Harpz

I bought some last year and rather pleased with them 8 months on. Review here http://blog.ktz.me/?p=145 I have 3 of the caddy's revived by ironicbadger and I and very happy with them. No issues at all, would recommend with out any hesitations.

Currently have 4gb in my server. When I take the plunge to v6 and start playing with vm's I'll probably up it to 8gb. Waiting for a decent xen webui to appear.

The server is now at my brothers so I'm getting him to get some new cables. If the speed still remains the same I'll get home to get separate switch as at the moment his main machine and server are both plugged into his new BT home hub. I agree it certainly seems to be a cable or hub problem. I experienced a similar problem which turned out to be a switch going bad slowly, would work at full speed once I restarted it for few hours then the speed would drop off. Are there any settings in the BIOS I could get him to look for? Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

If you are using the ODD or eSata ports it is a requirement if you want full speed parity checks. OK thanks guys for replies once the initial parity sync is done I'll make the changes in the BIOS listed above. How would I test the speed of the array after the changes have been made, would a normal non correcting parity check be a good indicator even though the array will have no data on it? OK the parity sync finished last night so i made the changes below and created a user share for my TV Shows. Write caching turned on in the BIOS VGA set to 32MB in the BIOS I used Teracopy to copy over 106GB of data and was surprised to see a max speed of 12MB/s, this seems a little slow. The network is gigabit and ifconfig seem to confirm this. What am I missing here guys? ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr c8:cb:b8:c5:2e:bb inet addr:192.168.1.69 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:3896136 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:2818524 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:4977588902 (4.6 GiB) TX bytes:1869594635 (1.7 GiB) Interrupt:18 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1 RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:560 (560.0 B) TX bytes:560 (560.0 B)

That would be the way I would test it. There are the performance scripts in another post/thread on the forums that might be even better but I've never used them. Ah ok, forgot about that one, used at a few times on my main machine, will probably run that in 6hrs lol when the sync finishes and I've enable the BIOS options.

If you are using the ODD or eSata ports it is a requirement if you want full speed parity checks. OK thanks guys for replies once the initial parity sync is done I'll make the changes in the BIOS listed above. How would I test the speed of the array after the changes have been made, would a normal non correcting parity check be a good indicator even though the array will have no data on it?

Once the parity sync is done I'lll get the options stated in first post turned on and see what difference it will make. Write caching turned on in the BIOS VGA set to 32MB in the BIOS PCI Power saving turned on in BIOS The micro-servers not on a ups as of yet how will write caching be affected in the event of a power failure, the box will mainly store tv shows and movies, so there aren't going to lots of writes going to the array mainly reads? Would you recommend upgrading the ram to say 4GB? I should think that the box will mainly have green drives it and just use the main 4 drive bays, It may get another swap bay like the one in the first post at some point but thats a little way off. Do you recommend using the BIOS made my TheBay, are there any major improvements over stock?

Hi Got one of these a while ago and decided to let my brother have it and use it for a simple file server with unraid 5.0.3 We pre cleared 2 drives on the box, 1x 3TB Green and 1x 3TB Red. Red Drive Results: == invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh -A -c 3 /dev/sdb == WDCWD30EFRX-68EUZN0 WD-WMC4N1469972 == Disk /dev/sdb has been successfully precleared == with a starting sector of 1 == Ran 3 cycles == == Using :Read block size = 8388608 Bytes == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 8:11:38 (101 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 7:54:37 (105 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 17:37:18 (47 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Total Time : 25:32:55 == == Total Elapsed Time 84:50:15 == == Disk Start Temperature: 27C == == Current Disk Temperature: 27C, Green Drive Results: == invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh -A -c 3 /dev/sdb == WDCWD30EZRX-00DC0B0 WD-WCC1T1430923 == Disk /dev/sdb has been successfully precleared == with a starting sector of 1 == Ran 3 cycles == == Using :Read block size = 8388608 Bytes == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 7:40:10 (108 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 7:19:40 (113 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 16:36:41 (50 MB/s) == Last Cycle's Total Time : 23:57:22 == == Total Elapsed Time 79:43:21 == == Disk Start Temperature: 20C == == Current Disk Temperature: 29C, == We have now assigned the drives to the array, red parity and green the first data slot. The data drive has been formatted. The initial parity sync is under-way at 32.6mb/s does this speed seem normal for one of these micro-servers? The micro-server is stock nothing has been added all we have done is put an unRAID pro stick in and the 2 drives above, is the base 2Gb RAM enough? I have only skimmed through this thread but I would appreciate it if those of you that own these cool little boxes could provide a check list of bits i need to do to get the best out of these boxes, BIOS setting tweeks etc etc. I've already come across the thread about the modified BIOS, is this needed? http://www.avforums.com/threads/hp-n36l-n40l-n54l-microserver-updated-ahci-bios-support.1521657/ Thanks in advance

