Hanfufu

So after years of pondering, i finally took the plunge to start using unRAID on my server. At the moment im fearing it was the worst decision i ever made, and that perhaps the software cost is just a loss, along with the several days of moving over data from old disks to my new array.... i DO NOT have parity drives yet. All drives are either IronWolf NAS og Seagate Exos. though a few is 6TB consumer disks. Its running on my old server atm (Xeon E5 2683v3, 14 cores/28 threads so slow CPU is NOT the issue), which have been running for years with WS2016 with zero issues at all. The performance is horrendous... It does not affect speed at all, which disk i copy to in the array. Copying from a locally attached drive to the array, can get me speeds of about 110-160MB/sec, which is somewhat acceptable. VMs lagging and almost impossible to work with. Disk transfer speeds are reminiscent of the old 10Mbit days. Downloading anything on my 500/500mbit is completely useless - goes up quick to 40MB/secs, then tanks totally and goes down to sub 1MB/sek after 3 secs. Sometimes its stuck as 0.0KB/sec in 30 secs or more, before going up to 40MB/secs again, and after a few secs were down to sub 1MB/sek and then it goes on and on. Downloading same file on my WS2016 server, sees the speed rock solid at 60MB/sec - but if i download it to a network share on my unRAID box, the speed is again horrendous. Trying to copy over lan, from my primary server to the temp unraid server, does the same. Stuck at like 40MB/sec, going all the way down to 0.0B/sec and gets stuck there for minutes at a time. Copying from my main server, to an unRAID share, via a VM on the unRAID server, gets me the 40MB/sek at short intervals - Starting another copy from my main server and also to the unRAID, sits at around 60-80MB/sec - pausing the slow transfer on the VM on the unRAID server, does nothing to the other copy - still hovers between 60-80MB/sec. so with just 1 copy running, it is impossible to get over 500Mb/sec, which makes ZERO sense. So copying 2 streams simultaniously, gets me around 950Mb/sec on a 1000mbit LAN. But copying just a stream at a time, never comes close to this speed. This is completely useless, and nothing is running at acceptable speeds....can someone PLEASE help me here, as i am completely lost as to how to fix this, and which information do you guys need, to help me fix problem?

Well you do make a point! That way it would only cost me time because it needs to copy 4.5TB of data off of it, and not have the risk of something going wrong, either the disk being encrypted/config screws up. Will unraid redistribute the files automatically, when i add the disk as empty afterwards? And ty so much for your time!

Thanks alot for the answer! Btw is it best to do it like this: Stop array. Make new config (preserve all) Remove disk. Start array. Shut down server. Switch the disk to sata. Start the server. Then stop the array Add the new UUID. And if its encrypted and unreadable, do it again to add it as USB, and then use unbalance plugin to move the data off the disk and then afterwards add it as internal?

Yeah I kinda saw something about that, and I am also experiencing slow downs when copying to the array, though not to that disk, but im thinking the USB disk could be casino some problems. I just really wanted to keep it as USB, as it is not a NAS disk like my others, and it would need to be in a case with 11 other disks. In thinking the vibrations are gonna kill it in the long run. But I guess there is no way around trying new config then.

Thank you for that answer! I didnt expect the enctyption thing tbh, but when i attached it via sata, it did report it as 12TB. So the only way to know, would be to make a new config with the disk on sata, remove the old UUID, add the new and start the array. Then if the disk has unsupported format, that would indicate that the disk is encrypted, and if it mounts it and I can see files on it, it would show that it was not encrypted? Or just leave it as USB, is always an option also.

As the title suggest, i think i need to make a new config, on my new unraid install. I am btw completely new to the linux/unraid stuff, as I have used WS the last 15 years. I just shucked a WD drive, and was not aware of the fact that it would show up with a different UUID. So I just need to get that disk replaced and nothing Else. I dont yet have parity drives, as I først want to migrate all my data to the array, and then add 2x18TB parity disks. But I am scared sh1tless tbh, that something will go wrong with my dockers/vms in the process. I finally got them all setup and running. I have 1 1TB SSD as a cache pool, with dockers and vms on. Also, one vm is running off a second cache pool called vms, as I only need to run that for a few more months, and then the disk can be removed afterwards. So my question: Will making a new config, screw up my VMs and Dockers - assuming that I select the preserve option for all disks, and only remove the external "version" of the drive, and add the drive under the new UUID?

Yeah im aware that I could run into issues with that, and that it could need to be replaced with another, x4 sata controller

Wow, awesome, i guess i missed that in my research Thanks for the info!

Interesting, so its possible to add all drives to a pool (or what its called), copy data to the volume with single disk speeds, and then add 2xparity drives without any problems, when all data has been copied?

Thank you for the reply, and well spotted, I forgot to mention i have a pci-e cheap noname sata controller with x4 ports. I still am unsure how the lanes work, as there are 3 small x4 slots on the Motherboard, besides the 2x x16 physical (of which one operates in x4 and the other x16 or x4/x4/x4/x4 bifurcation mode). I seem to recall something about some lanes wired to the chipset, and was thinking that was the case with the small slots. Otherwise you would have 0 use for more than 2 slots in a Ryzen gaming pc (x16 and 1 x4 tales up all 20 lanes wired to the CPU), and the motherboard is more or less gaming oriented. But maybe im wrong, and would love to be corrected

Thanks for the suggestion, i should have mentioned that I had checked into that, but I still havent decided if its worth the extra wear and tear on my other disks

Hello all, I have been wanting to migrate my Plex server from WS2016 to unRAID for quite a while now, and i finally have the possibility of buying 3x14TB drives, of witch 2 are meant for parity. I have however, seen some concerning posts regarding speeds on esp writes. Also i seem to recall something about that the more disks that you add, the slower it can get, but is there some truth to that? My server has a Asrock x570 board, 3950x, 48GB RAM and support, and my disk setup would be this: 2x14TB for parity, and for data: 1x14TB Seagate enterprise. 5x10TB IronWolf disks, 2x6TB Normal disks, 1x12TB WD something And i was thinking of doing a RAID 0 with 4x2TB Kingston NVMe disks for speed and redundancy (using an Asus HyperX PCIe->4xm.2 adapter), and use a 1TB NVME m.2 disk for cache. Anyone have any idea what i could reasonably expect, performance wise from this setup? If reads/writes are as low as like 40MB/secs as i have heard, it will take literally forever to transfer my existing data (located across all the non 14TB disks mentioned), as it will saturate the cache very fast. And on another note, is GPU passthrough. I went from Xeon CPUs to that ryzen one, and had never before worried about PCIe lanes, but i apparently have to with the only 20 available on ryzen CPUs - I have read that it IS possible to pass through a GPU to a VM, even though its the only one in the system, that can be "released" by unRAID when bootup is completed, is that correct? There is no iGPU on the CPU, and with the Asus pcie x16 card to m.2, i will only be able to have 1 GPU, currently a 1050TI that will have to make do with a x4 interface so it is not possible to have multiple GPUs in the system. I hope someone has something to share on these things, and i wish everyone a nice evening :)