wsume99

You can find the forms here.

The rule of thumb related to cache drive size is that it should be large enough to handle the most data you would ever write to the array in a single day. If you try to write more data to the array than can fit on the cache drive you will eventually get a disk full error. Other than the first time you populate the array with data - which you should do before establishing parity BTW - I'd be surprised if you wrote more than 50-75GB of data to your array in a single day. But only you will know how much data you'll be writing. You can also partition your cache drive and use some of the space for installing apps like sabnzbd. You can basically use any old drive you have lying around for a cache drive. If you don't have anything already I'd suggest something in the range of 160-320 GB. 500Gb would probably be WAY more than you'd ever need. Just get whatever you can find the best deal on.

I would say they are going to perform pretty much the same. So the difference would be in cost and reliability/reputation. Right now I personally think the 5k3000 is the better of the two drives. Mainly just because I'm a little afraid to use the Samsung after the firmware problems they've had recently. They supposedly have it fixed but I'm staying away from Samsug for a while just in case.

I used to have a sempron 140 (45w) in my server and I ended up switching to an e5500 (65w) because it used less power at idle. My sempron & 3 green drives idled at about 70w but my e5500 & 3 green drives now idle at 40w. Check the forums but I believe that the AMD cool n' quiet drivers are not included in the unraid kernel. I believe that is why the sempron performed so poorly at idle. I think you can add the necessary files but I never got around to doing that because I got a supermicro C2SEE & e5500 for $85 and then used my sempron 140 and MB for a HTPC. Also I'd suggest getting a power measuring device (i.e. kill-a-watt) to see exactly how many watts you are using.

The parity drive is not any more important than any of the other drives. Having a 7200 rpm parity drive in an array with all green data drives is basically useless. You won't see much of a benefit until all the drives in your server are 7200 rpm. The best way to achieve maximum performance from your array is to use a 7200 rpm cache drive - all the others can be green drives.

Just pulled the trigger on two 5k3000 drives. Next up on my little tech shopping spree - should I get an SSD for my HTPC?

I just purchased a Zacate MB for my HTPC. Got the $25 off with my "new" account. Now I'm considering getting 2 of the 5k3000 drives. I don't really need the space but with the new user discount the drives would be $52.50 AR. That's a pretty good price for a 2TB drive. It would be a long time before I probably ever saw a deal like that again. Hmm...I need to think about this one a little more.

I received a new 2TB EARS about a month ago that did basically the same thing you are describing. The preclear would launch just fine and run for about 5 minutes at ~100 MB/s but then suddenly the preclear seemed to stop responding (i.e no updates were being posted to the screen). At first I thought it was a problem with the script because I was using a newly released version (shame on me for doubting Joe L). However after waiting about 20 minutes it finally updated and the read speed was really low, like ~3 MB/s. I checked the syslog and there were tons of read errors. I checked the connections, swapped cables, everything I could think of but each time I ran preclear on that drive it would bog down about 5 minutes into the process. After 4 or 5 preclear attempts I eventually RMA'd the drive.

I'm currently running SAB and Sickbeard on my desktop but I like the thought of having these apps run on my server then I would only need to run one machine 24/7. I'm wondering if running these apps on my server make it vulnerable to malware that could be imbeded in the files I'm downloading? There are a lot of posts about SAB on the forums but I don't see anyone talking about any additional risk to their server. Perhaps I'm missing something. Is this an issue I should be concerned about? If so, what precautions should I take to minimize the risk?

Would you please elaborate on what you mean by that statement? Do you mean that the drive would not complete a pre-clear cycle? Or do you mean that the drive did complete the preclear operation and you did not like the results that were displayed (i.e. read error rate, reallocated sectors, etc.)? This leads me to believe that it was the latter. Preclear is just a tool that you can use to evaluate the health/integrity of a HDD. And the important part is that this evaluation is independent of whatever OS you will be using the HDD in. Just because you installed a drive that showed "isues" in preclear into a windows system does not mean that the drive all of the sudden fixed itself. The drive only appears to be "working fine" because you aren't seeing the level of detail in windows that you got from the preclear results. I think the phrase "Ignorance is bliss" would be appropriate to describe this situation.

I would get the PWM fan and use the script from this post to control your fan speed based on the HDD temps in your array. I just started controlling my fans using this method it works very good. It's better than having the MB do it because the MB does not adjust the fan speed based on the HDD temps instead it uses some system temp on the MB.

