I got the ss4200 working with an upgraded processor E4400 ($7) and 2G RAM ($14), and an upgraded operating system disk ($25). With two weeks under my belt, it had been chugging away nicely. I want a reliable location to store family pictures, so it does not need to be super fast. This afternoon and this evening, ... I'm having issues.
Seltz - I like the ss4200 case too! The link you posted, ... he did a LOT of work to the cabinet.
QUESTION: Once you create mirror-0, can you revert back to just stripe? I did not see an option.
Here is why I'm asking about reverting back to stripe-0:
The ss4200 uses an IDE bus with device-on-memory (DOM) stick for the operating system. By default, freeNAS does not see this bus and this drive and can't boot from it. I upgraded to a 4G stick, and with google help, figured out how to boot from the DOM drive by updating the freeNAS hints file. I setup mirroring between the DOM and a USB stick. The mirror was working fine until this afternoon when the DOM had a glitch and the system continued running from the USB. I attempted a reboot using the USB and system would not boot from just the USB (got an ELF compaction error?). Bad news for my reliable picture archive!
This evening I ordered a replacement DOM -and- an IDE-to-compact-flash drive. It's tight, but I will install an IDE ribbon cable, the new DOM, and the compact flash as master and slave on the IDE bus. Thankfully, it's Christmas time and even obscure computer hardware orders are moving a Santa-speed and will arrive on Wednesday. My plan is to mirror both IDE drives and confirm that I can boot from either.
Luckily, this evening the system booted from the original DOM and all the files are present. Yes, ... I'm assuming that this drive will fail again! With the mirror USB drive now removed the boot partition is now degraded and I only see an option to replace the mirror drive and not to revert back to stripe-0. Just curious if this is possible? Ultimately, assuming no crashes, this weekend I'll mirror to one of the new IDE drives (I can use the replace option), then remove the flaky original DOM and replace it with the other new IDE drive.
