The Vanity of an Ancient King

(No, Not WoW)

But rather, a resolution (partially) of my battle with the Qx2 (see here for more deets):

I was able to trick the array into being seen by the OS (although I didn't HFS format it, so it appeared as a raw device, ready to be formatted), which allowed me to go in with the *very* nice Data Rescue II, and get everything off the drive. All the files were there, I just nuked the partition map, so when read block-by-block, everything turned out just fine. Of course, it took about 16 hours… twice. Why twice? Because I couldn't stop fidgeting with the app, and let it do its own thing. I kept flipping various folders open and closed within the app, which caused it to hang, making me force-quit the app, and start from scratch.

So where am I? The new enclosure (3rd unit) could be a viable unit, and this could be a situation of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), where unit 2 screwed up the disks, and unit 3 simply couldn't deal with that. At this moment, I'll ship unit 2 back, but keep unit 3, until it proves to fail (which it verywell may). I however, will *only* use it as a backup of a backup, and be doubly sure I don't go and do anything silly like I did last time (the reason I had any data that wasn't backed up is due to my Lightroom settings not being what they should be, which is totally my bad.)

I'm putting this here for safe keeping. This is the product to which I refer: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/



Let me tell you, I’ve had quite the run with this product, and I have to say, I am not happy.

Currently, I’m on my 3rd unit. The first unit they sent (ordered about an hour after they were originally announced as available, well before this new price reduction) I am pretty sure was a test mule, as the packaging was different, and the unit came assembled, but with a different RAID configuration out of the box than was stated in the manual.

Within 2 days, the array started going offline randomly, and wouldn’t go back online (it wasn’t seen by Disk Utility), and the only way to bring it back up was to cycle the power. Then the rebuild light went “solid on”, which isn’t supposed to happen, and one of the drive lights went on (indicating a failed drive). I was asked to move the drive position, to see if the failure light moved with it… it didn’t, which would indicate something else was wrong. So I sent that entire unit (drives and enclosure) back.

Their customer service was eager and pleasant, however, they would drop the ball without contacting me for days (I had outstanding questions I needed resolved).

My second unit arrived (Cross shipped), in new, sealed packaging, with the enclosure and drives separate (home assembly required, and everything totally sealed). I noticed that the RAID level was as it was supposed to be (set to RAID5). I plugged it in, gave it a test run, and copied my data to it. I was a little paranoid. Everything was fine the first 24 hours. Then, out of nowhere, the alarm would go off (boy is that loud at 3am!). However, the rebuild light wasn’t on, nor was there a disk fault light. The array was still mounted, so I unmunted it, and cycled the power. The alarm didn’t go back on… for another 18 hours. Still, no fault light. This time I merely squelched the alarm (the little black button on the front of the case behind the bezel).

Weeks went by, and all was silent (I don’t turn off this machine), until Friday (10 July), when I noticed the array wasn’t mounted, and the rebuild light was stuck on, but no disk fault light was on. I cycled power, but no dice. I tried other connections (FW800, 400, USB), and other computers (G5 tower, macbook), but still no resurrection. I kept the device powered up for over 48 hours, in hopes that whatever it was doing would somehow fix itself. It didn’t, so I contacted OWC, and now I am on my 3rd unit.

They X-shipped a new enclosure (received today 14th July) (kept my disks), and I put the old drives into the new enclosure… I still have the solid rebuild light, and no disk fault. I put my ear to the enclosure, and I don’t hear any writing nor seeking, although I do hear the drives spinning.

I’m now of the belief these problems are endemic to the product, and not “just me”, and I am pretty upset about all of it.

Oh, and while I had them on the phone, I asked about RAID-level migration (the ability to expand a RAID pool by replacing the drives one at a time with larger capacity drives), and this unit, unlike my internal RAID5, *DOES NOT SUPPORT THIS FEATURE*, which makes it less useful to me. It also doesn’t support any feedback of any kind, so you don’t have any idea where it is in the rebuild process, or SMART status of the individual drives. If you care about your data, look elsewhere.