AndrewMc

Hi again. Thanks for your comments and help. Much appreciated. I used Fillup because it's a new 4TB drive and the others are older 2TB drives...that may be a bit prone to failure, hence the Fillup setting.

Ok, thanks for the explanation. Looks like my 8TB of files copying onto the array will span itself across multiple physical 4TB disks when I upload to /mnt/user/plexMedia. I'll keep an eye on it as the transfer takes place.

Fantastic!! Thank you. I originally had it pointing to /mnt/user/plexMedia but didn't quite know how it was managing it. ie. The same files appear on DISK 1, 2, 3 etc. Perhaps the /mnt/use/plexMedia files are just hard links to the physical files on the array. I'm thinking that might be the case.

So guys.... If I'm FTPing data to the server, how do I get it to the CACHE share? The issue is that if I have a share called "plexMedia" and I want to upload to the CACHE, the directory does not exist on the CACHE, because the MOVER has moved it to the array. So, the FTP upload fails with 'directory not found'. If I go directly to a disk in the array it might be full, so FTP fails. I'm sure there's a way to upload a folder, that doesn't change, that UNRAID can split to other disks on the array if it gets full. Any help would be appreciated.

Ok, so the problem exists when using FTP to transfer files to UNRAID. It could be the end-point of the FTP connection that's incorrect. I'm uploading via FTP to: /mnt/user/plexMedia/ Potentially /user/ is the wrong directory and UNRAID isn't looking there to split the directory between physical disks. I don't want to upload to the CACHE directory and I want to go directly to the array instead. The log shows the failure due to a full disk: MOVE is working: Jul 1 17:15:36 UNRAID move: move: file /mnt/cache/plexMedia/TV Shows/... Jul 1 17:20:51 UNRAID move: move: file /mnt/cache/plexMedia/TV Shows/... Jul 1 17:21:26 UNRAID move: move: file /mnt/cache/plexMedia/TV Shows/... ... But the disk gets full and the FTP transfer fails: Jul 1 17:31:58 UNRAID vsftpd[6454]: connect from 192.168.0.100 (192.168.0.100) Jul 1 17:31:58 UNRAID vsftpd[6454]: [qnap] OK LOGIN: Client "192.168.0.100" Jul 1 17:31:58 UNRAID vsftpd[6456]: [qnap] FAIL UPLOAD: Client "192.168.0.100", "/mnt/user/plexMedia/Movies/...", 8944 bytes, 9079.39Kbyte/sec Jul 1 17:31:58 UNRAID vsftpd[6457]: connect from 192.168.0.100 (192.168.0.100) Jul 1 17:31:58 UNRAID vsftpd[6457]: [qnap] OK LOGIN: Client "192.168.0.100" Jul 1 17:31:58 UNRAID vsftpd[6459]: [qnap] FAIL UPLOAD: Client "192.168.0.100", "/mnt/user/plexMedia/Movies/...", 8944 bytes, 8876.40Kbyte/sec So, who knows the correct upload end-point that UNRAID is looking at to split directories between disks??? Cheers!!

Ok, thanks. The GUI button is what I've been using to monitor it. I'm checking it now. On another topic, I wish UNRAID had a plug-in that was simple to use to upload to Google Drive, not their cloud storage. The current plug-in seems very convoluted and even though I know what I'm doing (mostly) it still didn't work. My QNAP has a Hybrid Backup Sync which does it all for you, which is nice, but I really want to support UNRAID.

Hi, Thanks, I'll turn on the log for the MOVER and take a look. I'm copying a large chunk of files so I'll keep an eye on it. Not sure where to find the log but I'll have a hunt around for it.

Hi, It's not the array drives causing the issue. It's when files move from the CACHE to the ARRAY using the MOVE command that has the issue. I let UNRAID do all of the folder splitting between drives, but in this case, something is not working with the MOVE command.

I have a PLEX folder on DISK 1, and a PLEX folder on DISK 2, and the share is set up for "split directory when required" DISK 1 is now full. That's why UNRAID made the DISK 2 folder and began using that. However, I changed the UNRAID to use the CACHE drive, and began to copy files to the share again. But, when I press MOVE, it's trying to move the files to DISK 1, not DISK 2, even though the share is set up for a "split". Jul 1 11:16:10 UNRAID shfs: copy_file: /mnt/cache/plexMedia/readyForMediaLibrary/..... (28) No space left on device Jul 1 11:16:10 UNRAID shfs: copy_file: /mnt/cache/plexMedia/readyForMediaLibrary/..... (28) No space left on device Jul 1 11:16:11 UNRAID shfs: copy_file: /mnt/cache/plexMedia/readyForMediaLibrary/..... (28) No space left on device etc. Now I can't get the media on the CACHE drive into the array because it's trying DISK 1....not DISK 2. So, I this a bug in UNRAID????? [SOLVED] So, I must have set the minimum space to 0KB, which was causing the error. I set the share's minimum free space to 5GB, knowing I'll never get a file larger than that, potentially, and the MOVE function is working again. (I think I read about free space somewhere in the docs now I think about it.) [Nope, NOT solved]. I've set a 5GB limit and when I MOVE from the cache it does this: Only 1MB left, when the limit it clearly 5GB. There's a bug somewhere in UNRAID. I'm MOVING while I'm uploading media to the array, which shouldn't affect it because the CACHE is being cleared while new data is being written. And, It should know there's a 5GB limit on DISK1 and move it to DISK2.

