[How to recover from usb stick death [SOLVED]]

I came home after a few days out of town to find the usb stick with the unraid OS on it snapped off the tower case of my unraid box.

 

I have about 2 TB of data stored between 2 data drives.

 

Is it possible to load a new stick, plug it in, and set the drives and have the data accessible, or will I have to copy the data off the drives, preclear, and go through the entire set up again?

 

Thanks

[Disk Aggregates vs split levels]

If I understand you correctly then what you're asking about is not posible with unRAID. unRAID uses a number of individual disks. The share just makes the data on multiple individual disks appear as one big volume.

 

You need a striped array of some kind where multiple disks are basically combined into one larger disk/storage array to do what you ase asking about.

 

Peter

 

 

Yes, it would essentially be data striping across the data drives, with the exclusion of the parity drive.  So there is still redundancy from single disk failure.

[Disk Aggregates vs split levels]

I work with enterprise Storage systems like NetApp where disk storage is pooled into an aggregate and you can create volumes and LUNs from the aggregate.  Not having experience with unRAID before, I had expected more of a storage pooling system rather than the user share/split levels that are being used.

 

While I think it would be a neat feature to have in unRAID, I am not sure an aggregate style system would work with SATA drives.  ISCSI seems to be the default for more enterprise level systems do better I/O performance and disk seek/write operations.

 

I was wondering if aggregate style storage had ever been considered, and why it was/was not adopted or perhaps if this is a goal for the future.

 

Thanks,

 

D

 

 

[Split Level [SOLVED]]

I am planning my split level and I think I mostly get it.

 

If I want the level 3 folders split between disks but the files inside those folders only on one disk, I would choose split level 3.

 

Am I correct, given my folder structure?

 

- Backups                                         1

  - user1                                          2

      - various folders                          3

  - user2                                          2

       - various folders                         3

 

- Video                                              1

      - anime                                      2

         - show folder                            3

             -.mkv                                  

      - tv                                           2

          - show folder                           3

             -.mkv                                  

      - movies                                     2

           - show folder                          3

             -.mkv                                  

 

 

[Preclearing WD20EARS]

I attempted to preclear three of these drives simultaneously on my box, but ended up with two processes hanging and the third continuing to run.  I think it may be a function of not enough RAM in my box (only 512mb until I put another gig in it next week) since the web GUI has also hung and I can't launch any new processes on the box. 

 

I'm at 33 hours for the first drive thus far, with my read and write speeds varying from 50MB/s to 114MB/s.  I'm going to reboot after preclear completes on the first drive and then try to run the next two drives concurrently.

 

 

[wd20ears drives not detected]

Thanks for the info.

 

Just preclearing the drives now.  So far so good.

[wd20ears drives not detected]

Though when I to a dmesg | grep SATA I see

 

ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 - ie Sata 1..

 

confused.

[wd20ears drives not detected]

Ok.  Follow up.

 

I can see the drives when I go into the web admin console.  I will assume this means it is working.

[wd20ears drives not detected]

Having some issues getting my 3 new wd20ears drives detected as sata drives.

 

Currently they show up as

 

ata1.00 ATA-8: WDC WD20EARS

ata2.00 "

ata2.01 "

 

I have 4 sata 2 ports on my motherboard.  P5LD2-VM http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=orjq7G3HX3F0tRrN

 

I have gone into the BIOS and it only lists the option to configure SATA as Standard IDE.

 

so when I do this command dmesg|grep SATA|grep link

 

I get nothing.  Perhaps I need to flash a new BIOS version?

 

I'd appreciate any input.