Changing operating system on home network

I have installed Windows 2008 SP1 networking system, but it keeps losing
connection with my other computers, and I am getting a bit fed up with
it. After a search on Google , its a known problem apparantely.

Anyway,l have WHS 2008 on a separate drive to my Raid1 drives, which is
driven by a hardware raid controller, If that is right, so its not
linked to WHS 2008.

What I want to do now is:
Either disconnect the drive with WHS 2008 and install Freenas on a USB
stick, or install Ubuntu Server edition on another separate drive.

My question is , if I do either of those things will I lose all my files
on the raid1 drive.
If that is the case I will have to move them to another PC.

Thanks

On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:10:12 UTC, Bob H <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

<snip>

> My question is , if I do either of those things will I lose all my files
> on the raid1 drive.
> If that is the case I will have to move them to another PC.
>

You mean you have no backup? Anything of value you should have at
*least* two copies of - Preferably well away from the primary.

--
Regards
Dave Saville

On 26/01/2012 17:44, Dave Saville wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:10:12 UTC, Bob H<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> My question is , if I do either of those things will I lose all my files
>> on the raid1 drive.
>> If that is the case I will have to move them to another PC.
>>
>
> You mean you have no backup? Anything of value you should have at
> *least* two copies of - Preferably well away from the primary.
>

I think I have not explained it properly.

I have a HD which presently has WHS2008 SP1, and that is backed up to a
separate partition on the same drive.

I also have 2 1tb HDs' in raid1 configuration. This or these drive do
not have any OS on them at all, just files etc

If I use Freenas on or from a USB stick, I won't be using the HD with
WHS2008 SP1 on it as I will disconnect or remove it from the machine.

If I use Ubuntu Server, then I will wipe WHS 2008 SP1 from the said
drive, and install Ubuntu on that drive.

I would like to know if I do either of the above will the files on the
raid1 drive(s) become unreadable/unusable or deleted.

Thanks

On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:00:34 +0000
Bob H <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> I have a HD which presently has WHS2008 SP1, and that is backed up to
> a separate partition on the same drive.

A copy on the same disk doesn't really count as backup.
>
> I also have 2 1tb HDs' in raid1 configuration. This or these drive do
> not have any OS on them at all, just files etc
>
> If I use Freenas on or from a USB stick, I won't be using the HD with
> WHS2008 SP1 on it as I will disconnect or remove it from the machine.
>
> If I use Ubuntu Server, then I will wipe WHS 2008 SP1 from the said
> drive, and install Ubuntu on that drive.
>
> I would like to know if I do either of the above will the files on
> the raid1 drive(s) become unreadable/unusable or deleted.

Just boot a Ubuntu CD and see if it can see your RAID array. I expect
it will.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Bob H wrote:
> I have a HD which presently has WHS2008 SP1, and that is backed up to
a
> separate partition on the same drive.

That "backup" may protect you from, say, accidentally deleting the wrong
file ... but it won't protect you from disk failure.

> I also have 2 1tb HDs' in raid1 configuration. This or these drive do
> not have any OS on them at all, just files etc

... and do these contain further copies of all the files on the first
disk? You better hope so.

How are these disks connected? Are they attached to the same motherboard
as the first hard drive, or are they in a separate box connected somehow
to the first (e.g. a NAS)? If they're directly connected, how is the
RAID managed (is it some ghastly chipset thing for which drivers may
only exist for Windows, or what?). What filesystem is used on the RAID
disks?

The answers to your other questions depend on the actual setup you have
... but I'm guessing that you probably just have a couple of internal
drives in that same PC running as a RAID1 mirror controlled by the
chipset on the motherboard. In this case you may well not be able to see
the RAID mirror at all from another OS as there may not be a chipset
RAID driver for FreeNAS or Linux for that chipset -- it depends on the
chipset/motherboard.

If you're using NTFS on the RAID mirror that may not be supported
out-of-the-box by another OS. NTFS support for Linux is getting pretty
good, these days, but not every distro enables it as standard ... and it
won't run as well under linux as a native linux filesystem. If you want
to switch to Ubuntu or FreeNAS long-term I would think about copying the
data off and reformatting the drives with a different filesystem.

If the RAID disks ARE just extra drives in the same PC as the first
drive you mentioned then all three disks could easily be taken down by,
say, a faulty PSU ... and you haven't really got a backup at all. A lot
of fault-tolerance, but no backup.

Cheers,
Daniel.