Everything is also backed up on Google Cloud, and I'm keeping the original QNAP files on the external drives. So I'll have 3 backups when the parity drive is synced.

Yes, it makes a big difference. I did some tests with and without a cache drive. With and without a parity drive. With a cache drive, and raid sync stopped, I'm getting up to 103MB per second transfer. With a cache drive and the raid syncing, I'm getting up to 90-95MB per second. The CPU is at 100% syncing the drives, hence the drop in performance. It's only an Intel® Atom™ CPU D525 @ 1.80GHz 2-core, 4-threads, with a very small on-board cache. With no cache, 4 data drives and one parity drive, with syncing stopped, I'm getting about 60MB per second transfer. With no cache, 4 data drives and one parity drive, with syncing started, I'm getting about 30-35MB per second transfer. So the plan is to copy the data from my external source drives, then when finished, turn on the parity sync. I'll have a copy locally and a copy on the QNAP so I don't need to sync until it's all copied. The only thing now is that I have non-redundant data on my local drives. A faster CPU and better motherboard would be ideal but hey, this is what I have lying around and it's costing me nothing except $22 for 4GB or RAM. The QNAP has been flawless over the last 12 years so I'm pretty happy with the hardware. Oh, and Plex runs without issues too.

Hi and thanks for your comments. I was only getting throughput of 30MBs...pretty bad. Then I realised I had to change from 1504 MTU to Jumbo Frames at 9014 MTU. So, set the Network Interface Card on the PC to Jumbo Frames of 9014 MTU. Set the Network Interface Card on the QNAP to Jumbo Frames of 9014 MTU. Faster throughput than the native QNAP software. I'm seeing it bounce between 95-103Mbps. The QNAP only bounced between 92-95Mbps. Looking good so far!!

Hi, I'm moving all of the existing data off at the moment and at some point today will pre-clear the 5 current QNAP 4-TB Seagate Ironwolf drives and build the empty array. I'm not going with a cache drive, just 1 parity and 4 data drives. I'm guessing over my 1Gbps LAN which normally runs at around 94-100Mbytes per second that it will drop to around 30Mbytes per second. That's going to be fine for me. It's a storage device so I don't need a lot of speed. All I need is read speed for Plex, and that will be fast enough. I don't transcode on the fly. I just play the file directly on the Apple TV. I'm also thinking of installing a USB3 64GB thumb drive into the QNAP as a cache disk if the write speed it too slow....that's assuming it will write faster than 30Mbyte per second, and UNRAID can use that drive as a cache. We shall see.... The big thing that I want is the ability to add a 16TB drive in the future if required. Let's hope the BIOS recognises a drive that large. Theoretically it will since it's only a number that it reads from the SATA controller on the drive....but who knows. It's an experiment at this stage but the hardware is sitting there getting old, so is the operating system, even though the QNAP OS still works.

Hi everyone, I wanted to see if my 12-year old QNAP TS-559 PRO II would run UNRAID...and it does. QNAP no longer supports this hardware which is a real pity. It also has a limit of 15TB. So with UNRAID, I'll be able to use larger capacity, non-NAS specific drives. And, Plex upgrades on my Apple TV no longer work with the old version the Plex Server on my QNAP. So, time to try UNRAID. I just want to store my files and run the Plex server. Nothing more, except perhaps Google Cloud backup. I did remove the 1GB 204-pin DDR3 RAM that came with it and installed 2 x 2GB DDR3 SoDIMM RAM sticks into the QNAP however. (second hand and only $15 on eBay for the RAM) I have not pulled the 512MB USB DOM (QNAP boot drive) out of the system. I simply plugged in a 15-pin VGA cable to see what it was doing, plugged in a keyboard, plugged in the UNRAID USB, rebooted and pressed DEL to enter the BIOS. I then set up the BIOS to recognise the UNRAID USB drive and selected it to look like a Hard Drive. After rebooting, UNRAID unpacked itself and ran on the QNAP hardware. I decided not to assign the drives and build the raid at the moment as they still contain 'live' data. To get the QNAP back to normal I'll simply unplug the UNRAID USB and boot the QNAP. Time to move 10TB of data on the QNAP to an external drive, plug in the UNRAID USB, and copy the data back. Goodbye old QNAP!!