(no subject)
Apr. 11th, 2012 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingI think I'm going to add "network archaeologist" to my business cards.
Seriously, people! I just found a pair of 400GB SATA HDDs, manufacture date in 2007, attached to SATA->SCSI converters, in turn attached to SCSI->SATA converters, with the SATA cables hanging loose inside a machine - not actually plugged into the motherboard. Those disks appear to be a Linux MD software RAID-1 (presumably they mirror each other). The machine was in constant use until a few weeks ago, and those drives have been disconnected since *at least* 2009. Bonus points: The machine was running Debian Woody[1], which is to say *the operating system did not speak SATA*.
I can't decide if I want to try to build a suitable RAID and mount 'em to see what's on them, or if I want to just write them off as Bad News and toss 'em into the "hey, a drive with nothing important on it, let's wipe it and replace a failing desktop drive that's not worth buying a new one for" pile.
[1]: Guess why that machine was being replaced! Go ahead, guess.
Seriously, people! I just found a pair of 400GB SATA HDDs, manufacture date in 2007, attached to SATA->SCSI converters, in turn attached to SCSI->SATA converters, with the SATA cables hanging loose inside a machine - not actually plugged into the motherboard. Those disks appear to be a Linux MD software RAID-1 (presumably they mirror each other). The machine was in constant use until a few weeks ago, and those drives have been disconnected since *at least* 2009. Bonus points: The machine was running Debian Woody[1], which is to say *the operating system did not speak SATA*.
I can't decide if I want to try to build a suitable RAID and mount 'em to see what's on them, or if I want to just write them off as Bad News and toss 'em into the "hey, a drive with nothing important on it, let's wipe it and replace a failing desktop drive that's not worth buying a new one for" pile.
[1]: Guess why that machine was being replaced! Go ahead, guess.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 02:43 pm (UTC)Why would anyone do that? OK, so you had sata drives but needed to plug them into a SCSI thing, fine. But then, when the time comes to retire said SCSI thing, why on earth get a second set of adapters instead of just plugging them directly into SATA? Especially since each such set of adapters is another point of failure waiting to happen?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 02:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 11:04 pm (UTC)Hot-swappable drives were, in 2007, very expensive, and all SCSI.
The drives and the SATA->SCSI converter were in a hot-swap bay. They plugged into the SCSI->SATA converter, which stayed in the case full time.
So by doing this, you take a cheapass COTS hard disk and make it hot-swap.
We're actually pretty sure that's what the guy who set this up was thinking.