MurrayW

Is this one 4 TB drive, two 2 TB or some other combination of multiple drives?

That's it. Just assign it, then start the array. Thanks...everything is back to normal now with the new drive.

When I stop the array it is available for assignment and lists the model/serial numbers. Do I just assign it and then the array will rebuild and incorporate it with the other disks? Or is there another step to get it into the array? thanks,Murray

I ran pre-clear on a new 2TB drive 3x and it was successful (no errors). I restarted my server with the new disk (same size as the old disk) in the same location (disk 6). The main page shows this disk as not installed. Where do I go from here to add this disk to the array? Disk 6 is showing up as not installed. thanks, Murray

I opened up my server and all the disks that are missing/not installed are on the same icy dock 5/3 tray. These 5 disks are connected to 5 of the motherboard SATA connectors. The other 5 disks that are showing green are in a second 5/3 tray with one SATA connection from the motherboard and the other 4 from two SATA pci cards. I disconnected the drive that was originally the only red drive and booted the server and now all the drives that are connected show as green (just like I originally saw before my first reboot that made the others go red). Would one bad disk when connected within a 5/3 tray make the other 4 disks connected in that 5/3 tray show as Missing? So it appears to me that I have a bad disk and I need to follow the procedures for replacing a bad disk. Does that seem logical?

I'm going to open my server up and dig into it this weekend. Can I cause any irreversible problems in troubleshooting by swapping out cables, disk controllers, drive bays among the disks that show up and those that are missing? thanks, Murray As long as you do not connect a data disk in place of your parity disk your data should be OK. Just be careful... ground yourself so you don't zap any electronics. (purchase an electrostatic wrist strap ... and use it) Unplug the server so you don't electrocute yourself. (unlikely, but good advice regardless...) Make a copy of your disk assignments page so you'll know how you had them connected. Make a copy of your config folder, so we can help you regroup if needed. To make it easier on yourself, make the copy with the array stopped. Joe L. Sorry for asking so many questions. I searched but probably did not have the correct search terms. How do I make a copy of my config folder? And is the first screen shot I posted in this thread the disk assignments page? thanks, Murray

I'm going to open my server up and dig into it this weekend. Can I cause any irreversible problems in troubleshooting by swapping out cables, disk controllers, drive bays among the disks that show up and those that are missing? thanks, Murray As long as you do not connect a data disk in place of your parity disk your data should be OK. Just be careful... ground yourself so you don't zap any electronics. (purchase an electrostatic wrist strap ... and use it) Unplug the server so you don't electrocute yourself. (unlikely, but good advice regardless...) Make a copy of your disk assignments page so you'll know how you had them connected. Make a copy of your config folder, so we can help you regroup if needed. To make it easier on yourself, make the copy with the array stopped. Joe L. Thanks Joe. I thought I would start out with the unraid flash drive unplugged and just work in the bios to see if swapping cables/etc. made a difference on which disks were detected. I'll make copies of the two items you suggested above. So how exactly do I prevent connecting a data disk in place of my parity disk? Does that mean if my parity disk is now connected to SATA controller 1, that I leave that connection alone when doing the troubleshooting?

I'm going to open my server up and dig into it this weekend. Can I cause any irreversible problems in troubleshooting by swapping out cables, disk controllers, drive bays among the disks that show up and those that are missing? thanks, Murray

When you say reboot, it implies a powered restart. Have you totally shut down and powered off? Actually I did it both ways. The first time a reboot. The second time I powered it off, reseated all my drives in the drive cages then powered it back on.

I had already rebooted the server (twice) last night before I got the initial log. Attached is the log from a few minutes ago after the two reboots last night. The reboots did not bring the missing drives back online. After the first reboot was when disks 4,5, and 7 went from flashing green to red and "missing". An yes, I know about the UPS...the most embarrassing thing is that I have one sitting right next to the server but had never shut down the server to connect it to the UPS! thanks for your help, Murray syslog.txt

I have been running 4.7 for more than 6 months without any problems and I haven't added any disks since I started. Last night I went to a folder on the unraid server to find a file and the folder structure was all there, but all the folders except the Movies folder were empty. The Movies folder was never assigned to all the disks in the array. I logged on via the web interface and all disks were flashing green except for disk 6 which was red. We had a storm a few days ago when we lost power and the server rebooted (yeah I know I should have had it connected to a UPS). When I saw this red disk, I rebooted the server in hopes that it would magically come back on line with a reboot. After the reboot, disk 4,5 and 7 now show as missing and 6 (the original red disk) shows as not installed. The other disks are blinking green. What should I try to get the array back up and running? thanks, Murray

OK, I now understand! Thanks for the clarification. Murray

I had read that when I set up my shares, but I guess I still don't understand it. I understand why my 750GB or the two 1TB drives were not used, but why did it write movies only on disk 4 and disk 5 and leave my other three 2TB drives alone? It seems to me that it would either write all the movies to one drive (< 1TB total needed) or spread them out among the five 2TB drives. Sorry for asking so many questions, but something isn't clicking for me. thanks, Murray

