• Thanks for visiting the Kaleidescape Owners' Forum

    This forum is for the community of Kaleidescape owners, and others interested in learning about the system, equipment, services, and the company itself.

    It is run by a group of enthusiastic Kaleidescape owners and dealers purely as a service to this community.

    This board is not affiliated in any way with Kaleidescape, Inc.
    For official technical support, product information, or customer service, please visit www.kaleidescape.com

  • You are currently in "Guest" mode and not logged in with a registered account.

    The forum is free to use and most of the forum can be used by guests who are not registered....

    ... but we strongly encourage you to register for a full account. There is no cost to register for a full account.

    Benefits of registering for a full account:

    • Participate in the discussions! You must have a registered account to make posts on the forums. You will be able to start your own thread on a topic or question, or you can reply to other threads/discussions.
    • Use the "Conversation" feature (known as "private messaging" on other forums) to communicate directly with any of the other users here.
    • Access the Files area. The "resources" area of the forum contains many "Favorite Scene" and Script files that can dramatically increase the enjoyment of your Kaleidescape system. Go directly to great scenes in your favorite movies, created by other owners, and add automation to playback of your system with Scripts.
    • You won't see this annoying notice at the top of every screen!😊

    It's easy and free to register for the forum. Just click the "Register" button in the upper right corner of this page, and follow the instructions there.

Kaleidescape 5U movie Server drive

Joey808

Member
Im new to Kscape and can’t seem to find drives to add more movies. I’m looking to purchase 5U movie server drives that are uninitialized. Will consider any size as long as they will work in my Kserver 2500. Any advise is welcome.
Thank you.
 
Hi,

Good luck finding “clean” 5u server drives as they have long been discontinued. The only servers that are viable long term are the 1 and 3u servers as you can still purchase new drives.
 
Hi,

Good luck finding “clean” 5u server drives as they have long been discontinued. The only servers that are viable long term are the 1 and 3u servers as you can still purchase new drives.
So if you cannot find clean drives are there any other options? Thanks for the info.
 
Perhaps if you could elaborate on what you are trying to accomplish we can better help you. Are you looking to keep using your 5u server long term or is this only temporary to move the movies off to a newer server?
 
Yes I'm planning to continue using the 5U. I have over 500 movies on it and the capacity is full. I would like to be able to add more capacity to add more movies to the 5U that's why I was hoping to find disc drives that would work. I bought one off eBay and and it worked. Bought several others and they didn't work. I called Kscape and spoke to Rusty and he said they had to not be initialized to work.
If expanding the capacity of the 5U is not possible, is there a Kscape server I could purchase that would work with the 5U to add more capacity or should I just get a new server and transfer all from the 5U?
Thank you for your help.
 
I've had people looking for 5U drives for years, they are extremely difficult to locate, and I'm not aware of any in the past couple of years (other than someone selling a complete set which wouldn't help you). You can add any of the other Premiere servers to you system to add more storage.

Jim
 
I've had people looking for 5U drives for years, they are extremely difficult to locate, and I'm not aware of any in the past couple of years (other than someone selling a complete set which wouldn't help you). You can add any of the other Premiere servers to you system to add more storage.

Jim,
What would you recommend?
Thank you,
Joe
 
I'll PM you now.

Jim
 
Jim's a rockstar @Joey808 You're in good hands there :cool: Just be careful, it get's rather addictive... :p
 
Yes I'm planning to continue using the 5U. I have over 500 movies on it and the capacity is full. I would like to be able to add more capacity to add more movies to the 5U that's why I was hoping to find disc drives that would work. I bought one off eBay and and it worked. Bought several others and they didn't work. I called Kscape and spoke to Rusty and he said they had to not be initialized to work.
If expanding the capacity of the 5U is not possible, is there a Kscape server I could purchase that would work with the 5U to add more capacity or should I just get a new server and transfer all from the 5U?
Thank you for your help.


My opinion:

Purchase a new or used 1u/3u server and either keep the 5u in operation to add storage to your system or transfer your content and retire your 5u server. If you wish to buy a new server their was/is? a trade in promo to get credit for your old one. ( @cinelife could give you more info on the terms and if it is still in effect.) You can also possibly repair failed/failing hard drives by sending them to a company such as DriveSavers. The cost to do this is most likely not worth the effort and wait time so I would only do this to save any content that is stored on a set of drives that is non-bootable. ( ONLY as a last resort not recommended.)

