Subj : Re: What to do?
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : Gamgee
Date : Fri Jun 26 2020 12:23:00

-=> poindexter FORTRAN wrote to All <=-

 pF> I've got an old Dell T3400 Workstation, it's 11 years old this
 pF> year. I've used its onboard RAID to mirror two drives, and
 pF> upgraded the Core2 Duo to a Core2 Quad a couple of years ago.

 pF> The problems? The RAID doesn't have Windows 10 drivers. I can get
 pF> along with an older driver, but the most recent Windows update
 pF> broke the system tray app, so the only way I have to control the
 pF> RAID is through the BIOS. The app starts but can't connect to the
 pF> RST service, and when I try to reinstall it complains about .Net
 pF> 4.5 not being installed (although it's part of Windows now, if
 pF> I'm not mistaken, and when I tried installing Net 4.5 it
 pF> complained that a newer version was already installed...)

 pF> I'm mostly worried about not getting notification of a failed
 pF> drive until the next boot.

 pF> The other issue is that it's maxxed out at 8GB of DDR-2 ECC RAM.
 pF> The RAM is impossible to find, or expensive if you do.

 pF> My options are thus:

 pF> 1. Stick with it as is and pay attention when booting to the BIOS
 pF> screen to see if a drive has failed - keeping in mind that I'm
 pF> running 5 year old drives in the box. No cost, no effort.

 pF> 2. Ditch the RAID and buy an SSD to get a nice speed boost. I
 pF> could leave the RAID as-is as a data drive or break the pair, use
 pF> the drives for backups and be done with RAID. Low cost, medium
 pF> effort.

 pF> 3. I found a refurbished Dell T3610 with a Xeon 3.0 ghz quad core
 pF> and 16 GB of RAM for $200, I could possibly swing that. I'd need
 pF> to move my current drives to it and re-make the RAID, I doubt it
 pF> would recognize the RAID pair from an older controller. Once I
 pF> was done, I could use the old box as a BBS box. High cost, high
 pF> effort, biggest return.

 pF> 4. Ditch Windows 10 and put Linux on the existing RAID array, I
 pF> have a backup drive I could use to copy the data to, and linux'
 pF> md tools work with the older RAID just fine from what I've read.
 pF> I could leave the RAID as-is, install the OS, format the drive as
 pF> ext4, then copy the data from backup. It's probably run better
 pF> with the 8gb of RAM than Windows 10. Low to medium effort, low
 pF> 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
 þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL

.