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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■ Synchronet ■ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

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.


... Daddy, what does "now formatting drive C:" mean?
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
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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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--- MultiMail/XT v0.52
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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.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
■ Synchronet ■ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL

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...





... The tape is now the music
--- MultiMail/XT v0.52
■ Synchronet ■ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

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. :-)



... All the easy problems have been solved.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
■ Synchronet ■ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL

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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