I think the time to move away from the 5u platform is now while the components are still running. To give you some context I currently have 2 5u servers and 4 sets of drives for them. Both power supplies are going out and two of the drive sets are non-functional. The third set works perfectly and the fourth boots, but has one failing drive. I personally will move away from the 5u systems by purchasing a used 1u and 2 new drives or just a new 1u+ and transfer my DVD rights/content over.

Do I trust my perfectly working set of 5u Drives? Not really. They may all work just fine for years ahead, but a drive could go out any time.

Feel free to ask any more questions you may have.

P.S. Jim is a great asset to the community as are many of the other dealers/owners that contribute to the forum. Never have I been pressured from the dealers on this forum to purchase from them, just friendly help.
 
Agree with KTDJ's comments (kind of what we talked about). It's becoming more and more difficult to find support components for 5U's, so moving away (upgrading) from 5U at some point is a good idea.

(Thanks for the kind words guys. In the past year I've intentionally stopped posting on every subject, in every thread, I'm trying to give others a voice on the forum. I don't have all the answers, so I appreciate all of you that take the time to post comments and assist other owners with information that helps them maximize the value of their K system.)

Jim
 
I have some Grandfathered 1U Servers coming available that I will be selling once I receive my new (to me) 3U Server.
4X6TB
4X4TB
2X2TB
If anyone is interested, keep an eye on the Marketplace thread.

Chris
 
I am new to this. I have a 5U server that is full so I bought a set of 7 500gb KDISK's.....they glow amber when trying to add them I supposed because they were from a previous system. When I remove my drives and just insert them I can get them all to stay blue but the bottom light is amber and I can't browse to the server IP address. Thinking I'm getting close to being able to start from scratch and just use these drives and start importing my movies......maybe??? Any thoughts or suggestions as I'm really stuck here. Thanks in advance.
 
First, you indicated your 5U is full, but you don't say if the drives are full or the available slots are full. What I'm getting at is, you apparently you added that newer drive "set" to your 5U while you still had older drives installed. If so, that would only work if those newer 500GB drives had been previously reinitialized (or if they were new, but that's not likely). I don't know the history of those 7 500GB drives, but given that they light up Blue, and given that your server is Amber and you cannot reach the Browser, they may have a corrupted file system (could also be that they were originally part of a bigger drive set that for whatever reason were reduced to those 7 drives, and if that's the case, they will not work. Only the FULL set of drives will work in an EMPTY server if the drives have not been reinitialized.

Further, if you removed "some" of your old drives in order to add those 500GB drives, then in doing so you caused your 5U to think it had multiple drive failures, and you "may" have lost your content.

My questions are, did you remove the 7 500GB drives and reinstall your old set? and if you did, can you reach your browser?, do you see your content? does it operate normally?

Jim
 
First, you indicated your 5U is full, but you don't say if the drives are full or the available slots are full. What I'm getting at is, you apparently you added that newer drive "set" to your 5U while you still had older drives installed. If so, that would only work if those newer 500GB drives had been previously reinitialized (or if they were new, but that's not likely). I don't know the history of those 7 500GB drives, but given that they light up Blue, and given that your server is Amber and you cannot reach the Browser, they may have a corrupted file system (could also be that they were originally part of a bigger drive set that for whatever reason were reduced to those 7 drives, and if that's the case, they will not work. Only the FULL set of drives will work in an EMPTY server if the drives have not been reinitialized.

Further, if you removed "some" of your old drives in order to add those 500GB drives, then in doing so you caused your 5U to think it had multiple drive failures, and you "may" have lost your content.

My questions are, did you remove the 7 500GB drives and reinstall your old set? and if you did, can you reach your browser?, do you see your content? does it operate normally?

Jim
Yes when I put my old set in it works as it did and my content is there. Add the newer drives and they go immediately to amber. Just have the new drives in and they glow blue but the server lights go to amber and I can’t navigate to it. I bought em used so I have no idea if the drive set was more than the 7 drives I bought.
 
Good that your original set works. I suspect there is a file system issue with the 500GB drives, but don't know how that was caused. Contact that member I mentioned in my private message earlier (start a conversation with him), he may be able to help. You might also be able to learn more about those drives by emailing K Support and providing them with the drive serial numbers. They should be able to tell if they were a part of a larger set, or had any know problems.

Jim
 
Back
Top