mani

No opinions ?

Hi I am revamping my old unRaid server and will be configuring as new with 8 3TB WD red drives and 2 SSDs for cache pool and load Unraid 6.5 . what is is the final consensus about preclear - is it still needed ? And if so what’s the best way to do it for multiple drives . If not preclear what is best option to stress test WD red drives thanks

My current Unraid server has six drives . I am running Supermicro server MB with Xeon processor and MB has 6 SATA ports . I don’t have a cache drive at present . I am thinking of adding LSI 9207-8i and have total of 10 drives in my server - 6 data drives , 1 warm spare and 1 parity and have 2 SSD’s as RAID 1 cache pool. On wiki it says this particular LSI card works OOTB and doesn’t need to be flashed . Can someone confirm please . I am planning on using WB Red drives and likely WD or Samsung 500GB SSD’s . I will be building the server as new with all new drives , so no migration ir restore is needed . Can someone recommend which drives should be attached to MB SATA ports and which ones to LSI? Will it make any difference thanks

Are you using ASRock H77-PRO4-MVP Motherboard ?? Thanks mani

Hi Everyone Is it possible to add same files in two different shares without writing them twice on the hard drives ? For example I want to add some movies (ISO) in " Movies" share and also want to make a separate share for HD movies and have the HD movies available in both " Movies" share and also in "HD"share. I would like to do it without using twice the disk space? How can it be achieved? I need to do above because of my multiroom setup and integration into control4 system besides being able to configure some of my other setups. Thanks Mani

- I have transferred 4 TB of data so far , all of it in user shares and I have consistently gotten 30-40 MB /s transfer speed. I dont really feel the need for cache drive as I leave the transfer at noght and it is done by morning. The preclear speed was 120MB/s at the beginning of the disk and 70 MB/s towards the end with 6 3 TB being precleared simultaneously.Parity checks is running between 120-125 MB/sec which I just started an hour ago..

Yes you are correct. You can run IPMI through dedicated LAN or over shared LAN. works flawlessly. I was even able to flash the new IPMI firmware on the motherboard through my desktop in the other room , over IPMI...

Sorry for the delayed response. I didnt login for few days. This is what I used http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139040 I used two of this kits- so total of 8 Gigs of RAM

running the new permissions utility solved the problem. I am good to go now Thanks

Here is another strange thing I just noticed. I can write to all the shares. And whatever I write to these shares with the new desktop ( same desktop but after re installing same windows) , I am able to access. All the content in shares that was written before I re installed the windows is giving me the - permission denied message??? Please any input??? When I right click in IE to see the properties of the folders in user shares- it says original owner not known and when I try to change owner to my current desktop name - it gives me access denied message. I guess I may have to change something in Share config file??? Thanks Mani

Hi everyone I had to re install windows 7 - 64 bit on my desktop, because system was hanging uyp and had slowed down over last couple of months. Unraid was working very well on the same desktop with same hardware with same windows OS , but after I reformatted the main drive and re installed the windows , I can see the "tower" in my network and when I click on it I can see all the folders / shares in the tower. I can open the "Flash" folder and access the files , but I cant access any files in the user shares. I get the messgae that " you dont have permission to access \tower\backup etc . And to contact your network administratot . I am logged in as administrator. Both Tower and desktop are on same workgroups. I have turned off the password protected file sharing in windows. I turned off all firewalls. I can connect to ReadyNAS on same network on same work group without any problems and access all shares. I also tried changing user chare option to local master , but it didnt help. The user share security is on "workgroup" . I am using version5 beta13 I also tried to map the user share a a local drive , but I get access denied notice. I have changed the worgroup names twice on both the Tower and PC but doesnt make any difference. The only difference is that now I am using IE9 and previously I was using Internet Explorer 8 . I dont know if that should make any difference? Any help will be appreciated Thanks Mani

I am using Cisco small business series switches an they LA in the management console

Any more luck with it...! Any one else has any experience with setting it up Thanks Mani

Hi everyone I just started transferring data to the new server: - MB: Supermicro x9SCMF - 8GB DDR3 Kingstone memory -Intel Xeon 3.2 GHZ processore - Hitachi 3TB drives ( 6) - using built in LAN port - Cisco small business SG200-26 switch During the preclear I was getting speeds 120-130 MB/sec towards the begininning of the disk and 70 MB/s towards the ends with all disks being precleared . Now while transferring the data from my desktop over the network- on Windows console I see the speed of 18 MB/sec. In unmenu the network performance varies between 5000 KB/s to 33000 KB/s as it refreshes every second . I am transferring 24 GB folder of pictures to "picture" share. Under disk performance on unmenu , it seems like data is being written on sda and sdb and the total speed varies between 30000 KB/s to 60000 KB/sec, divided half and half between two disks, so sda and sdb speeds vary 15000 to 30000 KB/s. I have intel PRO gigabit NIC which I used in my previous unraid tower. Do you think I will get better speeds with that? I was hoping to use both the Supermicro LAN ports once I have more clearer idea on how to do port bonding in unraid and on the switch? Thanks Mani

I justed posted my new server build in compulsive design thread . I pre cleared five 3TB drives simultaneously this week. The pre clear speeds were 120-130 Mb/sec at the beginning and towards the end of the drives they were around 70 Mb/s with five drives being pre cleared simultaneously. I just wanted to see if these speeds are what should be expected. I haven't started transferring the data to the tower yet. Thanks Mani