Sweet. I'll update my script then. Thanks! I'm pretty sure it's a design characteristic of the fan itself. I've attached a copy of the 4-pin PWM specification from bubbaQ's post. Take a look at Section 3.4. Based upon what I've seen my fan is following the Type A Operation model. Ideally I'd like to have a Type B, but Type C would work. I'm not sure if the mfg actually specifies the Operation Below Minimum RPM model their product utilizes so I think you just have to try it and see.REV1_2_Public.pdf

I used the code from your post here and modified the user defined variables based on my system particulars. You can download a text version of my script here. Here is the sensors output for my fan... Aux Fan: 697 RPM (min = 712 RPM, div = ALARM Here is the output from the detailed correlation that pwmconfig generated... It appears that fan hwmon2/device/fan3_input is controlled by pwm hwmon2/device/pwm2 Would you like to generate a detailed correlation (y)? y PWM 255 FAN 1917 PWM 240 FAN 2109 PWM 225 FAN 1917 PWM 210 FAN 1917 PWM 195 FAN 1917 PWM 180 FAN 1757 PWM 165 FAN 1506 PWM 150 FAN 1506 PWM 135 FAN 1318 PWM 120 FAN 1240 PWM 105 FAN 1110 PWM 90 FAN 917 PWM 75 FAN 811 PWM 60 FAN 753 PWM 45 FAN 753 PWM 30 FAN 703 PWM 28 FAN 680 PWM 26 FAN 680 PWM 24 FAN 680 PWM 22 FAN 659 PWM 20 FAN 680 PWM 18 FAN 680 PWM 16 FAN 680 PWM 14 FAN 680 PWM 12 FAN 680 PWM 10 FAN 659 PWM 8 FAN 680 Based on that output I have my fan settings in the script set at - Fan low speed = 28, Fan high speed = 195, Fan off = 0. This post leads me to believe that the following command should stop the fan... echo 0 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon2/device/pwm2 I have tried that and I still get ~700rpm. So I'm wondering if the ability to stop is a characteristic of the fan itself?

Just curious why you chose that case. It only has 11 external 5.25" drive bays. Why not go with the Antec 1200? It has 12 external 5.25" bays so you could fit for of the 5-in-3 units in there.

I'm a little annoyed that I can't command the fan to zero RPM. When my server is sitting idle and all the disks are spun down I'd like to turn the fan off. I can't get the fan to spin any less than 700 rpm no matter what command I send. Perhaps this is a limitation of the fan I am using? Right now I'm using a COOLER MASTER R4-BMBS-20PK-R0 Blade Master 120mm Case Fan. I'm wondering if anyone else has a fan that they can command to zero rpm?

Ok, I'm making some progress here. I'm adding a little detail here to fill in the some of the blanks that were left out in a few of the previous posts that weren't so apparent to a noob like me. The filename of my script is unraid_fan_speed.sh. First I used the following command to get the text formatted correctly: fromdos <unraid_fan_speed.sh >tempfile mv tempfile unraid_fan_speed.sh Then I ran the script by simply typing unraid_fan_speed.sh at the prompt and got the following messages in my syslog: Mar 16 17:31:59 Tower root: fan_speed: Highest disk drive temp is: 32°C Mar 16 17:32:01 Tower root: fan_speed: Changing disk drive fan speed from: 24 (12%) to: 82 (42%) I'm currently running a parity check so after I noticed that the max drive temperature increased to 33C I ran it again. This time I got this message in my syslog: Mar 16 17:52:01 Tower logger: fan_speed: Highest disk drive temp is: 33°C Mar 16 17:52:01 Tower logger: fan_speed: Changing disk drive fan speed from: 82 (42%) to: 109 (55%) So everything with the script appears to be working just fine. Next step was to add this to crontab so that the script will run automatically every 2 minutes. To do this I used to following command: crontab -e */2 * * * * /boot/scripts/unraid_fan_speed.sh 1>/dev/null 2>&1 After that I checked to see what cron jobs were active by using the crontab -l command and the entry I just added was shown at the bottom. So it looks like the job was successfully loaded. I then checked my syslog and I found the following entries which had appeared after I loaded the script into crontab: Mar 16 20:04:02 Tower logger: fan_speed: Highest disk drive temp is: 34°C Mar 16 20:04:02 Tower logger: fan_speed: Changing disk drive fan speed from: 109 (55%) to: 136 (69%) Mar 16 20:16:02 Tower logger: fan_speed: Highest disk drive temp is: 33°C Mar 16 20:16:02 Tower logger: fan_speed: Changing disk drive fan speed from: 136 (69%) to: 109 (55%) Mar 16 20:20:02 Tower logger: fan_speed: Highest disk drive temp is: 32°C Mar 16 20:20:02 Tower logger: fan_speed: Changing disk drive fan speed from: 109 (55%) to: 82 (42%) These changes were done without me having to run the script manually. Yes!!! Finally I think this is working. Note: I removed a piece of tape that I had put over part of the front inlet of my case and that caused the temps to cool down pretty fast. Now if I understand this correctly all I need to do is add the following entry in my go file and it should automatically whenever I reboot the server. Correct? I guess I'll find out after my parity check is completed and I can reboot my server. chmod +x /boot/unraid_fan_speed.sh crontab -l >/tmp/crontab grep -q "unraid_fan_speed.sh" /tmp/crontab 1>/dev/null 2>&1 if [ "$?" = "1" ] then crontab -l | egrep -v "control unRAID fan speed based on temperature:|unraid_fan_speed.sh" >/tmp/crontab echo "#" >>/tmp/crontab echo "# control unRAID fan speed based on temperature" >>/tmp/crontab echo "*/2 * * * * /boot/unraid_fan_speed.sh 1>/dev/null 2>&1" >>/tmp/crontab cp /tmp/crontab /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root- crontab /tmp/crontab fi Thanks again to everyone for the helpful posts. Update: I just rebooted my server and verified that my script was properly loaded into crontab. Now if I can just find a fan that I can command to zero rpm.

