Stucco

I ran some additional tests, and have produced some interesting results. I hooked up four drives to my windows system inside one of the supermicro backplanes. I set up a striped disk across three of the drives, and leave the fourth as a normal simple partition. Test 1 - I run a speed test on the fourth drive, with no activity to the other drives. I get the expected R/W speeds. Test 2 - I run a speed test on the fourth drive, while copying a large file to the other drives. The drive performance drops significantly. I remove the drives from the backplane, and hook them directly up to the system. Test 3 - I run a speed test on the fourth drive, with no activity to the other drives. I get the expected R/W speeds. Test 4 - I run a speed test on the fourth drive, while copying a large file to the other drives. I get the expected R/W speeds. Here are the actual test results. Expected - From Test 4, and consistent across Tests 1, 3 & 4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 Shizuku Edition x64 © 2007-2012 hiyohiyo Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [sATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s] Sequential Read : 132.396 MB/s Sequential Write : 93.653 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 66.123 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 117.524 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 1.160 MB/s [ 283.1 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 3.037 MB/s [ 741.4 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 1.401 MB/s [ 341.9 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 2.991 MB/s [ 730.3 IOPS] Test : 50 MB [E: 1.9% (17.3/931.5 GB)] (x1) Date : 2012/12/28 22:31:29 OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64) Poor - From Test 2 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 Shizuku Edition x64 © 2007-2012 hiyohiyo Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [sATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s] Sequential Read : 22.792 MB/s Sequential Write : 12.029 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 10.667 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 16.446 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.073 MB/s [ 17.8 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.184 MB/s [ 44.9 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.092 MB/s [ 22.5 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.195 MB/s [ 47.6 IOPS] Test : 50 MB [E: 1.9% (17.3/931.5 GB)] (x1) Date : 2012/12/28 22:20:47 OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64) This happens with both of my supermicro backplanes, identically. Anyone have any insight on the CSE-M35T-1? Maybe they aren't all they were cracked up to be? Maybe I got a bad batch? Thanks in advance.

Hi, I had disk3 rebuilding and disk1 had failed writes either during or shortly after the rebuild. disk1 showed red ball and disk3 showed orange ball. I saw that orange usually means pending cache writes, so I went ahead and proceeded with starting to deal with disk1. I disconnected and reconnected disk1, and it showed a blue ball and asked if I wanted to rebuild the disk. I stated that I did, and then it presented me with this, which now says both my disk1 and disk3 are orange and unformatted. Is there any way to restore the array in the current state? I am thinking I will have to recover the data and rebuild the array a disk at a time. Thank you, syslog-2012-12-09.zip

Ok, still not sure what was going on, but I fully shut down and left it for about 10 minutes, and ran through a cold boot cycle. When it came up, it looked exactly the same, but no disk was assigned to disk1. I assigned it, and all of a sudden it is found and ready to come online and start the rebuild. When in doubt, reboot (again and again) Thanks for all the help guys, seriously. I really appreciate it!

Got into unMenu and I can see the drive, and it shows the right size. :-| Notice though, the name is missing the P in the image. That is strange... WDC_WD20EARX-00P_WD-WCAZA8408153

IC, Adding a drive to a second install like that doesn't change the drive data as long as I don't spin it up, right?

That would be to get the actual drive size to compare against the previous and confirm that is the problem, correct?

A soft reboot was performed after the other steps (unassign, assign, reseat hard drive, reseat sata connections, switch sata port). The system shows the same status after each action.

Are you sure 4.7 supports hot swap? Somewhere in the back of my head I'm remembering hot swap after stopping the array (warm swap?) being added as a feature in the 5.x series somewhere? I am not sure, but I have done it multiple times in the past and the hot swapped drive seems to be working fine. It is the other one that is giving me fits. I can shut down from now on.

Thank you for the reply. It does allow the drive to be assigned. I did not assign it to a different slot. How can I verify what unraid is expecting for the size vs. the current size?

Hi, Unraid 4.7. Disk 3 showed redball, so I stopped the array and hot swapped for another identical drive. I updated in Devices and when I went back to Main, Disk 1 shows that it is missing. I double checked the configuration, unassigned it, reassigned it, reseated it, rebooted the server, swapped the sata port, and still it shows that disk 1 is missing. Syslog attached, screenshots below. Please help! syslog-2012-11-28.zip

My unraid version is 4.7. All drives are connected to the motherboard, not the RC-218. The drive that was in the second bay was connected to the RC-218, but the bay/PSU causes the problem even without a drive in it, and disconnected from everything except the power.

