bman

It depends how much you depend on your cache data being safe. I don't like surprises, so I wouldn't trade an EVO drive for a cheap SSD of any kind. I have thrown away many lesser SSDs but used some of my forty or so Samsung SSDs for 8 years already. They make the NAND flash memory, they make the controller, they make the firmware. Their reputation is all over their drives inside and out. I discovered that Intel's 5-year warranty means precious little if you don't have your data when you come home from a long day of video production. Eight SSDs and all of them failed more than once within the first year, in the case of that particular hard-learned lesson.

Not that I am an expert on this but as far as I know, the special flag to tell Unraid the drive is "cleared" is only set at the end of a successful preclear script execution. If a new disk is not properly cleared, Unraid must clear it before use as part of the array. This would be (among other reasons) to prevent any possibility of old data on a drive becoming part of a parity calculation and wreaking havoc on your once-good data elsewhere in the array. Clearing is just writing zeroes to all spots on a disk, where preclear reads, then writes, then verifies for each of its cycles, unless you change its settings to skip some of those steps. That's why you saw the large time difference.

I don't have the answer for your issue, but I experienced very much the same kinds of trouble when I wanted to run 4 RAM sticks on my Gigabyte EP45-UD3P based computer. Two sticks were fine but I had to tweak many BIOS settings to get four RAM sticks to be stable. I was able to find the correct tweaks via internet search. Maybe someone has ideas for your motherboard?

I'm sure there are better ways, especially if by chance your Synology disks are each singles with valid file systems on them, but since we don't know how you've got things configured, here's how I would go about it: Create desired shares on UNRAID and use rsync to transfer files categorically over the network. For example if you have a large Apple Music library and create a "music" share on UNRAID, you would proceed to copy all the music files from your Synology device to that share as one session. Repeat for TV shows, photos, etc as required. That way if something breaks along the way you can easily find out where things left off, double-check the latest file edition for corruption, and continue from there. For mounting shares on UNRAID check https://docs.unraid.net/legacy/FAQ/transferring-files-from-a-network-share-to-unraid/ I usually mount network shares in the /mnt directory on UNRAID but you may choose anywhere you like. rsync can show progress, verify and then safely remove source files with a single command, such as rsync -av --progress --remove-source-files /mnt/synmusic/* . This copies and verifies, then erases the source files. If you want to skip the --remove-source-files option you'll retain a backup of each file until you know everything is safe. That command assumes you're currently in the UNRAID destination share before executing - e.g. cd /mnt/user/music. "synmusic" is the name I chose to use for the mounted music share from the Synology device. If you have just one master share from your Synology device and just a bunch of subdirectories, perhaps "synology" is a more appropriate label, then your rsync command might reference /mnt/synology/music/*

Okay thanks for the explanation. This is a useful plugin, thanks very much for your efforts!

I'd like to request this goes one further in having the ability to hide individual slots, or mark them in some way as N/A (not available) with their own colour. Reasoning is because sometimes through poor quality control or over-use/abuse, individual slots on a backplane may no longer be functional. I have two Supermicro 24-bay chassis where this is the case and I need to remember not to try to use those slots, so I physically mark them with tape, but it would be nice to have the plugin able to also mark individual slots as defunct, so when I am several miles away from the physical server, I can easily know which slot(s) are faulty for making upgrade or drive swap plans before visiting the site.

I guess if you measure its outputs with an oscilloscope under different loads to check ripple and general quality of the signal, as well as deviation from expected output, you could be suitably impressed by a PSU. Or maybe it's nicely lit and has an LED readout telling you how much power you're using... not performance related, but lights and gizmos generally impress on a subconscious level if nothing else!

I started my unRAID life after IDE (okay, the motherboard had the controller, but I always used SATA drives and ignored the IDE ports)... and never really had much use for spin up groups. Now that hard drives are very large and also very power efficient (<= 5W each) I have no concerns about letting them spin for several extra hours, or even 24/7/365. Where I am 100W of constant consumption for 23 HDDs costs me $0.31 daily, which is far less than the cost of a daily coffee -- and I don't drink coffee, so I'm still well ahead! I generally set my spin down time to about 6 hours which lets them stop as I sleep, and usually they won't be called upon again until the next afternoon. There's always delays the first time or two I try to access the array, but it's not a big deal after that as the rest of the day is hiccup free due to the long spin down timer.

Having searched briefly for anything that's not rackmount and still holds that many drives, I come up short. As far as I can tell, any other form factor (like Lian-li's PC-D8000) adds extra space but no increase in available drive slots. I'm not sure there's a way around it. There is not a large enough market for a single chassis that holds as many drives as you're looking to house, so your choices are few and expensive.

I'm handy with a soldering iron so I'd just add another 8-port connector from old PSU bits I have lying around if it was needed - but that's just me, and also assuming there were no power requirements that would blow up my power supply by performing such a mod

Nice motherboard! I got the non-IPMI version for a recent build that I haven't quite gotten around to yet. In my previous experiences, though, I have learned to connect ALL motherboard power connectors no matter how many there are. I've had it happen before where I failed (or thought I wouldn't need that extra 12V feed) only to scratch my head a year later when a new add-on card wouldn't work, or some other silly problem I could have avoided. Each 12V wire and each circuit trace on the motherboard are designed to carry only so much current. If there are extra power connectors, it's probably because in some situations the extra current will need to be available to certain slots on the board. Plug in whichever connectors fit. They're keyed so you can't mess them up, no matter how they're labelled.

Where I am the Supermicro 847E2C-R1K28JBO chassis (which includes two 1280W power supplies, and SAS backplanes and front+rear hot swap bays for 44 3.5-inch hard drives) costs the same as 6.37 10TB enterprise (5-year warranty) hard drives. That's 50TB of parity-protected data for your rendering needs. I've never seen a chassis as large as the one you're after for sale in the used market (eBay or otherwise, yet -- I am sure I will one day!) so as far as I am concerned you're buying a new chassis at full price. I don't see how you're going to fit it into such a small budget. Best forward-thinking logic is as already suggested: Spend money on larger drives so you can use cheaper, smaller chassis, like one of the ones you already have... unless you can barter a deal with a good metal bender in your area who can make you what you need.

650W will work fine for what you're up to. Looks like your load will put that supply in its highest efficiency zone, so I'd say you're good to go!

So if, in my messing around I DID do the above and my UnRAID system no longer works properly... how do I edit the XML from the command line? How do I find it to edit it?

Different supply... but in my experience thus far, just as good for UnRAID and other purposes. I've used both the X650 and X660 Seasonics with great results, whether I am loading a system up with 22 drives, or just 13.