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

 

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

 

A copy on the same disk doesn't really count as backup.

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

 

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

... 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

 

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.

 

Raid 1 is two drives one copy. However yes, two backups are really
required to be safe. Murphy loves to arrive at certain times ;-

 

FreeNas requires a seperate/dedicated machine/hardware. NAS is after all
Network Attached Storage. Severs, likewise, are seperate machines/hardware.
While one can self serve e.g apache, of NFS share it is really not the norm.

Good idea, after you get the FressNAS, Ubuntu server up and running. Backup
first though. Now

 

Murphy here. I await the death of your HD. (Both partitions will be dead.)
Backups are about seperation, and numbers of copies. Lots of both.

Please, do yourself a favour and backup a wee bit and understand/learn how
things operate. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as the saying goes.
If you were running an airline I would not fly with you. ;-)

Plaese back up onto a seperate medium (extrenal HDD) and put this in the far
cupboard. Trust me, a external HDD not connected holds it data rather well
in cases of need.

 

Yes, that is correct. However RAID 1 should not be considered a back up.
Reason is that both disks are live, and it is possible for something to go
wrong and take out both disks, or getting the data off them.

As Daniel said, RAID 1 is fault tolerant. Which is not the same as a backup.

A backup is a copy of the data stored someplace(s) else which are not
connected to the primary machine.

 

I think not. FreeNAS takes over the hardware. (If you say okay)

 

I started moving everything from the server to another HD last night,
and WHS2008 lost connection part way through, so I am having to start
again just now.
Only another 5 hours to wait!

 

Mirrored drives are great for availability but no good at all for
backup. Screw one and the mirror is instantly screwed. The difference
between archive and backup is another one that throws a lot of people.

When I started out programming, way back on IBM 360's, I was taught
"the first law of systems programming - take a back up" it was some
years before I found the second law: "make sure you can read it"

 

Yes, RAID1 gives you two identical copies of the data on two disks (a
"mirror" -- one disk is a reflection of the other).

The point I was making and to which I think you were replying was:

That is: Does your RAID1 array contain a copy of all the files on your
first (non-RAID) hard disk?

It may do, but you don't say. If it doesn't then (both copies of) the
data on your first drive will be lost if that drive fails.

So, that's "chipset RAID", which is a hybrid software/hardware RAID in
which the chipset does some of the RAID calculations in hardware but the
whole has to be controlled by a driver. Such a setup does give you a
little more speed than pure software RAID, but gives neither the
transparency (you still need a driver) nor the speed advantages of true
hardware RAID.

These hybrid setups also suffer from an over-dependence on the hardware:
If your motherboard dies you will have to replace it with one that has
the same RAID chipset to be sure of being able to read your disk array.
Pure software RAID does not suffer from that.

Cheers,
Daniel.