Help with AS400 sys...
 
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Help with AS400 system

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(@thepm)
Posts: 253
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Topic starter
 

Hey,

An old IBM AS400 system was seized and should contain important information about a case. It's my 1st time dealing with an AS400 (hopefully my last) and it is a quite different beast from a standard PC.

The system has 4 hard drives and one is defect. From what we can see in hex on the 3 working drives, they don't seem to be in a striped RAID configuration. However, the system detects that a drive is missing and won't boot.

I made mirror copies of all 3 working drives. However I have to work from the original disks as the AS400 says the original drives are missing if I try to boot from the copies.

While I cannot confirm what OS/file system is running on this system, but looking at IBM's website, the OS should be OS400 and the file system should be IFS (Integrated File System).

I could not find an analysis tool that supports IFS or anything related to AS400.

1. Does anyone know if there is a way to mount an AS400 drive in some other OS (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.) ? I would like to mount the 3 working drives to see if I can extract anything good.

2. Is there a way to tell the AS400 system to "forget the previous drive configuration and try to find something to boot from within the working drives"?

3. Is there an AS400 emulator that would allow booting from the drive(s)?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

 
Posted : 08/10/2013 1:07 am
BraindeadVirtually
(@braindeadvirtually)
Posts: 115
Estimable Member
 

It's been a good ten years since I worked on an AS/400. There was a Windows Terminal emulator client which worked relatively well as I recall and would connect to the working box effectively enough. As for rebuilding with one duff disk, you are going to need a miracle. Obvious question but have you looked at slightly less painful alternatives such as tape backups?

 
Posted : 08/10/2013 2:10 am
(@thepm)
Posts: 253
Reputable Member
Topic starter
 

There is indeed a tape backup drive on the AS400 system and there was a tape in it when it was seized. However, I must admit that I have no clue what is on the tape backup and how to restore such backup on an AS400 (even more so considering the system doesn't boot completely…)

 
Posted : 08/10/2013 5:14 pm
BraindeadVirtually
(@braindeadvirtually)
Posts: 115
Estimable Member
 

You might need a specialist to attempt to extract the data off the tape. I would suggest contacting somebody like Tony Dearsley at Kroll Ontrack if you're in the UK/Europe

 
Posted : 08/10/2013 6:29 pm
(@marcflores)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

Apologies for dragging up such an old thread. Potentially similar scenario and found this thread.

OP Did you have any luck with this? Did you end up accessing the backup tape data?

 
Posted : 25/07/2016 6:36 pm
PaulSanderson
(@paulsanderson)
Posts: 651
Honorable Member
 

Apologies for dragging up such an old thread. Potentially similar scenario and found this thread.

OP Did you have any luck with this? Did you end up accessing the backup tape data?

Get in touch with Mark Sear at Altirum - he's a wizard with tapes.

http//www.altirium.com/

 
Posted : 26/07/2016 2:23 am
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