aaronwt

Just use external enclosures. I am currently using four external enclosures with my N54L. Each enclosure has the capability to have four drives. And I can add a fifth enclosure to house more drives. I am currently using five drive in my Microserver and thirteen drives in the fours external enclosures. I have a Rosewill RC-218 port multiplier PCIe x4 in the Micro server that gives me four ports that can be used with enclosures that are port multiplier capable. I only wish I had jumped on the N54L deal last week that Newegg had for $200 for the 4GB version. With another $30 off by rebate. I would have liked to setup a fourth unRAID server and eventually have it replace my second one which uses more power than I would like.

Yes. Resulted in quite an increase in transfer speed, mainly when copying data to the microserver. Reading was fast enough without the "fix". So what are new speeds now? With my N54L even copying content to my parity drive is limited in speed. I think it's only around 50MB/s. Where can I find more info about this script?

There's a whole level of virtualization going on there with FUSE. What is the difference in CPU between the two machines? What are the bogomips on the machine(s) you are comparing. How much ram is in each machine? do you have the himem is dirtayable option set? My unRAID1 setup has a 2.4 Ghz(or 2.6Ghz I always forget) single core Athlon CPU, but with 4GB of memory. My unRAID2 setep has a dual core 2.8 Ghz Athlon but with 2GB of memory. Both machines have dual channel memory while I guess my N54L is only single channel since it's got only one 2GB stick. I had thought about getting another 2GB stick before I opened it up but I figured my other machine was perfectly fine with only 2GB of memory so I figured it wasn't needed.

I thought I was getting faster results to cache drive then that on my N40L but I'm at work currently and can't test for you. I will see when I get home tonight. Maybe someone else can confirm earlier. Writing to a user share which writes to the cache drive I get 50-60MB/s. Writing directly to the cache drive share and not through the user share file system I get 75-85MB/s. This was using Windows Explorer in a Windows 7 VM from one unRAID server to the N40L unRAID server. I copied a BluRay folder of a movie (34.8GB) - "2001 A Space Odyssey". The cache drive is a EADS 1.5TB green drive and the rest of the drives in the array are WD 2TB Reds. Thanks. My N54L finished the parity sync last night. Now when I write to a share that uses the cache I'm back to only 50MB/s write speeds. If I write directly to the cache drive is up to double that. Why is there such a disparity between the two? So it sounds like when I had all my drives in the array in external enclosures everything was fine. But I don't like those slow speeds to a share that uses the cache drive. Since my other unRAID setups can get much faster speeds in the same situation. I just don't understand why the N54L is so much slower.

OK, I forgot that I mostly had test data on my unRAID3 setup. I only had around 100GB of data I needed to keep, so I copied that to another location and started from scratch. I'm using a Seagate 2TB 7200 rpm drive for parity, three 5900 RPM Seagate drives for the array, and one Seagate 5900 rpm drive for the cache drive. All the drives that are in my N54L enclosure. I don't have any of my external enclosures turned on. So while it's doing the initial parity sync(I'm getting 107MB/s parity sync speeds) I'm able to copy files directly to the cache drive and I'm getting between 70MB/s and 110MB/s write rates and between 90MB/s and 110MB/s read rates. It is fluctuating alot between those speeds but it is much higher than before. I'll need to gradually add enclosures and drives to see where the copy speeds start to drop down. So my next step is to move the drive I was using as the cache drive before into a slot in the N54L to see what speeds I get. Then if that goes well, I'll need to add one enclosures after another, testing speeds after each one is added.

My BiOS is upgraded. I turned on the write cache when I had a parity and a couple of array drives inside the N54L. It made a big difference in the parity check then but I never tried it with a cache drive. Now that I have around eighteen array drives i am not going to get 100MB/s+ parity check speeds. So with the write cache on or off the speeds are the same. It's just more consistent with it off now. But with the cache drive I've tried an old 750GB WD green drive and a 1TB 7200 rpm Seagate drive. Both of these drives get much faster speeds from my first unRAID setup. The drives are fine. But for some reason my write speeds over the network aren't exceeding 50Mb/s to the cache drive. When I pick up a few more drives I'll stick some in the N54L to test it out with just a parity, cache and three array drives to see what speeds I get. But until I find some drives on sale for a great price I'll need to wait and just live with the speeds.

I tried turning the write cache off. When I initially turned it on I only had drives in the internal drive bay, but I was only looking at speeds during a parity check. Not transfer speeds since I was transferring without a cache drive. I wish I had checked out transfer speeds earlier with a cache drive. Anyway I turned off the write caching in the BIOS. The write speeds are still on 45MB/s to 50MB/s to the cache drive. But at least they don't fluctuate alot like they did with write caching on. These write speeds are slower than I would like. I would prefer to get at least 60MB/s write speeds for when I'm ripping BD titles. So I could rip two at a time. Otherwise with the speeds I'm getting I need to only rip one. The read speeds are 75MB/s to 85MB/s from the cache and array drives so I know the network connection is capable of faster speeds, I just don't understand why the write speeds are so slow over the newtork.