I finally finished my second tower . Here is the build: -Supermicro X9SCM-F-0 motherboard - Processor- Xeon GHZ quad core - DDR 8 GB unbufferred RAM - 6 Hitachi 3TB drives - V 5.0 Beta 13 - I know processor is an overkill, but I already had the processor , which I bought to built a windows based server and eventually changed my mind and decided to build my second tower as the first one was about 4-5 yrs old with 500 GB drives and was giving problems. It was a breeze to build it and fire it up. Everything worked like a charm the very first time. The Motherboard booted and recognized all the memory on first go. I booted it first time with v5.0 beta 13 with no problems at all and all the 3 TB drives were there on first boot. Preclear went well. Overall I am very happy the design. If anyone is thinking about this board , I will strongly encourage it . One major benefit I see is that it has embedded IPMI with KVM access. My tower will be in a separate small equipment room , where all my automation equipment and AV distribution and home network wiring is. So it is so handy to have access to the KVM and all the controls and BIOS remotely from any of my computers by just typing the IP address of the IPMI ethernet adapter , and that also worked like a charm the firt time with no problem and I was even able to update IPMI firmware remotely from the deskptop as well . SO I have a different IP addreses for IPMI and tower and you dont have to make any changes in unraid or your switch etc . It has 3 ethernet adapters - two gigabit LAN's and a dedicated IPMI LAN adapter. The only downside is that it has only 6 SATA ports , but I am upto 15TB already , so I dont see any need for more SATA connections at least in forseeable future, at which time I may get supermicro PCI card.

I think switch may be an issue , you will need managed switch where you can link/bond 2 ports

What switch are you using? Can you go to the management site of your switch and it should have an option for link aggregation pr bonding if it supports it? Mani

Any more luck??

Sweet... so at least my switches are good to go.... Do you know how to configure the unraid ? What commands to exactly type in the console? Do I confifure the ports on my switch before or after the unraid is configured? Somewhere in the link on release notes its says not to configure ports? Thanks Mani

I looked at the link in the release notes. I am not well versed with Linux and am not very clear how to make it work in unraid. I am also not clear about configuring the ports , because the link in release note says not to configure the two ports? Also I am not clear if the port bonding which the script does is same as link aggragation that I have in the configuration options for my switch. If anyone is using this successfully , please share the details...will appreciate it Thanks Mani

Hi I tried this and it worked. Right click on the disk in disk management ( it still had no drive letter or volume ) , and clicked on delete volume. Then refreshed the drives and right clicked and reformatted that drive in NTFS , took 2 minutes per drive. Thanks Mani

Hi I looked at the management interface of switch - there is link aggregation (LAG) which I believe is what you mean by port bonding . There are three sub headings to configure: - LAG management - LAG settings -LACP And this is what I see in 5. Beta13 release notes; Changes from 5.0-beta12a to 5.0-beta13 -------------------------------------- - linux: use kernel version 3.1.0 - linux: restore linux r8169 driver - linux: include 'bonding' module and '/sbin/ifenslave' command - netatalk: use version 2.2.1 - samba: use version 3.6.1 So I assume this bonding module is the one you were referring to., But how do I use this comand. What exactly do I need to do in unraid for it to be able to use both ethernet ports simultaneously.? Does anyone have any experience with these. I will like to give it a try Thanks Mani

How do I select the drive I want to clean , because it doesnt show any drive letter or volume in the disk management ?? Also can you please give the exact commands and sequence ...I am not that good at cmd Thanks Mani

Hi Everyone I just used preclear for the first time . Can some one please look at the syslog file . Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: General SMART Values: Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Offline data collection status: (0x82)^IOffline data collection activity Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^Iwas completed without error. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^IAuto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Self-test execution status: ( 0)^IThe previous self-test routine completed Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^Iwithout error or no self-test has ever Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^Ibeen run. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Total time to complete Offline Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: data collection: ^I^I ( 612) seconds. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Offline data collection Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: capabilities: ^I^I^I (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^IAuto Offline data collection on/off support. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^ISuspend Offline collection upon new Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^Icommand. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^IOffline surface scan supported. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^ISelf-test supported. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^IConveyance Self-test supported. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^ISelective Self-test supported. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: SMART capabilities: (0x0003)^ISaves SMART data before entering Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^Ipower-saving mode. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^ISupports SMART auto save timer. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Error logging capability: (0x01)^IError logging supported. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^IGeneral Purpose Logging supported. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Short self-test routine Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: recommended polling time: ^I ( 1) minutes. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Extended self-test routine Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: recommended polling time: ^I ( 255) minutes. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Conveyance self-test routine Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: recommended polling time: ^I ( 2) minutes. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: SCT capabilities: ^I (0x30b7)^ISCT Status supported. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^ISCT Feature Control supported. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ^I^I^I^I^ISCT Data Table supported. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 108 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 16012712 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 093 093 000 Pre-fail Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 13 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 061 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 1565312 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 29 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 13 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 183 Runtime_Bad_Block 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 184 End-to-End_Error 0x0032 100 100 099 Old_age Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 188 Command_Timeout 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 069 069 045 Old_age Always - 31 (Min/Max 29/31) Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 8 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 13 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 031 040 000 Old_age Always - 31 (0 24 0 0) Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 036 016 000 Old_age Always - 16012712 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 110500918591518 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 3645151637 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 3315528952 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: SMART Error Log Version: 1 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: No Errors Logged Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: No self-tests have been logged. [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t] Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1 Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 1 0 0 Not_testing Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 2 0 0 Not_testing Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 3 0 0 Not_testing Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 4 0 0 Not_testing Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: 5 0 0 Not_testing Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: Selective self-test flags (0x0): Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk. Nov 16 09:54:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[29415]: If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.