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Harvesting 3U drives for a 1U (?)
- Thread starter 9riffTX
- Start date
Generally, no.
However, if the drives are still under warranty you can send them to Kaleidescape to have them re-imaged to work in a new server.
The other possibility is if the drives never had data written to them (ie you have 7 drives in the server but only had a few movies stored on it), you might be able to take them out and have them recognized as new drives when you insert them into the new server.
However, if the drives are still under warranty you can send them to Kaleidescape to have them re-imaged to work in a new server.
The other possibility is if the drives never had data written to them (ie you have 7 drives in the server but only had a few movies stored on it), you might be able to take them out and have them recognized as new drives when you insert them into the new server.
cinelife
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As KTDJ indicated, the answer is no. The reason I'm commenting here is because unless something has changed, once you place a drive into a working Server that has drives installed, it is identified to the existing file system of those drives, and at that point cannot be used in any other Server unless you move ALL the drives from that Server to the new Server, OR, the drives you plan to move are sent to K to be reinitialized. Another consideration is that if you only remove some drives from an existing Server, you will cause that server to report drive failures.
Note: K does not offer this as a regular service, and there is no guarantee they will reinitialize drives. They will NOT reinitialize drives that are out of warranty, which should be all drives 4TB and smaller, all of which have expired warranties by now, and some 6TB's as well. There is also a fee to reinitialize drives. Check with your dealer for details.
Jim
I recognize this is not the case here, but wanted to point this out for anyone reading this thread in the future.
If you had a 3U file system that consisted of 4 drives (meaning 2 are for storage, 1 is the parity disk, and 1 is the hot spare), you could move them all to a 1U server and they would work fine. Once they are initialized in the 1U, the hot spare will be added and you will end up with 3 disks for storage and a single parity disk. The same would be true with a 3 disk file system - 1 storage, 1 parity, and 1 hot spare would become 2 storage and 1 parity.
Andy
If you had a 3U file system that consisted of 4 drives (meaning 2 are for storage, 1 is the parity disk, and 1 is the hot spare), you could move them all to a 1U server and they would work fine. Once they are initialized in the 1U, the hot spare will be added and you will end up with 3 disks for storage and a single parity disk. The same would be true with a 3 disk file system - 1 storage, 1 parity, and 1 hot spare would become 2 storage and 1 parity.
Andy
Incorrect info... Read this for the gospel:
www.kscapeowners.com
The hot spare (the one that the blue light blinks on and off) never gets written to until another drive fails. Until that happens it is 'blank' in the same sense as a new spare drive that you just purchased from K. You can remove it out of a 3U and put it in another server (per the rules of adding drives or replacing failed drives) all day long. The 3U will complain that it is missing a hot spare.
But as @KTDJ mentioned and @J.Green writes in the linked post... If the hot spare is removed and one of the other drives in the 3U has never had data written to it, the file system will shrink and the drive that has never been written to will become the hot spare (and start blinking). You can repeat this process of removing the hot spare until the 3U complains that it is missing a hot spare. All of the drives removed under these circumstances are usable as spare drives.
This works on a 1U also but practically speaking only if the server has had very little content loaded on it. I had a 1U that I got on ebay that had 4x 2tb drives. Only a small amount of content had ever been loaded. When I replaced the power supply I found that one of the drives had failed. But because no data had been written to it, I was able to remove it and the server was happy with only three drives.
Edit: To answer the original question posed...
If you can get the number of drives in the 3U down to 4 or less using the 'remove the hot spare' method and the 3U is only complaining about the lack of a hot spare... Then yes you can take those drives and put them into an empty 1U (I have done this myself). But realistically this only works if the 3U has not had much content loaded.
Also the utility of re-using old drives in this manner is somewhat of a false economy because they are OLD and might fail on you sooner rather than later.
Hot spare clarification
I had some weirdness with my new 3U that I am not sure about. Somehow everything I thought I knew might be wrong! The server came with 11 x 1tb drives. One drive was flashing indicating that is was a hot spare. The server page indicates the capacity was 8948 GB. I have read here somewhere that...
www.kscapeowners.com
The hot spare (the one that the blue light blinks on and off) never gets written to until another drive fails. Until that happens it is 'blank' in the same sense as a new spare drive that you just purchased from K. You can remove it out of a 3U and put it in another server (per the rules of adding drives or replacing failed drives) all day long. The 3U will complain that it is missing a hot spare.
But as @KTDJ mentioned and @J.Green writes in the linked post... If the hot spare is removed and one of the other drives in the 3U has never had data written to it, the file system will shrink and the drive that has never been written to will become the hot spare (and start blinking). You can repeat this process of removing the hot spare until the 3U complains that it is missing a hot spare. All of the drives removed under these circumstances are usable as spare drives.
