Can I Ghost (hard drive backup) my Intuity box? 2

[ngkatsaras]

We have an OLD Merlin Legend system and a very old Intuity machine.

We are not planning on changing our phone system because it is working fine and our phone tech says it is good for at least another 10 years and will probably last longer than that because of how robust the electronic circuits are. However, we realize that our ancient 386 Intuity voicemail system may have a hard drive failure any day. I'd like to use Ghost (or other recommended hard drive image software) on it to back up the hard drive in case it fails I can easily swap in a new one.. (if I can find a compatible hard drive) after successfully ghosting I plan to use spinrite to check the status. I'm worried if I even bump the case slightly that the whole thing might fall apart, and I'm scared to see how thick the dust must be in the box after so many years of continuous use, I think it's probably about 15 years old now. That says a lot for Linux and old 386 hardware!!! I need to develop a plan in case the hard drive fails. I've seen some systems that have a RAID 0 (mirror) but I don't know how to check for that. I'm scared to open the case, just to find out if there are two hard drives in there. What is the typical setup?

So if it is possible to back up the hard drive to an image or to another hard drive, what kind of hard drive should I buy? What size hard drive? I imagine it's probably SCSI, 50 pin, is that most likely the case? I just want to have as much info as possible and a new hard drive standing by at the time before opening the case. My phone tech is great with programming the phone system and very knowledgeable but he doesn't know old 386 hardware or PC's in general as well as I do. His "solution" is to just wait for the hard drive to fail and then sell us a voicemail card that goes into our Merlin Legend, in a free slot. But if that happens we will lose everything and have to reprogram the entire voicemail system from scratch. He says we can probably reconstruct it in a few hours, but that sounds like a nightmare to me. I would rather make my Intuity virtually immortal. In fact, if there is some way I could image the hard drive and run it as a virtual server on new hard ware, then it could literally last forever.

 

[ngkatsaras]

Here is more information about SpinRite.
This is some amazing software, that I would like to run on my Intuity machine to get an idea how healthy the hard drive(s) are and make them last longer.

http://grc.com/spinrite.htm

http://grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

 

[ngkatsaras]

I just found this other thread where someone's hard drive crashed:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1157157&page=5

In it, there is a link to a replacement box:

http://www.nyteldirect.com/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=907

Inquired with them the following:

What are the specs of this unit? Does it contain a brand new hard drive?
Is it new or refurbished (the entire thing)? Is it possible to perform a drive image from my existing Intuity to this new unit? If so, does everything come back up exactly the same or will there be some reconfiguration required?
--

If anyone here can provide any advice I would appreciate it.

At first I just wanted to back up my hard drive.
But if I can easily replace the entire computer, including case, motherboard, power supply and do a hard drive copy (image) to a brand new hard drive, then I could hope to make my system last another 10 or 15 years, hopefully!

 

[tdaugirdas]

The hard drive is not easily clonable - because of weird BIOS and formatting interactions. This eas done deliberately - because the software is proprietary - and so AT&T made copying the drive difficult. Most copied drives will not boot at all or will not boot correctly. I guess you could experiment with different cloning software and see what you can do. The best advice may be to "bite the bullet" and get yourself a modern voice mail system - even though all of the reprogramming is a "pain".

Tom Daugirdas,
President
STCG, Inc.
stcg.com

 

[ngkatsaras]

Thanks, that is too bad.. now I'm really curious, but still scared of breaking it.. especially since I really don't know unix that well. All I know is that when you reboot it, there are pages and pages of error messages that I have no idea what they mean.. but then it comes online and the voicemail works... There is a tape backup drive in the unit, but I've never used it.. I don't know how. And it's never been backed up for at least 4 or 5 years. Would it be possible to buy a replacement box and restore the drive using the tape drive? Does your company sell anything like what I linked above?

 

[tdaugirdas]

What you linked above is a hard drive replacement for a Merlin Mail R3 unit. You have an old Audix system. You will see them occasionally on eBay - but most of the Audix Intuity systems on eBay are much newer (MAP5). They may even be 486 PC's vs. 386. The Merlin Mail is a 386, but uses standard IDE hard drives. Your old Intuity may have a SCCSI drive, then again it may not. You can still download all of the appropriate documentation on Avaya.com, under support, then pick all systems alphabetical and scroll down to Intuity Audix. You should be able to see the release information when your Intuity is running - and you can download all necessary info - including how to use the tape backup. You may even be able to use the backup tape to reload a new hard drive - but I am not sure.

Tom Daugirdas,
President
STCG, Inc.
stcg.com

 

[BobbR]

What you want to do is certainly feasible, and has been done successfully. Before searching for a good, used SCSI hard drive, you must determine what you have. Hopefully the box is Audix R4.xx and not R3.xx. The drive is most likely a 2GB IBM SCSI drive with a 68-pin connector, but you need to know for sure as you should not use a connector adapter. After procuring a spare drive, you can then download a Linux program that will duplicate your present drive, bit-by-bit:

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

You will generate a bootable floppy (plus a 2nd program floppy). It would be best if you have a spare PC with a SCSI2 interface rather than running this on the Audix box. Read all the documentation carefully. It does work. You will have to open up the Audix box again to determine SCSI ID of original drive, ensure the "new" drive ID is different, and connect it. The original SCSI cable may have only one connector so you should have a multi-connector cable available. The major caveat in running g4u is same as any cloning procedure, make sure you are correct as to which drive is "source" and which is "destination" before hitting <enter>!! The program works with IDE drives also, so you might want to do a trial run with a less-crucial hard drive. You should understand that the "new" drive will be an exact copy of the original, errors and all. After successful duplication use the "new" drive and try to resolve the errors, try Audix' database verification, etc.

 

[ngkatsaras]

Awesome advice gentlemen!! Thank you very much. I really appreciate it, I have a lot of reading to do now and some testing. I knew it had to be possible and I'm glad to have found the solution and I'm optimistic it will work exactly how I need it to. Any thoughts regarding spinrite? I've been using it on other hard drives with a lot of success.