Topic: NEED TO ADD EXTRA SATA HDD TO SME SERVER 8.0

[microlatina]

Hello, I have not much experience but I've been using SME server at my office for 6 years now. A very simple standard instalation, with a couple of users and iBays for work. A hardware problem occured and the SATA HDD has problems. The data seems to be intact  but the operating system is lost and it won't boot again. I bought a new 1T SATA HDD and I am about to reinstal a fresh SME 8.

Once I get it up and running, I will need to mount the old SATA HDD and copy as much information as I can get to the new SATA HDD. It is just a manual mount to make this old HDD visible.

The problem is that the information about how to do this across the forum and Googling "SME add extra SATA" , etc. is confusing and mostly related to RAID disks.
I found things like this:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=39014.0
http://wiki.contribs.org/Recovering_SME_Server_with_lvm_drives

... but are discouraging and very complicated for a newbie.

Can somebody give me a simple solution to do this ? I think it can't be so difficult.
How can I identify a new HDD in a system and know it is there ?
How can I mount this volume so I can "see" it for a while as a directory so I can locate my old data in it and rescue it by copying to an iBay in the new HDD ?

I will very much appreciate your help.
Thank you

Roberto

[purvis]

i do it the hard way longest but maybe the most stable way of transferring files.
when i transfer files to a new system, i use xcopy on a windows xp machine and transfer all files from ibays to as many workstations as can handle the size of the files on the server.

the servers that i set up all use raid1 and i suggest anybody setting up a server to try and at least do that, raid1
if you have done that, raid1, on your server, remove one drive and shelf it for safe keeping,
use the other drive and install it on a windows machine in a external usb enclosure.
as i understand, there is software for the xp to read ext3 formatted drives.
load the software to read ext3, then hopefully you can find and copy the files onto your windows xp machine
then remove the drive that has been formatted with ext3 by shutting down the windows xp machine then at that time remove the drive, i would do this for safety measures.
boot up the windows xp machine, setup up your new ibays, then copy over the files to your new sme8 server

[microlatina]

I finally solved the problem by downloading a free program DiskInternals Linux Reader, installing the SATA HDD in my Windows PC, and copying all de data that fortunately was intact.

As I said before I have no technical authority with Linux and SME. I am just a microprocessor hardware and software engineer, with experience in electronics, and just starting with Linux.
Please don't take me bad but I am surprised because I couldn't find any support on this issue among the SME envirnoment. This is a simple thing to do, but all what I found is related to RAID configurations. My machine has just one simple SATA HDD and it is used as a dedicated server and gateway in my office. Just that. I couldn't find support about this very simple issue of adding (mounting) an extra SATA drive to my computer.

Yes, I found good literature to start with for example here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/

It would be nice to find this simple tasks documented somewhere in the SME environment. Maybe I skipped something, but I first Googled and searched the contribs.org forums and found nothing about simple matters like this issue. Maybe SME is for a higher level of expertise users ...

So I will get started with the mount and fstab commands and also something about filesystems, because I don't feel good about solving Linux problems with Windows resources 

Kind regards

[TerryF]

Providing the old drive was still working and the only problem was not booting, did you try the rescue mode first?  Then add the new drive and let it setup a Raid 1, remove the old drive, have a coffee and bask in the admiration of your co workers

This How To has always worked for me adding a non raid drive to a working system. It is comprehensive and covers all bases, but within it is the instructions to do what you wanted.

[Stefano]

this should be applicable too..

[purvis]

@microlantina
your time is worth way more than the cost of a second drive to make your system a raid1 system.
it is likely time to also just change out the drives if they have been working for a really long time.
the process to setup a raid1 is so easy inside of a sme server, thanks to many people here.
when you do this, you will sleep much better at night too by having your system more dependable.

[Stefano]

@microlantina
your time is worth way more than the cost of a second drive to make your system a raid1 system.
it is likely time to also just change out the drives if they have been working for a really long time.
the process to setup a raid1 is so easy inside of a sme server, thanks to many people here.
when you do this, you will sleep much better at night too by having your system more dependable.

I would add that a good backup is highly recommended

[microlatina]

Thank you friends for your advice.

