marcosv

I do think you won't find an unRAID solution given your size requirements. According to the Synology website, that RS816 uses a Marvell Armada 385 88F6820 CPU (dual core). It also costs $495 on Amazon. Synology has the RS818 with an Intel Atom C2538; but, that unit is much deeper than the RS816 and costs a lot more. In the end, I doubt you will find a more cost-effective solution than the Synology given the size requirements. For starters finding a 1U case with four 3.5" hot swap bays that doesn't cost a lot will be tough --- then factor in a depth of 12". Most cases I see have a depth of 26".

Hmmm... Just occurred to me to ask: whereas my motherboard does not have USB 3.0 ports, the thumb drive I'm currently using is a USB 3.0 drive (Ultra Fit 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive). Could there be an incompatibility between 6.4 and using a USB 3.0 boot drive in USB 2.0 ports?

My motherboard, ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16, does not have USB 3.0 ports.

Thanks for the suggestion. I wiped my USB thumb drive, installed v6.4 to it, and then copied my old config folder to the thumb drive. Same result: Get messages during boot about not being able to mount the UNRAID thumb drive. System comes up configured as tower, no password, no ethernet connection, etc. Nothing about these errors appear in the syslog file. I then re-installed v6.3.5 to the thumb. System comes up normally. Any further suggestions on how to figure out where the incompatibility could be? Should I start a separate thread?

Tried upgrading from 6.3.5 stable using updates in the plugins page. Upon reboot, get messages about not being able to mount UNRAID. System comes up as "tower", having lost all of my settings. Checked the USB thumb drive; its volume label is still "UNRAID". Any suggestions on how to roll back to 6.3.5? I should have made a backup of the USB thumb drive before doing this update; but, I thought the update would go well. Motherboard is an ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16. USB 2 port is a front port hooked up to a motherboard USB header.

Thanks for the confirmation about preclear. I'll give it a try and report back. Might have to wait until middle of next week due to work.

I will try removing/pre-clearing/re-installing that 512GB SSD. Just to be sure: preclear SSD drives is fine? Old forum messages about preclear being bad for SSD is not true? Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

Thanks for the replies. After doing the balance operation, btrfs filesystem show: Label: none uuid: 12f30176-f0de-42b0-aab8-e77c658765ef Total devices 2 FS bytes used 86.35GiB devid 1 size 232.89GiB used 99.03GiB path /dev/sdb1 devid 2 size 232.89GiB used 99.03GiB path /dev/sda1 It doesn't show the 3rd device, a 525GB SSD. I never noticed this before. If I use the arrow keys on the cache display, I can see a screen for cache3 for the 34d device. Any suggestions on how to get that device recognized as part of the cache pool? Given btrfs filesystem show does not list the 3rd SSD, can I simply remove it and add it back?

Hi, After doing a search of the FAQ and the forum, I have some questions about swapping out cache drives. I am currently running unRAID 6.2 stable release. My BTRFS cachce currently consists of the following SSDs: 1. 256GB (originally started with just one) 2. 256GB (added it to have redundancy) 3. 512GB (added it later, figuring to double the size of usable space to 512GB) The webGUI always reports having only 256GB available and shows only the two 256GB with used space; the 512GB appears to be have no read/writes to it. I want to swap out the two 256GB SSDs with a single 512GB SSDs, resulting in two 512GB SSDs. Here's my questions: 1. Would the fastest way to do this be to backup everything on the cache drives to a non-cache drive; remove all the drives from the cache pool; physically swap out the two 256GB for the second 512GB drive; re-create the cache pool; and copy the data back to the new cache pool? 2. Do I need to somehow clear out/reformat the old 512GB drive before re-creating the cache pool? I've seen references about using preclear on a drive before using it for cache to make sure it is empty; but, also have read other messages saying preclear is for hard drives only. 3. I've read that having a cache pool using different size drives could result in incorrect cache pool space being reported in the webGUI. If I was to add a third drive of equal size (e.g., a 3rd 512GB drive), will this result in 750GB usable? Thanks, Marcos

Personally I hook up a kill-a-watt meter and take measurements while all the drives are idle and when all of the drives spun up during a parity check. Since I don't have active fan control, all of the fans are running at constant RPM --- although I did undervolt most of the case fans. Doing this, I found my setup using 80W with the drives spun down and about 145W with the drives cranking. It's going to be interesting to see how much power consumption goes up when I swap out my old AMD Phenom II X4 B96 (95W TPD) with a dual Xeon E5-2670 (2x 115W TDP). OTOH, the motherboard enough PWM headers for all of my case fans. So hopefully it'll spin down the fans and save some power. Anyone know how to configure energy saving features of CPUs in unRAID? I see power saving options in the motherboard BIOS settings, but, no idea if unRAID overrides or works closely with such features.

How loud is this server going to be? For a server requiring a 800W PSU, I wonder how much heat is going to be generated. Are you looking to use this server to rip blu-ray disks as well?

