ilovejedd

Yeah, but the internal HDD came with the older MicroServers already which is a nice bonus. I just wish HP had made it just a wee bit bigger and retained the full size 5.25" bay and 6 SATA slots. That really would be perfect for unRAID Plus. Oh well, at least with current drive densities (up to 4TB), having only 4 slots isn't too restrictive. I reckon I'll just use the free version of unRAID for this one (for 8TB of data). That or Windows 7+SnapRAID or FlexRAID and use it as CableCARD DVR. Alas, no such deals here. I think cheapest I've seen it is around $250 after rebate. That's still half the price of the Gen8 G2020T, though.

I don't mind the switch to slim ODD but it's a shame HP didn't keep the internal SATA like in previous models. It's perfect for use as cache drive.

And lastly if in the future I needed more storage could I link two of these beauty's together or would I be better getting a bigger unit when the time arises? so are you saying that I would be better building a different/larger one in the first place rather than a couple of these? How easy is it to link different servers together? You can't really link full unRAID servers together so they show up as a unified share unless you use some other software on another PC (e.g. FlexRAID View). If you think 4~6 drive bays (4x hotswap, 1x ODD, 1x internal) isn't enough for you, then I suggest getting a build that can house more drives. One thing to consider: Right now, the MicroServer is limited to a maximum of 10TB (5x2TB data, 1x2TB parity) but eventually we'll be getting bigger hard drives. unRAID currently can't utilize bigger than 2TB but it will be able to do so eventually. How much storage do you need now and how quickly do you anticipate needing more space? If you don't need a ton of space right away and have a fairly slow-growing collection, what you could do is just buy drives as you need them. Then, once you've filled up all your drives, replace the older, smaller drives with bigger ones. Caveat, the parity drive needs to be at least as big as the largest drive in the array so if you only have 2TB drives and want to move to 4TB, you need to replace both the parity and the data drive to be able to utilize the bigger space.

Probably to prevent situations when you're writing to the cache drive while it's moving data to the parity-protected array. What if you had just finished a 100GB copy to the cache drive, mover script runs and then you copy another 100GB to the cache drive? Yeah, not fun. Unless you're nocturnal, there's less chances of that happening at 3:40AM.

You use a cache drive to speed up writes. If you write data to the cache drive and move that data to parity at the same time, then you're going to get slow write speeds (hard drives aren't exactly good at random read/write). It would probably have been better if you just forgo the cache drive and just written the data directly to the array.

Same behavior in Windows. The only thing it will ask to convert are WMA files. MP3 files, you can import as is. Again, same.

Restart seems to have fixed it. It just finished parity check and it didn't find any errors.

No idea when exactly. It was accessible and doing a parity check around 5- to 6-ish when I started the machine but when I tried to check on the progress and drive temps around 7, it was already inaccessible. Waited for the HDD activity lights to finish blinking but still nada. I had to hold the power button because it wouldn't shut down and the console just hanged. No prompt or anything after I tried to log in as root. I've rebooted the machine and it's doing a parity check now. Hopefully, it proceeds normally this time. Ugh, I really need to change the UPS...

My server seems to have frozen after a power failure (I really need to change the battery on the UPS). I could ping the IP address but the shares are inaccessible as well as the web admin page. I also couldn't telnet into the machine and it seems to have hanged when I tried to log in locally to the machine. The HDD activity lights are all blinking so I'm thinking it's probably doing a parity check so I'm a bit hesitant to just turn off the machine. Still using unRAID 4.3.3 (haven't gotten around to upgrading yet as the server is on 24/7). Any thoughts? Should I just restart it or should I try again once parity check finishes (probably in 6 hours or so)? Thanks!

Trick question. You're missing two drives, at least going by the assumption that you have a 20+1 array.

Thanks for the link. Looks like this is going to cut down quite a bit on the initial processing, too. I can run through all my large files first and then take care of the smaller files later. Hmm, is there a way to set upper and lower bound? Say, I want to divide the comparison in stages: > 1GB 100MB to < 1GB 10MB to < 100MB < 10MB Thanks again!

Ooh, thanks for this! My Linux shell-fu is pretty non-existent. Is there a way to limit the script to only comparing files greater than a certain size, say 10MB? Thanks!

Anyone here have any suggestions? Would prefer free software or freeware but not averse to paying for a good commercial one. Whenever I change computers or an HDD starts showing signs of failure, I usually copy the contents to the unRAID server. I'm pretty sure I've got duplicates of files, particularly some massive ones (mkv, vhd, iso, etc) so I'm hoping to do some clean-up to gauge actual usage before I start buying a ton of HDD's. Who knows, I might even clear up enough space so I wouldn't need to buy HDD's for now. Thanks!

