tillkrueger

yes, indeed. when you instruct "Check that there's enough free space on the array and invoke the mover by clicking "Move Now" on the Main page"... I clicked the "Move Now" button in the Array Operation tab of the Main page, but it appears as if nothing is happening.

when u describe it like that, nuhull, I wonder whether I messed up when first assigning the SSD to the cache pool (this is my first time of using a cache drive)...my (probably wrong) assumption was that cache drives are not really part of the array in the sense that they are not striped/protected and work as individual entities...that they are quicker in part because they aren't subject to the RAID5 calculation...so when you say "I let parity" run, I must say that I didn't even pay attention whether there were any parity operations that were starting or happening when I added the SSD, created a second cache slot in the WebGUI, added the SSD to the second slot and then removed it again...not sure exactly what/why I did there, but I have a feeling that I messed with the partition table of the SSD right there. I also didn't check whether/when the "format" button was grayed out or not after I first started the array again. jb, I was looking at the attached screen when determining that it is shown as "sdl"...am I not interpreting this correctly? one way or another, these are the most recent diags.

~ sigh ~ root@unRAID:/# wipefs -a /dev/sdl1 wipefs: error: /dev/sdl1: probing initialization failed: Device or resource busy I tried while mounted and unmounted. does the array need to be stopped? I mean, this SSD is outside of the array, so...

amazing, the things you know, jb. I had hoped to not have to go back to the physical location the server is hosted at, but I guess it will be necessary. when you say "for best performance", how much additional performance are we talking about? 10% 30% 50% 100%? since the difference between a hard drive and this SSD will likely be quite noticeable, no matter what, how would I go about pre-clearing it remotely until I get physical access to it again to connect it to one of the on-board ports?

unmounted it, re-executed the command, same error.

do I need to unmount it before executing this command?

thanks. ok, so it is "sdl". but then I get this: root@unRAID:/# blkdiscard /dev/sdl blkdiscard: /dev/sdl: BLKDISCARD ioctl failed: Remote I/O error

and what's the quickest way to determine which of the many sdx's in /dev is the ssd?

in which place do I have to be in order to execute this command? if I execute it from inside the SSD, I get "blkdiscard /dev/sdX blkdiscard: cannot open /dev/sdX: No such file or directory" sorry I'm so inept with this, jb, and thanks for your help!

I *tried* to swap out my hd cache for an SSD, but failed miserably, as chronicled in this thread...hoping to get there soon, though.

great info/instructions, but since my SSD shows as essentially 100% full right now (even though there are no files on it, when looking at it via FTP or Krusader), I will first need to find a way to wipe it and make it "like new" again...how do I do that?

so since I am pushing my old unRAID system to the edge by trying to run a Windows 10 VM on it (I upgraded the CPU to a Q9550 and am trying to upgrade the RAM from 4GB to the max 8GB if I can figure out how to upgrade the BIOS and hopefully get it to see the other 4GB), the speed of the VM is mostly held back by residing on the cache hard disk of my array. so I ordered a 525GB Crucial SSD with the goal to swap out the 3TB cache drive for the SSD...the cache drive now holds a total of about 300GB, so the SSD is petty big for that, even though only the Windows 10 VM really needs to reside on it, which is 80GB, and the rest I could move to disk 1 of my array. when I went to the physical location of the server today, I was so confused about how to properly add the SSD to unRAID (outside of the array), copy the most important files from the cache drive to the SSD and then swap out the cache drive for the SSD, that I did all the wrong things (please try not to judge me for what I tried): - I first stopped the array - then I plugged in the SSD to the connectors that used to go to drive11 (I have reduced my array down to 10 drives in the past few weeks) - then I tried to format the SSD via UDEV (but the "Format" button was grayed out") - (this is where I went crazy) then I added a second slot to the cache and assigned the SSD to it and started the array again (got an error about too many cache profiles) - stopped the array, unassigned the SSD from the cache pool, deleted the second slot - the SSD now shows as btrfs and having only 2GB available - ssh'd into the /mnt folder and tried to parted the SSD drive in hope of formatting it, but got these errors: warning: Unable to open /mnt/disks/Crucial_CT525MX300SSD1_174819E3876C read-write (Is a directory). /mnt/disks/Crucial_CT525MX300SSD1_174819E3876C has been opened read-only. Error: The device /mnt/disks/Crucial_CT525MX300SSD1_174819E3876C is so small that it cannot possibly store a file system or partition table. Perhaps you selected the wrong device? needless to say that I have no idea what I am doing and need help formatting the drive, copying the most relevant files from the current cache drive to it, and then assigning it as cache, instead of the current 3TB spinner, then re-linking the vdisk of my Windows 10 VM to it (if that is even necessary if the directory structure on it is the same as on the 3TB drive I use at the moment). if my old father called me with something like this, I would ask him "you did *what*?!"...so yeah, I know that was a pretty weak attempt at implementing an SSD into my system and swapping it for the current ache drive.

