Cavalry Dual-Bay Dock, RAID 1 ... saga continue ...

In my last journey to RAID 1, I was dealing with a failed drive situation with my Z drive, which WAS set up as RAID 1.  So none of my data was lost.  But now I need to figure out how I should move forward, specifically:

• What drive I should use as new Z drive?
• What drive I should use a mirror of new Z drive (assuming that I will continue using RAID 1)?
• Should I continue to use RAID 1?

My assumption was that the previous Z drive and it's mirror was bad since they both showed a symptom which system Scan Disk couldn't completed or still have problem after the fixing.  I have 2 3Tb spare drive, so the logical decision was to use these 2 3Tb harddisk as new Z drive and it's mirror.

And that was when my new sequence of pain started.

I have the 2 drives prepared on another machine as the workflow I documented in my previous blog post, and then I started copying files form old Z backup to this new Z on 3Tb drive (I need to use windows explorer file copy, which is slow, because I want to utilize the whole 3Tb.) Everything went as planned UNTIL I insert the mirror disk.  Suddenly the new mirror disk took over as a MAIN disk, and started REPLACING data from my new Z!  The 1.5 days of file copying instantly turned into nothing.

Luckily, the original old Z mirror is still ok.  So I didn't lost any data; just time.

So I started playing around the combination.  My original diagnostic was that some how the new mirror disk was still recognized as Z drive, while the so called new Z didn't get the drive letter assigned.  So I made a note-to-self that:

• When you prepare drive letter (forr remove it, and removing partition, in order to prepare for the RAID mirror disk) do it on the machine and the drive bay that you intented to use with.  Otherwise you might risk not having the right drive letter assigned and recognized.

HOWEVER, after trying out all sort of combination, I still found mirroring failed to happen. So eventually I have to concluded that on my Cavalry Dual-Bay Dock, 3Tb drive COULDN'T work with RAID 1, which explained everything I experienced so far.

I don't have any spare 2Tb harddisk left.  So for now I will go for the "plan B" approach, which is using SyncToy 2.1 to sync the content from my new Z (still the new 3Tb disk) to backup Z drive.  the advantage is that:

• I can clearly control what files/directories to backup.
• I can mirror the progress (instead of just seeing red light blinking when mirroring happens

But then I have to manually do the backup, instead of the automated "backup" done by RAID 1.

Eventually I know that I will have to buy a few new 2Tb harddisk, and then I will do the RAID 1 I used to do.

Copied 1.7 Tb files

I copied 1.7Tb of file from one drive to another drive through USB 2.0.  The whole copy process started on 3/17/2013 from around 4:00 pm and it ended on 8:52 am , 3/19/2013.  Yes, 1.5 days to copy 1.7Tb of data.

7 hours for copy 2Tb of data

Just found out that it took 7 hours to replicate a 2Tb harddisk in RAID 1 with Cavalry Dual Bay Dock.

Cavalry Dual-Bay Dock, RAID 1, and other technology problem happened all in one day

My tech disaster day started when I found out that my Galaxy Nexus phone ran out of battery, even though I have the charge cable hooked up over night.  Later I found out that it was the cable that had problem.  That cheesy micro USB cable I brought form Hong Kong was malfunction.  No problem, though, as I had a few spares.  But then that's just the prelude of all the mess.

Then I found out that the Z Drive of my closet server machine wasn't working.  I should have known it because there was a lot of hanging happening on that drive, but I didn't pay close attention to it and merely just restart the Cavalry Dual-Bay Dock.  Since the Z drive is actually 2 harddisk running on RAID 1 on this dual bay dock, I was a bit worry that problem was happening on both drives.  Sure enough, when I use Windows 8 scan disk feature to check these 2 discs, I found that both of them had problem, and both of them FAILED to have the problem fixed even after I ran scan disk multiple times.  On one disk, the fixing stuck at the 5% point of the scanning.  On the other disk, scanning was completed, but the problem shows up again after I scanned it again.  Obviously I couldn't rely on both disks anymore, and need to find another harddisk to host the data on these 2 harddisk.

