Anybody in Massachusetts/Rhode Island have a Linux system available??

Started by Fontaholic, December 10, 2012, 08:53:23 AM

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Fontaholic

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if anybody in the Massachusetts / Rhode Island area has a Linux system available?

I ask because some time ago, our RAID backup system stopped working all of a sudden, and after I went through the company's tech support, I was no better off than I was before I called... :angry:

However, the tech person did suggest that if I knew anybody with a Linux system, to try and connect the RAID system's hard drives to the Linux system to see if the files were still readable / accessible / retrievable, because apparently only a Linux system can read the hard drives the way they're set up at present...

Naturally, Da Boss doesn't want to spend any money on data retrieval, and would be happy to write off the files on these drives.  And granted, I'd say that 90% of these files, we'll never use again.  But that remaining 10%, I know will cause headaches (for me) down the road.

So if anybody feels like helping out a fellow prepresser who's down own his luck...?  :cry:

Cheers, John

Greg_Firestone

Hi John,

Sorry to hear about that. As an alternative if you can't find someone, you can install a copy of SUSE or Debian for free. If you have an old hard drive lying around, pull out the drive of a PC and pop in the new drive. Install the OS and plug in your drives. When you're done, you can pop out the drive and put the original drive back in.

Greg
_______________
Technical Project Manager
OneVision Software

Farabomb

I'm not good enough with linux to even attempt but do you guys have a old PC laying around? Specs shouldn't matter seeing that linux can run on a casio watch. Install linux on it and see what you can come up with.

I do have some friends in the Boston area, including a programmer so I will ask around.

Yea, what Greg said.
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Fontaholic

Quote from: Greg_Firestone on December 10, 2012, 09:18:22 AMHi John,

Sorry to hear about that. As an alternative if you can't find someone, you can install a copy of SUSE or Debian for free. If you have an old hard drive lying around, pull out the drive of a PC and pop in the new drive. Install the OS and plug in your drives. When you're done, you can pop out the drive and put the original drive back in.

Greg

Any chance ya could guide me through this process, or point me in the direction of a site that can...?  I ain't much on the technical end of things most of the time...  :blind:

Cheers, John

Joe

It's doable but not for the faint of heart when it comes to the free distros of Linux and RAID drivers.

Can we back up and find out what kind of a RAID system it is? Operating system? Manufacturer of RAID and other details?
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

Greg_Firestone

Hi John,

Go to https://www.suse.com
Go to Free Downloads on top right
On the list of software, select OpenSUSE (bottom right)
Select if you need 32 or 64 bit version. Download the file and burn it to a DVD

There's some documentation here: http://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/html/openSUSE/opensuse-startup/

Hope this helps.
Greg
_______________
Technical Project Manager
OneVision Software

dubstep

Use a bootable distro like knoppix [1]. You can burn an .iso image to cd and boot into linux from the cd without installing it.

This would be good for seeing if the the files are readable. I'd leave the actual recovery to experts. One wrong move and you can leave the drives in worse condition than when you started.

[1] http://knoppix.net/

Fontaholic

Quote from: Joe on December 10, 2012, 09:51:10 AMIt's doable but not for the faint of heart when it comes to the free distros of Linux and RAID drivers.

Can we back up and find out what kind of a RAID system it is? Operating system? Manufacturer of RAID and other details?

It's a RAID-1 system, Cisco / Linksys NAS200 with two hard drives in it.  Manufacturing date of August 2007.

Presently it is reading one of the hard drives, but not the other.  And on the drive it is reading, all it shows is a Parent Directory and nothing within it...

Cheers, John

Joe

Quote from: opsprinting on December 10, 2012, 11:29:47 AM
Quote from: Joe on December 10, 2012, 09:51:10 AMIt's doable but not for the faint of heart when it comes to the free distros of Linux and RAID drivers.

Can we back up and find out what kind of a RAID system it is? Operating system? Manufacturer of RAID and other details?

It's a RAID-1 system, Cisco / Linksys NAS200 with two hard drives in it.  Manufacturing date of August 2007.

Presently it is reading one of the hard drives, but not the other.  And on the drive it is reading, all it shows is a Parent Directory and nothing within it...

Cheers, John

Once they get to that state the chances of recovering anything is low. Since they are a RAID 1 you have to have the RAID drivers installed for any OS to see it and try to read the disks.

If it is a hardware RAID, when you boot the PC you should see some text that shows you the key combo to press to launch the RAID utility. You can try some of the stuff in there but I really can't guide you without being able to see the screen. Even trying to use the RAID utilities you should always be prepared that there is a good chance you will or already have lost everything. But I think your chances of recovery are better this way using the same PC. I've heard the old "Linux can save your data" many times but I've never been able to make it happen.
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.