Rajahal
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Posts posted by Rajahal
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Thanks! I looked at the 804 as well, looks like a solid case, but I get the sense that its cooling for the hard drive bays isn't as strong. Have you had any drive temp issues with it?
Meshify 2 is looking like the one.
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2 hours ago, foo_fighter said:
Depending on your budget, I would throw this case in for consideration:
https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chassis/cs382/
Thank you, I'm afraid that one is out of budget. A decent value for someone who needs hot swap though.
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Howdy, I'm contemplating a server facelift, as the old Thermaltake case I'm currently using has some noise/fan rattle issues. My server mostly lives in a closet where airflow can be an issue too, so I would like to improve the airflow for the drives (I have one in particular that sits above 50C most of the time, the rest stay in the 40s). I'm using old hardware and don't see much of a need to update it at the moment, so I'll stick with:
- microATX motherboard, CPU has a standard factory heatsink and fan.
- 5 HDDs (1 parity, 4 data, and I have another 3 or so spare smaller capacity drives I could add with a PCIe SATA card)
- 1 SSD (2.5" SATA)
- ATX PSU, can be mounted with fan up or fan down
Based on recommendations in these and other forums, I've found these two cases that fit my budget:
Meshify 2 - $150
https://www.newegg.com/black-fractal-design-meshify-2-atx-mid-tower/p/11-352-131
Define R5 - $125
https://www.newegg.com/black-fractal-design-define-r5-atx-micro-atx-mid-tower/p/N82E16811352048
I prefer the look of the R5, but I'm leaning towards the Meshify 2 since it comes with 3 x 140mm fans, whereas the R5 comes with only 1. So assuming I would have to add more fans to the R5, I figure the Meshify 2 is actually about the same price.
The Meshify 2 also supports up to 11 x 3.5" drives, whereas the R5 maxes out at 8 x 3.5" drives. I'm fine with a total of 8 drives, that feels like plenty, but storing 'cold swap' drives in the extra drive bays of the Meshify might be nice to help with quick and easy recovery.
What do y'all think? Both of these cases get rave reviews so I doubt I'll be disappointed with either.
For fun: my 'workhorse' PC is still rocking the Antec P180 from many years back, what a rock solid (and silent!) case that's been. I wish they still made them! Not ideal for unRAID, but I love it nevertheless: https://www.newegg.com/silver-antec-performance-one-atx-mid-tower/p/N82E16811129154
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I'm going through a similar failure recovery, and my server is of a similar vintage (hardware from 2010 - 2012, with only drive upgrades since then). When I first noticed the problem, I found that my server was running, but the dashboard was showing the flash drive had failed (was in read-only mode), and one of my data disks had failed and was being emulated for the past month. I did a backup of the flash drive contents, but much of it was corrupted, so it wasn't helpful. I do have older backups of the flash that I could reference if needed, but thus far I haven't needed to.
So while all of this won't apply to your situation, some of this may help you or others who find this post:
If prepping a new flash drive for older hardware, keep in mind that you may want an older model flash drive as well. I got the Sandisk Cruzer Glide USB 2.0 which was recommended in these forums. The motherboard I'm using doesn't support USB 3.0, so its a safer bet to use a USB 2.0 flash drive. Also keep in mind that while flashing the new drive, it is very likely that you'll need to uncheck the UEFI box on the drive flashing utility, as many motherboards of that era did not support UEFI. If you are swapping to a modern motherboard, then you probably want UEFI enabled. Either way, you'll have to tell the motherboard to boot from the flash drive, and may need to disable its attempts to boot from the other drives in the system.
If you have the ability to grab a screenshot of the server dashboard Main page before powering it down, it is useful to do so, so you can associate the drive serial numbers with their disk assignment slots. If you aren't able to do this, its not a huge deal.
