Our company has four sentinel dx4000 on subsidiaries behind VPN. We are running DFSR replication to the central server do duplicate and backup the data.
Three devices are working already for several months, and I was preparing the last one.
I have plugged an external usb disk to the sentinel, to prestage the content (copy of shared files to external disk), however the ext. usb disk disappeared from system after few minutes. Plugging the usb disk to second usb had the same outcome.
There was a message requesting the reboot of the system due to changes on system, so I restarted the device, hoping it will resolve the issue with disconnecting the external usb connected disk.
The sentinel did not boot however. It was stuck on loading OS for 12+ hours. The ext. usb disk was still attached.
Removing the ext. usb disk did not help. Sentinel device was shut down and started up.
From that point the device is in STARUP INITIALIZATION. The led above the power button is flashing, and the disk LED’s are off.
Since I don’t know if the device eventually starts up, I have to prepare for the worst case scenario, that the OS is broken.
If that is so, I need a way of accessing the data on the raid (sentinel 8TB variant 4x2TB), since the data do not exist anywhere else. It is about 300GB that is very important to the company.
Please please PLEASE tell me that there is a way to access the data.
Hi Gramps
Thank you for the reply. My koleague already suggested this option to me.
It is definetly an option when the recovery without loosing data fails.
I was thinking of creating an linux distro usb live session like gentoo or ubuntu with automatic ssh server start and dmraid for ich9 raid support but that would take long time to develop and compile.
Thanks again for your advice.
My regards,
Ondrej
EDIT: After comunication with WD suport i have prepared for the recovery. It should be possible to recover while maintaining data. Even rebuild storrage should be possible. I have to wait until somone is physicaly on the site to be my hands
Its a pity that the mainboard does not have intel AMT.
Update: We have followed the instructions for recovery, however, when we shut down the Sentinel, insert the created USB flash and press and hold the reset/recovery button (holding 30 seconds and more) nothing happens.
We already tried to disconnect the power cable and network cables for 2 minutes, and plugged it back, but no change. I am waiting for the support guys to give me a call what I can do.
Hello Gramps,
Yes we did the procedure exactly like you describe. I was specifically asking about this while talking to a WS support technician, since it was not conclusively described in the manual. However it was not possible to start the recovery.
The Initializing startup state newer goes to boot sequence.
The downloaded file was verified.
I am still in communication with the support, so I still hope.
Well the second most common issue seems to be that the DX does not like all thumb drives. I would suggest a different brand of 16gb drive. Cheaper the better.
Yes i know about the issue with incompatible thumb drives. That is why we have tested three types.
The 16 GB sticks are working as Windows and Linux (Ubuntu) boot devices on company laptop, desktop and server computers. However the Sentinel device does not start from it. As I mentioned above, it does not seem to reach the boot state. I suspect main-board failure, but I can be wrong.
The support technician did a great job by analyzing the issue, and now we get a replacement device where we can put our disks. So hopefully we can start the recovery process by keeping the data in the new case
Great news! The data is safe!
The replacement device arrived, and we swapped the disks from the old device into the new one.
The device started right into the OS like nothing happened
I have performed two backups to two different external disks one with robocopy to have file level backup and one Windows server backup for presaging the dfsr content.
OK, to answer Gramps question: “Can you give us any insight on what the tech did to diagnose so we can learn from this?”
The technician was giving me precise questions about the device - what does it do when it starts, when we press the buttons (power reset)…
The device did not go past the Startup Initializing no matter what we did, so he decided to send us the replacement device and recommended to swap disks. Then i could run recovery or even raid rebuild before that. Thankfully the raid level was ok and the OS as well. It seems that the motherboard is broken for reasons i do not understand.