On 27/01/2012 11:15, Daniel James wrote:
> In article<rOSdncj3ov99LbzSnZ2dnUVZ8imdnZ2d@giganews. com>, Bob H wrote:
>> I have a HD which presently has WHS2008 SP1, and that is backed up to
> a
>> separate partition on the same drive.
>
> That "backup" may protect you from, say, accidentally deleting the wrong
> file ... but it won't protect you from disk failure.
>
>> I also have 2 1tb HDs' in raid1 configuration. This or these drive do
>> not have any OS on them at all, just files etc
>
> .. and do these contain further copies of all the files on the first
> disk? You better hope so.
>
> How are these disks connected? Are they attached to the same motherboard
> as the first hard drive, or are they in a separate box connected somehow
> to the first (e.g. a NAS)? If they're directly connected, how is the
> RAID managed (is it some ghastly chipset thing for which drivers may
> only exist for Windows, or what?). What filesystem is used on the RAID
> disks?
>
> The answers to your other questions depend on the actual setup you have
> .. but I'm guessing that you probably just have a couple of internal
> drives in that same PC running as a RAID1 mirror controlled by the
> chipset on the motherboard. In this case you may well not be able to see
> the RAID mirror at all from another OS as there may not be a chipset
> RAID driver for FreeNAS or Linux for that chipset -- it depends on the
> chipset/motherboard.
>
> If you're using NTFS on the RAID mirror that may not be supported
> out-of-the-box by another OS. NTFS support for Linux is getting pretty
> good, these days, but not every distro enables it as standard ... and it
> won't run as well under linux as a native linux filesystem. If you want
> to switch to Ubuntu or FreeNAS long-term I would think about copying the
> data off and reformatting the drives with a different filesystem.
>
> If the RAID disks ARE just extra drives in the same PC as the first
> drive you mentioned then all three disks could easily be taken down by,
> say, a faulty PSU ... and you haven't really got a backup at all. A lot
> of fault-tolerance, but no backup.
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel.
>
>
>

Well I thought that raid 1 means duplicate copies or similar, as in the
files are written to both disks.
Both of the 1TB drives are connected to a Raid hardware controller on
the same motherboard as the the 1st disk or the one which has WHS2008
on. This is connected directly to the motherboard sata port.

The filesystem is NTFS on the Raid drives, and there is the stumbling
block as I have since realised that it would be a different filesystem
for both FreeNAS and Ubuntu, so yet I will move everything onto another
drive before I use any other OS for my home server.

Thanks

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:36:32 +0000
Bob H <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Well I thought that raid 1 means duplicate copies or similar, as in
> the files are written to both disks.
> Both of the 1TB drives are connected to a Raid hardware controller on
> the same motherboard as the the 1st disk or the one which has WHS2008
> on. This is connected directly to the motherboard sata port.
>
> The filesystem is NTFS on the Raid drives, and there is the stumbling
> block as I have since realised that it would be a different
> filesystem for both FreeNAS and Ubuntu, so yet I will move everything
> onto another drive before I use any other OS for my home server.

My Ubuntu happily uses NTFS data partitions (i.e. accesses/modifies old
Windows installations), I expect FreeNAS does too.

Den 2012-01-27 Rob Morley <(E-Mail Removed)>:
>
> My Ubuntu happily uses NTFS data partitions (i.e. accesses/modifies old
> Windows installations), I expect FreeNAS does too.

Freenas does not write to ntfs file systems, as far as I know.
There is no driver that can write to ntfs in freebsd. You'll
have to install 3:rd part driver for that, like fuse-ntfs. It's in ports.


--
"Some secrets can bring only catastropy"

Valerij Legasov

Den 2012-01-28 skrev Gunnar Gren <(E-Mail Removed)>:
> Den 2012-01-27 Rob Morley <(E-Mail Removed)>:
>>
>> My Ubuntu happily uses NTFS data partitions (i.e. accesses/modifies old
>> Windows installations), I expect FreeNAS does too.
>
> Freenas does not write to ntfs file systems, as far as I know.
> There is no driver that can write to ntfs in freebsd. You'll
> have to install 3:rd part driver for that, like fuse-ntfs. It's in ports.

Never mind. Freenas has support for ntfs but freebsd has not.


--
"Some secrets can bring only catastropy"

Valerij Legasov

On 2012-01-26, Dave Saville <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:10:12 UTC, Bob H <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>> My question is , if I do either of those things will I lose all my files
>> on the raid1 drive.
>> If that is the case I will have to move them to another PC.
>>
>
> You mean you have no backup? Anything of value you should have at
> *least* two copies of - Preferably well away from the primary.
>
Raid 1 is two drives one copy. However yes, two backups are really
required to be safe. Murphy loves to arrive at certain times ;-