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adding used 3U hard drives

N

nsxboy

Well-known member
Hello,

I just got a few used 4tb and 2tb Kaleidescape hard drives out of a used 3U system. I was wondering what's the process required for reformatting them and adding them to my existing 3U system (it currently still has 6 open slots.)

Any guidance and recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I looked around the forum and was unable to find any directions on it.

Cheers,

Mike
 
From what I understand, you can not add used drives to any servers. You can take a complete set of drives from a server and move them to another empty server only.

To be able to add additional drives, the drives need to be brand new or formatted by Kscape. From what I hear, Kscape only formats drives under warranty and charge a fee.

Are you able to return them? You can still order 6TB drives from Kscape.
 
Unfortunately they are not returnable. Does Kaleidescape have the ability to remote format the drives as service by chance? If not, what do folks do with all the upgraded drives?

thanks for bearing with all the noob questions
 
No you need to send them in. Are they under warranty still? If they are older drives outside Kscape warranty, they won’t format them, even for a fee.

You said you removed them from a 3U server. You can continue to use them in the same server or you can look for another 3U server chassis with no drives. You can have multiple 3U server in one system.
 
Thanks. They were claimed to be out of a 3u system and I’m going to reach out to see if they are still under warranty.

do you need a complete set of drives to restore into a 3u chassis with no drives?
 
It is a bit tricky. One of the drives have the OS but it is not physically labeled on the drive itself. At the minimum you need the drive that holds the OS and two more drives for the parity/backup. The parity drives do not count towards your system size, they are reserved for back up only. K software picks the largest drive as the parity by default.

So for example, if you have a 2TB drive and two 4TB drives. 2TB is likely the OS drive and the two 4TB drives are parity. Your system info would show 2TB available storage for your movies. If you buy a brand new 6TB drive from Kscape then this would become your parity drive and free up one of your 4TB. Your system size would appear 6TB (2TB+4TB), one of your 4Tb and the new 6TB would be your parity drives.

the 3U server would still power on with one of the parity drives failed but I don’t believe it will allow you to import or download new content.
 
So in this case, the original system had 10 1tb drives, 2 2tb and 2 4tb drives.

which drive think would be the os drive and which ones would be parity?
 
To clarify one thing, parity does need to equal the size of the largest drive, but this does not necessarily mean it will be your largest disk.

As an example, let’s say you had a file system consisting of all 4TB drives. One of theses would be your hot spare while another would be your parity disk. All the remaining drives would be storage.

If you installed a single 6TB drive, it would become your hot spare and the 4TB that was the hot spare would be added to the file system as a storage. The parity disk would not change since the largest drive in the array is still only 4TB (a hot spare is not part of the file system).

When a second 6TB is installed, one of the two 6TB drives would continue being the hot spare while the other would be added to the file system as 2TB of parity and 4TB of storage. This new 2TB of parity along with the original 4TB parity disk is now large enough to backup any future 6TB drives that are installed.

One other detail… each drive has the OS on it, but only one is the boot disk. Should the boot disk fail, another drive will become the boot disk since it already has the OS on it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Thanks. So does that mean that if I had an empty 3u, and just load up with the 2 4tb and the 2 2 tb drives, the system will boot up?
 
I don’t believe the system is able to recover if more than 2 drives fails/missing. You will surely lose all the content on them. When attempting to boot, the system will expect all 14 drives to be available. Since you will insert only 6, it will assume the remainder 8 are failed.

Kscape system is designed to be able to expand as new drives are added (up to the server max) but not designed to shrink as drives are removed. Kscape system expect you replace the failed drives immediately. In real world situation, although not impossible, it is highly unlikely you will have 3 drives fail the same moment. So the system is designed to recover from up to 3 drive failures. 3U Server is designed to continue to operate as normal with 1 drive fail. With the second drive failed, it will offer limited operations to reduce the likely hood of additional drive fails. In either situation, it is not expected to use your system in this condition for long duration of time. If you continue to use your system with failed drives, the system will limit even more functions to protect itself.

Now with 8 drives failed/missing? I believe you will need to get 8 new drives. I am not %100 sure though.
 
Thanks for the feedback on this. Looks like I need to do more investigation through Kaleidescape support.

I'm now seeing if I can get the other 10 1tb drives from the same guy. Assuming they have been sold to someone else, I will let you know if kaleidescape can confirm if 4 drives will work when all the other 1tbdrives are no longer in possession.

I don't expect to recover any data from the drives and would be happy with a clear system format if possible without having to send things back to Kscape.

Stay tuned!
 
Substance said:
[snip]
Kscape system is designed to be able to expand as new drives are added (up to the server max) but not designed to shrink as drives are removed. Kscape system expect you replace the failed drives immediately. In real world situation, although not impossible, it is highly unlikely you will have 3 drives fail the same moment. So the system is designed to recover from up to 3 drive failures. 3U Server is designed to continue to operate as normal with 1 drive fail. With the second drive failed, it will offer limited operations to reduce the likely hood of additional drive fails. In either situation, it is not expected to use your system in this condition for long duration of time. If you continue to use your system with failed drives, the system will limit even more functions to protect itself.
[snip]
Click to expand...
This is not quite accurate.