I have 2 spare 3 Terabyte harddisks, so I thought I was pretty safe.  That, however, actually led me to realize another problem: harddisk bigger than 2Tb was NOT supported by Acronis Disk Director 11.  That means if I use these 3Tb discs to store data, I can't use Disk Director to manipulate or fix problems.  Harddisk with bigger than 2Tb size stores partition in different format.  That got me into trouble, since I used one 3Tb harddisk to replicate data from the problem "Z drive" with RAID 1 replication, and I original thought of merely expanding the 2Tb partition into 3Tb, thus optimize the usage of the harddisk while preserving everything I had in the 2Tb harddisk.  But because of the 2Tb limitation, I couldn't do that, and had to instead do file copy old school style, which will probably take 1.5 days based on my estimation.  To be honest would be totally ok with it as long as the copying process was a success.

Speaking of copying, during all sort of disk manipulation, I accidentally wipe out a small part of my W drive, which contains all of my movies.  That, of course, send me into major panic mode.  Luckily, I yanked out the harddisk quick enough, and thus the damage was 90% reversible.  It involved:

•  Set Cavalry Dual-Bay Dock into JBOD mode (no longer in RAID 1)
• Using Acronis Disk Director 11 to assign a drive letter to the problem disc
• Use scan feature in Acronis Disk Director 11 to fix the problem

The mess happened because I accidentally let the RAID 1 replication kicked in.  That's when I realized that on Cavalry Dual-Bay Dock:

• RAID 1 replication does NOT care if the source hard disk is on Hard disk 1 or Hard disk 2.
• It happens when the USB cable IS connected to a PC.  (So no computer-less RAID replication)
• To make a hard disk the source, it should:
• have a drive letter assigned
• available for consumption on Windows Explorer
• To make a hard disk the copy destination, it should:
• have NO drive letter assigned

In fact, the RAID replication process DOES NOT CARE if the destination disk has content in it.  All it cares was whether the disk have drive letter assigned.  That was exactly how my W drive being accidentally copied over because it doesn't no have letter assigned at the moment I plug the drive into the dual-bay dock.

To prevent the same mess happening, I will use this following workflow to prepare discs for RAID 1 replication: 

• Make sure there's only one disk on the dock at any giving moment during preparation.
• Prepare source disk by making sure that it shows up on Windows Explorer.
• Prepare destination disk by removing all the partitions, and thus no visible partition on Windows explorer.  
• To replicate, first put in the source disk, and make sure that it shows up on Windows Explorer.  
• Then put the destination disk at another available slot.

That process led me to experience yet another thing that didn't experience before.  I saw that in the Disk Management has the following message showed up: "The disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online"  Someone suggested an answer, and then there's another one.  I haven't tried neither one yet, so I won't make any comment until I tried it myself.

Finally, I was a bit frustrated as most of time of my Sunday was spent on fixing this mess.  The problem was first discovered last night, and then I continue working on it this morning before going to church, and then continue working on it when I got back home.  By now that I have everything documented, it's 8 pm already.  And yet I am still looking at the W drive on my desktop and Z drive on my closet server keeps copying files.  It will probably take another one day or so to have everything copied.  This is when I realize that it's time to gradually migrate these docks and my home machines to USB 3.0.  Otherwise I have to continue dealing with the fact that it takes 1 to 2 days to replicate a 2Tb harddisk.

Lousy printing support on Surface RT

I was trying to see if I can use my Surface RT as a workplace tablet, but found out the biggest problem: NONE of the network printer works with my Surface RT.  Lame man, lame.

Work flow of scanning magazines

I haven't been subscribing or buying magazine for a long time, and I missed nothing.  The cost of maintaining printed objects at home is simply too painful.  In fact, I am still actively trying to find a solution to turn my existing printed materials, like performance booklet and conference pamphlet, into digital format so that I can find and use at ease.  That's why I spent sometime this morning trying to turn a ballet performance booklet into digital format.

The scanning process is pretty straight forward.  I still, however, need to decide the proper scanning setting in order to strike balance between file size, scanning time and scan result quality.   After a few trial and error, I found that I really don't like the look of Descreening done by the scanning software.  So with tthis Epson Perfection V30, I settle with these setting for magazine scanning:

• Document Type: Reflective
• Document Source: Document Table
• Auto Exposure Type: Photo
• Image Type: 24-bit Color
• Resolution: 600 dpi
• [  ] Descreening