Uncreative Labs

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Hello,

I have a custom-built server. It was running now for about 4 years and I constantly added stuff to it. As some of you might know, it was loacted at mf2server.gotdns.org
Anyway, it crashed about 4 days ago and I'm still trying to recover the data from the raid array. I now replaced the server with a pentium-II 350 and found out that there's no real difference in speed as far as ICS ( internet connection sharing ) is concerned.. and that's the server's main purpose.
So I want to sell the mf2server on ebay but I want to get some money out of it. I don't want it to go for like $20.
Here are the specs:
Elitegroup K7VZA 1.0 Mainboard
AMD Athlon C 1.2 GHz
1,024 MB PC133 SD-RAM
8x4x32 HP CD burner
U133 PCI Raid Controller
2x WD 80GB drives ( as a RAID1 array )
3.5" floppy
HUGE ATX server case with 10 5.25" bays and a door, 7 drive leds
S3 PCI graphics
2x Intel 10/100 MBit PCI Network
56k Modem
Windows Server 2003 Trial with unused key
sound onboard
hp keyboard
ps/2 mouse
power cords
probably some cat5 ethernet wires
sony CRD-200 15" vga crt ( for like an additional $15 )

How much should I set as a starting price on ebay for that system?
Did you sell something similar on ebay? What are your experiences?

Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 4:48 pm

I'd think it'd definately go for somewhere above $150. You could probably get more than that, though.

Is it in the United States or Germany? I might do some comparisons and see what I want to spend vs building a system with the parts I am starting to acquire.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

It's in Germany. I'll weigh it though and calculate a USPS postage though, so US bidders can bid on it too if they want to.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

According to my scale, the server weighs 16.1 kilograms, which would be somewhere around 32 lbs. This is without HDDs, Raid controller and cords though. Shipping up to 20 kg to the US would be €62, which is roughly around $70. So it's quite expensive and it'll probably take a while to get to the US too. Plus, I would have to package the HDDs extra, because I don't want to risk that they get damaged during shipping.

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 10:11 pm

That's more than I want to spend on shipping, but thanks for taking the time to give an estimate.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

A little off-topic, but still:
Does somebody know a good recovery software for a broken raid10 array? I can split out a single raid0 if needed.
So far I tried:
R-Studio NTFS
R-Studio NTFS & FAT
Stellar Phoenix NTFS
File Scavenger 2.1
File Scavenger 3.0
Ontrack Easy Recovery ( even in RAW mode )
Testdisk
the picture recovery of testdisk
raid reconstructor ( wcouldn't use it, since it's imaging the whole freakin' raid and I don't have a spare 160gig to put the image on... )
quick recovery raid0 ( I have yet to try this, I just now found it )
Recover My Files
Zero Assumption Recovery ( ZAR32 )
PC Inspector File Recovery

As I said I will now try the quick recoery thing, but I won't get my hopes up too high.
I have noticed something: File Scavenger 3.0, Recover My Files ( built-in preview of certain file types such as txt ), and the testdisk picture thing get me the best results. The thing good about the testdisk stuff was that it would recover images <1kb w/o problems. recover my files showed me the content of some textfiles just fine, ie. the log files of my ftp srever, however the content of the textfile got scrambled after a few kilobytes ( lines ). Also, it wasn't able to get the filenames, but neither was the testdisk picture thing. Testdisk itself finds no partition btw.
File Scavenger 3.0 restored my file names, and sometimes even the directory the file was in, HOWEVER: The file content is still scrambled sometimes, but at least it can recover some word doc's <64kb. I wasn't able to try bigger files, since that program is only a demo woith the restriction that it can't recover files bigger than 64kb. Even though fs 3.0 is good, it's far from being perfect. It was able to recover only about 10% of the file names.
My fear is that I screwed something up with the drive type ( like mirror1stripe0 ie ) and that that is the reason why I get that scrambled sh*t after a few lines of the file. Or maybe I chose the cluster/sector size wrong when setting the recovery options. The default value in the raid controller bios for the sector size is 64kb and that's what I use. I alos tried 1kb ( at least in fs 3.0, it wasn't changeable in r-studio and phoenix ).
BTW: R-Studio and Stella Phoenix are pieces of cr*p. they all crash just when they finsih scanning the last sector.
Well, any suggestions on recovery software?
All my php work is on there, including my hoempage, my family's homepage, the login script on whcih I wrote for almost a year, etc. I also have 20gigs worth of backup files on there. remember it used it be a mirrored set, so I though it wopuld be safe. Also, my family's picture collection is on there, so I really need to be able to recover all that stuff. Attempting just that has basically been all I have been doing the last 5 or 6 days. I'm starting to get tried of cluster sizes, raid arrays, recovery demo restrictions, endless sector scans, 400+ fat partitions on a drive which is supposed to only contain one partition ( and that being an ntfs, not fat ) etc etc