aaronwt

I'm running nine of those old HP Microservers with unRAID. One N36L, five N40L, and three N54L units. They are all running unRAID 6.12.3 without any issues. But I also typically upgrade my unRAID OS as soon as they are out of beta, and available for general use. So I did not go straight from 6.11.x to 6.12.3

Is there anyway you could add an option to benchmark SSDs when the CPU core count is below 4? All my unRAID systems run on old dual core CPUs. It would be nice to be able to benchmark the SSD I have in each one. That is used for a cache drive.

Fifteen years ago I strictly used WD drives for my LAN storage. But over the years I gradually switched to Seagate. First Seagate Barracuda drives. Then Seagate Iron Wolf. Then Seagate Terascale. Most recently I started using the Seagate EXOS drives. I recently purchased seventeen of the 14TB Exos X14 drives, renewed. And six of the 12TB EXOS X18 drives, renewed. Although I still use WD drives, for my external USB drives, that are attached to my Plex PCs. And also in my old unRAIDs. For my new unRAIDs, I have gone all in with Seagate. Except for the cache drive. Which are 1TB Samsung 870 EVO SSDs. And once I transfer all my content from my oldest unRAID setups, which still use the ReiserFS file system. I will purge the forty or so, old 2TB and 3TB, WD drives. And will be left with only Seagate Terascale and Exos drives, in all my unRAID setups.

With no Parity drive in use, the N36L should have no problem maxing out the throughput on the drives. How old are the drives? I know I have 24+ 4TB Seagate Terascale drives in unRAID setups. With an N40L and N54L, and they don't come anywhere close to reaching the throughput that my Exos X14 and X18 drives have. But they will still hit up to 170MB/s throughput. While the Exos drives will hit up to 250MB/s throughput, in the N36L.

I have a couple of those QNAP switches. I've never had any problem getting over 8Gbps throughput, between two PCs, using Commscope Cat6 patch cables. On the 10GbE ports. And then Cat5e is rated for up to 100 meters at 2.5 GbE. My unRAIDs are connected to the 2.5 GbE ports. Some using generic Cat5e. At 2.5 GbE, they work just the same as the ones using Commscope Cat6 cables.

I just setup an N36L last night. I bought a "For Parts" N54L off eBAY and needed to replace the Motherboard. So I was able to pickup an N36L Motherboard (and Tray)for around $40 shipped, off ebay. In my testing last night, with no parity drive, I had no problem hitting up to 1.6Gbps transfer rates, using a 2.5GbE network card (in the PCIe x1 slot), and bypassing the cache drive. And the 12 TB EXOS X18 drives I had in the system, easily hit up to 250MB/s (2gb/s) transfer rates. With consistent rates over 200MB/s(1.6Gb/s). Both from the Motherboard SAS connector and the SATA card I have installed. My SSD cache drive, 870 EVO, was even hitting around 450MB/s (3.6gb/s) peaks. But that 2.5" drive, and a fifth 3.5" drive, is connected to a PCIe x4 SATA card. And it hit those peaks when pulling cached data from the 16GB of ECC memory.

I have 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB in my HP N36L, N40L, and N54L microservers. But I will be upgrading them all to 16GB. I currently only have four with 16GB. But, as I setup new arrays, I am installing two, 8GB, ECC sticks of memory. Unfortunately, 16GB is the max memory it will take.

I'm currently running six unRAID servers. And I plan to setup two to three more. After I finish transferring data from my first three unRAID servers (only 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB drives), to my second three (Five 14TB drives in each). The first three still use the Reiser file system. So I want to move everything off of them. And then I will take the 20+ 4TB drives I have in the first three unRAID servers. And use those to setup four unRAID servers.

WoW! I want my drives spun down whenever they aren't in use. I have several unRAIDs setup with 20+ drives. I use the Dynamix caching plugin so directories are in memory. And if a drive needs to spin up it's only a short delay. Much better than my systems using 200 watts or so each, constantly. With everything spun up. Although I am in the process of moving everything off of my first three unRAIDs, with 20+ drives in each. To unRAID setups with only five drives in use. My unRAIDs with, a large number of drives, use 3TB and 4TB drives with two parity drives. And my new unRAIDs will only use five 14TB drives. With only one parity drive. Then I will setup several unRAIDs, only using the 4TB drives I have. With only five drives in each again. But only 16TB, total storage, for the arrays. That way I can further split up my content to separate systems. And only turn them on as needed. Right now, it looks like I might end up with eight or nine unRAID setups. When I'm finished transferring all my content.

Wow! I completely forgot I was still using the ancient reiserfs file system. I'm glad I recently decided to move the data from my older three unRAID setups to new ones. I am still using reiserfs, with sixty plus drives, in those three old setups. So with the three new unRAID systems, I setup last week, I am using XFS for the array drives and btrfs for the cache drives.

I deleted everything on the unRAID usb drive and started from scratch. Now I am connecting. I'll see if it stays ok overnight.

I just started having this issue an hour or so ago with a new unRAID I setup on Saturday. It was fine prior to that. And I also set up another one on Friday night. And that one is still working fine.

Doh!!😳 Somehow I missed this in the FAQ. So, I guess, there is an extra $10 cost to upgrade from Basic to Plus or Pro. But, that is fine. I can't see needing more Pro Licenses. But at least I know there will be an option, in the webGUI. To be able to upgrade from the Basic license, if I need it in the future.

