making sure they were the way they were before.

Best of luck :)

Dude, it is sfc /scannow. And I don't think it will help.

Dude, it is sfc /scannow. And I don't think it will help.

Not only is the command SFC /SCANNOW, but it won't help at all considering he can't get into the OS to begin with.

Your options are the two that have been mentioned earlier.

Do what I said and clone the drive as it is currently to prevent further irreparable damage. Then either connect it as a secondary drive to a working PC and pull the files off (if possible), or load up a boot disk (my vote goes to the Ultimate Boot CD For Windows). Or, you can just do a repair install and pray that your data is in tact enough to pull the needed files off.

With that said, assuming the firewall rules are just an XML file or something like that, as opposed to some confusing array of files scattered about, I would use the boot cd to get into the WinPE environment, pull the files, do a clean install, and call it a day.

I'm not trying to be mean but it sounds like you may be in over your head if your asking for all this help. The best thing to do is probably call a consultant and get them to come down and get things working. They charge like crazy so I'm not sure how well your company would like that but it might be your best bet.

What I would do is take the hard drive out of the server and put it as a secondary drive in a computer that works. You should be able to see the drive and copy off any files you need since it sounds like the drive is somewhat accessible. It's probably gone bad but if it's still recognized then you should be able to get files off it. Since you said it was a SCSI drive this might not be very easy so a linux live CD would also work but if you don't have the image then you would have to download and burn it which would take some time. I've never had much luck trying to repair Windows installations as it usually doesn't work and just wastes a lot of time. It's faster and easier to just get the files you need and rebuild from scratch on a different drive.

yeah i totally understand what your saying, this is still a learning curve for me.. i pick stuff up quickly and have taken everything that people have said on-board. we're only a small company with a small ICT budget, they are happy for me to use this time to learn and do what i need to do...

anyway, i went ahead and tried to re build windows from setup... i got the error "damaged or unpartitioned disk" so i'm guessing its goosed. i've pulled the server apart and noticed it has 2 SCSI drives coming off the controller...

now i didnt know anything about the 2nd drive and i'm sort of hoping it's mirrored.. but i cant see anyway of accessing it?

regardless of what works and what doesnt, we're going to upgrade... can anyone offer any advice on a good setup that can backup.

at the moment i'm looking at a new SCSI drive (or 2?), controller and cables.

or should i go with S-ATA and a sata controller pci card running a raid setup?

thanks :)

So I think it's decided your drive is failed.

Moving on...You are now asking for advice to which hardware components you should use to build a new server or upgrade your current...SCSI is not a technology that I've been using lately. SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is becoming more prevalent. They use the SATA interface but are SCSI drives on the inside.

With pointing that out, I think designing and building or upgrading a server for stable and long-term use is something I would not recommend to someone who isn't absolutely fully fluent in all the current technologies available. There are serious factors to consider from RAID controllers/configurations to the software that you put on this server.

One option is virtualization, but that's a whole 'nother can o' worms.

Good luck to you. Research all you can.

One option is virtualization, but that's a whole 'nother can o' worms.

To me, it doesn't sound like an option for this guy, no offense. You've got to understand fairly basic concepts before you can bring that to a whole new level in the virtual world. Not to mention the physical to virtual conversion process will probably be a bit flustering (if anything goes awry).

As far as the current situation, I'd say get another SCSI drive. Well, first, figure out which drive failed, and then replace it. Also, determine what kind of RAID you've been running.

Why buy a new RAID controller and two new hdds when he can just replace one hdd? It sounds like this machine is fairly old (running Win2K) so I wouldn't put new hardware into it (the new RAID controller and SAS drives). Replace the failed hdd or buy a new server.

To me, it doesn't sound like an option for this guy, no offense. You've got to understand fairly basic concepts before you can bring that to a whole new level in the virtual world. Not to mention the physical to virtual conversion process will probably be a bit flustering (if anything goes awry).

As far as the current situation, I'd say get another SCSI drive. Well, first, figure out which drive failed, and then replace it. Also, determine what kind of RAID you've been running.

Why buy a new RAID controller and two new hdds when he can just replace one hdd? It sounds like this machine is fairly old (running Win2K) so I wouldn't put new hardware into it (the new RAID controller and SAS drives). Replace the failed hdd or buy a new server.

I gave him valid options but already stated that I would not recommend doing any of those options to someone who does not fluently understand all the concepts behind them - hence "but that's a whole 'nother can o' worms".