Hi Tom Have you ssen the work bonienl been doing with Dynamix webGui, maybe worth a chat? http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=30939.msg278560#msg278560

I ended up getting this one, hope it will be ok, will do what you said: You could just move 2 drives from motherboard ports to the card and start a non-correcting parity check to test it. It's likely bad if you start getting errors. If it does throw errors I take it my data wont be in any danger? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=141006206664

Looks like all the ones on eBay are going to take 2-3weeks to get to me, can anyone recommend another 2 port card.

Looking for UK source but found this on eBay, http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-PCI-E-SATA-3-0-SATA-III-Card-6Gb-s-eSata-ASM1061-/150987242415?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_InterfaceCards&hash=item23278a7baf Is this the same card?

I'm currently looking for a cheap no frills PCIe x1 2 port SATA card that's not going to give me issues with drives of 2TB and greater, also be good if it plays with xenserver (may go down that route). There seems to be loads on eBay but unsure which to get, I read somewhere about silent data corruption so thought I better ask. An example of what I found: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fast-Speed-PCIe-2-SATA-3Gbps-2-eSATA-RAID-Card-PCI-Express-PC-Desktop-UK-SELLER-/251327651087?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_InterfaceCards&hash=item3a844b9d0f Appreciate any UK based cards / links, thanks.

I would also be interested if anyone has had experience with these as was thinking about getting some also. Also looked at the icybox ones as well Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Would also like to know if there are any significant reasons to update from p15 to p17 also as haven't noticed any issues. Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Doesn't look like it, me thinks this gonna be a long long slow process of updates if any Really waiting for the sleep and mail plugins

