I've been a happy owner for several years. Recently, my 3U (14-2TB drive) server died a sudden death, so I decided to invest further in the brand by upgrading to a new 3U server with (14-4TB) drives. My dealer sent my drives, which contain roughly 1500 movies and 1500 CDs of content, to Kaleidescape to be transferred to the new server. After waiting through delays apparently due to a switch in suppliers, I was just informed one of my drives failed and another is experiencing intermittent failures. I am awaiting further details today, but it sounds like the company won't spend any additional time dealing with this issue without more money - and there still would be no guarantee my content could be recovered for transfer. Even though I have a speed reader and a vault, I still spent countless hours fixing titles, bookmarking and babysitting robotic misfeeds and don't relish the thought of repeating the process.
So, I guess I wanted to hear some experiences from folks who may have gone through this process. Has anything like this happened to any of you or any Kaleidescape owners you know / support? A company representative mentioned something about not being able to boot the OS due to the drive failure. Can these drives be cloned using something like Acronis? I would think - at least in the case of the intermittently failing drive, they could potentially do a bit-image clone to another drive and then attempt an OS boot with the RAID set. Also, I know drives fail, but one reason why I felt so comfortable making this dollar and time investment was because of the exceptional rarity of losing two drives and thus the dual-parity RAID. Have any of you lost two drives and thus all of your content on these servers? I always envisioned the scenario of losing a drive, but having time to replace it and thus preserve the RAID via the company's active monitoring of our systems. I've heard in this scenario, the company would ship out a replacement, I would pop it in, and the RAID configuration would automatically heal itself, bringing the new drive into the collective. Is that what normally would happen - or was I dreaming that? Losing two drives immediately makes me wonder about shipping and handling issues as well. Was sufficient care taken with my content? I just don't know.
I know nothing's guaranteed, especially when it comes to machines, but this strikes at the heart of the Kaleidescape value proposition for me, as my confidence in the security of my content is now shaken. In industry, there are ways to archive to tape and other media, but this thing is locked down. Are there any other options - say replicating to another server - for additional protection? Again, just looking for shared experiences / ideas at this point.
So, I guess I wanted to hear some experiences from folks who may have gone through this process. Has anything like this happened to any of you or any Kaleidescape owners you know / support? A company representative mentioned something about not being able to boot the OS due to the drive failure. Can these drives be cloned using something like Acronis? I would think - at least in the case of the intermittently failing drive, they could potentially do a bit-image clone to another drive and then attempt an OS boot with the RAID set. Also, I know drives fail, but one reason why I felt so comfortable making this dollar and time investment was because of the exceptional rarity of losing two drives and thus the dual-parity RAID. Have any of you lost two drives and thus all of your content on these servers? I always envisioned the scenario of losing a drive, but having time to replace it and thus preserve the RAID via the company's active monitoring of our systems. I've heard in this scenario, the company would ship out a replacement, I would pop it in, and the RAID configuration would automatically heal itself, bringing the new drive into the collective. Is that what normally would happen - or was I dreaming that? Losing two drives immediately makes me wonder about shipping and handling issues as well. Was sufficient care taken with my content? I just don't know.
I know nothing's guaranteed, especially when it comes to machines, but this strikes at the heart of the Kaleidescape value proposition for me, as my confidence in the security of my content is now shaken. In industry, there are ways to archive to tape and other media, but this thing is locked down. Are there any other options - say replicating to another server - for additional protection? Again, just looking for shared experiences / ideas at this point.