My guess is that everything you've written to the unRAID array was stored on the disk with the "write" activity. The 50-60 writes is quite normal for just mounting the drives. Yes, you do need to format the cache drive before it will be used. You also need to enable it on each of your user-shares you wish to utilize it. I have set up several user shares, most of them using split level 1 and all using high-water. Data was only written to 2 disks (disk 4 and disk 5). Disk 4 with low writes has ~700GB used and disk 5 with the larger number of writes has around 350GB used. If I shouldn't worry about the difference, then I won't. I was wondering why only disk 4 and 5 were used when I moved files onto the array. One of my shares is Movies using split level 1 across all disks. I have around 40 folders that contain the individual movies. My understanding was that using a split level 1 and high-water, movie 1 would go to disk 1, move 2 to disk 2, ... movie 9 to disk 1, etc. instead of all the movies going to disk 4 and 5. I'll format my cache drive. I had enabled it but forgot to format it. thanks, Murray

One other question. My cache drive is unformatted. Do I need to format it in order to use it?

I just put my unraid server together, copied over some data and on all of my data disks except 1 I have 50-60 writes. My 2TB WD Eads drive has 19,456 writes. Do I need to run WDIDLE3 on it? Should I be worried about it? I precleared each drive 3x before using them and all the 2TB drives were brand new, never used before. The 1TB and 750 GB drives had been used as external drives for my DirecTV DVR's before I precleared them. thanks, Murray

Thanks everyone for all your help. I understand it now.

So if I create the sub folders with windows under Music, then anything moved to the MP3s or CD's sub folders will be split across the disks that I have defined for the Music share? I guess I am still confused with the different split levels. thanks, Murray

I have read through the wiki and posts on the forum and still don't understand how to do this. I want to create a user share called Music and have sub-directories of MP3s and CDs under Music. I created the user share called Music using split level 1. Then I created shares for MP3s and CDs using split level 2. How do associate these two sub directories with Music vs. another one of my split level 1 user shares such as Backups? thanks, Murray

I haven't added it yet, so I don't know if I have problems. It passed 3 preclears.

First, download this program. http://www.hiren.info/download/freeware-tools/USBFormat.zip Then, you'll need the DOS startup files from here. I think all of them will work. Just move the Samsung flashing utility onto the disk in the root folder. http://www.allbootdisks.com/disk_contents/download/dos.html For some reason I am having a problem creating the bootable usb drive. I downloaded the USBFormat tool and went to allbootdisks to download a dos version...I tried several versions. When I downloaded the 15 or so files that were under each version, I was able to save all the files directly from allbootdisks except for the .sys files. When I clicked on these, they opened the file rather than giving me the option to save the downloaded file. When the file opened, I copied all the contents into notepad++ and saved (using "all file types") as the same name that it was on allbootdisks. Then I used the USBFormat program selecting the location where I had saved the downloaded files to create the USB dos startup disk. When trying to reboot off of the usb disk, I got an error stating that it wasn't bootable or something like that. Can anyone give me any pointers on what I am doing wrong? Also, I have a few additional questions. 1. My samsung drive is an F3 not an F4 drive. Does this current problem only affect F4's? I thought I would go ahead and try to flash my F3 with the newest F3 firmware regardless. 2. Do I need all 15 files from the allbootdisk location for each version of dos? Only three files, COMMAND.com, IO.sys and MSDOS.sys, were copied to the USB drive using USBFormat. thanks, Murray

Everything you ever need to know about HTPC's. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=19553212#post19553212

Sent you an email.

$50 with free shipping to the US. I have had this card for several years and used in a traditional hardware RAID system. When I moved to UNRAID, I changed motherboards and no longer need this card. Rajahal was very kind to thoroughly test this card for UNRAID compatabilty. See his extensive write-up here: http://www.greenleaf-technology.com/Blogs/BlogSoftwareAndHardware/index.php?id=944507679992677930 Here's his conclusion: PM me if you are interested. thanks, Murray

I have seven 250 GB WD Caviar SATA drives. I took them out of my previous hardware raid system and replaced them with larger drives for my UNRAID server. I ran the WD short SMART tests on all of them and the long test on one of them. I had been planning to put them on eBay but have been busy the past month and not had a chance to do that. When I get home tonight I'll check the exact model numbers and rpm's (pretty certain that they are 7200). If interested, I can email you the results of the SMART tests. Since I was planning to try to sell them on eBay, I would want to sell these rather than donating them. Looking at the WD 250 GB drives that have sold on eBay recently, the majority of them seem to be going for $20-30 with shipping. http://completed.shop.ebay.com/Internal-Desktop-/56083/i.html?LH_Complete=1&LH_ItemCondition=12&_trkparms=65%253A16%257C66%253A2%257C39%253A1&rt=nc&_nkw=western+digital+250+sata&_catref=1&_sc=1&_sticky=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_sop=15&_sc=1. Shipping them all at once to the same person and being able to help out the UNRAID community would be pluses for me also. Let me know if you are intersted. thanks, Murray