BobPhoenix

Sounds like Windows is scanning the folder for thumbnails and such but with the IP address it isn't. Of course if you used the IP immediately after using the name the contents were cached on your windows box and that is why it was instant. As confirmation wait a while or browse lots of other directories so that the cached info is discarded then use the IP first. Is it still instant? If so then windows is setup not to scan with an IP address but is with a name. Interested to know as I will have to try it myself when I get home.

I chose 16GB because once I switch from ESXi to unRAID/Xen that is what my 3 main servers will contain. Currently in ESXi I only have 2GB assigned to the unRAID VMs and would be all I would use if I continue with ESXi. I do have a N40L server with 4GB and a N54L server with 8GB running unRAID as well as my 6.0b5a server with 8GB and a 2GB WHS2011 VM and 2GB miscellaneous other VMs that are usually shutdown so far.

I use the instructions for upgrading at the bottom of this post http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=26774.msg234516#msg234516

600GB cache drive that show HPA in myMain: root@Media3:~# hdparm -N /dev/sdj /dev/sdj: max sectors = 1172123568/1172123568, HPA is disabled Not really a "larger" drive but I thought I would post anyway.

Import is to import an appliance. You would just setup a new VM and "use existing disk" for the storage to access an existing .vdi file.

Have you tried replacing the network cable, switch or port? I ask only because that has worked for me when I was getting bad transfer speeds. I had a bad switch. It was reduced to 100 instead of 1000. I usually get 30MBs when I write to my array on my N54L. Faster when using a cache drive.

That would be the way I would test it. There are the performance scripts in another post/thread on the forums that might be even better but I've never used them.

If you are using the ODD or eSata ports it is a requirement if you want full speed parity checks.

Username: admin Password: admin AWESOME! Thank you! up and running. Time to play around and see if I cant get this server imported. And now that you have it running you don't need this info but I just setup my VMs using VBoxManage and the command line. So didn't need a web server or phpvirtualbox. I do use this plugin to start and stop the VMs.

Very nice guide. Thank you. I will have to look into doing this. For the quote above: If I had to guess I would say you are using pass through on your unRAID VM. Probably for your HDD controller. Your other VMs that work you probably don't have pass through on PCI/PCIe cards. The documentation for pass through and personal experience with pass through leads me to this conclusion since my Windows VMs that I pass through tuner cards are not snapshot-able either - the option is greyed out in the GUI client. But other VMs where I have no pass through PCI/PCIe devices the snapshot option is available in the GUI client.

If you didn't use the following command to load Midnight Commander you might try it this way next time before you use MC to move/copy files from your USB drive. sudo -u nobody mc

Is it normal for the Post Read on all his drives to be nearly half the Preread and Zeroing speeds? Yes. Always has been for me anyway.

Or possibly an older Lian Li, they had several options in the past to support large amounts of drives. I guess I got my d8000 at the right time. I have some Lian Li V2000 cases they support 12 drives out of box. Add 2 5in3 cages to up the total to 22 drives. If you add a Double Twin in the top 5 and 1/4 drive bay to up it to 24 drives. You could also add an additional 5-6 drives above the power supply if you can attach them together to up the total another 5-6 drives. Unfortunately they are not sold any more.

anyone Looks fine.

Yes it would be harder to RDM a drive in Windows since I don't know of a way to map it by ID rather than by location. I only use Virtual HDD on VBOX on a Windows host because of that. The only reason I have it is because I have to reset the snapshot of the Windows VM (on Windows host) every 30-60 days. On my N54L unRAID server since I can map by ID I have no problems using RDM for drives. A thought I just had but no way to test it out is to try the same Windows command with the GUID of the HDD from device manager instead of PhysicalDriveX. Most likely it will just generate a syntax error from VBoxManage but if I get an opportunity I will try it and see if it is possible. That should make the mappings in Windows as robust as Linux - if it works. As I suspected it doesn't work with an ID on Windows.

I'm still on 1.13 and it preclears 3TB Reds just fine. I've done about 20 of them many times. I do plan on updating to 1.14 just forgot it was available

Yes it would be harder to RDM a drive in Windows since I don't know of a way to map it by ID rather than by location. I only use Virtual HDD on VBOX on a Windows host because of that. The only reason I have it is because I have to reset the snapshot of the Windows VM (on Windows host) every 30-60 days. On my N54L unRAID server since I can map by ID I have no problems using RDM for drives. A thought I just had but no way to test it out is to try the same Windows command with the GUID of the HDD from device manager instead of PhysicalDriveX. Most likely it will just generate a syntax error from VBoxManage but if I get an opportunity I will try it and see if it is possible. That should make the mappings in Windows as robust as Linux - if it works.

