SimonAG

I am aware that speed tests have to be done when the drives are not experiencing any other activity. I copied some data from the NAS to my desktop pc, so this should go full speed because it is not doing anything with parity on the destination and is going to an SSD in my desktop PC and it still stops at 60 mbyte a second. Which to me indicates the bottleneck is the network for some reason. Whether it is windows 10 or smb or maybe my physical network itself i am not sure yet. I thought I saw in another thread a SMB reg key fix that speeds up transfers. Maybe I need to do that.

Strangely I have a similar unrelated issue with transfer speeds over WIFI. I bought expensive wireless AC 5ghz kit and my internet won't go above 3mbyte a second with it. Which I know is an issue because i have tested wireless ac at other houses and they max out the internet line speed without an issue. I do have a new pfsense in place as a firewall but my internet is a flaky VDSL setup and it doesn't take much for it to lose sync. So I am leaning towards not blaming unraid completely for the slow speeds within the filezilla docker, although i think we can say it is unusual. When downloading to the SMB share through my other deskop PC the speed is OK and saves me a recopy but one thing i noticed is that it seems to stop and start for a ms every few seconds and is not as stable of a connection, like it is over my normal internet line. I guess that is because of SMB or maybe unraid? I would have thought that 7 or 8 mbyte a second would have been no issue for SMB. This is my first time downloading from SFTP directly to an SMB share at home. At work on enterprise equipment I never had an issue with this stop start and slow speeds. I am thinking I should buy a switch and put them all in to the switch, rather than rely on pfsense to route between interfaces/subnets. I have enabled the other write mode, do I need to stop and start the array to see that applied? I am not seeing any significant write speed increase and I read some people saw their speed doubling to the max 110-120mbyte.

I am new to Unraid and just in the trial period. I have noticed that the disks did 220mbyte a second during preclear and building parity. I have no cache yet. When I copy files to the array through SMB it goes at about 60mbyte a second. When I download from my sftp which usually maxes out my 8mbyte a second internet, it goes at about 7.2mbyte a second to the SMB mapped drive. When I use the filezilla docker it only goes at 3mbyte a second. I am guessing this is because the driver of the docker does not work very well in bridge mode? This was kind of a disappointing speed, as I was hoping to download directly to the array. Now it seems the fastest way is still to download to my PC and then copy it across at 60 mbyte a second. I have looked in to this Turbo Write feature and thinking I should give that a try, at least during this stage when I want to write like 15TB to the array right from the start. Is that a good idea? Any comments on the other speeds? Sorry for some of the posts that I know have probably been asked a million times before.

This is sort of what i was reading in some other articles, which is why I created this thread, as I was unsure. I have asked the seller if they will send a replacement, I find that highly unlikely. I could ignore the error as some have suggested in other threads, I would have to acknowledge the smart alert every boot it seems. If they won't accept the RMA then i will probably hold on to it and RMA it before the warranty is up.

I didn't think they would accept that, I will try send it back to the seller and request a new one.

I have completed 1 cycle of preclear with pre read and post read on 4 Seagate 6 TB NAS drives. 1 has come up with 1 187 SMART error. I have looked in to this and it seems there is a higher chance of failure of the disk if this SMART value is greater than 0. If I do warranty the disk they will send me a factory disk and not necessarily a new one. Would you RMA a brand new disk for a reported uncorrect 187 error?

Thanks for the clarification. I will contact prtg and ask them why they don't have a linux version. I would still recommend it for monitoring in a windows vm, if you have that ability. You will basically get full feature enterprise monitoring for free. Some of the sensors are multi as well. For example some netapp sensors take up 1 sensor but read back 20+ properties in one sensor. So 100 sensors will go a long way at home network. There is also a multidisk sensor which monitors all the disks for free space in one sensor. The api to create custom sensors is also easy. It would be great to see some unraid specific sensor templates.

I have moved it to a pci-e 3 x8 slot and it is working great now. I contacted Silverstone to ask them about the issue i had with the ddr 2 motherboard and they replied from a .de domain, indicating them are a German company. They said that the firmware file for IT mode says it is for 9207 but it will work on the 9217 as only raid mode available labelled 9217. Strange why not just label it too match but I guess it doesn't matter. I am currently doing pre clear on four disks, temps are a bit high but usually i imagine they idle at a much more reasonable temperature. It is a stress test of sorts anyway. The pre-read stage is showing 220mbyte per second for all four drives.

I would recommend running PRTG as the free trial is 100 sensors for ever. Which is perfect for home setups. I think it only runs on windows, not aware of a linux install. Probably be best running it on a windows vm, unless someone can create a docker through wine? I don't know much about docker.

