RAID recovery failure

[Henri]

RAID recovery has unfortunately broke again with update 1.2.4.

Please Excito team, could you update your Bubba USB image download archive and make available that image, which has a working RAID recovery function !

Then there would be some sort of workaround or backdoor to restore user data in case of hardware failure. As it seems that every other update brokes data retention reliability.

I have tried twice and have failed both times to do RAID recovery on internal hard drive.

Pictures tell the storyline.

1. Bubba is booted with external RAID disk turned on before Bubba.

Disk information


Disk raid


Raid recovery



2. Bubba is booted first and then eSATA disk is turned on.

Disk information


Disk raid


Raid recovery


Attempting to create a new RAID array ...



...

[ubbe]

same happend to me..
What to do?

[Henri]

Thanks for confirming the problem Ubbe.

[ubbe]

anyone know how to fix this whidout loosing all information on disks?

[carl]

We have identified the problem and an upgrade is scheduled to the 15:th of January.

/Carl

[LudwigVan]

There was no update on the 15th. When can it be expected?

L.

[johannes]

Any day now, possibly already today.

[Henri]

Good new for RAID users.

Update (1.3.1) has fixed RAID recovery feature once again.
Both internal and external RAID recovery works great. There's also a nice Message box feature added in Bubba's status screen, which is informing user if there appears to be a problem with the RAID.

Thank you Excito.

Though my trust with Bubba's RAID has degraded too much during this over six months period, which I have been spending "testing" Bubba. I have come to a conclusion that it's best to give up the RAID completely and dedicate the external hard drive for a backup disk. I believe this to be the most efficient and carefree way to protect user data at the moment.

So far history has showed that every other software update has broken RAID recovery and the next update fixed it. I just can't take the chance that RAID recovery is not working at that moment when catastrophic hard drive failure happens. There might not be time to wait for a next software update to be released in order to get user data back in use.

Things could change, if Excito team can give a quarantee that RAID recovery function is tested to work every time before new software update is released. Otherwise it just seems too risky to trust Bubba's RAID.
I am getting tired of reinstalling Bubba's software every time a new software is released, just to see if RAID recovery is still working. I feel like I am doing job that Excito team should be doing for a quality control

I understand and accept that there will inevitable be all sort of small glitches with updates. RAID feature in my opinion is such a critical part of NAS function that there really should not be a reason to doubt it's reliability.

Couple of suggestions Excito team could do to improve Bubba's reliability:

• * Put out a USB reinstallation image which has a working RAID function.

• * Make an idiots guide (for me) how extract user data from Bubba's RAID hard drives's (Internal and external) by using Live Ubuntu.

• * Make an idiots guide (also for me) how to extract user data from Bubba's external backup hard drive with Live Ubuntu.

In addition to RAID failure there might be a situation when Bubba'a electronic fails and user data is then unavailable unless one can get a new motherboard for Bubba.

That is why there is a need for a user to be able to extract data out from either RAID disk or backup disk without Bubba hardware. The guide could teach how to use Live Ubuntu or other Linux version to extract data from Bubba's hard drives.

Otherwise I am still very positive about Bubba and it's vast number possibilities it is offering to user.

Waiting for Bubba III with build in RAID for 2x2,5" hard drives.

[Ubi]

If I can chip in: I feel strongly that RAID is not a good safety design for a Bubba server. Having one disk on a esata link with a separate power supply is asking for constant degradation problems.

Considering that the importance of backup is in the availability of user data, rather than system data, and that there is generally no high financial consequence of a small downtime, I think much better solution is to use the external drive as a rsync incremental backup solution (like the time capsule, but then free). This has the same level of data preservation, but you get timed backups as a bonus. Oh and there's no driver problems. The downside is that you reduce availability when the primary drive dies, but I seriously doubt this is more important in normal household situation (i.e. where bubba is usually deployed)

[RandomUsername]

@Ubi, I don't disagree with you (I wouldn't dare ) but I think the post you're replying to us just a spam bot - see the link in his sig.

[Ubi]

damnit, I'm usually pretty good at sniffing these buggers out. Thanks!

note to self: first coffee, then post on forum

[Cheeseboy]

(I wouldn't dare )

[Ubi]

If that were true, it'd be a sad situation!

[DanielM]

Not that I want to destroy the nice conversation here, but since nobody else did, I simply deleted the spam in question...

/Daniel

[Cheeseboy]

Thanks Daniel!