He also stated that they were looking to upgrade. If they want more life out of this server, one SCSI drive may be fine. But also consider the price differences and that if one drive went the other might soon as well. It may be more cost effective in the long-term, considering possible down-time in the future, to get a new RAID controller and new drives. With of course taking the non-recommendation into account.

Have you considered the drive may be bad? If this is the case, you could use Acronis to image it to an external USB drive and restore to another drive. If the drive can read just once, this will bring you back to A-1 on it.

Chris Watson

Network Administrator/IT Manager 7 years

MCSA, MCSE, C/EH

I dont see any reason why we would just upgrade 1 drive if one has already failed, they are only 36GB and clearly really old so the other could also be nearing the end of its life.

whoever set the server up i dont even think they were using the disks in a RAID. the first drive cannot be accessed at all and the 2nd drives comes up as 'damaged or unformatted'

we have ordered 2 new drives that have higher capacity and also alot faster... the rest of the hardware is sufficient for what we're using the server for.

I will try Acronis on the drives

Thanks for all the other suggestions, it's really helped and i've learned some stuff. Smoothwall was a life saver... if one more person asked me "when will the internet be back.." :cry:

I dont see any reason why we would just upgrade 1 drive if one has already failed, they are only 36GB and clearly really old so the other could also be nearing the end of its life.

whoever set the server up i dont even think they were using the disks in a RAID. the first drive cannot be accessed at all and the 2nd drives comes up as 'damaged or unformatted'

we have ordered 2 new drives that have higher capacity and also alot faster... the rest of the hardware is sufficient for what we're using the server for.

I will try Acronis on the drives

Thanks for all the other suggestions, it's really helped and i've learned some stuff. Smoothwall was a life saver... if one more person asked me "when will the internet be back.." :cry:

I have found that Acronis works on drives that appear to be dead and/or BSOD most of the time. If the drives are identical, you can also pull the control board off the bottom of one and try it on the other for recovery and this will sometimes work as well. There is another trick I have heard of, but I have never tried it. They say you can FREEZE (yes you read correctly) the hard drives sometimes, which condenses the platters long enough to save the data, but I have never tried it. As a last resort I would try it before canning the drives. Crazy, but if your going to toss them anyhow, why not right? In any case good luck and let us know how it goes!

There is another trick I have heard of, but I have never tried it. They say you can FREEZE (yes you read correctly) the hard drives sometimes, which condenses the platters long enough to save the data, but I have never tried it. As a last resort I would try it before canning the drives. Crazy, but if your going to toss them anyhow, why not right? In any case good luck and let us know how it goes!

We've done this at work to a couple drives and it's worked but really depends on what is wrong with the drive. What we do is pack the drive in an anti-static bag with as many silica gel packets as we can find, put it in the freezer for an hour or so then take it out and immediately plug it into a computer and run whatever recovery is going to be done. It might get you 5 minutes or an hour, just keep in mind that this has the potential to do more harm to the drive so only use it as a last resort before you toss the drive anyway.

On failed drives, I've often found popping them into a USB caddy can allow me to grab a file or two from it. As USB permits hot plug and play, the fact it keeps failing whilst in use just means the drive is inaccessible and not system fatal.