I need to access the cache because my domains and isos folders reside on it...I tried to get a small speed advantage over storing the VM's on an array disk...is there an inherent problem with putting VM's on the cache device? I tried to swap the spinner cache for an SSD today, but failed miserably for reasons I'll have to try to figure out in another thread :-/

according to this thread, it seems that my Network setup for the VM itself needs to be modified (to create the correct bridge)...will have to see whether I can kludge myself through that next time I shut down the VM. in the meantime, I mapped one of the drive letters to //172.25.123.123/unRAID and another drive letter to //172.25.123.123/cache to get direct access to the two most important user shares...but I wasn't successful trying to set up a drive letter to link to the root of my unRAID system, so that I could access *everything* from there, including all my disk shares, which - in theory - I could map to additional drive letters, but what I *really* need to do is to get the network bridging to work correctly, so that my unRAID appears as a proper server in my Windows network.

Well, I got the proper IP numbers from my friend's IT guy, entered them, Windows alerted me of one problem and actually fixed it (DHCP needed to be enabled), and my Windows 10 VM seems to now be pretty happy, basic as it is...but I still can't see my unRAID shares...with file sharing enabled and firewall off, what can I check next in troubleshooting this? should I start a new thread for that?

I feel your pain, BobPhoenix...Windows is...well, Windows...it took me 3 years to completely banish all remnants of Windows from my business when I switched it over to an all-Mac workflow (being a Design/Audio/Video production facility, it was the best solution, with only an SGI Onyx for VRML and a DEC machine for Lightwave 3D as non-Mac machines). For my unRAID system, I will tolerate Windows as a desktop environment until I muster up the courage to try following the instruction video that shows how to get a macOS desktop working...although I suspect that it will have to wait until *after* I do an extensive hardware upgrade of my system. with that said, the Windows 10 now appears to be running solid through a few reboots, but I fail to figure out how to configure the network settings in such a way that I can see my unRAID shares from it...file-sharing is enabled in Windows 10, firewall is off, my unRAID is running on 172.25.123.123 and I connect to it via OpenVPN and VNC...I hope to hear back from the IT guy at the location it is hosted to find out what the proper subnet, gateway and dns settings need to be...I suspect that when those are correct, I'll get access to my unRAID disk/user shares, right? or is there something else that needs to be done?

are there any other recommendable "themes" for Windows 10 that makes it look less like a Surface Tablet? "Classic Menu" is one, I understand...let the search begin, bc the install of Windows 10 is going *so* much quicker and smoother than the Windows 7 install did, on my old machine, surprisingly.

wow, and I was wondering where all those other settings went that I remember seeing...no idea how it got toggled and why I didn't notice. thanks for pointing that out, 1812!

when creating a VM I don't see an option to select a bios...what am I missing here? if I had that option, are the settings for Win 7 and Win 10 different, as far as the bios is concerned?

Huh, I never messed with the bios setting when creating a VM (I just started with VM’s last week and so far I only successfully created a Win 7 VM), so does that mean that Win 10 requires another bios setting than Win 7?

what does it mean when I get this screen from VNC? I downloaded the official Microsoft Windows 10 ISO, as instructed in the setup video, selected only cpu 0, assigned 2048MB of RAM (out of 4048MB), created the VM, used VNC to connect to it, and whatever I do, I always get to this screen.

haha, I hear ya, pwm...not a friend of Microsoft either, by a long shot...but since I have yet to learn to first thing about using a Linux VM instead, it's the best shot I have at using a desktop environment to work with my unRAID data remotely. Windows always was and still is an abomination. Even the Amiga OS ran circles around it in 1989 (and it ran circles around the McIntosh OS and hardware too, at the time, arguably). Since the SP1 update progress bar hasn't moved a pixel in 3hrs, I'm abandoning the Win7 VM and will try Win10, though.

I shall give that a try if I can actually get Win 10 to run on my old system...bc it is the Win 10 UI which bugs me to no end...thanks for the pointer!

Why Windows 7? - I really don't like what Microsoft did with Windows 10 - my machine is old, has an old core 2 processor and only 4GB ram atm (which will hopefully be upped to 8GB, if I can get the BIOS updated) but if this time around I lose access to the Win 7 VM again after rebooting it, I *will* try to install Win 10...that is if this Win 7 VM will ever finish the update to SP1 :-/

finished another install of Win 7 this morning, downloaded the SP1 update (960MB or so), and since I started the update, about 3hrs have passed...the upgrade progress moved to about 60% in the first hour and a half, but it has been stuck there for about 90mins or more, not moving at all. in your experience, is it possible that this SP1 update can take many hours, maybe even a day, or is that unlikely? I should mention that this VM is running on one core and only 2GB of RAM, off a spinner, so that is definitely close to a worst-case scenario...if I ever get this VM to update and have it configured the way I want, I'll assign more memory and cores to it, for sure...that is, if I can get the BIOS updated and hopefully recognise the other 2x2GB mem sticks.