It has to be a faulty PSU or a faulty bay. Any idea how to figure out which one? I don't know how to test the power pulled by an individual molex or sata power port. I have a spare Rosewill RV2-700. The problem is that it is 700W and can probably supply the second bay with what it wants, even if it is faulty.

It had 1 green drive in it. The drive would have connected to my controller card. I tried to "recreate" the rebuild by initiating a parity check and plugging in / unplugging the power to the bay. Without the second bay plugged in I run about 95 MB/sec. When I plug in the power to the bay containing the single green drive it drops to around 58 MB/sec. When I plug in the power to the bay containing NO drives it drops to about 40 MB/sec. When I plug in the power to the bay with NO connectivity to it whatsoever except for the power it drops to about 40 MB/sec. Any thoughts?

Hi all, I had a drive redball on me. During the rebuild process I hooked up my second 5-in-3 Supermicro bay in order to expand the array when the rebuild completed. When I plug in the power to that 5-in-3 bay it drops my rebuild speed from about 47 MB/sec to 2 MB/sec. If I unlug the power, it goes right back. Any thoughts? I am using a 1 x SATA to 3 X molex power converter to hook up the bay. I have 5 drives in the system currently (in the first bay), 4 of them green. The second bay I was trying to hook up contains 1 green drive. My system build is: Motherboard: ECS A885GM-A2 (V1.1) AM3 CPU: AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Desktop Processor SDX145HBGMBOX PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 V2 430W RAM: Patriot 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Controller Card: Rosewill RC-218 Hard Drive Array: 2 X Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5x3 Case: AZZA Helios 910 Thanks!!

I think i narrowed it to my sumermicro backplane. Regardless, I wanted to leave a note of two things. 1) I had to go back and buy this to have enough molex power plugs to power my supermicro backplanes: Power Adapter 2) Newegg is running a special on the PSU right now. I called in and they issued me a $15 credit, so now my total cost was only $69.97 shipped.

I am having some problems with either some of my drives, or some of the sata ports, or some of my sata cables. One to two of my drives are responding painfully slowly while the rest seem to be fast. What do you guys to to gauge the hard drive r/w speed and optimize your configuration? Thanks!!

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I had nearly the same experience, and wanted to share my different solution. My MB does not have the USB option the previous poster referenced. The boot order settings were not sticking in the BIOS, and I was ending up at the blinking cursor screen as well. I set up the configuration again, disabling all other boot devices except the USB drive, but this time also changed 'Boot Other Device' from Yes to No. This booted straight off the unRAID USB key. I will look into an MBR format as well on affected drives, but for now at least I can boot.

The rebuild of disk3 completed successfully, so I went ahead and bought some new hardware. I'm not sure if it was the MB, CPU or RAM, but the new build will replace it all. It is also possible the corrupt disk2 was causing the problem, and the correction caused it to stop locking, however I think it was hardware. Regardless I will have a better set of hardware to run unraid on. Unfortunately I did lose my data on disk2. Much of it appears to be in the lost+found folder. Is there is a way to recover the file names? Thanks for the help!

I placed my order. I ended up with the Corsair PSU, due to a $20 MIR currently at Newegg. Actually this purchase is going to end up being really inexpensive. MB: $69.99 - $30 MIR PSU: $44.99 - $20 MIR CPU: $39.99 $20 for $40 google offer at Newegg Use ShopRunner code for free 2 day shipping Total $154.97 - $30 MIR - $20 MIR - $20 Offer + free shipping = $84.97 shipped Thank you for the help. After a while I will come back and let everyone know how it went.

That looks like a great option. I originally limited my search to 6+ SATA ports which is why it didn't come up. That one is cheaper, has a better NIC and onboard video. Thanks for the heads up!