I plan on buying two more unRAID licenses soon. My first four unRAID setups use Pro licenses. But I will be setting up a fifth and sixth unRAID, using N40L Microservers. I only need six disks in each system. Since I don't plan on using external storage cases any more. So my plan is to purchase the Basic licenses. But I want to make sure than I can still upgrade to Plus or Pro, by paying the difference, if I need to in the future. Or is there an extra cost involved when upgrading?

I'm using HP microservers, N40L and N54L models. I use the internal USB port, on the motherboard, for the unRAID USB drive. I've been using the small USB drives for unRAID since I first started using unRAID in 2011. So far, I have not run into any issues with them. Hopefully, that continues to be the case. But these new unRAIDs setups will be using 14TB drives. My previous setups never exceeded 4TB drives. I used external cases with port multiplier, eSATA ports. To have 20+ drives in use with each unRAID setup. My new unRAID setups will have five, 14TB drives. With one parity, instead of the two I had been using. Plus one SSD, 1TB, for the cache drive. But these will all be internal drives, in each HP N40L or N54L Microserver. Instead of messing with the external cases. Which I had been doing since 2008. When I first setup a Windows home server on previous model HP microservers. That had around thirty drives, using external cases, with eSATA port multiplier ports. When I switched to unRAID I kept using external cases, unfortunately. They have always worked very well for me. But they use much more power.

I ended up getting a SanDisk, 16GB Ultra Fit USB 3.1 drive from Amazon. To go in my fifth unRAID setup. It came in a blister pack, so I hope it's OK. But I got this USB drive because I have been using them in three of my unRAID setups, since 2019, with zero issues. SO, hopefully, this one is fine. Although I'm still waiting for another N40L system to arrive from eBay. That I will be using it in.

Wow! I'm glad I saw this. I was going to get another SanDisk USB. I got two back in 2019. When I had setup two additional unRAID setups. And was going to use the same model USB drives. Since I have had zero issues with the ones I got in 2019. But I guess i need to look for something else now. What is a popular USB drive people use now for unRAID? One that is super small.

Does the USB stick for unRAID or a network card count as an attached device? I plan on moving from three unRAID setups, with 16+ external drives attached, using eSATA port multipliers. To five unRAID setups with only six drives in each setup. 1-Parity, 1-cache- and four drives in the array. So I need to pickup a fifth license. My current four are the Pro licenses. That I got when they had a discount for getting two licenses together. But I only need one more. And I don't plan on having 20+ total drives in each system any more. So I would only need the basic license. Unless the network card and unRAID USB stick count as attached devices. Then I would need to get the Plus.

Any update on the new website for prebuilt unRAID servers?

Happy 14th Anniversary. I've been using unRAID for eight years now. I currently run three unRAID setups with Pro licenses. And I have a fourth pro license that I use in a box for preclearing. 53TB unRAID1a--49TB unRAID2--76TB unRAID3

I have not had this issue yet. In the options I set 50GB as a minimum space available. So I'm in the process of moving content from four 2TB drives so I can remove them from the array in my unRAID2 setup. The lowest amount of free space I've seen the 3TB and 2TB drives get to in the array is 53GB. I'll see what happens later. I'm halfway through my third drive. When I finish I should hopefully have 19 array drives with around 50GB of free space for each drive. My unRAID 2 is my oldest unRAID setup. I set it up back in 2011. And I used mostly 2TB drives and later a few 3TB drives. But the 2TB drives are ten years old now. And I have not added content to it in many years. It's filled with BD ISOs. Most of which were created when I used a WIndows Home Server back in 2009 through 2011. Then I switched to using unRAID and transferred my BD ISOs to it. I recently dumped the power hogging 2009 home made PC I used and installed an old HP N40L microserver in it's place. But I'm using four, 5-bay external enclosures for the array drives in addition to the drives in the HP microserver. So I want to get the external enclosures down to 4 drives each to speed up parity checks. 53TB unRAID1a--53TB unRAID2--76TB unRAID3

I recently purchased twenty four 4TB NAS rated drives. So I had been using the pre-clear Plugin to preclear between two and four drives concurrently. I didn't run into any issues. I have a fourth unRAID pro license so I just use that in a PC with a four drive cage. And do the prelear process.

I just picked up a couple of N40L Proliant Micro servers off ebay. To replace the PCs I built, a long time ago, that I use with my unRAID1a and unRAID 2 servers. I installed the modded BiOS from 2013 and it was installed in just a few seconds. I thought I might see some difference between my N54L and the N40L microservers. But so far they seem to be working just as well. I'm using two parity drives in my N54L and two in one of the N40L micro servers. It's working great so far and is using a little less power than the N54L. 53TB unRAID1a--53TB unRAID2--76TB unRAID3

I've been using External eSATA cases with port mUltiplier cards with unRAID since 2011. I've not had any issues. Currently I use twelve external 4 and 5 bay eSATA enclosures with my three unRAID setups for array drives. And I use a 1 bay ESATA enclosure for the cache drive with each unRAID setup. 49TB unRAID1a--53TB unRAID2--72TB unRAID3

This seems to be working fine in unRAID 6.7.2. I'm currently running it on all three of my unRAID setups right now. unRAID1a with 14 array and 2 parity drives. unRAID2 with 23 array and 1 parity drive. unRAID3 with 19 array and 2 parity drives. 49TB unRAID1a--53TB unRAID2--73TB unRAID3