senrab

Thanks for the help guys! Sorry, forgot to mention. One of the 3TB drives is the parity drive. Thanks again for the info!

Hey everyone, I've been running Unraid with 3 drives for about a year now and I have been loving it. Recently I filled my server up(about 8 gigs of free space). I want to pay for the upgrade and add a 4th hard drive to my array. I currently have 2 3TB's and 1 2TB. I plan on adding another 3TB drive and paying for the upgrade. Is there any documentation on how to make this change? Will I have to move everything off my server before I do the upgrade? Any info would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for the help.

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't trying to over think anything. I was just wondering how I can get certain folders to have everything on the same disk. I have some software install folders that contain a lot of files and I think it would just make sense for them to be on the same disk. That way if I ever have any serious problems(knock on wood), I won't lose some of those files on a failed drive. After a lot of reading I now understand that if I just map to the disk share and copy things that way it will all be on the same drive. I will be doing that for certain things now. I don't really care if my movies and tv shows are on different disks. Thanks again for all the help!

Well that's kind of where I'm stuck. I would like to just give my wife access to her share and she can copy things over the unraid server. Does it really matter if the files are on the same disks? Thanks!

OK I have all of my movies and TV shows copied to my unraid server and now it is time to add documents, music and stuff like that. I am wondering what allocation method and split level I should use to set this up with. Sometimes there can be several folders and files inside of a root folder. Is it possible to have all of these types of files on the same disk? Example: I created a share for my wife using her name and she wants to put all of her pics, documents and music on the unraid server. Thanks for the help!

Thanks for all the help!

Thanks for the help. My movies are all MKV files. Most of the time there is only the one files in each folder but sometimes it does have additional files. I have already copied a lot of movies over. Can I change the split level now? or will that screw things up? Thanks again!

If you've never run preclear on your drives I would suggest running it on all of them. From what I've read its recommended to do it on all of the drives before adding it to the array. Note: It did take approx 30 hours for my 3TB drives and just a little under for my 3TB drive. You can however run the preclear script on different drives at the same time to save some time.

I'm not an expert by any means but did you 'preclear' the new drive that you wanted to use as your parity? I'm pretty sure I read that you need to run 'preclear' first to zero the drive before adding it to your array. I could be wrong but just a thought.

K I think I have it figured out. I set a share called 'Movies': Allocation method: High-Water(was default so left it) Min.Free space: 0(default so left it) Split level:blank Included disk(s): disk1 disk2 Excluded disk(s): blank Share empty?: No Does this look right? K so when I map to the 'movies' share and copy movies to it, will it put the data on both discs? Is that how this works? Sorry for the questions and thanks for the help!

OK I have the drives formatted and it appears that everything is ready to go(I think..lol) I want to add shares to my two drives that I have for data(1x2TB and 1x3TB). I've read the wiki and I'm a little confused on how to do this. I will be putting a lot of HD movies on these drives, music, software and well anything else I want safe. What is the best way to set this up? Thanks for the help(again!!)

Thank you!

Hey everyone! OK I have finished preclearing my drives 2x3TB WD Red's and 1x2TB WD Green. I have added one of the 3TB's and the 2TB to the array so I can bring my data over(I read to do the parity drive last because it can take a long time to transfer things while there is a parity drive active). First: The two drives that I added both say unformatted. Do I still need to format them even after I successfully ran preclear? Second: I'm trying to set up shares but can't get it working. I'm assuming it is because my drives are not formatted. Is this correct? Thanks!

No, it indicates that one of the disks was > 2.2TB and the other <=2.2TB You might want to convert the WD green to start on sector 64 though, as that may be a tiny bit better. preclear_disk.sh -C 64 /dev/sdX (where sdX = the three letter drive designation for your drive) Conversion of a precleared drive only takes a few seconds. (you can only convert it if it still has a pre-clear signature) You should set the default on unRAID to MBR-4k-alligned so future drives under 2.2T will automatically get formatted starting on sector 64. There is no reason to be concerned. Joe L. Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it!

Hey everyone, I just have a quick question about Preclear. When it finished clearing the drives (One was a WD Red 3TB and the other was a WD Green 2TB), the 3TB drive had a starting sector of 1 and the green had a starting sector of 63. What does this mean and should I be concerned? I would like to start up the array today and begin copying my data over to the unraid server. Thanks for the help!

Wow ya I'm an idiot. I installed Unmenu but forgot to run it. Thanks for the help!!

Thanks. These are the instructions I was referring to that say you install screen from the web browser using 'Pkg Manager'(which doesn't exist).

Hey everyone, I'm just looking around on how to install screen on unraid 5.0-rc12a. The instructions on the wiki say I need to do it from another computer using the browser. It says to select 'Pkg Manage'. I don't see it. I've also done a lot of digging around and from what I've read(I think) that you have to do it from the command now in version 5. Is that correct? Is there a step by step instructions somewhere? I've found this: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=15707.0 But I'm not quite sure how to follow it correctly. Sorry if this question has been asked before.

I must have missed that part. Pressing CTRL c did give me the ability to type a new command. So I wonder if the first drive I started to preclear was canceled. The second drive is still going. Is there a way to check? Thanks! Ctrl+C is the standard unix command to abort the current task so if you had a preclear running in a normal terminal session that would kill it. That would explain it. Damn! I guess I have to wait even longer to get these drives precleared! Thanks for the help!

I must have missed that part. Pressing CTRL c did give me the ability to type a new command. So I wonder if the first drive I started to preclear was canceled. The second drive is still going. Is there a way to check? Thanks!

Thanks for the info. I have the drives currently preclearing. I used 'Ctrl+A c' to get to a new screen to get the second drive going, but how do I check on the first drive? I tried 'CTRL+A n' and Ctrl+A p' to switch screens but it does nothing. I'm using the latest download of Unraid. Is the command different in the latest version? Thanks!

If you do not do it beforehand then it will get done when you add drives to the array which can mean the array not available for use for a long time (hours/days). Adding pre_cleared disks to an existing array means the array is only unavailable for a minute or so. Thanks for the help guys! Well I won't have an array when I first build this so I will just go ahead and pre_clear them before I set the array up.

Hey everyone, I finally received all my computer parts to begin my build for my unraid box. I've done a lot of reading and I think I understand most of what I need to get the system up and running. I do just have a couple of questions though about pre-clearing the drives. Do I need to specify either "-a" or "-A" when I run preclear_disk.sh? I'm going to be putting 2X3TB WD Reds in the system(brand new) and 1X2TB WD Green(used) into the tower to start. What is the recommendation for this? From what I read it sounds like pre-clearing the drives is necessary but do I really have to do it? Thanks for the help!

I ended up getting the i3-3220. I got a bit of a combo deal when buying the board. I figure I'll eventually start doing stuff with plugins so this system should do the job for awhile. I plan on starting with 3 drives (2X3TB and one 2TB) and I will add drives as I can afford them. By the time I use up all 8 sata ports on this drive I will likely be building a new system.

I went ahead and ordered the 2/2gigs(before I read your post) so don't think I can change that now. I kind of wish I waited. lol.. da well... I'm sure 4gigs will do the trick for me for awhile. For starters I just want to back things up and stream. As I get comfortable with unraid I will try to do other things with it.