Hard Drive failure on SLES 8... Email server

SUSE Linux Enterprise Extensions SLES Hardware
1

Shoot… Something weird just happened. My EMail server (running Sles Enterprise 8) (I am a windows guy and 6 months into this job) shut down and the hard drives wont boot. I got HP to replace all back pane, controller, cache card, and system board. Still to no avail. We then got 2 HD in and they seemed to work. Havent put an OS on there yet.

MY question to you experts is this… I need to get my data off there. I am familiar with hirens and other media to assist. But these harddrives are SAS and I don’t have or know any converters that can go from SAS to USB so I can plug it in to my windows machine and read the file system of the Linux hard drive?

Does anyone have any ideas or hints or products that I can use.

Yeah… I know… It should have been backed up and im an idiot for not. But the system had other issues that needed to be fixed.

Please, any help would be great.

2

Sorry… SLES 10… not 8.

3

stevenhopfner wrote:
[color=blue]

Shoot… Something weird just happened. My EMail server (running Sles
Enterprise 8) (I am a windows guy and 6 months into this job) shut
down and the hard drives wont boot. I got HP to replace all back
pane, controller, cache card, and system board. Still to no avail.[/color]

That would seem to indicate there is a problem with the data on the
drive or the drive itself.
[color=blue]

We then got 2 HD in and they seemed to work.[/color]

That would seem to confirm there is a problem with the data on the old
drive(s) or more likely the drive(s).

[color=blue]

Havent put an OS on there yet.

MY question to you experts is this… I need to get my data off
there. I am familiar with hirens and other media to assist. But
these harddrives are SAS and I don’t have or know any converters that
can go from SAS to USB so I can plug it in to my windows machine and
read the file system of the Linux hard drive?

Does anyone have any ideas or hints or products that I can use.

Yeah… I know… It should have been backed up and im an idiot for
not. But the system had other issues that needed to be fixed.

Please, any help would be great.[/color]

Can you provide some more information. Some of what you say doesn’t
make much sense.

  1. You can’t boot from the old drives.
  2. You installed two new drives and they seemed to work.

What do the new drives do that the old ones don’t?

If the drives don’t spin up, you may have to use a data recovery
service.

Were the old drives part of a RAID array? Explain…

The data on the drives is likely contained in a Linux file system. You
would need to attach them to a Linux (SLES) system if you need to read
the data. Trying to read those disks on a Windows system would be like
trying to read an NTFS disk on a DOS system. It isn’t going to work.

You might try using the SLES installation DVD and boot into rescue
mode. Check the SLES documentation. If you feel you are up to the task
and have some additional questions, please post in the SLES
Install-Boot forum.
https://forums.suse.com/forumdisplay.php?18-SLES-Install-Boot

–
Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
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show your appreciation and click on the star below…

4

I do think there may be a issue with the data. Just wanted to see if anyone else had this issue.

I received 2 new HD and booted them up on the server. This was merely just to test the server. The 2 new drives actually get past Array initializing screen.

-The old drives are RAID 1.
-I was thinking of installing SLES on the new hard drive(s) and then just mounting the old drive to the server and see if I can see the file system and have access to it. Once again, I an a newb to Linus and SLes… so just wondering if this is possible.

-I never tried the SLES insall disk, I did try the HP rescue disks, those didn’t help.

-My next bet was to call the data recovery services and see what they can do… and at what price. I guess I am going to have to put a price on the data and see how much they charge. Wowzers.

5

stevenhopfner wrote:
[color=blue]

-The old drives are RAID 1.[/color]

That’s better than nothing. If your issue is hardware related,
hopefully one of the two drives is okay.
[color=blue]

-I was thinking of installing SLES on the new hard drive(s) and then
just mounting the old drive to the server and see if I can see the
file system and have access to it. Once again, I an a newb to Linus
and SLes… so just wondering if this is possible.[/color]

Yes, that is not a bad plan assuming the drives are working but there
may be an easier way (see below).

From what you have said already I gather your RAID adapter doesn’t
recognise the drives. Is that true? Or is the issue that the server
just won’t boot?

If one of the drives is defective, can you install just the one that is
working? The RAID adapter should recognise that one drive is missing
and continue to serve up data from the good drive.

You have to sort out any hardware issues before attempting any file
recovery.
[color=blue]

-I never tried the SLES insall disk, I did try the HP rescue disks,
those didn’t help.[/color]

You would do well to search through the knowledgebase. There is a lot
of useful information. There’s no point to reinventing the wheel.

https://www.suse.com/support/

Here are a couple of documents I found that might be helpful:

http://www.novell.com/communities/node/1794/troubleshooting-sles10-boot-process

https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc.php?id=3864925
[color=blue]

-My next bet was to call the data recovery services and see what they
can do… and at what price. I guess I am going to have to put a price
on the data and see how much they charge. Wowzers.[/color]

This would be a last resort. If it comes to this, it will likely be
expensive.

–
Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
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show your appreciation and click on the star below…