Thanks for the reply Joe. I figured I was doing something wrong. I'll fix my file when I get home tonight and see if it works then.

Thanks for the response. Sorry if this is a stupid question but how do I do that? I'm editing the script in Windows Notepad. When I go to save the file there is a drop down labeled Encoding. Currently my script is marked ANSI. The other options are Unicode, Unicode big endian, and UTF-8. Are one of these other options equivalent to ASCII or should I be using a different editor?

I'm using the latest version of the code with my C2SEE MB but I'm having some problems. I can control my fan speeds just fine manually. echo 0 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon2/device/pwm2 --> fan does not stop but slows to its lowest speed (680rpm) echo 255 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon2/device/pwm2 --> fan runs at max speed (1900 rpm) I copied the latest version of the script and updated it based on my system. I've attached my version. The problem is that I've having trouble just running the script manually. Here is what I get when I invoke the script... root@Tower:/boot# sh unraid_fan_speed.sh : command not found: line 2: : command not found: line 7: : command not found: line 9: : command not found: line 13: : command not found: line 21: : command not found: line 27: ")syntax error: operand expected (error token is " I'm not linux savy so I'm really struggling with how to figure this one out. Hopefully someone can give it a look and give me some advice. In the meantime I'll be googling linux syntax trying to figure this out. unraid_fan_speed.txt

thing is, most of the market wont do any kind of testing. unraid is a small niche of people who will do that but most common people wont test the hard drive. most shops that will sell you a custom pc wont do any testing either. Also, fixing the drives might cost but, in the long run, replacing them could cost more (although i guess they estimate that). You're probably right. So the OEMs are really focused on making sure the drives is not DOA and also making sure it has enough spare sectors available so that the drive won't fail until it gets out of warranty.

I can't help but just be amazed at the poor quality of drives that are being shipped from OEMs. As long as they are all bad then I suppose it doesn't hurt any one of them too bad. Instead of fixing their drives (which would probably increase costs) the OEMs have just trained the market to do extensive testing on any new drive before using it.

Ok I am not linux savy so I need some help (aka hand holding). I have a C2SEE motherboard and 4-pin pwm fan connected. I ran pwmconfig and it was able to control my case fan. I had it perform a detailed correlation and it worked just fine. I can also control the speed by using the echo command... echo 0 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon2/device/pwm2 --> fan does not stop but slows to its lowest speed (680rpm) echo 255 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon2/device/pwm2 --> fan runs at max speed (1900 rpm) So at this point I'm assuming that means that all the drivers I need are already installed in the unRAID 4.7 kernel, correct? Thinking I was good to go I downloaded the unraid-fan-speed script and changed the user variables. I've attached my copy of the file. I then modified my go file to load the script into chrontab automatically. See attached. Rebooted my server and I got an error that says that sensors3.conf does not exist. I checked and it does not exist. I tried running sensors-detect and I basically get no response. I'm not really sure what that means. Perhaps I'm doing somethig wrong there. So I am not sure what to do at this point. Do I need a sensors.conf file for this to work properly? Any help would be appreciated. unraid_fan_speed.txt go.txt

^^Now that's funny.

I did not catch that info in your signature so I apologize to bw1 for being so harsh. Honestly, when I saw that response my initial thought was - oh man I hope this forum isn't turning sour. I appreciate the civility of the members on this forum. It is far better than any other that I have seen before and I hope it stays that way.

There's no such word as buyed. The past tense of the verb "buy" is "bought". http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/buy This has to be the most lame post I've ever seen. WTF man? This is a forum for discussing unRAID, not critiquing the use of the English language.