Any more cards left? I'd be interested in two. Thanks, Marcos

Wombat, Thanks for posting the latest info on your experiences iwth the GA-880GMA-UD2H. I just started shopping for a board that can handle dual Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8. Unfortunately, the Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H comes up as "Deactivated" on NewEgg's website. Just my luck.

bw1: Thanks for posting your experiences with the recent copy of this drive. I was strongly tempted to try a Seagate branded drive again and a Samsung for the first time. But, hearing that the warranty is now a mere one year means I'm going to pass for now.

Well I'm headed to Micro Center in any event to return some memory. For grins, I'll take a look at the shelves to see if they happen to have the motherboard in stock. If I was able to get this deal, I was going use it as a test server. I'd play with one of the unRAID beta builds using old 500 GB drives I got lying around. I figured the extra horse power might be nice for computing parity --- and for any other excuse I could come up with to justify the purchase.

Drat. The motherboard shows up as being sold out at the Santa Clara, CA, Micro Center. :'(

FWIW, I had two problems that came up intermittently when I moved large amounts of data to the unRAID server: 1. A faulty gigabit switch. Worked fine with light loads, but, with heavier loads, I can randomly lose connection to computers --- connections may/may not come back without a reboot. For now, I've stopped buying D-Link switches --- had to replace two faulty switches to fix my problem. 2. Realtek NIC on motherboards and discrete NIC cards. Replaced both with Intel. The Realtek worked fine until I started doing really large transfers; wonder if there's a thermal problem with them. Yesterday I successfully created a 300 GB backup file on the unRAID server without a problem (ultimately I'll configure my backup software to generate a series of much smaller files --- One huge file that took nearly 90 minutes to create is a large gamble for me)

Same here. About 21 days. The email I got as to when the drive shipped was within a day of the post mark on the package. So it does take a long time for things to get to the US these days.

Thanks for the link. Looking at the trendnet.com site, I see they refer to "TEG-S50g (Version v3.0R)". Wondering if Version v3.0R means no more 12k jumbo frame support. The installation guide says 9k jumbo frames: http://www.trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=530_TEG-S50g&cat=113

I was curious: Where did you hear that the TEG-S5G supports smaller jumbo frames than the TEG-S50G? From the trendnet website, it looks like both support 9216 byte jumbo frames. (Although for the TEG-SG5, the info wasn't under Specs, but, under features).

FWIW, two of my 1 to 2 year-old D-Link gigabit switches died. Swapped them out for the Trendnet green switches which seem to run cooler. I'm also waiting for another sale on the Trendnet eight port switches.

FWIW, I just received my Hitachi 2TB drive I ordered from Amazon through the deal mentioned in this thread. Interesting packaging: all cardboard. The old packaging, even for OEM, was to have the drive suspended in the box using plastic inserts that gripped the drive on two edges that fitted perfectly in the box to keep things from moving. So shock absorption is through deforming the plastic. The new packaging had the drive attached to a piece of cardboard using plastic wrap. That piece of cardboard had folds on the outer edges to fit perfectly in the box. In this case, shock absorption is through flexing the piece of cardboard that the drive is attached to. In both cases, the drive was in an ESD bag as usual. The box the drive was in was in a larger box stuffed with paper to keep the smaller box from moving around. The drive did test OK and so I'll use it. I guess the packaging is more eco-friendly, but, I'm not convinced it holds up as well as the older packaging in shipping.

I most certainly do buy Hitachi. Whenever they go on sale. Well beyond the bad old IBM Deathstar days. But, it's nice to have at least a couple of brands you can trust at any given time. Hmmm... Just read that Western Digital is buying Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $4.3 billion in cash and stock. I wonder what strategy Western Digital is going to do post acquisition? Will it be like Seagate buying Maxtor where Maxtor brand was the budget brand until the brand was phased out?

I most certainly do buy Hitachi. Whenever they go on sale. Well beyond the bad old IBM Deathstar days. But, it's nice to have at least a couple of brands you can trust at any given time.

Has anyone read this French article about drive failure experiences from some French etailor? Over a six month period sales period and a return period stretching another six months after that sales period (i.e., drives less than a 1 year old), the 2 TB Seagate LP had a failure rate of 4.35% and the WD EARS had 4.83% while the EADS had 2.9%. Granted the LP drives probably had the older firmware. More importantly it's just one etailor's numbers. http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/12/9/pc-component-failure-rates-documented/ http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hardware.fr%2Farticles%2F810-6%2Ftaux-pannes-composants.html&sl=fr&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8 First ran accross the article on Anandtech where it was claimed that some of the failure numbers where confirmed by manufacturers (although don't know whether any of them where actually drive manufacturer's --- doubt it). http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/4202?cPage=12&all=False&sort=0&page=3&slug=the-intel-ssd-510-review So the obvious question: any of you rethinking your 2 TB disc buying strategy? Are you looking to have more back up drives or thinking about replacing some drives sooner than later?