Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE
On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 06:31 am, Toomas Aas wrote: Hello! I'm looking for a cheap solution to back up a FreeBSD 4.8 machine. Cheap meaning that tape drives are out of question. Even external FireWire drives are deemed a bit too expensive by the folks for whom I'm doing this research. This leaves one option I can think of - standard IDE drive in one of those removable HDD trays. We'd probably use two drives, one being active in the machine and the other being kept somewhere out of the house for safety. The machine has an integrated Promise TX2 controller and two 80 GB drives are currently configured as RAID1 attached to this controller. There are two additional (non-RAID) IDE channels on the motherboard, one of them has CD-ROM attached to it and the other is free - I could attach the backup HD to that. I've done some web searching and I'm getting controversial results. Most of the info I find seems to indicate that IDE devices cannot be hot-swapped. At the same time some vendors are trying to sell stuff on their web pages which they advertise as hot swap IDE drive bays. I remain skeptical. If the majority is right and IDE drives cannot be hot swapped, this would indicate that we would need to power down the machine every time we want to change the backup HDs. This would be less than perfect, but since we are cheap we could live with it. OTOH I read 'man atacontrol' and saw that there are commands like 'atacontrol detach' and 'atacontrol attach' which seem to be meant for detaching/attaching IDE devices while the machine is running. Does this mean that I could actually run 'atacontrol detach channel', swap the drive and then run 'atacontrol attach channel' and be able to use the second HD after that? Is anyone doing something like that? -- Toomas Aas | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.raad.tartu.ee/~toomas/ * I don't know whether to kill myself or go bowling ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] We are currently using those removable drive trays for such a purpose. We have the standard vipower racks that have 3 fans and the sliding on/off switch. The drives are hosted off a standard promise 2 channel ata card, non-raid. We have a script that dismounts the drive then atacontol disconnects it. We then turn off the power via the switch on the rack and yank the drive out. No need to power down. Putting it in is just the opposite. Put in, turn on and run a script that atacontrol turns it on and then mounts it. We have been using it for about a month without a problem. We are testing it in preparation to use it as a replacement for our nightly backup to tape drives. We will still archive to tape or optical for long term data storage. It looks like as with many other things in the freebsd world it just works. The only potential problem with the whole setup is that we will be rotating the disks every day off site and we are not sure about how the drive trays and the disks will handle the constant moving around and plugging in and out. If you are interested send me an e-mail in say march and I can tell you how the first couple of months have been. Hopefully it will work, or at least we can make it work with a few mods. We stand to save about $2AUD as opposed to a tape drive and media. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE
On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 21:26:43 -0600 Marc Wiz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 10:31:24PM +0200, Toomas Aas wrote: Hello! I'm looking for a cheap solution to back up a FreeBSD 4.8 machine. Cheap meaning that tape drives are out of question. Even external FireWire drives are deemed a bit too expensive by the folks for whom I'm doing this research. External Firewire drives are too expensive? I would ask these people how much their data is worth to them. I understand about being on a budget but there are limits. I'm not trying to flame anyone but you sometimes you have to spend a little bit of money. IMHO most of the time Firewire drives cost too much. If you shop around you can get an enclosure and a drive and put the drive in yourself. I have been using a Buslink 1394 Firewire HD model #FW80 72E on 2 4-STABLE systems for backup. The Firewire ports are onbord on an ASUS P4PE and an ASUS P3B-1394 motherboard. Pulled this from pricewatch, I have not used this vendor before or the included Firewire card, my Buslink 1394 drive came w/o: Generic (Hard Disk Drives) Buslink 1394 Firewire 40.0GB 7200rpm External Hard Drive W/Firewire Card Part - HD-BL40FW2 Price - $ 138 Shipping - $6.00 - 8.00 Fed Ex Ground Insured http://www.digitalstormonline.com/ My firewire chassie appears to be easily opened, and if cost is that important you could try swapping drives in the chassie after removal. (warranty issues beware) -- the correct sequence for hot swapping this firewire hard drive on my motherboard is this: (this is with firewire and sbp devices compiled into my kernel) ... plug the firewire drive cable in run 'fwcontrol -r' mount the firewire drive do backups unmount the firewire drive unplug the firewire drive cable ... My PC and firewire drive would work fine on the first time plugin of the hard drive, but unplugging the drive and coming back later to plug in again needed the 'fwcontrol -r' to work properly. YMMV This reconnect issue may be fixed now in 4-STABLE for my firewire on-board interface :-) --- Another option to research would be the new SATA IDE drives and controllers and trays. Anyone with more info regarding doing this on 5.x or 4.x please chime in! Regards, Stephen Hilton [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE
