Iomega Storecenter Ix2 .. The Rise, the Fall and?

 Names 

So a long time ago I picked up a Iomega Storecenter IX2. Most often when you search for this you will come up with the more modern versions. There is an IX2 'two hundred', and now a modern IX2, along with a IX2 "slash D L".

Already in that first paragraph we have come across a problem with this device. I put those last items in quotes to help those looking for the original item and not the new improved ones. It is extremely hard to find posts and articles regarding this generation because of the names that they chose for the newer ones. Conspiracy theories exist that Iomega is trying to make up for a failed release by burying it as much as possible online. I however remain unsure that it isn't just the forgetful nature of big companies once the newer set of tech arrives.

Compatibility

You might be curious about the newer IX2 and if things like software apps and firmware are compatible. They are not.

	Iomega ix2 (new)	Iomega ix2-"two hundred"	Iomega ix2 (original)
CPU	Marvell 88F62E2A1C160 Kirkwood @ 1.6 GHz	Marvell 88F6281 Kirkwood @ 1 GHz	Marvell 88F5182 "Orion"
Ethernet	Marvell 88E81318	Marvell 88E81116R	Marvell 88E1118
RAM	256 MB	256 MB	128 MB
Flash	128 MB	128 MB	4 MB

Table 1: Component summary and comparison

The above table was originally posted here http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/.
As you can see the hardware varies significantly from the original to the newer versions, so any firmware wouldn't be transferable between them. Missing from the above table is the "d l" version, that would go in the "IX2 (new)" column, since it is merely the diskless version of that unit.

Rise 

As is true of many of my tech gadgets I originally got this NAS on Craigslist. It was an excellent price, and I had need of a large amount of storage due to an upcoming bout of video editing. At the time I was running a coffee shop that also doubled as a music venue. Many of the bands there liked coming around and using our compute resources to whip up a quick song or video.

It came originally with 2 500gb drives that you can configure either in Raid 1 or RAID 0. In theory Raid 1 mirrors both drives giving you some additional security, Raid 0 stripes both drives giving you added speed at the cost of security.  

I had need of copious volumes of speed and storage space so I set it up as RAID 0. I have rarely had a problem with reliability, as modern hard drives are a fairly hardy sort.

This worked for nearly a year. Its hard to tell how old the unit was originally, but it was at least a year or two old when I got it.

The NAS itself worked great. It has an easy web setup, the ability to setup different user accounts, you can password protect storage, its easily sharable on a network (windows, mac, or linux). It has a gigabit LAN connection so its fairly fast, though it seems limited by drive speed.

Fall

Then came the crash. I attempted to look up one of saved files to find that it wasn't available on the network. Repeated attempts led to nothing. Looking up the web interface indicated a failed drive. Restarting the unit led to a blinking light and no further availability of the web interface. It was essentially dead.

The very next day one of our friends, who worked with bands extensively came in after a show. His computer had been blown up by bad electrics at a local bar, he was hoping for the backups he had stored on our IX2. :( This was not happy times.

Looking online led to the previously mentioned frustration with the names. ..also the prevailing but useless wisdom that once a RAID 0 array fails you are screwed.

And...

I know that there often tricks to be used, so I didnt trash the drives, or overwrite the data as some might do. What I did do was go out and buy some new drives since the old ones had failed. I was now going to come up with 2 2TB drives in RAID 1, not wanting to repeat old mistakes, but wanting more space at the same time.

Various discoveries were made in this process:

1. The fan setup in this case is noticeably bad. Just by looking it seemed ineffective. Others have some to the same conclusion.
   
   This post here shows how someone else fixed a similar situation including the fan. Planetkris post.
2.  The raid is broken performance wise. Switching to RAID 1 is supposed to be slower then useing RAID 0. The striping version is supposed to nearly double your output, while showing the space of both drives as available. The size was there, but the speed was actually SLOWER then in the mirrored version. So no point in using that at all!
3. Its fairly hard, and takes a lot of messing about with the file systems on these drives to get the new drives to work. Ideally you would just pull 1 out, have the device update it, then add the second. This is old tech though, and luck is just not with us here.
   
   This post here deals with that problem BFtech blog post 

 Between all the information in those posts, and the searching I did using them I revived the old IX2 and have been using it ever since. Just about 2 years have gone by now, and it still runs strong.

I didn't do everything exactly as posted in those other pieces. At the time I thought the fan wasn't SOooo bad, so I merely cut out some of the grills on the front and the back. They were literally just tiny slits originally, and barely any air could move, so that clearly had to change.  Moving to the larger drives took some experimentation and multiple tries at copying the partitions, but eventually it did take. That experience mirrors that of many commenters so don't give up if your first try through the directions doesn't do it.

Blowing off the dust...

Now that it been a while I decided to dig out those old drives that I had stored so long ago. No reason to let some decently large hard drives just gather dust forever. Why not see if anything of use can be done with the info on them? By now Ive been living without all the data that was there, I wouldn't really feel it if it was indeed lost forever. Then I could reclaim the drives and use them for something in my computers before they became completely obsolete.

What a surprise.. I was actually able to rescue the original data! It took learning some obscure methods of linux partioning that Iomega decided to use, but it was manageable. Ill outline the gist of it below, so you can do the same if the need arises.

On the IX2 you have 2 drives hooked to a small motherboard. Each of the drives has 2 partitions. Here, Ill show you.

That first partition that you see in blue is quite important. That is the firmware for the entire device. That gets loaded into the motherboard on startup, and this is how the whole thing gets going. Often theres an electronic storage area on any given piece of electronics that holds its firmware, Iomega decided to use the hard drives instead.

This has some drawbacks, in that if the drive loses some of that info the whole device goes down. But aren't both drives the same? Yes, however the IX2 is not intelligent enough to switch over to the working version if 1 messes up. You can do this externally, and attempt to revive it, but this often is too little too late. This does work for updating to new larger hard drives though. Just take out the drives, use your favorite partitioning software to setup a similar structure and copy the data from that first partition over. ....and repeat. 

That 2nd partition is where Iomega got tricky though. Its not just a simple partition like you and I would normally mess with in lets say Partition Magic or the windows disk manager. No they decided to use something fancier here called LVM (logical volume management) partitions. This is a whole different, obscure, and very complex bit of doing a similar thing. ..and almost no O.S. is going to understand it by default. With some love and understanding, a bit of reading, and some additional packages you can get Linux to deal with it.

That isn't a step by step guide, obviously. But there should be enough information there to help you rescue any information you may have lost. .. I hope.