What speeds are people getting to the N54L when writing to a cache drive over the network? I recently setup a cache drive and I'm only getting around 45MB/s to 50MB/s write speeds. The read speeds are OK but it seems to be writing slower than I would expect. The same cache drive in my unRAID1 setup gets write speeds of 70MB/s to 75MB/s. So I'm curious if these speeds are normal. I've tried the cache drive in a drive bay inside the 54L and also in a couple of my external enclosures. It made no difference in the speeds. Is there a setting I need to change in the BiOS to increase the speeds or is this normal?

That was the idea I had a while back. BTW there is a particular syba card that allows 4 ports on a PCIe x1 slot. It has 2 eSATA ports and 2 internal SATA ports. It's no longer available on the regular market. I found 2 on the secondary market. It worked for me. It wouldn't be the best performer, but it sure would max out ports !!! As far as the opening, there's enough room in backup of the upper metal to drill and nibble space for eSATA ports. You would need to evacuate parts to insure no shavings fall on the motherboard, but it could give you 6 or 8 ports from the x4/x1 slot. A x1 card will not work well for multiple enclosures(and least not multiple bay. multiple enclosures) In my testing the most drives I will use on a x1 card is four(which for me is one enclosure with four drives in it) and with a x4 card I don't like to exceed 16 drives(four enclosures). Although I have 17 drives in my unRAID1 attached to a rosewill card. But it is noticeably slower during the parity check because of that. I've decided to just use a 4 bay enclosure with only two drives in it for the built in eSATA port. Then I will be moving my five bay enclosure from my unRAID1 and move that to my unRAID3 while moving a 4 bay enclosure to unRAID1. Then I need to drop the cache drive on unRAID1 and I won't have a cache drive on unRAID3 either. Then I should be able to get 1 parity drive and 23 arrays drives in the setup. Although I have found the N54 is is kind of picky with my RC218 and the eSATA port. I could not use five MediaSonic enclosures and I could not use five Sans Digital enclosures. I had to use a combination of both for it to boot and see all the drives. So I'm not sure what will happen when I move over the 5 bay Sans Digital enclosure. Although I had the same issue with my unRAID2 setup. I have no idea why, but I did not have the issue with my first unRAID build.

But during a parity check or drive rebuild, it will still be accessing all the drives at the same time. Accessing one drive at a time is no problem, like when writing data to the array. I tried staggering the drives in my first unRAID setup but the difference in my use was minimal. I ended up using a cache drive with that setup. With my second unRAid setup I put all the drives in order of each enclosure. I'm not using a cache drive in that setup and have been pleased with the speed results. While the driver attempts to read the drives, I think it has to read each drive sequentially. So by ordering the drives to access the channel once every round vs accessing the channel 4 times one behind the other may alleviate contention for the channel. There was someone who did this years ago when port multipliers were new and he said it gave him a slight increase in speed. YMMV. It may not be worth it considering how you have to arrange the drives. I know when I tested PMP support using 4 drives simultaneously, I got something like 15MB/s per drive. In comparison using the silicon image, 1 drive was 120MB/s 2 drives were 60MB/s, 3 drives were 40MB/s and 4 drives were 30MB/s. There is still the option of putting the 2 eSATA brackets ports on the back of the unit after it is nibbled out. You may be able to fit 4 there. I haven't measured it. That's what I did with my old chenbro chassis years back. I currently have five eSATA ports on the back. Getting four from my Rosewill RC218. Two external on the card and then I have two more from the two internal ports running to a two port bracket. Where would another eSATA port come from? Or would I need to create an opening to run the two internal ports from the Rosewill and then stick a card in the PCI express x1 slot?

But during a parity check or drive rebuild, it will still be accessing all the drives at the same time. Accessing one drive at a time is no problem, like when writing data to the array. I tried staggering the drives in my first unRAID setup but the difference in my use was minimal. I ended up using a cache drive with that setup. With my second unRAid setup I put all the drives in order of each enclosure. I'm not using a cache drive in that setup and have been pleased with the speed results.

I just started using my eSATA ports on my N54L. From my Rosewill RC218 it is fine since that uses FIS–based (frame information structure) switching. But from what I've read it seems that the built in eSATA port uses Command-based switching so it can only access one drive at a time, not concurrently like with FIS based switching. I was wondering why things were going so slow with the four bay enclosure I connected. With four drives on the eSATA port it really slows things down if all drives are going to be accessed concurrently like during a parity check in unRAID. With one drive of course it's fine, and two drives is not bad, but once you get to three drives it really slows things down. So if I decide to use the built in eSATA port in the future, I will limit it to two drives at the most. Then I will need to take a 5 Bay enclosure from my unRAID1 to use with my unRAID3 to connect to the RC-218. Then I should be able to hit the max of 23 drives in the array. I'll have to see though how much things slow down with two drives on the built in eSata port. When I was clearing one 2TB drive it was going at just under 3 minutes for each percent. When I tried two 2TB drives that increased to around 4.5 minutes for each percent. So I'm not sure what speeds I will get from a parity check.

