JonathanM

Knowledge gained is seldom "futile". Give a fish, or teach to fish, etc.

I have personally tried them, and no, the quality is just fine, as long as you don't try to push more data than the extender is rated for. If you are trying to push high res with a cheap extender, you will see issues. The cheap ones run 720p and 1080i just fine.

But then you have to wait for it to complete which could take hours for a drive full of data. Just curious, why do you have to wait? As soon as the drive is showing enough free space for the operation, why not go ahead? Then after you've finished your operation, and the mover finishes its first run, you can manually run it again, or just wait for the daily schedule if you don't need it cleared right then.

Haven't used it but this looks interesting.

Unmenu is compatible with any of the other GUI's, simply because it does not overwrite any of the stock functions, it listens on a totally different port, and is completely independent. Where did you find information that it was incompatible?

Do you have any ideas how it would be done over a single cable? Google: hdmi single cat6 tons of hits and reviews of the various solutions. Sorry, I am trying to figure out how to extend both HDMI & USB for IR receiver over a single CAT cable (if possible). I have 2 TVs I like to extend this to, but each room has a single cable installed. Is that still what you are talking about googling? Nope, sorry, from the quote you responded to I thought you wanted a single cable HDMI solution.

Do you have any ideas how it would be done over a single cable? Google: hdmi single cat6 tons of hits and reviews of the various solutions.

4.7 does not support drives larger than 2.2TB.

Not using screen = preclear quit when telnet closed. What model hard drive? What does the default partition format show on the settings page?

If you followed the guides that tell you to use screen, then the preclear should still be running in the screen session. The worst consequence of alignment is a slowdown in data speeds from a particular specific series of drives that handled alignment poorly.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=13187.msg182915#msg182915

It actually takes a good bit longer, because the script actually checks the drive fully. But, as you said, the array is fully available, so it is a good tradeoff.

If I understand you correctly, yes, you can stop the stock unraid clearing process, unassign the drive, then run Joe L.'s preclear script on it. I'm not sure what the unraid interface will show at that point, worst case scenario is that you will need to set a new config, and reassign all the drives and rebuild parity once again. I'm assuming you really haven't started moving data for real at this point, if you have, you will have to start over again if you preclear all your drives. (Which you really should, just for the sake of gaining confidence in the drives.)

Were these drives in the server when this happened?

Same end result, but not the same function. Preclear checks the smart status of the drive, exercises it and confirms that it reads back correctly what is written, then checks the smart status of the drive again and notes any changes. This is all done with the drive not assigned to the array, so you still have access to the other array drives while it works. After a drive is successfully precleared, you can then add it to the array and it will not have to go through the lengthy clearing process that keeps you from accessing the rest of the array. The stock clearing stage only writes zeros to the drive, it doesn't confirm that the drive is reading back correctly. It assumes the drive is good.

Correct. Formatting has nothing to do with whether it's assigned to the array. Set a new configuration, and don't assign any drives. You can then preclear your drives, no need to format them first.

The manual says it should be there, Legacy LAN as a boot option. Perhaps you may have to use the other network port?

The wiki assumes your server already has a valid parity drive in place. Until you complete the parity calculations, you can just set a new configuration and assign the drives however you wish. Once parity is valid, adding a new drive requires it to be cleared before it can be added to the protected drives. Unless you are in a real hurry to get your server up and running, I strongly suggest you search for and use the preclear script written by Joe L. to confirm your new drives are error free. It will erase all the data on any drive you run it on, so you'll have to redo populating your array, and once again wait for parity to build. However, it's well worth it to ensure that your drives don't suffer from infant mortality.

He just posted a couple hours ago here on the forums, so maybe try a quick email again? He said he has been under the weather recently, so he may be still catching up on things.

Quite a price difference though. $60 vs $700?

What we are discussing with dual parity is not 2 disks with the same data. It's 2 disks with complementary parity calculations on each one, in a way that allows for the reconstruction of 2 failed disks, and also allows for a method to pinpoint the exact location of any corruption with the ability to fix it. Current single parity can only tell you that there is a discrepancy in the data located at offset x on the entire set of disks, with no ability to pinpoint WHICH disk is wrong. Right now the assumption is made that any parity error involves the parity drive being wrong, and the data disks are correct. While this is the correct assumption for the vast majority of cases, it's not 100%.

Dual parity is exactly what will allow these operations to take place WITHOUT the system running at risk. It's one method. There are simpler ways to accomplish upgrades and swaps using the current single parity system that don't involve dual parity.

It's been discussed in the past, and yes, I agree, it's very bad form to require the array to be run at risk to do basic drive upgrades and swaps. There are fairly easy ways to accomplish what you want, but it has not been put forward as a high priority for Tom to work on. People seem to want built in email notification and some flavor of dual parity as a higher priority, and now that the 64 bit and full distro and virtualization crowd have bum rushed Tom to work on their needs first, I doubt the other basic stuff is going to get much attention.

How about this? http://www.theportablepc.com/zeusa1.htm Or this? http://www.theportablepc.com/commanderat2.htm

It looks like that's similar to what he already has, and it's too big for carry on.