The Kaleidescape filesystem can only continue to operate with 1 -- and only one -- failed disk at any given time. If another disk fails while there is already a failed or rebuilding disk in the filesystem, that is a so-called "double disk failure" and the filesystem is, for all intents and purposes, lost. A 3U server's filesystem could, in most cases, survive 2 disk failures but not 3 and those disk failures must not occur concurrently.

In the following sequence of events, we'll assume that no failed disks are physically removed from the server chassis and replaced.

When disk 1 fails, it is immediately replaced by the hot spare (assuming that the hot spare is large enough) and the missing data from disk 1 is rebuilt onto that replacement disk. If another disk fails while that rebuild is ongoing, that's a double disk failure and the filesystem is lost. Once the disk finishes rebuilding (which can take days), the filesystem is back to a healthy state but it is now operating without a hot spare.

When disk 2 fails, there is no hot spare to replace it and thus the filesystem remains in a degraded state unless the failed disk is removed and replaced with a new drive of equal or greater size. Once again, if another disk fails -- either while disk 2 is failed or while the replacement for disk 2 is rebuilding -- it's a double disk failure and the filesystem is lost.

The general rule of thumb is that there can only be one failed or rebuilding disk in the filesystem at any one time in order for the system to continue operating.

There is one exception to the information above:
If an empty disk in the filesystem fails without ever having had any data written to it before then the failed disk is dropped from the filesystem and the filesystem remains in a healthy state but now has less available storage.
 
Thanks for the clarification. The only way to empty a drive to become an empty disk is to send back to Kscape? Is there a manual way to do it yourself?
 
nsxboy said:
Thanks for the clarification. The only way to empty a drive to become an empty disk is to send back to Kscape? Is there a manual way to do it yourself?
Click to expand...

No, and the process you refer to (we call it "reinitialization") is only done by K for drives that are still under warranty. Drives that are out-of-warranty will not be reinitialized. There is also a fee for reinitializing drives (it was $250 flat fee for up to the first 5 drives, and $30 per drive after 5, but that may have changed).

Jim
 
Thanks for the clarification. Disappointing to hear that there's so many likely out of warranty drives that may still have life in them out there that are sitting idle. Has anyone attempted to clone an empty drive (effectively mirroring an reinitialized drive) of the same size to reinstate them for service?
 
nsxboy said:
Thanks for the clarification. Disappointing to hear that there's so many likely out of warranty drives that may still have life in them out there that are sitting idle. Has anyone attempted to clone an empty drive (effectively mirroring an reinitialized drive) of the same size to reinstate them for service?
Click to expand...

Can't speak to what someone else may have tried to do, and whether or not they were successful, but in any case it would likely be a violation of the Service and Licensing Agreement (SLA) that owners agree to when they register with Kaleidescape.

On a separate note, I do know of one case (former client) that did try something with a Server (not sure what exactly), and he "bricked" the server, lost all content, and basically had to trash the server. Live and learn I guess.....

Jim
 
The drives are very likely encrypted and I doubt you can clone, read or write to these drives. It is possible the OS verifies the serial numbers of the drives with Kscape. Both of these are very simple to implement from Kscape end but extremely difficult if not impossible to work around by the end user.
 
Understood. I'd love to continue keeping the unit on an end of life product with limited support going for as long as possible. Thanks for your guidance and help on this guys!
 
I understand out of warranty drives are wasted but there are valid concerns I can think of why Kscape works this way.

1- This way studios are happy because they know no one can copy their content from Kscape drives and share to pirate sites or sell to others.
2- Kscape can charge higher than normal prices for these drives and control the used market. This may sound against the customer but it isn’t actually. This is a very niche small market and mega margins allow Kscape to make enough profits to provide you the services. Through their upgrade offers and control over out of warranty products, they stop the market from flooding with cheap used Kscape equipment. This protects your new equipment from tanking in value after only a few years and most Kscape products hold great value in the second hand.
3- Hard drives are fragile in nature. An out of warranty drive has significantly higher risk of failure when attempting to format. If the disk fails during the process, they wouldn’t be able to replace it under warranty.
I am not saying you are disputing these points but I know many who browse this forum or find out about Kscape wonders why these drives are so expensive. I just wanted to share my two cents here.
 
Substance said:
3- Hard drives are fragile in nature. An out of warranty drive has significantly higher risk of failure when attempting to format. If the disk fails during the process, they wouldn’t be able to replace it under warranty.
Click to expand...

This is the most significant reason... K does not want to "bless" an older, out-of-warranty drive that is at a much higher risk of failure. Adding a drive of this nature to an otherwise healthy file system introduces unnecessary risk in the future, including the potential of a double disk failure (should multiple older drives be added and fail). I've seen enough double-disk failures to know they are unpleasant and often avoidable.

Andy
 
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