Unqualified Spectator

Thanks much - I looked the Lian Li over a little closer and there is alot to like. Didn't know you could put three more drives in the tray in the bottom - that makes it much more attractive and we need 2-3 drives for cache and parity anyway - do those HAVE to be 2.5'' or will 3.5" drives fit? Those plastic trays in the DS380 - I could live with that - I doubt you would really be swapping drives that often so the caddy quality seems to be less of a point for me than for some others. For me, the ability to swap out a drive without taking the case apart is a benefit. The heat issues are a show stopper - I wondered if this might be overcome with better fans - however, it seems to be related to very tight case tolerances that contribute to "hot spot" formation...and I think all the fans exhaust out - so that makes low pressure in the case and exacerbates the heat issue. Totally agree with the CPU cooler clearance issues, but I would be more concerned with that using an AMD processor - say an A8 or A10 - those are 100 watt CPUs and would need better cooling solutions - the Intels tend to be a little more efficient. The Lian Li appears to not suffer the cooling issues of the DS380. It is still unclear to me if you intend to run dockerized apps if you need a mobo/cpu combo that supports all the stuff required of a XEN configuration - and all that figures into the hardware purchases. Thanks again for the info - enjoy your new rig!

Mr. Hexen, I wondered if you considered the Silverstone DS380 case or was the Lian Li always your first choice (and why, if you don't mind sharing your decision process)? Also, considering the impending changes with unRAID (along the lines of utilizing Docker and all that), do you intend to get more RAM later? 2 Megs might be a bit limiting? I'm not being critical - I am interested in how you arrived at your configuration - I am having the same kinds of thoughts, although my current system already utilizes a mini ITX board - I will need to implement more horsepower most likely with the implementation of a few Dockerized apps - my old mobo is sporting an AMD Duron single core cpu - it's been enough. I realize now that I probably will NEVER need a honkin' huge case like I have...5-6 drives would likely be all I would ever need. I like the DS380 case, but I find the heat issues being discussed are a little concerning - perhaps that was cause enough to use the Lian Li...but you lose the hotswap ability and it seems to be more difficult to change hard drives? You already nailed my Motherboard of choice... And congratulations on the build - it's really nice. UPDATE - I did not know that this case supports 5x hotswap. Awesome...I retract the "lose the hotswap ability" quip! It's there, it's just 3 fewer slots which I'd probably never use and for $50 less! Nice one.

First Preclear result. Running Beta 5.0/14. Preclear.sh is latest AFAIK (downloaded 2 days ago). (2) WD15EARS Drives - Jumpered 7/8 - Preclears ran for SDA and SDC - Drives are new, but I've had them for a year. Excepts are: SDA Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: ========================================================================1.13 Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh -A /dev/sda Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == WDC WD15EARS-00MVWB0 WD-WMAZA2581122 Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Disk /dev/sda has been successfully precleared Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == with a starting sector of 64 Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Ran 1 cycle Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Using :Read block size = 8225280 Bytes Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 4:45:08 (87 MB/s) Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 5:51:22 (71 MB/s) Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 9:08:13 (45 MB/s) Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Last Cycle's Total Time : 19:45:43 Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Total Elapsed Time 19:45:43 Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Disk Start Temperature: 20C Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Current Disk Temperature: 25C, Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: == Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: ============================================================================ Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: ** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sda /tmp/smart_finish_sda Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: ATTRIBUTE NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS RAW_VALUE Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: Temperature_Celsius = 125 130 0 ok 25 Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: 0 sectors were pending re-allocation before the start of the preclear. Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: 0 sectors were pending re-allocation after pre-read in cycle 1 of 1. Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: 0 sectors were pending re-allocation after zero of disk in cycle 1 of 1. Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: 0 sectors are pending re-allocation at the end of the preclear, Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change. Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: 0 sectors had been re-allocated before the start of the preclear. Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: 0 sectors are re-allocated at the end of the preclear, Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: the number of sectors re-allocated did not change. Jan 7 17:04:17 Tower preclear_disk-diff[12218]: ============================================================================ SDC Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: ========================================================================1.13 Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh -A /dev/sdc Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == WDC WD15EARS-00MVWB0 WD-WMAZA2644094 Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Disk /dev/sdc has been successfully precleared Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == with a starting sector of 64 Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Ran 1 cycle Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Using :Read block size = 8225280 Bytes Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time : 6:44:40 (61 MB/s) Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Last Cycle's Zeroing time : 7:27:40 (55 MB/s) Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 12:59:10 (32 MB/s) Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Last Cycle's Total Time : 27:12:30 Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Total Elapsed Time 27:12:30 Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Disk Start Temperature: 23C Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Current Disk Temperature: 24C, Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: == Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: ============================================================================ Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: ** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sdc /tmp/smart_finish_sdc Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: ATTRIBUTE NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS RAW_VALUE Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: Seek_Error_Rate = 100 200 0 ok 0 Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: Temperature_Celsius = 126 127 0 ok 24 Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: 0 sectors were pending re-allocation before the start of the preclear. Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: 0 sectors were pending re-allocation after pre-read in cycle 1 of 1. Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: 0 sectors were pending re-allocation after zero of disk in cycle 1 of 1. Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: 0 sectors are pending re-allocation at the end of the preclear, Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change. Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: 0 sectors had been re-allocated before the start of the preclear. Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: 0 sectors are re-allocated at the end of the preclear, Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: the number of sectors re-allocated did not change. Jan 9 02:38:10 Tower preclear_disk-diff[28147]: ============================================================================ Are these good results? I noticed that the SDC drive published a "SEEK ERROR RATE" line that SDA did not. The SDC drive is operating a good deal slower than SDA - is that a concern? Are these "CYCLE TIME" numbers typical for the EARS Green drives? Sorry for so many questions...I've been reading and searching for a few hours and I just didn't have any feel for "are these good baseline results" and my build is new so I am suspicious of anything out of the ordinary. I realize that I probably need to run the drives for 2-3 more passes each minimum to verify they have no issues before I integrate them into the array and they get formatted for the first time. Thanks in advance for such an incredible tool! Waay better than the "Fire it up and take our chances approach"!