Hi! Just for the record I have the kind of setup you're talking about - I successfully 'hot swapped' a 40Gb IDE disk using a hdd caddy tray but there are caveats (mostly highlighted above) - using the term 'hot swap' loosely here because it just doesn't feel too clever doing it :P I found the following: - I could remove/reinsert the device only if it was originally in the machine on boot - this is fairly obvious I suppose. Otherwise the device just doesn't show up. Just to make it clear for myself - did you try running 'atacontrol attach channel' after attaching the drive that wasn't attached at boot time and it still didn't show up? - I could re-insert the device successfully but only if I'd umounted it first before removing it. That's obvious. Since I'm planning to use this disk as a backup media, I'll keep the FS unmounted most of the time anyway - to be protected from 'rm -rf /' type of things. Thanks for your input. -- Toomas Aas | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.raad.tartu.ee/~toomas/ * Character density: The number of very weird people in the office. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE
On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 02:26:39PM +0200, Toomas Aas wrote: Hi! Just for the record I have the kind of setup you're talking about - I successfully 'hot swapped' a 40Gb IDE disk using a hdd caddy tray but there are caveats (mostly highlighted above) - using the term 'hot swap' loosely here because it just doesn't feel too clever doing it :P I found the following: - I could remove/reinsert the device only if it was originally in the machine on boot - this is fairly obvious I suppose. Otherwise the device just doesn't show up. Just to make it clear for myself - did you try running 'atacontrol attach channel' after attaching the drive that wasn't attached at boot time and it still didn't show up? No, this might have helped perhaps :) Did you try this with success? I no longer use this technique as it goes since I added a large disk a while back and as such have no need now for caddy swapping. -- Jez Hancock - System Administrator / PHP Developer http://munk.nu/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: (Semi)hot swap IDE
Hello! I'm looking for a cheap solution to back up a FreeBSD 4.8 machine. Cheap meaning that tape drives are out of question. Even external FireWire drives are deemed a bit too expensive by the folks for whom I'm doing this research. This leaves one option I can think of - standard IDE drive in one of those removable HDD trays. We'd probably use two drives, one being active in the machine and the other being kept somewhere out of the house for safety. clip I personally think this a great alternative to tape, especially given the low cost per GB of drive space. 3ware cards support hot swapping IDE and there are several hot-swap IDE drive trays in the $50-75 range. You *MUST* make sure the trays are really hot swap. Most are not. The ones that are will be very specific about saying so. Another alternative I just found this past weekend... There is a company making hot swap IDE trays, but instead of being IDE out, they're USB 2.0. Its still an internal bay though. Its really quite cool and works very well. It takes the headache out of it too since we all know USB is hot-swap. ;) I *think* the mfg was incase or something like that. I picked up the unit for $50 at fry's electronics (if you don't have one, they're probably on the outpost.com website) and 2 extra drive chassis for $13 each. The chassis are fully enclosed too, so dropping them into a briefcase should be no problem. Cheers, Brent ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: (Semi)hot swap IDE
Hello! I'm looking for a cheap solution to back up a FreeBSD 4.8 machine. Cheap meaning that tape drives are out of question. Even external FireWire drives are deemed a bit too expensive by the folks for whom I'm doing this research. This leaves one option I can think of - standard IDE drive in one of those removable HDD trays. We'd probably use two drives, one being active in the machine and the other being kept somewhere out of the house for safety. clip I personally think this a great alternative to tape, especially given the low cost per GB of drive space. 