Hello all, I need to replace my MB, CPU, RAM and PSU. On top of unraid I run unmenu, sabnzbd+ (download, unpar, unrar), sickbeard, and am looking to run some streaming solution for XBOX 360 that I don't have worked out yet. This is what I am thinking about purchasing: Motherboard BIOSTAR A870 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD. This is after being unable to find the recommended Biostar A760G M2+. CPU AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Desktop Processor SDX145HBGMBOX PSU Antec NEO ECO 400C 400W Continuous Power ATX12V 2.3 or CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 V2 430W My existing build contains the follow elements that will carry over to the new build RAM: (left over from a different PC) Patriot 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Controller Card: Rosewill RC-218 Hard Drive Array: 2 X Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5x3 Case: AZZA Helios 910 6 X WD Green drives between 1TB & 2TB 1 X Maxtor non-green cache drive 300GB *For anyone reading this, no the AZZA case and the Supermicro 5x3 bays do not work together naturally. You have to grind out the case rails, and even then it is a PITA. I see the MB does come with the Realtek 8111E, so I know I would need a different NIC card, but I have a few of those laying around anyways. Are there better options since the Biostar A760G M2+ seems to be unavailable? Also, does anyone prefer one of those two power supplies? I have a 350W PSU at home, but it only has a 20 plug power for the MB, no +4. I'm not sure if that would continue to work on a new board. Thanks for the help all!

Does a drive rebuild go faster with a cache drive? In my original system without a cache drive I ran around 25MB/sec, I added the cache drive and changed around the drive configuration and it went to 45MB/sec, and now on this system without a cache drive it is running 11MB/sec.

Good news, I think. I made it through the --rebuild-tree. It says I had a lot of files that were lost. Flushing..finished Objects without names 7308 Empty lost dirs removed 103 Dirs linked to /lost+found: 479 Dirs without stat data found 58 Files linked to /lost+found 6829 Pass 4 - finished done 177831, 40 /sec Deleted unreachable items 7688 Flushing..finished Syncing..finished I ran a subsequent --check just to make sure everything was good and it came back with no issues. I am going to start the disk3 data rebuild now.

Hey guys. I am still stuck on this. I have hooked up the array to my HTPC, meaning a different MB, CPU, PSU, and RAM. The only common components left are the back plane, the HDDs, the flash drive, the power and network cables, and the SATA controller card. My setup is now: MB: ASUS M4A785-M 785G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131595 CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 245 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103687 RAM: Patriot 2GB PDC22G6400ELK http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220174 - Both sticks in Controller Card: Rosewill RC-218 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132018 Hard Drive Array: 1 X Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5x3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405 Video: Onboard Power Supply: With Case Case: hec 7K09BBA30FNRX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121100 CPU Fan: AMD Stock On a side note, this setup boots the array about 3x as fast. Even reading the unraid image from the flash is much faster. Running reiserfsck --check /dev/md2 yields an error that does not explain what to do. Searching online seems to indicate that I should re-run --rebuild-tree, perhaps with the S option to scan the entire disk, but I do not want to proceed without advice. root@Tower:~# reiserfsck --check /dev/md2 reiserfsck 3.6.21 (2009 www.namesys.com) ************************************************************* ** If you are using the latest reiserfsprogs and it fails ** ** please email bug reports to [email protected], ** ** providing as much information as possible -- your ** ** hardware, kernel, patches, settings, all reiserfsck ** ** messages (including version), the reiserfsck logfile, ** ** check the syslog file for any related information. ** ** If you would like advice on using this program, support ** ** is available for $25 at www.namesys.com/support.html. ** ************************************************************* Will read-only check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/md2 Will put log info to 'stdout' Do you want to run this program?[N/Yes] (note need to type Yes if you do):Yes ########### reiserfsck --check started at Mon Dec 12 12:56:54 2011 ########### Replaying journal: Done. Reiserfs journal '/dev/md2' in blocks [18..8211]: 0 transactions replayed Checking internal tree.. Bad root block 0. (--rebuild-tree did not complete) Aborted root@Tower:~# Thank you!! I anxiously await your help.

I am having some ideas, but don't want to proceed without direction. 1) I am thinking I need to correct disk2 before attempting a rebuild on disk3. I could boot to unraid on a different pc, attach only disk2, and run the --rebuild-tree from there. I am nervous about the parity getting out of sync doing this. 2) I am thinking I could have an overheating issue, or some other hardware issue causing the fault. The system seems to be failing only under load. I could swap out the MB, CPU and RAM for my HTPC parts just to test with known good. I think I would have enough SATA ports to run it. 3) I could test for the overheating theory by starting another rebuild and monitoring 'sensors'. I would like to fix disk2 first to hopefully prevent data loss, but I'm not sure how unless I hook it up to another PC. Thanks for the help.