lionelhutz

Go around your house and find some lamps with 60W and 100W bulbs in them. Test them to get a feel for what the meter is reading. For comparism, my HTPC uses a Zotac 9300-G-E mini-ITX board with a E6300 processor and the below linked power supply. I also have a Blue WD 250gig drive and a slimline DVD burner in the case. This system uses ~39W when sitting idle with the hard drive still spinning. I tested my meter with a 60W and 100W bulb and for both it measured very close to the bulb rating. http://cgi.ebay.ca/130W-ITX-ATX-Power-150W-AC-adapter-fanless-PicoPSU-Y5_W0QQitemZ180462064733QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCA_UPS?hash=item2a0460945d Obviously, the power supply can't support 12 drives. But still, this system is a good example of why these "low power" Atom boards aren't all their claimed to be on the energy savings front, especisally for HTPC use or other applications that could use more processing power for certain tasks to make the user experience smoother (such as using a remote to navigate a user interface or opening applications. Of course, I'm getting way off topic now.... Peter

It should work with a mini-ITX motherboard. They only take the 4 mounting spots right around the backplate opening, in this case it would be the standoffs in line with the power supply wires hanging down. There was a mini-ITX board posted here with I think 6 SATA connectors not too long ago. Zotac has a board, the 9300-G-E, where you could put a card in the PCIe slot too. Peter

I have 4 drives in my server right now - the AMD system. The mini-ITX is the HTPC with one hard drive. Any newer large capacity SATA drive should use no more than about 1W when spun down. So, 18 drives should use no more than 18W when they are all spun down. Peter

You can fit 3 drive cages in there that hold 4 drives each = 12 drives total. If you want 14 drives total you're going to have to mount the last 2 yourself some way. With that many drives you'll need the 650W supply. Assume 2A @ 12V per drive for start-up = 28A for drive start-up plus the current the motherboard needs. You're looking at over 30A required, so I'd find a supply with a 40A @ 12V power rail. Peter

My AMD 740G/BE2300 combo runs something like 55W idle and maybe 70W with the drives running. It's been a while and I have changed power supplies from an old piece of junk to a Corsair since I measured it so I should measure it again. To compare, my Nvidia 9300/Intel E6300 mini-ITX system runs about 38W idle with the hard drive is still spinning using a brick type power supply. This has proved to be a great HTPC so far but heat can sure be a trick to manage in a mini-ITX package. The new power supply dropped the measured wall power by about 10W compared to the supply that came with the case. Peter

FYI, the newest BIOS for that Gigabyte board has the option to turn off the HPA so it won't be an issue. Just boot the board and change/confirm the BIOS setting before attaching any hard drives. Peter

Change the share settings and then move the data. Ensure the data all gets moved and the share on the origional disk is completely gone, directory and all. Peter

IMDB keeps changing the webpage layout and when they do that, the web-page scraping programs are broken until they are updated. I'm curious why you want the data in a XL format? Peter

You can change it but unRAID will not fix the directory structure. You have to do that yourself. I have previously posted methods to fix the shares using large copy and paste operations. Lots of computer time but little user time. No-one who was trying the method posted that it didn't work so I think the method is sound. Peter

Yes, go back and you should be fine. Run another parity check and if you see problems then do it yet again until any parity drive errors are corrected and you see a clean one. Regarding the HPA - unRAID should never ignore these and if it now is then that's going to be a big problem for a number of people. In my opinion this is something that needs to be investigated and the behaviour corrrected. At this stage turning off the HPA backup in the BIOS will very likely not remove the HPA that exists on the disk. Once writing to the HPA is off then it should make no difference though. Peter

Yes, more sales = good for Tom and good for unRAID users. Peter

Something Starcat didn't mention is that Supermicro board is pricy but there is a Supermicro PCI-X to 8-SATAII board available for about $100 and you can easily get to the unRAID disk limits with 2 of them. Overall, it's a decent solution that will have all the speed of a PCIe high disk count solution at a comparible price. Sure PCIe is the new technology but PCI-X works just fine. When a 8-SATAII PCIe card is supported then the PCIe solutions will become quite a bit cheaper. Peter