Hi Ran your script and it produced the values below. I decided to go with the Best Bang for the Buck values and haven't been disappointed. I just watched a 720p stream with XBMC via SMB and have a parity check running also (just rebuilt a disk and wanted to run a check), to top it off the mover kicked in whilst i was watching and there was buffering for a few seconds but all carried on as normal. Parity check speed is currently at 29.6MB/s I was not able to do this before and just wanted to say thanks. Note: The results listed below are with me using a WD 3TB Green as parity I've just upgraded it to a 3TB Toshiba 7200rpm so will need to rerun script to see if the values change. Tunables Report from unRAID Tunables Tester v2.2 by Pauven NOTE: Use the smallest set of values that produce good results. Larger values increase server memory use, and may cause stability issues with unRAID, especially if you have any add-ons or plug-ins installed. Test | num_stripes | write_limit | sync_window | Speed --- FULLY AUTOMATIC TEST PASS 1 (Rough - 20 Sample Points @ 3min Duration)--- 1 | 1408 | 768 | 512 | 81.6 MB/s 2 | 1536 | 768 | 640 | 81.5 MB/s 3 | 1664 | 768 | 768 | 81.6 MB/s 4 | 1920 | 896 | 896 | 81.5 MB/s 5 | 2176 | 1024 | 1024 | 81.5 MB/s 6 | 2560 | 1152 | 1152 | 81.5 MB/s 7 | 2816 | 1280 | 1280 | 81.5 MB/s 8 | 3072 | 1408 | 1408 | 81.6 MB/s 9 | 3328 | 1536 | 1536 | 81.5 MB/s 10 | 3584 | 1664 | 1664 | 81.5 MB/s 11 | 3968 | 1792 | 1792 | 81.4 MB/s 12 | 4224 | 1920 | 1920 | 81.6 MB/s 13 | 4480 | 2048 | 2048 | 81.6 MB/s 14 | 4736 | 2176 | 2176 | 81.5 MB/s 15 | 5120 | 2304 | 2304 | 81.6 MB/s 16 | 5376 | 2432 | 2432 | 81.4 MB/s 17 | 5632 | 2560 | 2560 | 81.3 MB/s 18 | 5888 | 2688 | 2688 | 81.4 MB/s 19 | 6144 | 2816 | 2816 | 81.4 MB/s 20 | 6528 | 2944 | 2944 | 81.4 MB/s --- Targeting Fastest Result of md_sync_window 512 bytes for Special Pass --- --- FULLY AUTOMATIC TEST PASS 1b (Rough - 4 Sample Points @ 3min Duration)--- 21 | 896 | 768 | 128 | 50.9 MB/s 22 | 1024 | 768 | 256 | 79.9 MB/s 23 | 1280 | 768 | 384 | 81.2 MB/s 24 | 1408 | 768 | 512 | 81.4 MB/s --- Targeting Fastest Result of md_sync_window 512 bytes for Final Pass --- --- FULLY AUTOMATIC TEST PASS 2 (Final - 16 Sample Points @ 4min Duration)--- 25 | 1288 | 768 | 392 | 80.1 MB/s 26 | 1296 | 768 | 400 | 80.0 MB/s 27 | 1304 | 768 | 408 | 80.2 MB/s 28 | 1312 | 768 | 416 | 80.1 MB/s 29 | 1320 | 768 | 424 | 80.0 MB/s 30 | 1328 | 768 | 432 | 80.1 MB/s 31 | 1336 | 768 | 440 | 80.1 MB/s 32 | 1344 | 768 | 448 | 80.1 MB/s 33 | 1360 | 768 | 456 | 80.0 MB/s 34 | 1368 | 768 | 464 | 80.2 MB/s 35 | 1376 | 768 | 472 | 80.2 MB/s 36 | 1384 | 768 | 480 | 80.1 MB/s 37 | 1392 | 768 | 488 | 80.2 MB/s 38 | 1400 | 768 | 496 | 80.2 MB/s 39 | 1408 | 768 | 504 | 80.1 MB/s 40 | 1416 | 768 | 512 | 80.2 MB/s Completed: 2 Hrs 21 Min 34 Sec. Best Bang for the Buck: Test 1 with a speed of 81.6 MB/s Tunable (md_num_stripes): 1408 Tunable (md_write_limit): 768 Tunable (md_sync_window): 512 These settings will consume 38MB of RAM on your hardware. Unthrottled values for your server came from Test 27 with a speed of 80.2 MB/s Tunable (md_num_stripes): 1304 Tunable (md_write_limit): 768 Tunable (md_sync_window): 408 These settings will consume 35MB of RAM on your hardware. This is -4MB less than your current utilization of 39MB. NOTE: Adding additional drives will increase memory consumption. In unRAID, go to Settings > Disk Settings to set your chosen parameter values.

hi speeding_ant Any news on the code update to the sleep and email plugins from SF so the no longer rely on SF core. just after the sleep plugin mainly.

I was curious about this also, how do we know there's an update to the gui without checking the forum everyday lol.

I knew someone would ask... I had to go look it up myself. I only chmod once in a blue moon. Luckily when I copy files onto my flash over the network they seem to already have the correct permissions, so that probably holds true for most unRAID users. I updated the instructions to clarify. Hehe I'm a total Linux noob but i have learnt so much playing with unraid and the command line, thanks for the update.

noob question on installation step 4 you say Make sure the file is executable, use chmod to change permissions if necessary how does one do this, may be worth putting in this the instructions?

Yeah I've done the same just with my media centre and a free unraid, was more interested to see if the script would work on another platform. Its a great burn in / stress test tool.

Hi Bit of a silly question and a little off topic sorry, I have a feeling I know the answer to but hey, I love the pre clear script and love the fact that I know once I've ran a 3x pass on a new drive I have confidence the drives not going to die on me straight away (touch wood not happened yet). Now the question, does the pre clear script only run on unraid as I would love to be able to pre clear / stress test a drive on my ubuntu box. If its only an Unraid tool do you know of any other tools / scripts that do the same for ubuntu, I'm still very much a Linux noob but enjoying my ubuntu experience.

Wasnt planning of trolling through 36 pages but thanks for info.

doh solved it, had to remove the ; from ;extension = soap.so in the php.ini file in \config\simpleFeatures