When powered up the new server for the first time, if you are using your original flash drive then the disk assignments should be remembered. If you are using a new flash drive, then you will likely be faced with a blank config. If you have a screenshot to reference, you can easily assign the drives to the correct drive slots based on serial number. If you don't, then this is a critical step:
DO NOT ASSIGN A PARITY DRIVE
This is the biggest potential to lose data. If you accidentally assign a data drive to the parity slot and start a parity build, that data will be lost. If you don't know which is the parity drive(s), the safest bet is to assign drives one by one to the data slots, and make a note of which ones show as valid formatted drives. If the parity drive(s) is assigned to a data slot, unRAID will show it has having an invalid format, and that's your clue that it isn't a data drive. Now in some cases a failed data drive could show up as unformatted as well, so its still best to exercise caution here. If you previously had an array of 5 data drives and 1 parity drive, and through guess-and-check you are able to assign the 5 data drives and they all show up as valid, then you know the final one is the parity drive. If you wind up in a situation where you only had 1 parity drive previously, but more than one drive is showing as unformatted or invalid, then reach out here in the forums for help. You may want to start the array without parity assigned just to confirm the contents of the drives, that your data is all still there. The parity drive is the least important drive in this recovery process, and it should be saved for last in terms of assigning disks.
Best of luck! In my case the recovery is going easier than planned. I had bought two new drives to upgrade parity and the failed data drive, in addition to the new flash drive. It turns out that just replacing the flash drive seems to be enough, and the rest of the array is OK after all. I'm still watching that previously flagged 'failed' data disk closely, and I'm ready to swap it out if in fact unRAID flags it again.
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https://www.newegg.com/red-wd100efax-10tb/p/N82E16822231546
+ $40 off w/ promo code 93XPK57, limited offer
Normally $269, comes out to $230 after promo code
Limit 2 per customer/account
If you don't mind shucking external drives, and don't care about the slightly slower speed, this one is an even better deal:
https://www.newegg.com/black-wd-elements-10tb/p/N82E16822234350
10 TB for $190
The best deal that I'm finding today (in terms of price per GB) is the 8 TB version of that external drive:
https://www.newegg.com/black-wd-elements-8tb/p/N82E16822234349
8 TB for $140
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Edit: Follow the below with caution, I've asked Spaceinvader One to review this to make sure it is correct. I'll update this if he does.
Grateful for this thread, as I had the same issue. After watching the Spaceinvader One video linked above, it seemed like switching to the official Plex container was the best and easiest option (that part of the video starts at 13:19, and you don't need to watch the rest).
Here's the tricky part for me, which caused much frustration, so I'll spell it out and hope that it helps someone else. On Spaceinvader One's server, he has all of his movies and tv inside a single user share, like this:
media > movies
media > tv
So that's a user shared named 'media', and inside that are folders named 'movies' and 'tv'. Plex sees that as this path:
/mnt/user/media/ (so that's the path of a user share in unRAID named 'media', as viewed from Plex's perspective)
My shares are organized differently, I have separate user shares for movies and tv, like this:
Movies > subfolders containing movies
TV > subfolders containing TV shows
So Plex sees the path like this:
/mnt/user/Movies & /mnt/user/TV
Therein lies the problem, I have multiple paths to map to Plex, not just a single 'media' user share. The key to get this to work is in the 'Host Path 3' settings on the new Plex container (not the old LimeTech one). I've attached a screenshot of my settings, I believe this points Plex to all of your user shares, so that in Plex you can then specify Movies vs TV vs whatever for each library.
What is also confusing is that Plex will display a file's path as starting with /data, even if you don't have any user shares named 'data'. I thought this was an error, but it seems like that is just how Plex works - you specify what path to point to /data (with the Host Path 3 settings), then internally in Plex it will refer to this path as /data going forward. So for example, my Movies library in Plex shows the path /data/Movies, which looks wrong but is actually correct. You can think of this like a shortcut inside of Plex, anytime Plex writes /data it is actually using the full path that you specified, which in my case is /mnt/user. To effectively, /data/Movies is the same thing as /mnt/user/Movies. Confused yet?