You could make a share called Disk1 and assign it to only Disk1. Then, there will be a directory Disk1 created on the disk (you actually have to write to the share or manually create it). Then, using the real disk share move all the disk data to that sub-directory with a drag and drop which has always taken no more than a few seconds on my machine since it does not actually move the data. Repeat for each disk in the server. If you use other user shares then you will have to create a link in that directory back to the root of the disk otherwise you will screw up the other shares. Once done, turn-off the real disk shares. I'm not sure how unRAID would handle it of you did export them hidden since there'd then be 2 shares with the same name.... At any rate, this will create "virtual" disk shares that you can set read-only individually and from the "outside world" it would appear that nothing has changed. Peter

HPA issue - Gigabyte has a number of BIOS protection schemes. One called Dual Hardware BIOS protection which used the CMOS for both BIOS versions so it should mean you are OK. Then, they begin with the virtual BIOS protection schemes which appear to write a HPA for the BIOS backup. They also appear to have a version which has both hardware and HPA BIOS backups. On these boards download the manual and see if there is a setting to turn off the hard drive use. CTRL-F1 can bring up more advanced BIOS options. If you look through the WIKI I think there is a post linked about a board and I found that the option was in that manual so you could use that to get an idea what to look for. Looking for boards with more PCIe slots is always a good idea. It seems 4x slots will be required for the higher port count SATA cards. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128371 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130248 Peter

I had believed that 0 was set back to meaning any split is allowed sometime in this Beta process. 1 is the best setting to avoid unwanted splitting then also enter the disks you want each share to use or not use as the case may be. Still, using disk shares will make the setting meaningless. Peter

Interesting. That deal could be part of the reason Tom has been hard at work on development. At any rate, that server looks to be good news to help future unRAID development. The other part that is interesting is that Cinemar decided to offer a server which appears to be incapable of running their MLServer application. They must have seen a benefit to this server instead of working towards something like a WHS server. Peter

The hardware is a little overkill but you are getting good stuff and those parts will serve you well (even if you switch to a different OS in the future). Some people will put down using a PCI-X server board but I don't think you can find the parts to do a cheaper 20 drive solution with PCIe compared to what you are spec'ing anyways. However, I'm on the fence about that power supply. It should be OK but you are putting quite the investment in the hands of the power supply so buying a well respected supply is just something to consider. Peter

You must be running XP. You can just delete the thumbs.db files and the extra directory it's in. No need to move it. It's just a Windows generated file and will get created again (or not if you change your XP settings). You do have to delete the extra directory as well or a file will go there again. Here's a good explanation of the thumbs.db file. http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/98 Peter

I'd like to say search by file type or such but just can't think of a way to get rid of the empty directories and to make sure that you only move the small files easily using just the windows tools. I'd have to think a script run on each drive moving the directories with only small files to the cache would do it but I'm not a script writer. You'd have to check the files in the directory and then if they're just the support files move them and the directory structure to the cache and get rid of the directory on the data drive. The mover would then put things back. So, my method posted before is my best try at a fairly automatic way of sorting the mess out. Like I posted it's not very fast but you just have to do a little setup and then do a bunch of big highlight and moves to the new share and let the server do the work (which can take a while). I think with GigE that the drive write speed will be the limiting factor so it doesn't matter if you log in at the server or use a Windows machine the time required will be about the same. Ok, let us know. Got a vacation coming up so you can let it work for a week? Maybe you could go by date and then move the stuff back into the old share again? Or by date move the whole directory to the cache drive and let the mover work - the parity protection is temporarily lost but it's another possible way. Peter

