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.

I have use a couple of Seasonic X650 supplies on a few different Supermicro motherboards, all without problems as yet. Having said that, this thought train piques my interest because I am also soon to be a (hopefully proud) owner of an X8SIL-F-O motherboard. Crossing my fingers that no issues rear up and bite me.

Never seen anything quite like that, but it's pretty good for a custom build. Now if he wants to build me a 22 drive case the same way, I'd buy that

Nice! With your rig, do you use 5-in-3 cages, or if you did, do you think they'd fit with no messing about? I'm not looking for another bunch of work bending tabs out of the way just to be able to slide in my drive cages...

Wow those Xigmatek cases look the part - but do they play well with others? Since I have 3 5-in-3 cages already, I could get a big-ass Xig case and another 5-in-3 cage to bring my space up a bit... maybe more reliable than a Norco RPC-4224? Hmm... anyone had cause to purchase/use one of these 12x5.25" monsters yet?

Well, I ran my server with that Seasonic 'split rail' power supply (I have to think it was really a single as you suggest but I will not be disassembling and analyzing it to find out) for many months with 15, and recently 16 hard drives on it. So that leaves about 1A per drive if it was truly a split rail supply. So I can see two possibilities: the one you've mentioned about single rail even though the specs say otherwise, or the Seasonic supplies are really awfully darn good supplies! For info, I never had any separate spin-up groups, so every time I would come home with new files to transfer, I would spin all drives up at the same time, and every restart of the server of course saw the same task. Somehow it worked well and faithfully even though I was oblivious to the current loads versus ratings. I am more at ease now, however, as I bought a Seasonic X650 Gold with 54A of hard drive lovin under the hood. I can't wait for Tom to up the max drive on UnRAID to 40 drives so I can give this supply a proper workout, too

I am afraid now that I have been reading this thread. I have a Seasonic S12II-500 powering my UnRAID rig: http://www.seasonicusa.com/S12II.htm And if I can understand things correctly, this supply has split +12V outputs, each rated 17A. If I were to guess, I'd think that one rail is for motherboard, and the other for molex/SATA power. But I have 15 (now 16 as I just added a cache drive) drives spinning on this supply without a hiccup. Is this supply really that good, or have I been ignoring the obvious, and therefore need to order a new one before I jump ahead to all 7200rpm drives? At the moment, my array consists of all 2TB drives, 9 of which are Hitachi HDS72302, three WD greens and three ST2000DL003 drives. Seems to me I've already gone past the point of sanity

Edit: You mean tapped at 2 cells or maybe 3 cells for around 5V (though 3 is closer to 6.3V, a bit high) - each cell in a lead-acid battery is about 2.2V as opposed to NiCd or NiMH which are 1.2V per cell. I just didn't want to purvey confusion in this matter I've thought about this very thing more than once, as all that inefficiency does wear on my techie-type brain... but in the end, it comes down to these important considerations: Hard drives want 12V, and the ATX spec usually stipulates 5% either way (so max 12.6V), BUT a 12V lead-acid car battery that has a no-load voltage BELOW 12.6V is in need of a recharge. This helps prevent premature battery failure due to sulphation inside the cells, which occurs in a harmful, not-easily-reversible way when the cell voltage drops below 2.1 volts for an extended period of time (a couple days, or longer). 12V car batteries usually output around 12.75 volts when fully charged and under moderate load, but when you put a charger on the battery, it's minimally 13.2V and optimally somewhere around 13.7V or 13.8V, but chargers can put out higher voltages for shorter periods of time, and the battery will still be safe. But whatever the charger voltage is, this is what your hard drives would see, too, and for my comfort this is a voltage range too far away from the expected. As 12V lead-acid batteries discharge under load, they can go as low as about 10.8V before needing a recharge. (Any lower and permanent damage to the cells becomes increasingly likely, though it does not happen instantly.) Again, 10.8V is a bit too low for my liking, though I am confident many hard drives would function adequately on even this low a voltage. So really, what is needed is a DC-to-DC converter, which is a device that takes the battery/charge voltage and chops it into AC-waveform-like pieces, raises the voltage to some higher-than-needed value in order to be able to convert it back to DC at the appropriate (12V) value using a DC voltage regulator circuit. And if you're gonna go that way (which has been done - look for computer power supplies designed to run from automobile power) then there's really not much difference in going from 120V/230V down to 12V inside a standard PC power supply. Yup, it's inefficient... but transmitting 12V DC down power lines to everyone's homes is orders of magnitude MORE inefficient than the way it is done now, so we live with it.

I also ended up with this case due to its size/price ratio... was plenty disappointed at all the extra work I had to do bending the tabs away so I could install my Supermicro 5x3 mobile racks... in the end, I should have spent less money on a Norco RPC-4220 or similar (the Supermicro cages add up quickly) but my drives are nice and cool, and much more so than if I had gone the 4220 route.