John's comments from life.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
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This is to update the sever problems / data recovery.
My extra memory came in the other day - Wednesday I think. And since my computer was compiling a single drive image of the data, I decided to wait. But, since it was taking SO long (I think it was around 26% after 2-3 days), I decided to stop and install my memory and start the GetDataBack again. Which I did. Install, anyway.
My computer is a MacPro, but running Win XP 32 bit on it. Come to find out, my XP didn’t recognize my extra memory. Nice. Boot in Leopard, it saw all 6g. Well, there’s something going on there, which I never did get to the bottom of, other than if I wanted to use all my memory, I’d pretty well have to go to Vista 64 bit (which I do plan on putting on, once my data is all safe and sound.) But, now what do I do?
Well, Friday our new server came in. Yeah! This has 4g ram, no OS, 2 gig NIC cards, so first thing is to put some server OS on it. We picked Win 2008 64bit, which went on just fine. It took me a little to configure to hook up to the NAS box, but it did go together just fine. Next thing to do is to consolidate all the drive images to the NAS, so I copied the remainder files over last night.
I was pretty excited to have the new server and everything working well, so I didn’t get much sleep last night. I was in the office by 5, getting GetDataBack started. And it’s running now, and probably will be for the next day or so (currently at 10%, 5 hours later, but it does seem to slow down as time goes on.) Analyzing 4 billion sectors does take some time. However, it is faster than before, because the images are all on the NAS, which is all gig-nic, better than usb2 that some was going through before. I do hope this is the light to the end of the tunnel, as it’s been over a month to get to this point.
So, while this runs, I’m able to gather together a couple-skid order to go to Canada, as well as work on the Kindle version of the Stranger, among several other things going on too.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
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Hey, does anyone out there have one of those Amazon Kindle ebook readers? I’m working on formatting The Stranger to fit that format, and thought it would be good to view it (or have someone view it for me) on one of those machines. It’s more of a process than I originally thought, taking longer to format than seems necessary. But that’s just how it goes.
So, if you have one and would like to help, get in touch w/ me. A link to my email is in the left column, under the search bar. Thanks!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
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I don't think I've written about this yet, though many may know that something is going on. So I thought I would write a little about it to keep you all informed as well as help me to never have to go through this again! Please be assured, I won't feel bad if you don't read this through! But if you were wondering how things were going, here's a stripped down version of my reconstruction.
About a month ago, I came into work to find several computers shut off. That was interesting, but come to find out, our power went out, and it was down long enough to drain all our UPSs, and henceforth, shutting down our computers. I had some trouble w/ our NAS (Network Attached Storage) box, about 2tb of space. I was able to get that back up just fine (or so I thought) and was all set.
About a week later, the NAS went down, similar to what it was like after the power went out. So I worked on it again, but this time couldn't get it back on line. I called a friend and he came over, and after 10 hours of working on it, couldn't get it up either (which made me feel a little better and worse - better that if he couldn't get it going, then I shouldn't feel bad about not being able to, and worse, because now what do you do?) The consensus was that the UPS drained down, and shut down. We think the power came back on briefly, which has the NAS start up, then quit. Since the UPS was already drained, we are thinking it quit suddenly and that's where my problems started. The drives seem fine, but the data integrity was compromised.
I didn't have a good backup. 2tb of data is a lot of space, but it still was not smart of me (us) to be in this position. I was figuring that the NAS (which is a RAID 5) was pretty decent protection. But this is not the case here. I did have a lot archived, but still lost quite a bit of work.
So now what do you do? We sent the drives to a company in NY that specializes in getting data off bad hard drives, and also RAID 5 systems. (For those who don't know, RAID 5 means that your files are stored across a number of hard drives--in this case 7 drives. So you need at least 6 of the drives to get any data back.) We sent the drives to this company. They said they could recover the data, about 98%, for $18,000. We said, "Ok, thanks, um, send the drives back and we'll try it ourselves."
Now I have 7 drives, and some software that is supposed to work at recovering the data. And this was a process in and of itself. What I needed to do, is to 'image' each drive (copy each drive to another location.) Ok, that's 7 drives times 400g, so just doing that will be about 3tb of space. So I ended up buying 6 1tb drives, and put those in my NAS box. (Really, I bought 2 1tb drives, then later realized I needed more, and bought 4 more.) (These 6 1tb drives will serve as part of my backup when all is said and done, so no money wasted.)
To image a drive, you attach the drive to a computer, then run a program that copies the data over to another location. So I figured the server would be the best bet, but it didn't have any extra SATA ports. No problem, I have a SATA card I can stick in. But in doing so, the server wouldn't even boot. So I tried another computer, that didn't work. Finally plugged it in my mac pro (which was really nice because there's no wire connections - just mount to the slide, and shove it in.) This seemed to work the best. (I'm running Win XP on my mac pro.)
For some reason, I couldn't get my NAS (or was it the server) running, and it was Saturday, so I went down to Costco and bought another 1tb external drive. This at least allowed me to work over the weekend. See, when you image a drive around 400gb, it takes around 12 hours. So I was able get get 3 drives done while I got the NAS problem figured out. For $200, extra space is a welcome sight.
While these were imaging, I was able to assemble most of our 2,000 Lamb PowerPoint boxes. Making good use of my time, I hope.
