• What to do?

    From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to All on Fri Jun 26 07:55:00 2020
    I've got an old Dell T3400 Workstation, it's 11 years old this year.
    I've used its onboard RAID to mirror two drives, and upgraded the
    Core2 Duo to a Core2 Quad a couple of years ago.

    The problems? The RAID doesn't have Windows 10 drivers. I can get
    along with an older driver, but the most recent Windows update broke
    the system tray app, so the only way I have to control the RAID is
    through the BIOS. The app starts but can't connect to the RST service,
    and when I try to reinstall it complains about .Net 4.5 not being
    installed (although it's part of Windows now, if I'm not mistaken, and
    when I tried installing Net 4.5 it complained that a newer version was
    already installed...)

    I'm mostly worried about not getting notification of a failed drive
    until the next boot.

    The other issue is that it's maxxed out at 8GB of DDR-2 ECC RAM. The
    RAM is impossible to find, or expensive if you do.

    My options are thus:

    1. Stick with it as is and pay attention when booting to the BIOS
    screen to see if a drive has failed - keeping in mind that I'm running
    5 year old drives in the box. No cost, no effort.

    2. Ditch the RAID and buy an SSD to get a nice speed boost. I could
    leave the RAID as-is as a data drive or break the pair, use the drives
    for backups and be done with RAID. Low cost, medium effort.

    3. I found a refurbished Dell T3610 with a Xeon 3.0 ghz quad core and
    16 GB of RAM for $200, I could possibly swing that. I'd need to move
    my current drives to it and re-make the RAID, I doubt it would
    recognize the RAID pair from an older controller. Once I was done, I
    could use the old box as a BBS box. High cost, high effort, biggest
    return.

    4. Ditch Windows 10 and put Linux on the existing RAID array, I have a
    backup drive I could use to copy the data to, and linux' md tools work
    with the older RAID just fine from what I've read. I could leave the
    RAID as-is, install the OS, format the drive as ext4, then copy the
    data from backup. It's probably run better with the 8gb of RAM than
    Windows 10. Low to medium effort, low cost.





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  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jun 26 12:23:00 2020
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to All <=-

    I've got an old Dell T3400 Workstation, it's 11 years old this
    year. I've used its onboard RAID to mirror two drives, and
    upgraded the Core2 Duo to a Core2 Quad a couple of years ago.

    The problems? The RAID doesn't have Windows 10 drivers. I can get
    along with an older driver, but the most recent Windows update
    broke the system tray app, so the only way I have to control the
    RAID is through the BIOS. The app starts but can't connect to the
    RST service, and when I try to reinstall it complains about .Net
    4.5 not being installed (although it's part of Windows now, if
    I'm not mistaken, and when I tried installing Net 4.5 it
    complained that a newer version was already installed...)

    I'm mostly worried about not getting notification of a failed
    drive until the next boot.

    The other issue is that it's maxxed out at 8GB of DDR-2 ECC RAM.
    The RAM is impossible to find, or expensive if you do.

    My options are thus:

    1. Stick with it as is and pay attention when booting to the BIOS
    screen to see if a drive has failed - keeping in mind that I'm
    running 5 year old drives in the box. No cost, no effort.

    2. Ditch the RAID and buy an SSD to get a nice speed boost. I
    could leave the RAID as-is as a data drive or break the pair, use
    the drives for backups and be done with RAID. Low cost, medium
    effort.

    3. I found a refurbished Dell T3610 with a Xeon 3.0 ghz quad core
    and 16 GB of RAM for $200, I could possibly swing that. I'd need
    to move my current drives to it and re-make the RAID, I doubt it
    would recognize the RAID pair from an older controller. Once I
    was done, I could use the old box as a BBS box. High cost, high
    effort, biggest return.

    4. Ditch Windows 10 and put Linux on the existing RAID array, I
    have a backup drive I could use to copy the data to, and linux'
    md tools work with the older RAID just fine from what I've read.
    I could leave the RAID as-is, install the OS, format the drive as
    ext4, then copy the data from backup. It's probably run better
    with the 8gb of RAM than Windows 10. Low to medium effort, low
    cost.


    My choices would be:

    #4 and then #2. In fact, perhaps use Linux with an SSD and no
    RAID. With regular backups (I do nightly rsync's to an offsite
    VPS), there is very little risk and no justification for RAID,
    IMHO. Also I'm anti-Windows. :-)

    #1 would not even be an option for me, too much risk.

    #3 would still be using older hardware, and using Windows.


