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Topic: We are back online! |
Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 23 May 2008 11:43 am |
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The SGF was offline from the afternoon of May 19 through the afternoon of May 23, due to the failure of our external RAID controller/exclosure, which manages the disks that contain all databases.
If any of you find any problems with missing posts or images please post about it in the Forum Feedback section.
Right now I can see that the avatars are not displaying on any posts. This has to do with problems that were already developing with the disk that hosts the images, which is a separate issue.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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Calvin Walley
From:
colorado city colorado, USA
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Posted 23 May 2008 1:08 pm
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR HARD WORK WIZ
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proud parent of a sailor
Mullen SD-10 /nashville 400
gotta love a Mullen!!!
Guitars that i have owned in order are :
Mullen SD-10,Simmons SD-10,Mullen SD-10,Zum stage one,Carter starter,
Sho-Bud Mavrick |
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Al Marcus
From:
Cedar Springs,MI USA (deceased)
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Posted 23 May 2008 6:55 pm Back
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Wiz-Good to see us on line agsain, thanks...al.
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Michigan (MSGC)Christmas Dinner and Jam on my 80th Birthday.
My Email.. almarcus@cmedic.net
My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus |
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Andy Sandoval
From:
Bakersfield, California, USA
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Posted 23 May 2008 7:31 pm
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| As far as I can tell there are no images showing anywhere. |
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Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 23 May 2008 8:47 pm
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| Andy Sandoval wrote: |
| As far as I can tell there are no images showing anywhere. |
That is correct. The images were stored on another disk, that also failed and is being sent out for data recovery, by experts, along with the two main system disks. We are now working strictly from recent backups. All images are off, including avatars.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 24 May 2008 7:12 am
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No posts were lost. The drive that holds the database was fine - I didn't even need to restore it from backup. Also, the FreeBSD server that holds the Forum Catalog and the old Forum was unaffected.
The real problem was that both of the RAID drives failed - something I thought was nearly impossible. Obviously it isn't. I lost several of my own web sites and numerous other files in addition to the Forum images. The bb.steelguitarforum.com program files were restored from the laptop I use at home.
It will be a couple of weeks before we're totally back to normal.
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-𝕓𝕆𝕓- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
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Edward Meisse
From:
Santa Rosa, California, USA
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Posted 25 May 2008 10:02 am
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Is it too difficult or time consuming to explain here what a hard drive crash is and what might cause it? If so, where can I find out about such things?
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Amor vincit omnia |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 25 May 2008 10:17 am
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I have no idea what caused the crash, other than simple hardware failure.
The drive in question is a external WD MyBook Pro Edition II. It contains two physical hard drives configured as a RAID array. That means that everything you write to it is supposed to be written twice. Each drive is an exact copy of the other.
Around noon on Monday, I discovered that the computer could no longer mount the drive. Disk utilities showed that it was there, but it appeared as "unformatted".
WD's support line suggested that I remove the drives and install them in a computer to further diagnose the problem. I popped them into a Mac Pro at work. One reported a hardware failure and the other appeared to be fine but unformatted. At that point I ordered a new unit from Amazon and formulated the plan to restore the site from the files on my laptop. Those are the program files - the scripts that make the forum run.
The forum's message data is in a database on the server's internal drive. Backups of that data are on the drive that crashed. The crashed drive also held all of our uploaded images and avatars, which were not backed up anywhere.
A second web server holds the forum entry page, the product catalog and the "old" forum. That server was not affected.
_________________
-𝕓𝕆𝕓- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
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Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 25 May 2008 10:42 am
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To further elaborate on hard disk crashes, here are more things that cause disks to become unusable.
- Hard disks have main bearings and rotate at about 7200 RPM. Sometimes the lube fails, or the dissimilar metals develop an out-of-round condition, leading to seizure of the main spindle.
- Heat buildup in enclosures that have less than excellent cooling will cause bearings and electronic parts to overheat, leading to physical component failure.
- Heat buildup can cause the data platters to warp, causing the pickup arm to skip, just like a record.
- Defects in manufacturing of the platters that store the data lead to corruption of files and sometimes the Master File Table, which indexes everything stored on the disk. Once the MFT becomes unreadable the disk is useless, unless the situation can be salvaged with a disk repair utility.
- Magnetic dropouts cause "bad sectors," where data can't be read from the bad sectors, causing program corruption, crashes and failure to boot.
- Viruses sometimes infect the boot sector of the master hard disk, leading to problems.
- The pickup arm can get knocked out of perfect alignment, causing data errors.
- Severe fragmentation can cause data read issues, because file parts get scattered all over the physical platter(s), requiring more pickup arm movement to recompile the files. When this happens to operating system files the disk can become unreadable.
- Some new disks for the consumer market are made with very cheap parts and are only warranted for one year and may not last half that time in less than perfect conditions.
- The chipset or controller board that interfaces with the hard drive(s) may become defective. RAID controllers sometimes fail, rendering the entire disk array unbootable, until the controller is replaced and it's driver is installed.
All hard drives will fail at some point in their lifetime. Sometimes they can be saved by running a disk repair utility, like Windows Chkdsk, or GRC's Spinrite, but most of the time once they begin developing bad sectors and boot problems, they are on the way out.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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Edward Meisse
From:
Santa Rosa, California, USA
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Posted 25 May 2008 3:00 pm
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Thanks, Wiz. That was very succinctly put. Maybe these things aren't as mysterious and incomprehensible as I thought. 
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Amor vincit omnia |
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James Quackenbush
From:
Pomona, New York, USA
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Posted 26 May 2008 11:25 am
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| Thanks to you guys for you knowledge and your time putting the system back together and running ....I have had, and other friends of mine have had many issues with Promise Raid Controllers ..... I'm content with my computer running a little bit slower with the satisfaction of knowing that I don't have to worry about a Raid controller dieing on me again ....What a pain in the ........... Thanks again ....Jim |
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Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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