Some information and my opinion now that I have all up and running again:

This HDD has just one year in a new machine. I've been using SME with this same configuration for years and I changed machines every 2 years more or less.
The problem was produced by an electrical problem during a storm. The operating system failed, not the rest of the data on disk.
I tryed to use the SME rescue solution booting from the installation CD, I could see that the data was there, but again I couldn't find a way to read the data inside the ruined the HDD and copy it to other disk. I think that I should have to mount an extra HDD too 

The method of copying the data using a Windows machine was simple for me with not much experience with Linux and solved the problem, but I am not happy with that. I would like to know how to do this the old fashion way, using the native Linux tools.

I know that the RAID disk storage is much better, but I have some concerns about using what I don't understand very well. If fixing a RAID system after a crash would expose me to the same lack of information of that in mounting an extra HDD to an SME server, it definitely wouldn't be a solution for me either. Do you know if there is any good, basic information about how RAID works, how to install and  ***specially*** how to fix a RAID system in case of a disaster ? If so, I would study it, spend some time on this and give it a try. If not, I can't imagine how could I read a RAID in a Windows PC 

I have an extra HDD in my Windows PC to make backup from time to time, but in this case I needed information that was not included in the last backup. I would like to have and extra HDD to make automatic programmed backups directly inside the SME server.

Finally, I couldn't find information on how to easily mount an extra HDD to my SME server, and I still think that this should be something really simple for somebody with a little much more experience than mine. I also think that not everybody uses RAID in simple configurations.

Thank you all again, as always all opinions are very valuable to me.

[janet]

microlatina

The info is here but you just couldn't find it.

Really if you are going to use Linux, at least learn some basics and stop relying on Windows.
You could have googled for mount or searched these forums for mount, you would have found lot's of answers
Please read the Howtos, the link is at the top of the forums, there are plenty that would inform you.
Trex & Stefano posted two links for you, did you read them ?

Connect your new SATA disk
Format ext3 , refer Howto

To see what drives are detected and their names & location
fdisk -l

mkdir -p /mnt/SATAbackup

To mount a drive
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/SATAbackup
(replace /dev/sda with your drive location and SATA port "name", replace /mnt/SATAbackup with your mount point location name)

df -h

To unmount the drive
umount /mnt/SATAbackup

[microlatina]

Mary, thank you very much for your return.
This is what I said at the beginning of the post:

The problem is that the information about how to do this across the forum and Googling "SME add extra SATA" , etc. is confusing and mostly related to RAID disks.
I found things like this:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=39014.0
http://wiki.contribs.org/Recovering_SME_Server_with_lvm_drives

... but are discouraging and very complicated for a newbie.

And later ... Googling ...

Yes, I found good literature to start with for example here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/

It would be nice to find this simple tasks documented somewhere in the SME environment. Maybe I skipped something, but I first Googled and searched the contribs.org forums and found nothing about simple matters like this issue. Maybe SME is for a higher level of expertise users ...

Unfortunately I couldn't find what I needed that easy.
It would be nice to find persons like you that can enlighten this issue.
Why don't you contribute a brief explanation about this particular topic ?
I don't think that what you are explaining is all under just one roof.

Thank you again
Roberto

[janet]

microlatina

Unfortunately I couldn't find what I needed that easy.

Well this took me 2 minutes to find (by searching the forums on mount)
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,46728.msg229636.html#msg229636

It would be nice to find persons like you that can enlighten this issue.
Why don't you contribute a brief explanation about this particular topic ?
I don't think that what you are explaining is all under just one roof.

I'm sure there are plenty of persons here who could have advised you.
Perhaps they did not because they knew the information was readily available if you searched.

I have noted in the past this type of information is not comprehensively included in a Howto, but as shown, there are useful forum posts that do encompass the information in one easy to read place. It was even one of my own posts.

Feel free to become part of the Documentation team and add a Howto to the wiki if you feel something is missing, you can easily copy existing info from the forums.

[chris burnat]

Feel free to become part of the Documentation team and add a Howto to the wiki if you feel something is missing, you can easily copy existing info from the forums.

Great idea!
To become part of Docteam, check:
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Volunteering

Thanks.

[microlatina]

Thank you Mary, don't get me bad.
In my specialty, I can find information probably as fast as you can. But respectfully, you are skipping the fact that I have explained that I am a newbie to Linux and that I just even known that "mount" existed, so I am am sorry about that. You will then understand that the problem in may case is ***what*** to search.

When somebody asks something very simple in the many hardware design or microprocessor software forums that I attend, I just try to help by responding the best I can without make him feel he is doing something wrong by asking at a newbie level.

So, unfortunately, I cannot contribute anything by now. Sorry about that friends.

Thank you all for your valuable returns.

Roberto