Small update Old motherboard does not seem to support the HBA, which was very disappointing. I contacted the HBA manufactures and they confirmed it works in ddr2. I contacted gigabyte and they said basically the bios is old and tough luck. I am thinking the bios can't handle it. My options now are to spend £400 on a new motherboard CPU and ram. The question is whether I should buy a supermicro motherboard and ecc ram or whether I should update my existing desktop PC and use that motherboard with non ecc ram. Maybe I will look for a second hand board but not sure. I could use 4 sata ports on the old motherboard instead of the HBA but won't have room for another 4 disks as planned. Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using Tapatalk

You will need SAS disks or SSD to make use of 12gbit backplane. The 6gbit controller maxes out at 500mbyte a second, this can be seen when SSD that are faster than 6gbit controller max out at 500-520mbyte read/write. The sata3 disks max out at 220mbyte per second although realistic is more like 120-180mbyte a second. Which is why they made m.2 slots and used the pci-e slot. I would like to have only m.2 nvme NAS and 10gbit networking. It would be gigabit per second transfer speed. Wait 10 years maybe then.

I have noticed that the card is actually a 9217 and when downloading the firmware and bios for the uefi for the card, from the LSI website, the zip only contains IT firmware for the 9207. I have applied this firmware and it seems to work fine on my pci-e 3 motherboard, as in it allows me to boot to windows or OS when the card is plugged in. On my older pci-e 2 16x slot, it is still refuses to allow me to boot to an OS when the card is in. I have checked boot options no luck. It won't allow me to load the f12 boot options and as the bios is quite old it doesn't have the option to boot from the bios. I am thinking the card is to new for the motherboard? Annoying issue. I might have to send the card back or probably a better idea buy a new motherboard.

Not sure if this should be in the support section? After several hours I finally managed to flash my Silverstone ECS04 with LSI2308-IT firmware p20. Had to create an EFI shell on the usb stick and use a different computer to flash the card. In the boot options of the controller, there is this option "boot support" it has options, bios and OS and bios+os and disabled. What should I select for unraid? I see if i set to disabled, it seems to disable the card in the boot ROM, as it says adapter disabled and doesn't scan the drives. I know I need to have it enabled, but which option is best? I am experiencing a weird issue where the PC goes to a black screen after the adapter bios screen and refuses to boot. Even if I disable it using the boot support option, it still fails to boot the usb. I have had it boot the usb earlier, but I had to turn the PC off due to moving it to where there was network ports. Since then it refuses to boot past the controller boot ROM. What do you think? could it be the controller or the usb stick? the usb stick looks normal in the bios and is set to the default boot. I hate these annoying issues that shouldn't realy occur. Probably another reason to not use an old motherboard.

Thanks for the replies I will consider buying a new CPU, I see on eBay I could get Xeon 5460 with same socket for £25 from China. Don't really want to spend too much on this old ddr2 as will eventually upgrade it. What PSU would you suggest, do you think 37A will be enough? I could get the seasonic 550w focus gold 45A instead? Might be a safer option. I can't find any other short depth case with 8 hot swap drive bays. The heat is a concern, especially with 8 drives. I will keep a close eye on the temps. Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using Tapatalk

I am trying to build a NAS with as little cost as possible while achieving 8 hot swap drive bays. I have not included a cache yet as still deciding on what to do with cache. Might replace my 512GB m.2 in my desktop or might buy new m.2 with pci-e adaptor or buy a new sata ssd drives. I should add the purpose for the NAS is for storing media files and add some redundancy to my current setup and free up my desktop PC while streaming to other devices. I don't plan on running any vms or plex from the device. Only playing media files over the network to other streaming devices that will bitstream to the TV. Current setup: I don't have a NAS, I have a desktop PC and my old desktop PC, I use as PFsense. In my desktop PC I have: 4x 4tb ST4000DM00 1x 3tb SST3000DM01 Full with data and no raid. My current Pfsense: Gigabyte ga-ex38-ds4 Intel Core 2 duo 8200 2x2gb Corsair dominator ddr2 non-ecc (will try replace with 2x2gb ECC ram) The plan is to create a NAS and a new pfsense in a short depth rack: Rack is £200 Tripp Lite SmartRack 9U Low-Profile Switch-Depth Pfsense In-Win IW-RF100 £125 including 315w psu "Borrowed" some 4gb ddr3l from work. ASRock J3455B-ITX with integrated CPU and pci-e expansion cable £110 HP NC364T Intel chipset 4 port gigabit pci-e £15 ebay Noctua fans for psu and case £25 Total pfsense £275 NAS Logic Case SC-43400-8HS from Servercase £170 Old Pfsense hardware listed above £0 8 Port SilverStone ECS04 £130 + £20 sas cables 4x 6TB Seagate ST6000VN0033 £609 450W Corsair CX450M, Single Rail, 37.4A £50 Noctua Fans for Case £30 Total NAS cost £1009 with £609 of that on HDs End result 18TB + 16TB = 34TB

Is the SAS2308 controller chipset confirmed working OK? I don't see it on the recommended controllers list in the wiki? I was wanting to buy the but Silverstone SST-ECS02 scan.co.uk don't have that one in stock. They do have the SilverStone ECS04 in stock and looking at Silverstone website the ECS04 has a higher spec and is the same price as ecs02. It does come with a different controller than the ecs02 and I noticed most of the recommended controllers on the wiki have that LSISAS2008 controller, the ecs04 has LSISAS2308 controller. I did search the forum but didn't find a thread specifically recommended SAS2308 .