3ware cards support hot swapping IDE and there are several hot-swap IDE drive trays in the $50-75 range. You *MUST* make sure the trays are really hot swap. Most are not. The ones that are will be very specific about saying so. My computer vendor uses these: http://www.amtrade.com/pc/ata133_ide_mobil_hdd_racks.htm I personally have not used them, so don't blame me if they end up not working as advertised, but my vendor is happy with them. I have also never used that company or its website until today, so I have nothing in the way of recommending for or against. Another alternative I just found this past weekend... There is a company making hot swap IDE trays, but instead of being IDE out, they're USB 2.0. It came to my attention that FreeBSD 4.x lacks USB 2.0 support. I used these USB 2.0 trays in a Windows server and hadn't thought that USB 2.0 might not be supported in FreeBSD 4.x. I don't use USB in my FreeBSD servers, so this never crossed my mind. I'm providing the link to the HDD trays above to show my apologies. :) Cheers, Brent ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE
Brent Wiese wrote: Hello! I'm looking for a cheap solution to back up a FreeBSD 4.8 machine. Cheap meaning that tape drives are out of question. Even external FireWire drives are deemed a bit too expensive by the folks for whom I'm doing this research. This leaves one option I can think of - standard IDE drive in one of those removable HDD trays. We'd probably use two drives, one being active in the machine and the other being kept somewhere out of the house for safety. clip I personally think this a great alternative to tape, especially given the low cost per GB of drive space. 3ware cards support hot swapping IDE and there are several hot-swap IDE drive trays in the $50-75 range. You *MUST* make sure the trays are really hot swap. Most are not. The ones that are will be very specific about saying so. My computer vendor uses these: http://www.amtrade.com/pc/ata133_ide_mobil_hdd_racks.htm I personally have not used them, so don't blame me if they end up not working as advertised, but my vendor is happy with them. I have also never used that company or its website until today, so I have nothing in the way of recommending for or against. Another alternative I just found this past weekend... There is a company making hot swap IDE trays, but instead of being IDE out, they're USB 2.0. It came to my attention that FreeBSD 4.x lacks USB 2.0 support. I used these USB 2.0 trays in a Windows server and hadn't thought that USB 2.0 might not be supported in FreeBSD 4.x. I don't use USB in my FreeBSD servers, so this never crossed my mind. I'm providing the link to the HDD trays above to show my apologies. :) Cheers, Brent ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] FWIW, those are pretty similar to what I've used in the past, with the aforementioned IDE bus issues. The chassis/drive carrier doesn't really add much into the mix one way or another- I've yet to see a carrier that effectively emulates the (removed) drive being online, which of course would pose it's own set of problems... ;-) No bus hangs, but whazt about, Oh yeah...oops, I forgot I included that mount point in THAT script! :-) Scott ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE
Hello! I wrote: If the majority is right and IDE drives cannot be hot swapped, this would indicate that we would need to power down the machine every time we want to change the backup HDs. This would be less than perfect, but since we are cheap we could live with it. OTOH I read 'man atacontrol' and saw that there are commands like 'atacontrol detach' and 'atacontrol attach' which seem to be meant for detaching/attaching IDE devices while the machine is running. Does this mean that I could actually run 'atacontrol detach channel', swap the drive and then run 'atacontrol attach channel' and be able to use the second HD after that? Is anyone doing something like that? To which Scott W replied: I dislike IDE and tend ot avoid it like the plague when possible, Me too. but: 1. The 'generic' removeable drive trays for IDE that use a normal IDE controller (like attaching to the slave or secondary channel on most onboard IDE), with another disk or device attached that's being used, do not support removeable devices. It's _extremely_ likely that you'll hang the IDE bus. If there is only CD-ROM (which is almost never used) attached as primary master and the removable disk attached as secondary master then maybe I don't need to worry too much about that. 2. Having mentioned #1 already, it's _possible_ that using a secondary controller (unsure if this can be the second channel of onboard or not, but NOT simply the slave of a given channel with another device), and atacontrol, it appears (no, I have not tried this), you can bring the controller itself (or channel?) offline, attach or remove the drive, and then reattach it. I'd like to hear more details on this one myself, and may have a system I can test it on if I get too bored, but have long ago chucked my IDE trays.. I'll probably be forced to do some testing on this during next few weeks. I'll keep you posted on the results. -- Toomas Aas | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.raad.tartu.ee/~toomas/ * Life ain't fair, but the root password helps. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE
On Sun, Nov 23, 2003 at 01:16:50PM +0200, Toomas Aas wrote: 1. The 'generic' removeable drive trays for IDE that use a normal IDE controller (like attaching to the slave or secondary channel on most onboard IDE), with another disk or device attached that's being used, do not support removeable devices. It's _extremely_ likely that you'll hang the IDE bus. If there is only CD-ROM (which is almost never used) attached as primary master and the removable disk attached as secondary master then maybe I don't need to worry too much about that. Just for the record I have the kind of setup you're talking about - I successfully 'hot swapped' a 40Gb IDE disk using a hdd caddy tray but there are caveats (mostly highlighted above) - using the term 'hot swap' loosely here because it just doesn't feel too clever doing it :P I found the following: - I could remove/reinsert the device only if it was originally in the machine on boot - this is fairly obvious I suppose. Otherwise the device just doesn't show up. - I could re-insert the device successfully but only if I'd umounted it first before removing it. - Removing the disk without umounting produced random results - sometimes the disk could be re-inserted ok, other times not, as the previous poster mentioned the IDE controller appears to hang. For the record iirc the disk was attached to the secondary ide controller with a hdd and a cdrom drive on the first ide controller. Best thing is to play - doesn't make as much noise (or smoke) as hot-swapping PCI cards! -- Jez Hancock - System Administrator / PHP Developer http://munk.nu/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE
Toomas Aas wrote: Hello! I'm looking for a cheap solution to back up a FreeBSD 4.8 machine. Cheap meaning that tape drives are out of question. Even external FireWire drives are deemed a bit too expensive by the folks for whom I'm doing this research. This leaves one option I can think of - standard IDE drive in one of those removable HDD trays. We'd probably use two drives, one being active in the machine and the other being kept somewhere out of the house for safety. The machine has an integrated Promise TX2 controller and two 80 GB drives are currently configured as RAID1 attached to this controller. There are two additional (non-RAID) IDE channels on the motherboard, one of them has CD-ROM attached to it and the other is free - I could attach the backup HD to that. I've done some web searching and I'm getting controversial results. Most of the info I find seems to indicate that IDE devices cannot be hot-swapped. At the same time some vendors are trying to sell stuff on their web pages which they advertise as hot swap IDE drive bays. I remain skeptical. If the majority is right and IDE drives cannot be hot swapped, this would indicate that we would need to power down the machine every time we want to change the backup HDs. This would be less than perfect, but since we are cheap we could live with it. OTOH I read 'man atacontrol' and saw that there are commands like 'atacontrol detach' and 'atacontrol attach' which seem to be meant for detaching/attaching IDE devices while the machine is running. Does this mean that I could actually run 'atacontrol detach channel', swap the drive and then run 'atacontrol attach channel' and be able to use the second HD after that? Is anyone doing something like that? -- Toomas Aas | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.raad.tartu.ee/~toomas/ * I don't know whether to kill myself or go bowling ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tomas- this may not be of much help, but hopefully some at least. I dislike IDE and tend ot avoid it like the plague when possible, but: 1. The 'generic' removeable drive trays for IDE that use a normal IDE controller (like attaching to the slave or secondary channel on most onboard IDE), with another disk or device attached that's being used, do not support removeable devices. It's _extremely_ likely that you'll hang the IDE bus. 2. Having mentioned #1 already, it's _possible_ that using a secondary controller (unsure if this can be the second channel of onboard or not, but NOT simply the slave of a given channel with another device), and atacontrol, it appears (no, I have not tried this), you can bring the controller itself (or channel?) offline, attach or remove the drive, and then reattach it. I'd like to hear more details on this one myself, and may have a system I can test it on if I get too bored, but have long ago chucked my IDE trays.. 3. Using one of the relatively inexpensive IDE RAID controllers, with an enclosure, should allow you to remove and add drives without issues. 4. Other ideas- backup to a single network fileserver equipped with RAID or additional drives for backup only. other network system- direct to tape USB hard drive caddies- have seen these, but not used, converts IDE drives to USB device, can re-use existing IDE drives for backup via USB port. Scott ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
