prostuff1

Yes those are your limiting factor. You could speed things up by replacing those two cards with either a AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 or IBM Serveraid M1015. The M1015 card would need to be flash to work. You would also need the cables to hook the drives up tot he cards but you would probably cut the parity check time to half a day instead of two and a half.

We use the Zalman MS800 case for our builds.

I prefer hitachi (HGST) drives

All over this!! Thanks for the post.

I don't really need one but darn I want to get an extra... just in case...

I assume it is based off the ITX-S4 case by Norco? I am working on a "Cleverbox Beginner" build that is based on that case. Great minds think alike!!

I suspect your system has other (slower) drives in it. A parity check is always limited by the slowest drive currently involved in the check ... and if you have multiple sizes, it's also slowing down appreciably as each drive reaches the slower inner cylinders. The only real test of how fast a particular drive is for parity checks is to do a check on a system with ONLY that specific drive model in it. Yup, and this system has 10 of the 6TB Red drives in it. They are quick that is for sure. I was seeing speeds in the 155 MB/sec range when starting out the check. I don't remember ever seeing it dip below 105 MB/sec

Yup. I had started a check with 10 6TB drives at about 6:30am. When i got home from work at 4:30 is said there was 2-3 hours or so left. So a little over 12 hours for a parity check.

Just built a server for a customer that had 10 WD 6TB Red drives in it. They all precleared fine and were running great when I shipped the server out.

No, it was not that long. preclears take longer because of the read/write/read that is does. If I remember correctly it was some where between 10-12 hours for a parity check.

Sounds about right

mother of god, how long did it take to pre-clear one of these guys? For Ever Only thing that saved me was the fact that I have a test server that can preclear 6 drives at once. I also have an HP microserver that can be pressed into preclear service if need be.

I have ordered about 20 of these drives in the last month. Some of them where tested with preclear for 3 passes and they all passed fine. Some did not get tested but I have not heard anything negative so I assume they are working fine.

Loves me some HGST drives. When a customer purchases a server and wants 4TB drives in it I always suggest going with HGST drives over any of the others. It is ultimately up to the customer but providing my opinion can't hurt.

I have no hesitation adding more than 8 of these drives to a server. I am in fact building a server for a customer right now that uses 10 of these drives to start.

I see on this pdf which seems to say something similar. They don't say "certified for max 8 drives" they say "designed specifically for." Frankly "limiting" any drive to a max number in a machine is ludicrous. I see no reason why you could not have 24 of those drives in a system. If there is something in there that limits it to 8 drives I will no longer be selling them and will start complaining loudly to WD.

If I had to put money somewhere this would be it.

DDWRT

This whole VM thing is dead in the water if they don't have a great GUI, in my opinion. It is not dead in the water but it is likely out of reach for "normal" users. With that being said most all users on the forum can/could follow a step by step guide on setting up a VM. Once done they probably won't have to touch anything or change anything again.

I did a lot of reading before making the suggestion to Brucey7. I am glad it has worked out so well for him, and hearing the same from you is reassuring. I think going forward we are going to suggest that our international customers look into setting up a Shipito account and using that as the "drop point" for us to send the servers to. It ends up being cheaper all the way around as the customer can chose the shipping method from Shipito to themselves and pay whatever they like. It works out better for use as we only need to worry about shipping to a US based address and insuring the server for that leg of the journey.

I am glad we were able to help with this and that Shipito has worked out so well!!

Yes, Rajahal boxed up the server and took it as checked baggage. He ended up spending a week or two over there on vacation This time around I got everything boxed up and we were able to use Shipito to get the server shipped to Thailand for less money. It only required us to ship within the US and then Brucey7 was able to consolidate and have both servers shipped over cheaper than I could get them shipped directly to Thailand.

Glad we could help you out and get you 2 more servers! Let us know if there is anything else we can help with!

No specifics but jonp is just fine. He has been working on some other LT stuff and it has been consuming his time.

No, he would have and did. Grumpy is a very smart individual, but the constant repeating of his points, in a usually hostile manner, was fraying the nerves of everyone, us mods especially. We don't try to "censor" anyone on the forum, that is not a good habit to get into...ever, but post after post after post after post was constantly the same thing. All the stuff he kept mentioning was in a thread already... which if I remember correctly he deleted (or something to that effect. It may still exist, I am just not awake enough to find it at this current time). Yes, but his post leave something to be desired... respect. His approach is not one that is conducive or productive in the long run. LimeTech is under NO obligation to share ANY of there plans and roadmaps with us. They are a private company. You would not expect Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, etc to release news of every feature that is going into there product. Unless you feel like paying for a closed beta program to get access to and features of news... His attitude and approach is unhealthy for the forum. I don't like going into the complaint thread, but I do because I have to moderate it. His attitude is that of a child that keeps demanding something until he gets what he wants. I know for myself that if I did that as an eight year old my dad would have spanked me red, taken my toys away and told me to sit in the corner. This is ultimately a business choice and public opinion may or may not add anything of value to that discussion. LimeTech can make that choice when the time comes. I know from my end of things, I would probably not open it to a public discussion as some may not even grasp the benefit/side effect of choosing one distro over another. If grumpy is so unhappy with the way unRAID is then he can use his special distro he has built himself and go from there. He can post his findings and what not in a thread, which he did at one point, and keep everything there. Instead he spammed every other thread with the same information, over and over and over again.