Chris Pollard

Is the Abit AB9 based on the P965 chipset? I had to use this procedure on my MSI board (also P965) to make a bootable USB stick. I used the USB-ZIP option :- http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2407.0

check the settings of your windows machine by typing ipconfig at the command line. Just change the last number of its IP address to something you haven't used already. Make sure you match the mask. If you have a router you will need to enter its IP as the gateway ifconfig shows you the same from linux or osx.

very tidy looking case, don't see many reviews for it around but it looks well designed from the images.

hmm hopefully I can RMA mine too, assuming I ever get a chance to test it

how many disks?

I've also got one of these cards which causes unraid to lockup when used, My system is based on the Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2H. similar sounding problem, i had a single 500gb drive on it originally and it worked fine, parity checks were fine. Decided to remove my 3114 based card and put the drives on the Supermicro card after that point the system would generate lots of errors and periodically lockup. Pretty sure the errors I had were timeouts of some sort. I need to test the card in another machine to confirm that its OK but haven't had time.

first card looks perfect.... thanks for the heads up.

good news, will have to flash mine after xmas.

OS X does it too. Definitely not, and probably the finder only, but not the other apps running. It hangs finder..... same as in windows it hangs explorer. In fact in 10.4 it would often cause finder to restart, and would almost always disconnect all your sessions to unraid.

OS X does it too.

I'll have to look out for one cheap on eBay, I'm in the UK and they are usually listed for about £40 shipped from HK.

I'm using scythe 4 in 3's myself.... couldn't find a cheap 5 in 3 solution. (UK)

Hmm I was thinking about upgrading my PCI 3114 with one of these when I first saw your original post, looking at your test results I'd guess its not gonna be much of an upgrade...

I think if you look at the spec for cat6 the max run is 100m and only 10m is allowed to be stranded, the rest should be solid core. Probably not too much of an issue unless you live in the playboy mansion or something

I don't quite agree with. The webUI as it is designed now, does exactly what is needed for the product as it is released. I don't think it would do any harm to put a little one liner explanation next to each field saying what it represents, especially boxes where you enter a number. I don't have a problem with how it looks.

Having used it for 5 months or so I can say I'm reasonably happy with it. (I don't have a limetech box, migrated from FreeNAS. Very little linux knowledge) pros :- easy to add capacity good support via forums just works cons :- Performance is pretty poor, but adequate for its primary use (Media server). Painful getting all of things I'd like it do out of the box working (UPS, email, SNMP, Any monitoring!) Even more painful getting it do do what most NAS solutions do out of the box (Torrent, AFP, UPnP, iTunes) Terrible UI

I've actually never managed to make my HTPC freeze or stutter, plex on mac mini 20mb read ahead cache. (OS X 10.6)

tversity has always been wildly unreliable when I've tried to use it. Good when it works tho

Just to be clear, this is the behaviour I reported. Access any disk using share over Samba and I get a pause. I have 3 data drives and have single disk user shares on each of these individual drives. Accessing a user share on either of the other 2 data drives while playing back a file from the 3rd data drive will cause a pause. Spinning up and down the other 2 data drives or the parity drive using unMENU does not cause studder even if I spin-up/spin down as fast as possible using the web interface. Quick 2nd test, and yes, same deal here, seems to be samba freezing when a disk spins up, doing a manual spin up from the web page doesn't do anything.

Well I can recreate the stall, my disks :- parity device: pci-0000:00:14.1-ide-1:0 (hdc) ata-SAMSUNG_HD154UI_S1Y6J1KS516318 disk1 device: pci-0000:00:14.1-ide-0:0 (hda) ata-WDC_WD1200JB-00EVA0_WD-WMAEK2829749 disk2 device: pci-0000:00:14.1-ide-0:1 (hdb) ata-WDC_WD800BB-60CJA1_WD-WMAAC1145603 disk3 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 (sda) ata-SAMSUNG_HD154UI_S1Y6J1KS616605 disk4 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-1:0:0:0 (sdb) ata-SAMSUNG_HD154UI_S1Y6J1KS516537 disk5 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-2:0:0:0 (sdc) ata-SAMSUNG_HD154UI_S1Y6J1KS516320 disk6 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-3:0:0:0 (sdd) ata-SAMSUNG_HD154UI_S1Y6J1KS516326 disk7 device: pci-0000:03:06.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 (sde) ata-WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ1828278 disk8 device: pci-0000:03:06.0-scsi-1:0:0:0 (sdf) ata-WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ1775088 disk9 device: pci-0000:03:06.0-scsi-2:0:0:0 (sdg) ata-WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ1728696 disk10 device: pci-0000:03:06.0-scsi-3:0:0:0 (sdh) ata-WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ1804275 cache device: pci-0000:00:14.1-ide-1:1 (hdd) ata-Maxtor_6V300F0_V6030LKG Doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, happens whenever a disk spins up it seems. Testing was from Ubuntu 9.10 and Windows 7 using samba, accessing user shares. Just tested using disk shares on Snow Leopard and its still the same, Playing video from Disk 4, spin up disk 5 and it paused. Spin up disk 7 and it paused.

failure rates for drives running 40 deg plus are certainly interesting.

I like that one alot. How do you mount the fan though? I've got 2 of these spread over nine 5.25 bays (mounted vertically) :- http://www.quietpc.com/ie-en-eur/products/caseaccessories/kama-bay-black I'm pretty happy with the setup. Drives are running 8-10 degrees cooler than they were in the Icy Docks. ( 23-25 from 33-36 )

VPN Tunnel terminated on your router might be an option, that would give you access to your whole home network. You'll need some kind of dynamic DNS setup if your ISP doesn't provide you with a static IP.

For the record I'm replacing my drive enclosures with these :- http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/acc/042/scyhdsx4-detail.html and front mounted fans.

Oh and one thing about the Icydock 5-in-3, the side of the cages have no notches so in some cases you will have to dremel / bend the case to make them fit.