Can't boot OS

[SaintMulligan]

Running FreeNAS 8 for over a year on a Dell 2950 with 6 SATA drives. No issues; not a single reboot. Last night it became unresponsive. Rebooted the machine and after all the Dell checks it can't find a bootable OS. Of course, our original system admin who setup the FreeNAS instance is no longer with us.

My gut is that the Dell has lost its bios level Perc controller info and no one remembers how the six drives where setup. One is 300gb and the other five are 2TB. Our guess is that the OS is on the small drive and the others are Raid5. None of drives show any errors through the server warning lights.

All Dell info says there's no harm in trying different Perc setups and attempting to boot so long as you don't write or initialize. We've tried multiple configs but still no boot. Possibly the OS drive has lost sectors and truly can't boot. Alternative is that we haven't hit the right Perc setup to match the original. I don't know FreeNAS well but know there's also a Raid setup in software.

We have backups but would like to recover this unit - especially if its just a Perc battery away from running another year or two. Can you tell me what my best path to recovery is?

If I create a bootable CD or USB, how do I then recover the drive configuration? Is that the best way forward?

THX in advance for any guidance.

 

[cyberjock]

Recovery is not as simple as you think it is. But, its not hard(assuming you can recover).

If the 300GB drive is your boot drive and its not bad or anything then you just need to boot from a FreeNAS USB stick and copy the file off the 300GB from the command line.

If the 300GB drive is bad, you'll have to make a new USB stick with FreeNAS installed and auto-import your zpool(assuming it was a zpool) and then resetup all of your FreeNAS settings. Obviously, if this is what you have to do you are going to be forced to learn to use FreeNAS as you are literally going to be resetting up FreeNAS from scratch, but your data will already exist on the server. Note that you will not have access to your data over the network until the setting up of your configuration is complete.

You can find the FreeNAS manual at doc.freenas.org. I recommend you download the PDF and print out the sections you want(or the whole thing for completeness).

If your Perc controller was in RAID mode you won't want to change it if you still want to access your data. If you destroy the RAID array that your data resides on, your data will be unrecoverable at that point. If your old FreeNAS guy knew his stuff he should have had it in JBOD mode. You shouldn't change it if it is already in JBOD mode.

 

[SaintMulligan]

When you say "and copy the file off the 300GB from the command line", what file are you referring to? If we set the system up wrong will it write, initialize or otherwise destroy the existing data? Does anyone who knows FreeNAS well provide a recovery service?

Thanks for your help.

 

[cyberjock]

I do recovery service as an "as needed" basis and if I think I have a chance of recovering your data. If you are interested PM me with your email, phone number if in the USA, or Skype address so we can talk.

 

[SaintMulligan]

Able to boot via USB. Got the following errors (among others). Sent you a msg with my cell #. Not sure how to PM on this board outside the 'conversation' action. Can you get my email from the forum registration?

 

[cyberjock]

I responded to your PM