Yes but not with VirtualBox. I moved an existing unRAID install to an ESXi VM all data was maintained. I have setup a NEW unRAID VM in VirtualBox that I was experimenting clearing a USB HDD. In the end it didn't work because the drive was overheating. In ESXi and Linux based VirtualBox you can pass through the controller to the VM so that everything on the controller is directly controlled by the VM. Also this allows you to spin down the drives and get drive temperatures in unRAID. Something that isn't possible (at least with VirtualBox anyway) when RDM'ing a drive. Virtualizing unRAID is very easy. In the link in my prior post for the Windows Host two methods are explained in later posts in the thread. Now transferring Windows to a VM is harder since when Windows installs it installs a hal.dll file that my not be the same when you virtualize it. I have used Acronis True Image to transfer to a VM before since with the plus pack you get a universal restore feature that works some of the time. There are also guides on the VirtualBox web pages to doing this transfer for a Windows VM.

Works great. I have done it (RDM) in both Windows host and unRAID host. You have to use the command line tools to do the RDM of drives in VirtualBox. Also that is the ONLY way to get the raw drive to the VM on a Windows HOST since pass through of PCIe devices only works on Linux host. It doesn't work and isn't available on a Windows host. I'm at work so I don't have the syntax handy but I will search my previous posts as I know I put it on the forums here for both types of hosts. Edit found the posts: This post is where I explained how I was preclearing a USB HDD on Windows host. Other users ideas follow using the same VBoxManage commands later in the thread. On unRAID host look at the attached files in this post for example in unRAID. Specifically the file SetupHomeSrvRawDisks.sh.txt

I use RDP to connect both directly to the Windows VM and to the VRDP console that VBOX provides. For instance to connect to my "Online" VM I can use N54L:5003 as the computer name in a Windows RDP connection dialog since I have the "Online" VRDP port setting to 5003 and it is installed on my unRAID server named N54L (which is on my N54L). I have the authorization setup to default which lets anything through so I can use ANY userid to connect. I like it better than VNC because I'm already using RDP to connect directly to Windows VMs on my N54L and other ESXi Windows guests. It is a smoother experience then the VNC clients I have one of which is Ultra but is a couple of years old now.

That is precisely why I have Raptors for my ESXi datastore drives on my ESXi servers. I don't have to worry about an early death for the drives because ESXi doesn't support trim on a datastore drive (might in 5.5 but didn't in 4.1 or 5.0). I do use SSD on my laptop and HTPC computers since they have Windows which supports trim. I use VirtualBox on my N54L since it is so much smaller and possibly/probably doesn't support AMD-V.

Yes an SSD is not required that was just the guide to format and mount a drive external to the array I would recomend following since it uses disk ID rather than SDA, SDB, SDC, etc... in the mount commands. You are not guarantied to have the same letter on a drive each time unRAID boots so just like unRAID you would need to mount by ID. You would probably be able to copy from one disk to another and get it to work. However the VirtualBox configuration could cause problems since pointers to locations can hang around. If you update the default folder for your machines and each VM it will probably work just fine. If you are unable to get it working you might have to nuke and pave your VM setup and just save any virtual HDDs you have setup for your VMs. Then setup VirtualBox and the VMs completely by scratch again using ONLY the virtual HDDs. If that actually happens and you can't figure out what to do I would ask again. I could post what procedure I've followed before but there are probably better ways to go about it. Cloning works but if I remember correctly you might have to reactivate a Windows VM as the disk signature and definitely the machine signature would change even with my procedure. However both signatures could be updated to the old values so you might be able to get it copied without a reactivation required.

Putting your VM HDDs on a parity protected drive will work but will have a much lower access speed because of the writes being slower on an unRAID protected array. You could solve this with a cache drive but for the Free version you would want a drive mounted outside of unRAID control. jumperalex outlines how to create and mount a SSD this way in this post.

Me too. I ran 12 disks at 60c during a parity check when a fan died and the drives have problems now with smart errors and just general drive slowness (i.e. I doubled the time required for the drives to complete a parity check). I have now replaced all of those drives and just use them for off line backups. I prefer to keep my drives in the 30s if at all possible.

Your link show a modified box as in metal has been removed. There are ways to do it without doing that. You could get a Double Twin to increase the drive count to 6 drives. The Double Twin is mounted in the optical drive bay instead of a CD/DVD drive. You could also use a 4 x 1 or 6 x 1 2.5 drive cage to go to up to 10 drives. This also mounts in the optical drive bay. You could expand it even farther by putting more 2.5 laptop drives under the optical drive bay. I've had up to 4 underneath it working. You could also update the bios to the custom bios to get the eSata port to work as a port multiplier and get an external drive cage. Going more than 6 drives will require the purchase of a controller but 6 drives could be done with just the eSata and optical drive sata ports if need be.