You need to use level 2. Media can split and the subdirectories DVD and TV can split but nothing underneath can split. You have to drag and drop to put the data back. I think this could work, it's more data intensive but less personal time intensive. Set the "Media" share split level to 2 and enter the disks you want it to use in the future. Create a new share called "New Media". Set the spit level to 2 and the disks you want the movies to be on -this should mirror the "Media" share settings. Go to the "Media" share and move a group of movies or TV to the "New Media" share. Do this each night before going to bed so that they are all eventually moved into the "New Media" share - figure out how much data you can move per night. I'd try about 200gig or so the first time and work from there so it's completed by the time you want to use the server the next day. Once the above is done; Share the disks. Go to each disk and delete the "Media" directory and re-name the "New Media" directory as "Media" - Make double sure the Media directories are empty before deleting them. Go to the server admin page and delete the "New Movies" share settings. Turn off the disk shares. Reboot the server and ensure these settings get applied. This basically allows the server to sort out the files for you. You machines have to be given the time to move the data across the network but you don't have to sit there and sort the media out one directory at at time. I recommended this before and didn't get a come-back post saying it didn't work so I'm assuming it worked out fine. Peter

Either one should work but I don't think anyone has actually used either one so you won't get any confirmations. I don't see any glaring problems. People have used the 780G/SB700 before and both network controllers have been reported as working on different boards. That pretty much covers the parts that are required to build a successful server. Peter

That's why I asked for a link explanaing it or with possible solutions. If Windows can't play a network video and access files at the sanme time with Internet Explorer then it must be something common that others have seen and documented. Besides, if you read through the thread others claim it's not a Windows problem.... Peter

Tom; Here is the output of v /sys/block total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 loop0 -> ../devices/virtual/block/loop0/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 loop1 -> ../devices/virtual/block/loop1/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 loop2 -> ../devices/virtual/block/loop2/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 loop3 -> ../devices/virtual/block/loop3/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 loop4 -> ../devices/virtual/block/loop4/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 loop5 -> ../devices/virtual/block/loop5/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 loop6 -> ../devices/virtual/block/loop6/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 loop7 -> ../devices/virtual/block/loop7/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 md1 -> ../devices/virtual/block/md1/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 md2 -> ../devices/virtual/block/md2/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 13:44 md3 -> ../devices/virtual/block/md3/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 07:21 sda -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:11.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 25 19:45 sdb -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:11.0/host1/target1:0:0/1:0:0:0/block/sdb/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 07:22 sdc -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:11.0/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0/block/sdc/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 07:21 sdd -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:11.0/host3/target3:0:0/3:0:0:0/block/sdd/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 26 07:20 sde -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:12.2/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0/block/sde/ I get what you define as a freeze when accessing a user share which will spin up either of the unused data drives using Windows Explorer. The tests were done on the same machine as the video file is playing on. Just trying to help here. Typically, I'm not accessing the server when watching video, I'm watching the video but it does happen on my system. Can you give a link to describe this problem? I've never seen it posted or read about it before so I'm curious what the issue is. Peter

It depends on the drives you want to support. That Asus board has 3 - PCIex16 slots and 2 - PCIex1 slots but there must be some combination of PCIe lanes allowed for those slots. Still, I'd have to believe you can add enough PCIe to SATA cards to connect 12 more drives on that board. The GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-UD3LR has 4 - PCIex1 and 1 - PCIex16 which should support 4 2-port SATA2 and 1 4-port SATA2 board and is cheaper. 4 of the 2-port cards would be cheaper than using 2 of the 4-port SATA cards. It's a P45 chipset board so it should be supported too. If you're not looking for high drive counts, then AMD 740G or 780G chipset boards should work fine too. You can get some with a few PCIe slots that will allow some add-in cards. Peter

Just to be clear, this is the behaviour I reported. Access any disk using share over Samba and I get a pause. I have 3 data drives and have single disk user shares on each of these individual drives. Accessing a user share on either of the other 2 data drives while playing back a file from the 3rd data drive will cause a pause. Spinning up and down the other 2 data drives or the parity drive using unMENU does not cause studder even if I spin-up/spin down as fast as possible using the web interface. Peter