There is a long story behind it, but basically a few drips of water got into my server. I had left it on the bench with the lid off. A drip must have landed on the RAID card, it then dribbled down the card and into the PCI slot. This shorted the card and killed the server.

There was quite a smell of plastic and PCB as you may guess from the photo. End result, one trashed server motherboard and RAID card, and a question mark over all my files on the RAID array.

I have built a replacement box and moved my main two drives over. They are an IDE LVM Group with the OS installed, with a little reconfiguration the system came back up. I then needed to try and rescue my data RAID array. The data array is a 250gb mirror, connected to the fried card.

I took one of the drives from the array and placed it in another system. I then booted into knoppix and mounted the drive. SUCCESS! I found all my data intact. I then messed around for a while copying all the home directories back to the main server drives in the new server, all but my main documents folder (as its massive!).

I now need to get a replacement RAID card and fit it into the new server. Then rebuild the array, move files around, and mount as /home once more.

As I type, I am running a quick backup, just to be safe.

Click on the photo to get a better look.