I don't have much hope in our server (an old "Doug 300") and so discussion was to replace that with a new machine. But in the meantime, I managed to get it working again, and continued on the process of imaging drives. So now, when all was said and done, I had one image on my mac pro, 3 on my external tb drive, and 4 on the NAS box (one was duplicated.) I have since ordered another server, which should come in about a week.
The next step, was to run Raid Reconstructor. This analyzes each drive, and comes up with the proper configuration to reconstruct the original image. See, with the RAID 5, data is duplicated, so in the event of a drive failure, the other 6 drives have all the data still. So this program 'weeds out' the extra data. But this program just gave me an xml (text) file, with the proper configuration, to which another program will use to actually get the data back. This program is called GetDataBack for NTFS.
I ran GetDataBack. Again, we are working over 2tb of data, and I figured it would take a day or so. 3 days later I'm still at 47%. Ok, I can wait, at least there are no Read / Write Delayed errors and the server is still running. That was Saturday night. Sunday on the way to church I stopped to look at it, and my mac pro ran out of memory (when GetDataBack was at 50%.)
Well, that's all I can do. Monday came and I ordered another 4g of memory for the mac pro, and will wait for that to come in before starting again. Or so I thought. I decided to create an actual image of the drives into one big image, which is currently running (I started it yesterday morning, and this morning it's at 17%. I'm glad I didn't have my memory shipped overnight!)
Any questions?
For the future, I plan on having a Drobo (w/ 3 1tb drives in it to start) as an external drive to duplicate the NAS to. This will be done daily. And weekly, I plan on swapping that Drobo out for another that I'll keep at my house. Further down, I may have another server, possibly at my house, that will back up my office data nightly. Seems easy enough, but will still probably have Dave come down and help set it up. Or Chuck, if he wants to come to Idaho. I could do tape, and might eventually. I have had bad luck w/ tape drives in the past, as well as them being very expensive. I'm still kicking around ideas for this, so it's not a done deal just yet.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
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Well, it’s been a while since I’ve been up Canfield, and since I haven’t done anything since I was sick a week or so ago, I thought that it might be a good time to do something. So, after a nap, I went up and around Canfield. Great trip going up. I was only passed by 3 women carrying horses. Coming down was more than I expected, though. I’ve been riding some this year, so I thought things would be ok, but this was not the case. I guess biking legs are different than hiking legs. At least I made it down in time to go to church these evening, as there was a send-off service for Pastor Steve, going to Panama.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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Thursday, August 21, 2008
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I am thankful to have had a part in jury duty, though it was a little sad that the process took place. An auto accident, resulting in a shoulder operation for the person not responsible for the accident. The case was about compensation for pain and suffering, but that wasn’t talked about until closing statements. Also, the defendant was being sued, but again, didn’t learn about the company he was working for as being liable until the last, either. The medical bills was around $24,000, but the defendant wanted another $69,000 pain / suffering compensation. We, the jury, ended up giving her $5k instead (plus the medical bills.)
Insurance wasn’t mentioned. Apparently they can’t talk about that. (Because, this is why we have insurance.) I felt very limited in my decision making because there was a lot of information that was left out. I didn’t have a police report, or approximate speeds (except for 114’ long skid mark), driving histories for either, etc. Looking back, I think they didn’t think that was important if all we were ‘talking’ about was the pain and suffering. But, it all comes in to play.
So, like I said, it was a good experience. I am thankful I was in the jury and not on the floor, that’s for sure.
Monday, August 18, 2008
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Well, it was 103 today, and the forecast is for a HIGH of 57 on Wednesday. Go figure. I just checked again, and they are listing 63 now.
I start in w/ Jury Duty tomorrow—for all of next week. I’m not real excited about going. Yes, it is part of this country’s justice system, for which I’m thankful to be able to participate in. But it’s not the best timing for my current schedule. I have a lot going on—one of which is trying to rebuild my RAID 5 NAS box. And if that is not successful, I have a lot of work to do to catch up. And on top of this, engineer and build a system that will not allow this to happen again!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
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Last Friday my filling fell, so today I went in to have it filled again. Come to find out, that it wasn’t a real good idea (the tooth was not real stable, as the filling was rather large.) So, he suggested another crown. I said “How much?” He said “$895” I said, “A thousand dollars?” He said “Yeah, $900 or so.” I went ahead w/ the procedure, as I figured that was the best plan, and the bill ended up at $956.00. I’ve learned to round things up so I can think clearly on things… In 2 weeks I’ll go back to replace this temp w/ the real thing.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
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Well, been sick for 4 days now, and today seemed to be getting better. I sure hope so, because spending so much time laying on the couch and watching the Olympics can get to a guy after a while. At least it’s been good exercise. Plus, at the office I have a lot to do. Like rebuild a RAID 5 NAS, get the files ready for print for a couple books, and box up 2,000 Lamb PowerPoint sets. Oh, and get ready for Jury duty next week. I think I’ll be happy when that’s over.
Monday, July 28, 2008
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Today (Grandma’s birthday) started with everybody assembling together at Thelma’s bed and breakfast - right in downtown West Salem. Bob treated us all for breakfast, like yesterday, but unlike yesterday, made it in before we all left! (He had company yesterday that delayed him…)
After this, Russ drove me up to Moline, IL, where I met my buddy Joe from Milwaukee. We drove back to WI, finished some last minute stuff (you know, like cutting the grass, packing, etc.), and sacked out to leave early next morning for the trip back to ID.
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