Adding to that, if you do end up having to manually remap each of your Plex libraries to the correct folder, as I did, then in Plex you'll look inside the 'data' folder, and find your user shares there.
So I think I've got this working. Unfortunately, since I did it wrong the first time (following Spaceinvader One's settings verbatim), Plex added my library full of broken links, so everything was visible but I couldn't play anything. Now that I've fixed it, I'm running a library scan, which should fix all of the broken links. I'm finding some stuff will play and others are broken, but once the scan finishes I believe everything will be back to normal. Annoying, but still better than losing the whole library and starting over.
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Newegg:
WD Elements 8TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN Black
$10 off promo code (requires you to sign up for newsletter): EMCFUVTV2
Similar deal, but the Seagate brand instead:
B&H:
Seagate 8TB Expansion Desktop USB 3.0 External Hard Drive
no promo code needed
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Looks nice! How's the noise? The poweredge servers I've worked with have all been pretty loud.
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beautiful work! I too am impressed with the Kindle/iPad hack. Have you found that the iPad consumes much more power? I've always wanted to use an e-Ink screen for this type of always on display because it seems like it would be incredibly efficient (and no backlight to add light pollution to a room). I've been thinking about this in relation to a smart mirror type project.
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Link to prototype builds thread, various hardware reviews/blogs we've published, tutorials Kyle has written, server sound test youtube video, etc.
- Reviews
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Antec 1200 v3 3.0
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Small business software
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Dropbox+uTorrent
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Portable Lian Li case
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4TB Hard Drive Testing
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Norco SS-500 Review
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15 Drive Budget Board
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JVC Minibox
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20 Drive Budget Board
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Prototye Builds
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Expansion Paths
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Alternative, Misc., and Old Components
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3 to 9 Drive Prototype
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10 to 15 Drive Prototype
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20 -24 Drive Prototype
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Quiet Fans
[*]The Search
[*]unRAID Hardware Compatibility Testing
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[*]Plugins
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Antec 1200 v3 3.0
- Reviews
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This thread will be used to aggregate and link out to Reviews/Testimonials that our customers have been gracious enough to post here.
Testimonial 1 - 9 Drive Cleverbox
Testimonial 2 - 16 Drive Cleverbox (ESXi build)
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I don't think the tiny slider looks very good next to the static images. I suggest a single static image to represent custom builds, then a large slider on another page. I'm also not a fan of the 'timer' bar, I find it distracting. Finally, for the photo of the Supermicro chassis that you credited to me, please use prostuff1's name instead, as he actually built that one (I know I didn't specify in my original post). Thanks!
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Congratulations on your new site, it looks great! I'm sure you'll be much happier with WordPress, I know we are
In case you haven't already picked one out, check out RoyalSlider, it works well on our site.You are welcome to use any of these photos:
Some are from a professional photographer we hired, some are my own amateur photos.
I resized them all to 460 x something (they don't all fix exactly as 460 x 300, but you can crop them if you like). They are all JPG, as the file size is actually smaller for JPG than PNG for these types of photos. PNG is better for computer-generated graphics, JPG is often better for photos. Using the smallest image size will help your site's load times.
If you use any of them, you can credit them to myself, prostuff1, or just to Greenleaf Technology in general. Thanks!
P.S. Let me know when you are done with the dropbox link so that I can take it down.
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So in the end I ended up trying out the Noctua NF-R8 for my SS-500 and they work great (I use the Low-Noise Adaptor (L.N.A.) cable option). I picked up a 3 pack of the R8 fans on Amazon for cheaper than I could find two of the R8 fans alone.
I've also used the Noctua NF-R8 as a replacement fan in the Norco SS-500 (I have the second generation SS-500, the one with the flat back). Works great.
I've started using the ARCTIC F8 PWM as a fan replacement for the Norco SS-500 and Norco SS-400 units. Fairly cheap, and it works well.
