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Previous posters have found the problems to be A) controller issues, B) power, C) heat. I have experienced the controller problem with other USB3 drives. And unfortunately the heat problem with many more drives Just how do you expect to "remove the bad sectors"? Lots of testing real SMR drives seem to contradict your finding as to the usefulness of SMR drives.

You mean this drive, found for $199 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38503.msg357830#msg357830 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=34861.msg324054#msg324054

Yes, I agree. I wish the newer external cases had better airflow. It would be crazy to ask for a fan, but at least more holes would help. They seem to be getting worse on airflow, not better. I'm not sure about those tiny WD externals. I guess they are laptop drives, but even they need vents. For most capacities, there are several versions. It was just 7200rpm and low power, but now there are even more. Often you can fine a desktop version, a video version, a NAS version, maybe an Archive version, at least one "performance" version, maybe laptop size, and maybe a a couple Enterprise versions on top of those. Even finding the rotation speed on each is difficult or impossible. Even if you know the model number of the drive you want, that's not on the packaging But once you have a drive, (I know we want these details ahead of spending money), finding the model number is small work and there are various sources online with details.

Ah, you have bad power so it is the drive's fault. As you mentioned, running the drive at 60C is also a likely source of problems, NOT the SMR technology, if you did in fact even have an SMR drive. If you did have a 7200rpm DX in that case, it is NOT SMR. I am not sure many would run a drive to 60C. The 5TB externals I have gotten are NOT SMR drives. You can tell by the drive model numbers. My externals are ST5000DM000-1FK178. You would see ST5000ASxxx if the drive was SMR. They all have NCQ as well. As a DM they do NOT run 7200rpm. The SMRs also do NOT run 7200rpm. If you have a 7200rpm drive it is NOT SMR. Oh, the 5TB SMRs are NOT based on 3TB drives, but 4TB drives. The SMR technology increases platter yield by 25%. Even the 33% of the v2, would only turn a 3TB into a 4TB. NOT 5TB. When comparing a 4TB PMR to a 5TB SMR, you'll find the older PMR is rated faster. NOT older is slower.

Can you share the details for the file corruption you are seeing? How was it detected? What tools were used to confirm the drive is the source of the corruption?

Some controllers (like 1064, 1068) are notorious for this kind of behavior, disk load and SMART collision results in the drive disappearing and returning. This gives an example to repro the problem http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2009-November/040453.html What it looks like to recover with mdadm http://sgros.blogspot.com/2011/11/readding-sata-disk-to-software-raid.html

1) Please update to a supported version of unRAID. You are running beta software, and the released version is readily available. 2) The file you downloaded needs to be decompressed. The .zip indicates a compressed file. This step is listed on the website you linked.

P19 is the current firmware to use, but P11 is not bad to do the crossflash. Once you have flashed LSI firmware, the upgrade is easy.

You should check the details of those two drives, model/firmware.

I think even Seagate would agree to avoid using their external drives in an array. The initial post is about a specific use case outside the manufacturers recommendation for the specific drive and firmware. I have hundreds of "Seagate 5TB drives" and no problems, but none of them fit the situation described in the initial post.

So, you want us to ignore drives which fail within XX hours? A failure is a failure. But I think you can get most drive manufacturers to join you. Anything to have lower reported failure rates.

I don't think Backblaze changed their method, it just happened at the time the NAS specialty drives were as cheap, or cheaper than anything else. They continue to purchase the least costly drives available. If you shop long enough, you'll find moments when "consumer" drives are more costly than specialty drives. The pricing for drives in quantity has been very good recently. They've purchase 8,000 4TB drives recently, likely below what you expect.

Single rail is highly recommended since multiple rails are more difficult to budget power across, and often capacity is stranded. 30 amp is dependent on the drive types, not just quantity.

HPA is not uncommon for many purposes. In fact, you may wish to use HPA yourself The key is knowing about it. HPA "detection" is very simple; root@unraid5:~# hdparm -N /dev/sda /dev/sda: max sectors = 7814037168/7814037168, HPA is disabled Now, why would you want to use it? #1 reason I have recently used it, increase the spare area on SSDs. Older SSDs had very small spare area. #2 short stroke a 4TB drive into a 2 or 3 TB array (or 2TB into 1TB array), aka rightsizing/downsizing. This is a temporary step in the process of upgrading an array when called about a failure and avoids buying a drive only to be used for days. Thus if you find you have a HPA on parity, you can quickly put one on new drive and move ahead.

I did not find any option like you mentioned so i tried to flash it and was unsuccessful, I'm pretty sure I bricked it so i'll just order one of the recommend cards in the next few days. I doubt you bricked it. That card is not based on the same hardware as this thread, so none of the commands should work. I do not think it can be flashed to JBOD.

From the first post, you should be looking at a 650W from SeaSonic or Corsair. However depending on your installation, you may need to add connectors/splitters. Check the guidance given in post #1 for power per drive type, and you can fit other manufacturers to your requirements. Without specifics on the rest of your hardware it is difficult to be sure how to connect fans, but a fan controller is not a bad idea. One with temperature feedback may help if you need to reduce fan noise.

Post #1 includes the SS-400FL and states up to 15 green drives. Perhaps you are confused by the term green. While it has been used by WD as a product name. Here it is used to label the class of drives operating at less than 6000 rpm (5400-5900 typical), ie the lower power demand drives. No one wants to just call them slower drives, and since the rpm is sometimes hidden or variable, the class is labeled green.

This is a common issue with current CPUs, they power down too well. Power supplies are working to catch up. To this end, there have been tests added lower and lower in the utilization curve, now down to 10%.

It is not an error. It's along the lines of 3.2 hours each day for 2 years. Which is not a crazy number for an average person's home computer systems. Recognize yourself as an above average user of computers, you know not only what RAID is, but unRAID as well. Believe me very few who know RAID, know unRAID.

I like this new guy!

There is interest! +1

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=20761.0

Those numbers are pretty good. It would be very hard for card slot to exceed the southbridge performance. The card has a few extra connections and the same drive interface.

While newer firmware might seem like a good idea, keeping Supermicro support is probably better. Unless you are experiencing a problem which is addressed by the newer firmware releases, in which case an email to Supermicro is in order.

I doubt anyone has the m1015 with IBM firmware working on unRAID. This thread is about putting LSI firmware on the cards. I and many others are using IBM m1015 cards which we have flashed with LSI firmware.