Mastodawn

Unraid hardware upgrades (couple quick questions)

Unraid hardware upgrades (couple quick questions) - midwest.social

My Unraid server is currently running out of a 4U rackmount PC case with 6x 3.5" drive bays (actually 5x 3.5" + 1x 2.5" since one bay interferes with the RAM…), and looking to increase storage capacity. It’s primarily a media server with some light NAS and PC/phone backup use. Initially I was looking at something like a used Dell MD1200, since it seemed like a pretty straightforward expansion, just requiring a HBA card with external SAS ports. But then I stumbled across this basic DIY build (https://www.serverbuilds.net/16-bay-das [https://www.serverbuilds.net/16-bay-das]) which seems obvious in hindsight. There are plenty of inexpensive 12-16 bay 4U PC cases, and I’ve already got a spare ATX power supply. So question #1 is whether there’s any substantial reason to go for a used enterprise DAS over the DIY option, given that I’m not too worried about storage density in my server rack? — Question 2 is unrelated, but I recently upgraded my wife’s GPU and now have a 1070ti lying around. The i3-12100 in my media server seems fully capable of any of the transcoding tasks I’ve thrown at it, so is there any point in installing the 1070ti? Or is that just a waste of power/hardware? Thanks in advance! I posted this same question the other day, but after seeing no replies I checked and realized it was nowhere in my posting history, so not sure what happened there… sorry if this shows up as a double-post for anyone

dmention7 Nov 1

Couple of Unraid server hardware questions

https://midwest.social/post/38092220

Couple of Unraid server hardware questions - midwest.social

I currently have an Unraid server running in a generic 4U rackmount PC case with 6x 3.5" drive slots (actually 5x 3.5 + 1x 2.5 since one slot interferes with the RAM…) Mainly as a media server with some light NAS/PC backup use. I’m now looking into options to increase storage capacity. At first I was thinking something like a used Dell MD1200 would be a pretty straightforward option, just requiring a HBA card with external SAS ports. But then I came across this: https://www.serverbuilds.net/16-bay-das [https://www.serverbuilds.net/16-bay-das] While the exact case is no longer available, there are multiple inexpensive 12-16 bay rackmount PC cases and I’ve got a spare ATX power supply handy. The DIY option seems more appealing, since I’d end up with the option to repurpose the first case into a second independent machine at some point. Given that I’m not worried about density in my server rack, are there other compelling reasons to stick with a used MD1200 (or similar) over the DIY option? ---- Second mostly-unrelated question… I just upgraded my wife’s GPU and now have a spare 1070ti lying around. The i3-12100 in my media server seems to handle any transcoding tasks just fine, so is there any reason I’d want to consider installing the GPU, or is that a waste of power/hardware? Thanks in advance!

dmention7 Oct 25

Windows 10 system image restore failure (0x80042412)

https://midwest.social/post/37669826

Windows 10 system image restore failure (0x80042412) - midwest.social

To make a long story short, I buggered up the Windows 10 installation on my wife’s PC while trying to address a GPU issue. Fortunately, I had been saving regular system images to a spare HD on her machine using the Windows System Image utility–including one from earlier that day. Unfortunately, I’m running into no end of trouble trying to restore from those images. The drives in question: Disk 0 = 1TB backup SATA drive containing images (MBR) Disk 1 = 1TB NVME drive originally with windows installation (MBR) Disk 2 = 32GB USB recovery drive What I’ve done so far: -Use the Windows Recovery Media utility on my Windows 11 machine to create a USB recovery drive -Verify that I’m booting in legacy BIOS mode, not UEFI -Boot into recovery mode from the recovery drive -Open command prompt, use diskpart to clear Disk 1, create a new MBR volume (same as the install used to create the images), and format that volume as NTFS -Use “System Image Recovery” option, select image from the backup drive -Ensure Disk 1 is unchecked in the “exclude disks” menu of the Image Recovery tool -Get “The system image recovery failed” with error code 0x80042412 in the details dialog -Run chkdsk on Disk 0 and 1 (no errors) -Run through about every possible iteration and permutation of the above steps, while referencing how-tos on the topic From the few forum posts I can find on the topic, one of the big problems is people trying to restore an image to a volume that’s smaller than the volume that was imaged. But this is the exact same drive the image was created from. The only thing I haven’t chased down fully is using the “Install Drivers” option in the recovery tool–mainly because I can’t figure out what drivers I might need. And I figured since diskpart has no problem reading and modifying the drive, it’s probably not a storage device driver issue. In hindsight, I should have just cloned the drive instead of messing with images, but here I am… Any tips or suggestions are appreciated! (The ironic thing is I was getting ready to help her pick out a Linux distro to migrate to. That’s still the plan, but I’d like to get her back to a stable Windows install on the side to ease the transition)