HW dead - what if

[skurt]

Hi,
I have a what if situation.

You have a build, on it FreeNAS and on it some data. Now you build dies. Every component, but the drives, those are OK.
So you make a new build, completely blank.
You have new build and the original drives that are perfectly fine.

Can you tell me the set of steps you'd have to follow to gain back access to your data?
Thank you

 

[garm]

(1) Install FreeNAS (2) load your saved config and (3) have a victory gummy bear

 

[Chris Moore]

Hi,
I have a what if situation.

You have a build, on it FreeNAS and on it some data. Now you build dies. Every component, but the drives, those are OK.
So you make a new build, completely blank.
You have new build and the original drives that are perfectly fine.

Can you tell me the set of steps you'd have to follow to gain back access to your data?
Thank you

If your boot device is not broken and the data drives are also not broken, you can simply install those drives in another hardware platform and boot it. The most you would need to do is change the IP address. FreeNAS does hardware detection during boot, so you don't even need to reinstall the OS.

 

[skurt]

@garm - Perfect! I will give that a show as soon as I have HW for it.
@Chris Moore - Not sure what to take from your answer :/

 

[adrianwi]

I think he said the same as garm, only using the same boot device and therefore not needing to reload the configuration. Oh, and a few more words :D

 

[Chris Moore]

I think he said the same as garm, only using the same boot device and therefore not needing to reload the configuration. Oh, and a few more words :D

I use many words.

Not sure what to take from your answer :/

The point is that the installation of FreeNAS is portable to a new hardware platform. If your system board fails, you don't need to worry that your existing installation of FreeNAS will not boot on a different system board. If the boot drive fails, you might need to reinstall the operating system, but if the boot drive is not failed, there is no need to reinstall the FreeNAS software.

 

[anmnz]

The point is that the installation of FreeNAS is portable to a new hardware platform. If your system board fails, you don't need to worry that your existing installation of FreeNAS will not boot on a different system board.

I would worry, though, because OP also said in a nearby thread:

I guess I solved #1 by finding a PC setup with RAID support. Free Nas can be installed on that machine, since I found a guy who did it.
So I can be blissfully ignorant about what exactly is 'doing' that RAID. Too bad, but I can work with that.

Which sounds like a recipe for data-loss-on-hardware-failure to me.

 

[Chris Moore]

@anmnz Yes. I didn't see the other post.
@skurt There is absolutely NO hardware RAID controller that should even be considered for use with FreeNAS. The filesystem, ZFS, handles all the redundancy. Access to the drives needs to be direct.

 

[Alecmascot]

I think we are being trolled

 

[adrianwi]

by the Head of Sales at Synology :D