Although, reading this topic, I guess its of no use as it's a SCSI. :/

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The setup process is pretty straightforward, through a wizard, and in full below: TOS 7 Initialization As you can see, TOS 7 received a new coat of paint, and the initialization requires fewer interactions. Happily, TOS no longer decides to throw all disks into the same Storage Pool; 2.5-inch HDDs are allocated into Storage Pool 1. This is because two of the HDDs are allocated to hold system files. Previously (with TOS 5 and 6), if you pre-installed HDDs and SSDs, they were all placed into Storage Pool 1, even if you did not select the SSDs for inclusion during the onboarding. TOS 7 Setup On first boot, there is a tutorial and some steps to take to harden the TNAS (or not), which includes an immediate update from TOS 7.0.0616 to 7.0.0706, of which the changelog screenshot is also included in the above gallery. It must be noted that the Security Advisor still contains (in my opinion) a pretty major bug in that if you enable SPC and then do the required rebooting, the Security Advisor still says that SPC is disabled. TerraMaster provided the following statement about it: It is disappointing that TOS 7 has been in beta since December, and this OOBE issue is still there. Shutdown option has moved Instead of a Taskbar option to manage the NAS, all of these options have been moved to a "Start panel", initially I didn't see it and my contact had to show me how to power off the F4-425 Pro. To logout, reboot or power off you can find those controls at the top right of the Panel. It is also possible to power off through the TNAS mobile app beta. Storage setup Above, you can see the steps I took to create the Storage Pools and Volumes. I made a second Storage Pool using TRAID on two 4TB MP44Q SSDs (which, in this instance, is similar to RAID 5), and finally, I added the 250GB 970 Evo Plus drive as Hyper Cache on Storage Pool 1 in Balanced mode. Registering If you decide not to lock down the F4-425 Pro in Security Isolation Mode (blocking all external connections), then you could set up a TNAS device ID through the Remote Access setting in the Control Panel (which must be unique). This works in combination with an online TerraMaster account. TOS 7 TNAS Online Creating a TerraMaster account and linking the device online activates the warranty when you provide proof of purchase and the serial number, but it also gives you access through the TNAS mobile app, which allows you to complete certain operationsб including powering off and restarting the NAS remotely. A TNAS mobile update is required to gain access through TOS 7, and this is provided on the TerraMaster website, as it is not yet on Google Play. The app is evolving all the time and has made leaps and bounds since I first started reviewing TerraMaster devices almost three years ago. It is not quite there yet if you are comparing the likes of Synology, which, sadly, a lot of users online do all the time. OpenClaw setup One of the main selling points of the new F4-425 Pro is the inclusion of OpenClaw, with TerraMaster claiming that it is "powered by the world's first AI-native TOS 7 OS, supporting local-first smart workflows and independent data control." However, I immediately ran into problems trying to enable OpenClaw. After waiting 20 minutes at the "Enabling" message of the OpenClaw app following installation, I decided to do some searching online and discovered that it couldn't complete the installation process due to SPC being enabled, which is something TOS 7 immediately recommends to be enabled on first boot. SPC for NAS (TOS 7) is basically the same principle as UAC in Windows; it blocks executables from being launched by non-Super Users. After reaching out to my contact about these issues, I received the following response: Anyway, this only became clear when I closed the OpenClaw app screen and clicked on the OpenClaw icon in the taskbar; that is when I saw the message about disabling SPC. I think, due to the fact that this is a requirement, this should be a prompt during the installation process, not when closing the App Market and then trying to launch OpenClaw. There's also no 'Getting started' guide for people like me who have never used OpenClaw. I tried to add an LLM and discovered the tutorial led nowhere. That's when I started looking around the official TerraMaster forums, and I found a guide that helpfully explains that you won't get anywhere with OpenClaw unless you have a paid plan, which is disappointing because I imagined there would be an option to use a local LLM as I do in SubtitleEdit with Whisper-XXL. In addition, with the marketing imagery on the official site, it says that the OpenClaw feature is "all processed 100% locally for absolute privacy." which led me to believe that I could install a local LLM, not one that required paid tokens. In any case, TerraMaster does not provide guidance for this new feature, which was also a selling point of the F4-425 Pro! My contact also provided clarification about the above points I raised with TerraMaster Since it is not in the scope of the review to add paid services, I'll leave that to the people who are more qualified with OpenClaw. F4-425 Pro Surveillance App TOS also comes with a Surveillance app, which is not installed by default; it can be found in the App Market recommended section. In addition, after installing, it doesn't drop a shortcut on the Desktop or top taskbar, but you can "Send to Desktop" from the App Market listing for the app for a quick way to open it. Adding my Reolink POE doorbell camera was painless. TerraMaster doesn't appear to have a repository of preconfigured cameras; instead, the camera must be added using ONVIF or RTSP. No mobile Surveillance app TerraMaster still doesn't have a dedicated Surveillance app, although from searching online, Surveillance can be used and managed through the TNAS mobile app. I tried this with the updated TNAS mobile app beta in combination with TOS 7 and got a message that Surveillance was "Only accessible through web browser," so I reckon this must be limited to the stable versions of TOS 6 and the mobile app. More quirks In addition, whenever I minimized the Live View window in the browser Surveillance app, the feed appeared to switch to the Low-bandwidth stream, and there was no way to get the High-quality stream back. To get the High-quality stream back, I had to close Live View and then reopen it. Benchmarking A pretty cool feature of the TOS 7 is that it allows you to install directly to the NVMe M.2 SSD. In order to do that, you would have to leave out any HDDs during initialization, and even then, the system partitions are always written to two HDDs when they are eventually added. With three NVMe slots, this also gives an interesting scenario where you could build a TRAID storage Pool for installing all your apps and Docker on, and keep the third for SSD cache on the HDD pool. Limitless options! SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 5 GbE hub was well within acceptable ranges. Although the read result on SATA was a little less than with the F4-425 Plus, for some reason, while writes were generally better. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. TOS 7, which, as of testing, is still in Beta, comes with an App Center that has a bunch of handy programs you can install right off the bat, such as Emby, Plex, Docker, as well as in-house Backup and Surveillance solutions. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4-425 Pro will work great, thanks to the Intel Core N350 CPU and its 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Accessing from mobile is only possible if Security Isolation Mode is disabled, which can put your NAS at risk from external sources, so there was no way to access it from the TNAS Mobile app. It's also quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past week, and I did wonder if the noise I was accustomed to with NAS devices would annoy me, but all I could hear was a soft whirring of the rear fan (which was a little annoying) when the disks were not actively copying or reading data. Conclusion So what have I learned? Unfortunately, this release raises a few important questions and concerns that I feel haven't been adequately addressed. What I didn't like Our variant shipped with TOS 7 beta, and it's advised not to use it in a production environment. I feel that's a bit limiting on an $800 device. The mobile app is also still in beta and does not support some of the first-party apps, like Surveillance, and it still has quite a few bugs. I am a bit confused about the OpenClaw marketing along with the F4-425 Pro. I feel like that if it's going to be a main selling point, then offer official guidance on how to get started with it. TerraMaster recommends enabling SPC, but then markets the NAS for use with OpenClaw, which requires disabling SPC to be able to use it, opening up genuine security concerns for the NAS; and that's before you get into the security concerns of OpenClaw itself. Of course, the above issues won't be a problem if you decide to install something else on it, or even go back to the stable TOS 6. I wish TerraMaster had just given TOS 7 as opt-in rather than shipping with it. TOS 7 has been available as a preview since December 2025 (so well before my last TerraMaster review), and according to a thread on Reddit where a user shared a screenshot from the TerraMaster Facebook page, it is scheduled to launch today, June 23, but there's nothing about that in the TerraMaster news blog. My contact confirmed over email that TOS 7 exits beta today. The rubber feet also deserve a mention as they continue to be a problem, with them coming unstuck the moment you shift the F4-425 Pro anywhere on your desk. What I liked What it comes down to, though, aside from what I already mentioned, you are still getting a quality, affordable device here, so recommending it will depend on the individual's use case. If you're just looking for a relatively small NAS device to manage virtual machines on, backup your files, and take care of your home theater streaming, then it is a great device that will certainly futureproof you for some time. It provides good performance, takes up little space, and is, on the whole, very quiet. Four bays afford proper redundancy using TRAID or RAID 5, and you can even expand on storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5, or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link. Considering the 2024 releases were more about power, with the likes of an Intel Core i5-1235U high-end laptop CPU under the hood, I asked my contact last time if we could expect more of the same in higher-end models and was told: It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N350 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the F4-425 Pro is intended for, media streaming and backup. The only downside is still the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. In the past, I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there would be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. Along with the other things I mentioned, it all ends up costing it a couple of points. If you are comfortable with the command line, Docker, and setting up TrueNAS or Unraid, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. In TOS, the apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected.\ AI NAS?! What has become clear to me this year is that we are going to start seeing all kinds of "AI NAS" come to market, and while that might be good for us consumers, be diligent and research these claims. Although the F4-425 Pro technically comes with AI, it is really using a cloud service that is externally sourced off-device through the third party OpenClaw app. My colleague did review a newcomer to the NAS space earlier this year, and it includes a local AI assistant inside the Zettlab D4 NAS, and they do not even use AI in the product name, check out Chris' review here. Where to buy and a discount coupon However, it does not change the fact that this is truly a great entry-level home media-class NAS that you can buy right now. TerraMaster is having a 20% off launch discount, plus you can also still apply our unique 10% off coupon on checkout, which only works on the official website. So here is a breakdown of the pricing that is only valid on the official TerraMaster website. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $575.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $503.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £525.59 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £460.79 Use NEOWIN coupon code during checkout for 10% discount Over on Amazon US and UK, the F4-425 Pro also gets a 20% launch discount, but here, the above 10% coupon cannot be applied. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for $639.99 at Amazon US (was $799.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for $559.99 at Amazon US (was $699.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for £583.99 at Amazon UK (was £729.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for £511.99 at Amazon UK (was £639.99) As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
    • well you can add a GPU for around $500, that's still around the price of Steam Machine but overall significantly better in performance.
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