Here are a couple of pics of it.

I'll need to take some tomorrow.

Yes I have all five of the enclosures, but I'm short several 2TB drives to fill all of them. When I tested the system to see if it would see all of the drives I used some old 1TB and 750GB drives.

I finally got my N54L setup completed today. I put in a Rosewill RC218 port multiplier card. So I tested it by connecting four, 4 bay enclosures to the Rosewill card and one, 4 bay, enclosure to the eSata port. All twenty external drives came up in unRAID. Plus I have a drive connected to the on board sata port. So this should work with up to twenty five drives connected to my N54L. Now I just need to get a pro license setup for my N54L and I can start off with five drives internally and fifteen drives in four of the external enclosures.

Does enabling write cache have any noticeable benefit? I just changed mine. When it was disabled I was doing around 45MB/s for a parity sync. With it enabled the speed jumped to over 100MB/s. That's interesting. I wonder if there are any downsides to enabling it. Why is it disabled by default? It says in the BIOS that if you lose power with caching enabled that you can lose data. So I guess as long as the MicroServer is connected to a UPS it should be fine.

Does enabling write cache have any noticeable benefit? I just changed mine. When it was disabled I was doing around 45MB/s for a parity sync. With it enabled the speed jumped to over 100MB/s.

What about the sata rate? If I set it to 3Gbps Max, does that mean every drive will try to run at that link rate? Or is auto the setting I need?

Really? Write cache on? I'll try changing it.

OK. I finally got around to setting up my N54L. I flashed the Bios. So if I have everything set up right, when I connect a drive to the eSATA port it should show up as AHCI right? Instead of IDE? Also is there anything I need to do to enable port multiplier capability from the eSATA port? I've loaded unRAID r15a so far with no issues. Hopefully I'll have another port multiplier capable enclosure removed from my WHS so I can try out the eSATA port. Plus I still need to get another Rosewill RC-218 card. And of course get a third unRAID license.

I've been using seven of those MediaSonic enclosures(USB 2.0 versions) with my WHS for over three years. They have worked great. Plus they will power down automatically as well so no need for me to get a power strip to do it like with my primary unRAID with SansDigital enclosures. I'm in the process of transferring content from my WHS to my unRAIDs and as the drives are freed up I will be moving my Mediasonic enclosures over as well. Although with my WHS six of them were using USB. It will be nice to be able to use the faster eSATA port on them with unRAID. Hopefully I'll be able to use five of my MediaSonic enclosures with my N54L when I get it setup. Four connected to a Rosewill RC-218 PCI express x4 port multiplier card, and one from the built in port multiplier eSATA port. If I can use five of the Mediasonic enclosures, plus use five drives in the N54L I'll be able to max out the number drives in my third unRAID setup with twenty five 2TB drives. All from my current WHS setup. But it's going to be a few weeks until I get around to starting on the N54L since I need to copy so much data from my WHS to my second unRAID setup first.

Try the Rosewill RC-218 card. It is port multiplier capable. I've been using one in my main unRAID setup for over two years with no issues. And I recently got one for my second unRAID. It's a x4 PCI express card with two external eSATA connections and four internal sata. Although only four can be active at once(selected by jumpers). I'm using four external enclosures connected to the RC-218 with seventeen hard drives on my main unRAID. On my second unRAID I have two external enclosures with eight drives connected to the RC-218. I picked up my second one for around $68 from Amazon this past week. Newegg prices were higher. This is the card I plan to use in my N54L when I'm ready to set it up. Hopefully there won't be any issues with it. But in my first two unRAID setups it has worked very well.

300 watts during a full parity check with 22 drives is not that bad. It's what the power draw in standby that I would be concerned with while using all those external enclosures. I don't run it 24/7 so the higher power usage isn't too big a deal. I typically only turn it on in the evenings and weekends. I was trying to get the drives to spin down but they haven't yet. With the drives spinning and 17 drives in four enclosures and five drives in the CPU enclosure it's drawing around 245 watts. EDIT: They just spun down. It's drawing 145 watts with all the drives spun down.

That is the one bad thing about using a bunch of external enclosures. A much higher power draw. Not sure offhand what it is in standby. But my main unRAID setup, when I was using five external enclosures, was drawing close to 300 watts(including CPU enclosure) during a parity check with 22 drives. But that is also higher because of the TR4M enclosures which have internal power supplies. My MediaSonic enclosures with external power supplies, that I use with my WHS, draw less power.