Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: NEC NP-90MS01 Hard Drives

This is topic NEC NP-90MS01 Hard Drives in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Adam Towill (Member # 7683) on 05-03-2019, 10:22 AM:

Hey all,

This is an NEC branded Doremi integrated server.

I appear to have two out of the three drives in one of these either in the process of failing or failed. Playback is fine, ingest is a tad slow, show playlist creation is very slow, and scheduling and deleting show playlists is impossible. I left one trying to delete for five hours the other day just to see if it would - it didn’t.

Questions are: These appear to be fairly standard 2.5” hard drives. Is there anything preventing me from swapping them out with the same specification 2.5” hard drives from an IT supplier.

If that’s the case, I’m assuming they’re a three drive RAID for speed and redundancy. If I swap them one by one, would they self replicate?

Failing in either of those lines of thought, would they run off the one working drive to get the performance back to normal until replacements can be organised?

Thanks for your help/thoughts.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 05-03-2019, 01:50 PM:

Just replace them with the same exact models and you'll be fine - or with something approved by the manufacturer.

Yes, that's a RAID, if you replace the disks one by one they should rebuild the storage. But if two drives have gone - or have problems - chances are it's not going to be working. In that case you'll need to reset the whole RAID. You "only" lose content if not mistaken.

Mind you, that is first generation of IMS if memory serves and it's kind of prone to having storage issues. Doremi replaced the RAID controller with another one of a different brand at some point if not mistaken. Make sure you're up to date with software and all HW bulletins have been applied.

Posted by Ioannis Syrogiannis (Member # 3235) on 05-04-2019, 02:02 AM:

quote: Adam Towill
I appear to have two out of the three drives in one of these either in the process of failing or failed. Playback is fine...

If you have had two drives out of the three failed, you wouldn't be able to play anything. Not on a RAID5 configuration.
You may rebuild the array by replacing the failed drive and then the one that is failing (if the strain doesn't kill it first), but the safest bet would be to back-up your CPLs and SPLs and replace all three drives at once, building the array anew.
I can't find any interest in doing otherwise, apart from saving movies and clips.

For IMS1000, the drives to use (according to Dolby) are the
Hitachi HCC541010A9E680 - 0J26243

That doesn't mean that other drives won't work, but that they won't be qualified or recommended. There are different opinions on what one should choose in such cases and you can find arguments on the subject in this forum.

P.S. Bear in mind that, in case of emergency, the interchange of a full array between two IMS1000 units is possible.