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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Gamgee on Sat Jun 27 21:28:00 2020
    Gamgee wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    My choices would be:

    #4 and then #2. In fact, perhaps use Linux with an SSD and no
    RAID. With regular backups (I do nightly rsync's to an offsite
    VPS), there is very little risk and no justification for RAID,
    IMHO. Also I'm anti-Windows. :-)

    I'm in both camps. My job is split 50/50 between Linux admin tasks
    and Windows/AD sysadmin stuff, and I play equally well with both.

    I saw a 3610 with 32 GB of RAM and a 4 core 3.0 ghz Xeon on Amazon
    for $250, just got a notification that it had been restocked at $405,
    was probably a bait and switch deal. Annoying.

    Because of that, I think I'm leaning to adding a single SSD,
    installing Linux on it, keeping the RAID as-is, and rsyncing the SSD
    to it. I could then put Windows in a VM for when I need it, or use
    WINE for most of my Windows apps (Adobe CS2 and Famatech Remote Admin)




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  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jun 28 07:39:00 2020
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Gamgee <=-

    #4 and then #2. In fact, perhaps use Linux with an SSD and no
    RAID. With regular backups (I do nightly rsync's to an offsite
    VPS), there is very little risk and no justification for RAID,
    IMHO. Also I'm anti-Windows. :-)

    I'm in both camps. My job is split 50/50 between Linux admin
    tasks and Windows/AD sysadmin stuff, and I play equally well
    with both.

    Cool, nice to know both.

    I saw a 3610 with 32 GB of RAM and a 4 core 3.0 ghz Xeon on
    Amazon for $250, just got a notification that it had been
    restocked at $405, was probably a bait and switch deal. Annoying.

    Yeah, that is pretty aggravating.

    Because of that, I think I'm leaning to adding a single SSD,
    installing Linux on it, keeping the RAID as-is, and rsyncing the
    SSD to it. I could then put Windows in a VM for when I need it, or
    use WINE for most of my Windows apps (Adobe CS2 and Famatech Remote
    Admin)

    Sounds like a good solution. Relatively cheap and not too much
    work. :-)


    ... Error reading REALITY.SYS - Solar System halted.
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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Gamgee on Mon Jun 29 11:06:00 2020
    Gamgee wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    Sounds like a good solution. Relatively cheap and not too much
    work. :-)

    Postscript:

    I ended up doing a system restore and going back to the old driver/app
    combo. Last night, the system wanted to update again and updated the
    driver. Again, the app broke. I did some googling around and found a
    Windows Store app that does work with my driver and OS, provides
    notification of drive failyure and as a side-benefit, the RAID feels
    much faster now than with the 8 year-old driver I was using...





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  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Jun 29 21:39:00 2020
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Gamgee <=-

    Sounds like a good solution. Relatively cheap and not too much
    work. :-)

    Postscript:

    I ended up doing a system restore and going back to the old
    driver/app combo. Last night, the system wanted to update again
    and updated the driver. Again, the app broke. I did some googling
    around and found a Windows Store app that does work with my
    driver and OS, provides notification of drive failyure and as a side-benefit, the RAID feels much faster now than with the 8
    year-old driver I was using...

    Cool! So it turned out "completely cheap" and not too much work.
    Win-Win. :-)



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  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jun 30 13:02:28 2020
    On 6/26/2020 7:55 AM, poindexter FORTRAN wrote:
    2. Ditch the RAID and buy an SSD to get a nice speed boost. I could
    leave the RAID as-is as a data drive or break the pair, use the drives
    for backups and be done with RAID. Low cost, medium effort.

    This would probably be my choice... SSD is a crazy boost over spinning
    rust for random access. Should mostly notice the difference for your message/network access. Combined with a good backup plan of course.

    3. I found a refurbished Dell T3610 with a Xeon 3.0 ghz quad core and
    16 GB of RAM for $200, I could possibly swing that. I'd need to move
    my current drives to it and re-make the RAID, I doubt it would
    recognize the RAID pair from an older controller. Once I was done, I
    could use the old box as a BBS box. High cost, high effort, biggest
    return.

    Depends on your use case and needs tbh, would probably hold out for
    something newer.

    4. Ditch Windows 10 and put Linux on the existing RAID array, I have a
    backup drive I could use to copy the data to, and linux' md tools work
    with the older RAID just fine from what I've read. I could leave the
    RAID as-is, install the OS, format the drive as ext4, then copy the
    data from backup. It's probably run better with the 8gb of RAM than
    Windows 10. Low to medium effort, low cost.

    Linux works very well, but I haven't even tried setting up doors yet.

    --
    Michael J. Ryan
    tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS

    ---
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