This works on a 1U also but practically speaking only if the server has had very little content loaded on it. I had a 1U that I got on ebay that had 4x 2tb drives. Only a small amount of content had ever been loaded. When I replaced the power supply I found that one of the drives had failed. But because no data had been written to it, I was able to remove it and the server was happy with only three drives.
Edit: To answer the original question posed...
If you can get the number of drives in the 3U down to 4 or less using the 'remove the hot spare' method and the 3U is only complaining about the lack of a hot spare... Then yes you can take those drives and put them into an empty 1U (I have done this myself). But realistically this only works if the 3U has not had much content loaded.
Also the utility of re-using old drives in this manner is somewhat of a false economy because they are OLD and might fail on you sooner rather than later.
Last edited:
This is an interesting puzzle and I appreciate all of the responses.
I am trying to re-establish some level of utility for a premier system that has already lost a vault, and has a power supply (at least?) problem with the 3U.
The system is HD-limited and will stay that way, so it's not likely that all this will be side-stepped by adding a compact terra and some players.
Judging by the small number of Blu-ray Discs in the vault, there aren't many HD titles on the server. The vast majority could be repurchased from the K-store save for a number of music concerts, True Lies and The Abyss. The system is old enough to have imported music, but I doubt that is taking up much space.
I was weighing adding an (empty?) 1U vs 'trying' to fix the 3U with the power supply kit. It seems to remove any transferable 'hot spares' I would need the power supply working, and if the 3U is working ... no need for the extra server.
The vault wasn't necessary anymore and I would like to revive the server so I can push HD-downloads from My Movies to it.
Thanks!
I am trying to re-establish some level of utility for a premier system that has already lost a vault, and has a power supply (at least?) problem with the 3U.
The system is HD-limited and will stay that way, so it's not likely that all this will be side-stepped by adding a compact terra and some players.
Judging by the small number of Blu-ray Discs in the vault, there aren't many HD titles on the server. The vast majority could be repurchased from the K-store save for a number of music concerts, True Lies and The Abyss. The system is old enough to have imported music, but I doubt that is taking up much space.
I was weighing adding an (empty?) 1U vs 'trying' to fix the 3U with the power supply kit. It seems to remove any transferable 'hot spares' I would need the power supply working, and if the 3U is working ... no need for the extra server.
The vault wasn't necessary anymore and I would like to revive the server so I can push HD-downloads from My Movies to it.
Thanks!
Not quite.Incorrect info... Read this for the gospel:
Hot spare clarification
I had some weirdness with my new 3U that I am not sure about. Somehow everything I thought I knew might be wrong! The server came with 11 x 1tb drives. One drive was flashing indicating that is was a hot spare. The server page indicates the capacity was 8948 GB. I have read here somewhere that...
The hot spare (the one that the blue light blinks on and off) never gets written to until another drive fails. Until that happens it is 'blank' in the same sense as a new spare drive that you just purchased from K. You can remove it out of a 3U and put it in another server (per the rules of adding drives or replacing failed drives) all day long. The 3U will complain that it is missing a hot spare.
But as @KTDJ mentioned and @J.Green writes in the linked post... If the hot spare is removed and one of the other drives in the 3U has never had data written to it, the file system will shrink and the drive that has never been written to will become the hot spare (and start blinking). You can repeat this process of removing the hot spare until the 3U complains that it is missing a hot spare. All of the drives removed under these circumstances are usable as spare drives.
[snip]
The shrinking of the file system happens as you describe (again, assuming that the removed disks were never written to ever). However, those disks that you removed from the file system are not "blank" and cannot be used in conjunction with a different file system. They are still identified as part of the file system that you removed them from. If you try to add those disks to a different file system, they will be rejected as a foreign disk.
Now, if you _did_ shrink a file system by removing unused drives from it and then put those unused drives into a new server chassis (as long as you had 2 or more), that server would boot successfully. However, it would have the same file system signature as the original server and two servers with the same file system id is a "very bad thing" and both systems would stop working properly.
TL;DR: Trying to reuse individual disks that have been removed from a set will not work. At best, the foreign disk will be rejected. At worst, both the original and the new server will stop working properly.
Hi John, Is this something that has changed in recent years? When I was following your previous guidance the drives that were removed (and the 3U shrunk it's filesystem without issue) were usable as 'spares'. I put one in another 1U that had a failed drive (which rebuilt the array successfully) and sold the others as spares (no complaints from the buyer). Since the original 3U was down to 4 drives plus a hot spare, those 4 were also able to move into a 1U. No duplicating of file system signature would seem possible in this scenario since it all servers involved begin with a running file system/signature and at worst would just reject the extra drive if it was deemed 'foreign'.