Hmm, maybe they changed their packaging. It's quite likely they've received several complaints regarding that. The ESD bag is standard. Mine was in an ESD bag, too, but the drive wasn't really protected aside from that. It was a WD10EADS bought a while ago (probably back in 2009). After that experience, I never bought an HDD from Amazon again. I'm in need of HDD's for my new ProLiant MicroServer. Maybe I'll give Amazon a try again and pick up a couple of these.

Bought the HP ProLiant MicroServer w/160GB HDD and 200W PSU (612275-001), and a Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/4G kit from Amazon last night. Total comes up to ~$350 (no tax, free ship).

While the no sales tax is on Amazon is pretty tempting (particularly since sales tax in my area is almost 10%), Amazon's packaging is just atrocious. They just have the hard drive tethered on a piece of cardboard and there's practically no cushion in the tiny box they ship it in.

Lol @ ninja edit.

I did two separate searches - one for Proliant and another for MicroServer. Now if I had searched for Miroserver (note the missing "c"), I probably would have seen that thread. How remiss of me not to have searched misspellings.

Ooh... Thanks for the recommendation. That looks absolutely perfect. I'm seeing two versions on Newegg, one $310 w/160GB HDD and another that's $350 w/250GB HDD. Does anyone know if the innards (aside from HDD) are the same on those two? At best, the small HDD will only be used for cache anyway so if they're basically the same, I'll just go with the cheaper model. By the way, how are HDD temps and noise? Power consumption, too. Again, thank you very much!

Lol, lemme guess, Biostar TH55B HD or Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H/UD2H + Core i3-530/540? Seriously wishing I bought two of those instead of the MSI 890GXM-G65 + Phenom II X6 1055T (I got one i3 combo and one X6 combo). For the things I use my PC for, the i3 kicks the X6's butt majorly while having much lower power consumption. Nowadays, Fry's doesn't offer MB/CPU deals like that anymore.

Actually, it seems someone has already tried them: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=10114.0 It boots but we still don't know if it would actually work or not as the poster wasn't able to test any file copies, etc. Still, it seems when unRAID 5.0 rolls around, there's a good chance of the hardware being supported. Hmm, wonder what motherboard Tom will use for the new server builds.

Actually, it's not the price premium that's the issue. The bigger question is will these new parts be supported in unRAID yet? For Linux, it's best to go with tried and tested hardware rather than bleeding edge unless you like being a guinea pig. Intel processors rarely go down in price and even if they do, the price drop is usually just $10~20 which isn't really as significant as the price drops we see from AMD. Heck, just check current retail pricing for LGA-775 processors. Besides, the S and T versions, given their specialized target applications, are unlikely to go down in price at all. It's already surprising that the price premium they carry over vanilla versions is just $20 or so. Previously, you'd have to spend at least $50 extra for low power versions. Personally waiting for Celeron Sandy Bridge to come out. Hopefully, by that time, the new chipsets will be supported by unRAID.

Meh, by the time unRAID supports it, the price will probably be down to $100~150 already. Better off just saving the cash right now.

Thanks for the feedback. Hmm, what I really like about the newer Clarkdale and Sandy Bridge processors is the insanely low idle power consumption. That's really the only thing stopping me from going LGA-775 right now. If I go LGA-775, I actually already have some Celeron and Pentium Wolfdales lying around. I've had three Zotac motherboards die on me (2x Atom/ION, 1x GF9300). I do own a couple of GF6100-E-E and AMD Sempron 140's (Newegg Shell Shocker Deal - couldn't resist). While I'm not overly concerned about the mobo dieing on an HTPC build, I'm avoiding Zotac for any server builds, particularly one that's supposed to hold my back-up.

I'm thinking of building a small 3-drive server to keep 1:1 back-up of a few files/folders from my 9-drive unRAID server. Question, has anyone tested LGA-1155 motherboards with unRAID, yet? I was thinking of going H61/H67 Mini-ITX + Celeron when those come out later in the year. The $75 Foxconn H67S looks like it might be a decent, inexpensive option and I'm hoping the Intel DH61DL will be one, too. Right now, I can't decide whether I should wait for LGA-1155 Celerons or if I should just go with the DG41MJ/DG41AN and a Celeron/Pentium Wolfdale. Rough parts list: Case/PSU: Chenbro ES34169 or CFI A2059 MB: ? CPU: Intel Celeron ? RAM: 2x2GB DDR2 800 or DDR3 1333 (depending on mobo, already have several spare) OS: unRAID Server Basic