Not sure if someone already mentioned but you can do GPU transcoding on windows with madvr renderer. On windows the best splitter and filters is lav filters. If you want to get the most out of a CPU I would recommend lav filters. Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using Tapatalk

I would use a read cache by having new content stay on the cache until new content replaces it, by setting say a 70% max disk usage limit. Of course still have the nightly copy but only repoint the files to the non cache once they are removed from the cache. That would be easier to do than have existing files on the array move to the cache when they modified. As that would only work for document stores and smaller files. While if I watch a 50gb film I could finish watching it before its even finished copying to the cache, after which I might not need it on the cache. Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using Tapatalk

I have some photos but only about 1gb and they are backed up to different smaller hard drives. It is mostly films and TV series and documentaries and books. Books are already backed up. I do have a bunch of 3 and 2 TB drives that I can use for backup, rather than having it as over flow data. I guess I am best simply trying it and if it turns out to be insufficient for my requirements that I will be forced to upgrade it.

I know it is not backup the problem is I have over 20tb of data and there is no cheap way to back that up. End of day I could get the data back, I would just prefer not to have to as it is very time consuming and often can't always get all of it back. Which is what I found when trying to redownload the 300 films that I lost. But If i did lose the data it would not be the end of the world. I just want to add disk redundancy so that If i lose a disk I don't lose the data. Maybe eventually in the future I could be in a financial situation where I can afford some 10tb disks or the price of large disks comes down and I can afford to have some disks not plugged in that I use for backup. But at this point I can not afford like £600 just to have a off site or offline backup.

Thanks for the reply. Using that old motherboard would I be able to say for example, have two or three people playing videos over the network and transcoding on their own media player? One thing I learned recently was that the Vero 4k only has 100mbit and I spoke to Vero support directly about this and they confirmed that 4k bitstreaming fits nicely in to 100mbit without an issue, much to my surprise. I was thinking surely then if there was one or two other people watching videos without bitstreaming, just playing from a laptop in their bedroom for example directly. That a gigabit connection or two might be suffice in serving the media. The next bottleneck I guess would be the read speed on the hard drives and if we were all reading from the same drive, that might slow it down? But then I was thinking wouldn't that be a problem even if I had a faster cpu and ram, as it is simply the network speed and read speed on the drives that are in play when there is no transcoding directly on the NAS device taking place? I can't see me running my desktop as a vm as I play bf1 and bf4 and I spent a lot of time on my PC and can't have the resources being shared with anything else. I work in IT so very familiar with vmware so won't be needing to "play around" with vms. I was considering running pfsense as a VM, but decided against it as want that on its own device, so building a mini itx 1u for pfsense. Other than that, only other thing i could imagine I would put in a VM in the future would be some sort of CCTV controller but that not planning on getting CCTV for a number of years as only just buying a house now. The guy at work runs freenas and puts the home automation software (which i think is available on unraid through docker). But I don't have any plans on running that either, well not initially. I just want to get some disk redundancy as few years ago lost like 300 bluray films and all my 4tb drives are down to about 400gb free. I also rent a dedicated server from OVH that is quite well spec and I have esxi 6 and pfsense and freebsd on there. I could consider putting cctv controller (not the video files) or new VMs on there if I want to test things out. That has 3tb in raid 1, 6 core 32gb ram. £30 per month.

I have an old gigabyte ga-ex38-ds4 and an Intel core 2 duo 8200 with 4gb non ecc ddr2 ram. I currently use it for a pfsense but need to upgrade my pfsense for newer CPU support. I also have a more modern desktop with Haswell 4670k. For a while I was considering buying a new motherboard and CPU and using my haswell in the nas. But if I can use my older PC I can get away with not buying a new PC at this moment. Saving money. I plan to buy a vero 4k for media PC so don't want to use plex. I plan to buy 4x 6tb WD 5400 nas drive, Silverstone SST-ECS02 and a 8 bay rackmount case and a single rail PSU. I also have 4x 4tb non NAS drives with data on, that I want to add in once I have copied the data off. Should I avoid using old hardware at this point? Any other recommendations or tips? Thanks. Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using Tapatalk