A couple of things. Yes, it was a failing hard drive. No, I couldn’t clone the failing drive. It’s part of a stripe set and if I could get the drive ID’s to work with replacement drives, I could have been up and running in an afternoon. No such luck. Yes, non-Apple drives will work in the server. I’ve got some Seagate Barracudas (enterprise class) drives on order that should be here tomorrow. I’ll get those installed then restore the data from tape (I have an Exabyte (Tandberg) tape carousel using VXA V23 media). It’ll take awhile but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Jason – sorry, somtimes the geek just leaks out like that.
that’s not a leak, that’s an eruption. I bet you drive all the girls crazy with phrases like Seagate Barracuda enterprise class. Sounds like a new TV series on Sci Fi.
you know, seagate’s gone down hill a bit since the acquisition of maxtor a few years ago. i’m more of a western digital man myself. let the nerd flow baby!
Jason – Chicks dig my FireWire.
cb1016 – In this instance, I had a used version of the Seagate to test compatibility with the controller Apple uses in the Xserve. Based on the results I got (well it worked), I ordered the same thing. Going to mirror the drives this time. For what we do, striping (and recovering from a failure like we had this week) is just not the optimal way to do it.
I had a WD drive go south on me earlier this year. It was in one of their MyBook products and not an enterprise class product though. Hard drive failures are a pain in the butt for sure.