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Yes, you have to use the trays if you want a reliable server. Without the trays, the drive bay is too large for the drive and it will likely come loose and have an unreliable connection. I've seen trayless 4-in-3s and 3-in-2s, but no 5-in-3s unfortunately. Plus, the drive's serial number typically isn't written on the end of the drive, so even in a trayless cage it wouldn't be visible. You can print out some stickers and label the drive trays yourself, or just organize your trays in a logical manner (parity in tray 1, disk1 in tray 2, disk2 in tray 3, etc.) so that you can easily identify a failed drive.
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New Defcon Special build (finally) posted!
This is our beefiest server yet, sporting a Quad Core Xeon CPU, Intel server motherboard, and 4 GB of RAM right out of the box. There's also two optional 2.5" bays (bringing the total to 18 drives) for your cache and apps SSDs! Based on enterprise-quality Rackable Systems hardware, these servers lived a former life in Amazon's data centers running their EC2 cloud service!
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I notice in you blog that you used the antec 1200 v3 thumb screws for the for the norco cages how did you manage this
They fit, but they strip the Norco's screw holes a bit. For future builds, I've decided that it is better to use the Norco-provided screws instead of the Antec thumb screws. They don't look as nice, but they do a better job of holding the cages securely.
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I found that I had issue mounting the Norco SS-500 in my Antec 1200 case, apart from the removal of the tabs with a dremel I found that using normal screws to hold the Norco SS-500 inplace resulted in the screws going to far into the cage itself and stopping the caddies/drives going in and out.
I use the screws provided by Norco for this reason. Since they don't give you enough for the cages and the drive trays, you have to buy more: link. $10 for a bag of screws is pretty ridiculous, but they are the only ones I've found that are proven to work.
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Do all 12-bay cases need this flattening-procedure? Or are there cases that can do without?
Basically yes. There are very few cases that don't have the tabs separating the 5.25" bays, and those are few and far between. At least in the US they are very difficult to obtain.
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Heads up, Antec has modified the Twelve Hundred V3 on the sly! It is now the Twelve Hundred V3 3.0...see the Greenleaf blog for details.
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Rajahal - I'm impressed with your product range and the website. Very well designed and decently priced.
Just had a quick question, noticed that all of your servers have a PRO (USB 3.0) version available, question is does unRaid support USB 3.0 are there any linux specific drivers that needs to be installed for it to work at Super speed specs.
My MoBo has USB 3.0 ports and I have USB 3.0 external drives, would be great if they do work at Superspeed transfer rates, would even beat gigabit, and that would be my method of choice it is already on my windows machines.
Thank you! In response to your question, all Linux kernels since 2.6.31 have USB 3.0 support (see here). unRAID currently uses newer versions of the Linux kernel and therefore should have all the requisite drivers. However, as unRAID doesn't support USB devices in the array (with the exception of the USB flash drive), you will need to mount the external drive with unMenu or the SNAP add-on in order to access its data. We believe that USB 3.0 is a great way to migrate your data from an external hard drive into the unRAID array and for making off-site backups, but we don't recommend it for long-term use as all data on the external hard drive will not be parity-protected.
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The Greenleaf team is gearing up to offer new products and services! However, we need your help! Please take our short, four question survey to help us gauge interest in the products and services we have in the works:
Thank you, we truly appreciate it!
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Wintec 8GB FileMate Swivel USB Flash Drive Model 3FMUSB8GWB-R - $5.50 shipped after promo EMCNEJJ83, ends 5/17
Kingston DataTraveler Micro 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive - Black - DTMCK/16GB - $13 shipped (low profile!)
In case you haven't already picked one out, check out
Where to shop for what?
in Good Deals!
Posted
Server Part Deals deserves a shoutout in this thread, great source of manufacturer recertified drives, with free 2 day shipping within the continental US. I just ordered two individual drives from them, and they came very well packaged (ESD bag, and very strong custom bubble pack, in individual cardboard boxes, then both packed into a larger cardboard box with additional padding).
https://serverpartdeals.com/