garycase

Regardless of how well a simple upgrade may run, I still think it's best to just do a reformat and start from scratch with the new x64 version (v6). As trurl so succinctly noted, it's "... a good learning exercise / memory refresher to do some things over again, and reconsider what you really want/need."

Agree that "THE" way to do the upgrade is to start with a fresh format of the flash drive -- AFTER, of course, completely backing it up [if for no other reason than ensuring the key file isn't lost !!] Most plug-ins aren't going to be used in v6, since Dockers are available for most things. And even if they are, it's a good idea to do them one-at-a-time and ensure all is working well, since a lot has changed in v6. The most important thing, of course, is that no data is lost. If you're starting with a clean format, the one very important thing to ensure is that you've noted the correct drives for all non-array functions (parity and cache) and get those assigned correctly. This is NOT a difficult upgrade ... and Frank's done a very nice job of "hand holding" for those that need a bit of encouragement.

Agree that if you do a really good job of blocking all possible intake paths except the one you want, then an all-exhaust setup can work very well. I don't have this specific case, but from the pictures on Newegg it looked like making the right-side the intake area you'd get better direct flow across the drives, since they are mounted horizontally front-to-back. But I agree that restricts placement ... and if the only available intake is the front of the drives, then indeed they'll still get pretty good airflow. Definitely interested in your temps once you have everything reconfigured and sealed.

Agree ... I'd think it's far preferable to have intake air from the front going over the drives and then out the rear. Although I admit that the case design makes that a bit difficult, since the primary intake is on the left side of the case. Changing the fans at that point to exhaust fans may in fact result in a greater pull through the drives ... although if I was going to mod the case with that intention, I'd have likely had the right side modified for venting instead of the front door, so the airflow would be directly across the case (right-to-left if the fans are set to exhaust).

Agree ... low-to-mid 40's isn't an issue at all for pre-clear temps. That's as high as they'll ever get ... and with a fairly high ambient (33) it's completely understandable. Modern drives are rated for up to 60, so you're nowhere close to "dangerous" levels. I agree that for normal operations it's nice to have enough airflow to keep the temps in the 30's.

Agree combining the best features of the Q25B and the Q08 would be a neat case. The Q08 is a better choice for a desktop, thanks to the 5.25" slot for an optical drive and the USB3 ports in front ... ... but I like the Q25B better for an UnRAID box because of the "cleaner" front and the hot-swap bays. I wish the Q08 had the nice little "pop-on, pop-off" side panels instead of requiring the removal of 6 tiny screws to remove a panel. I may buy 3 BP2SATA adapters for my next Q08 build => this would make the 6 drive bays hot-swap and, except for the screws on the side panels, make it a very near ideal ITX case. [ http://www.frozencpu.com/products/18360/cpa-630/Lian_Li_BP2SATA_Dual_Bay_to_2_x_HDD_SATA_Hotswap_Backplane_BP2SATA.html ] By the way, Newegg has a VERY good deal on the Q08 at the moment ... net cost of $58.49 through 31 March. It's 30% off with a promo code, plus has a $15 rebate.

Easy to understand. It's easily worth $50/TB instead of $45/TB to move from 3 to 4TB units; but jumping up to $57/TB is a bit much if you don't need the additional space. Especially in an array where you've only got 8TB now ... simply standardizing on 4TB drives will let you triple that space in the Q25B ... which I suspect is ample for a pretty long time in the future. It's really only worth the per/TB premium for the 6TB units if you think you'll need the additional space within a reasonable time frame. Otherwise, stay with the 4TB units -- and in a few years when you need to expand your space there'll likely be even larger drives you can use

Agree ... they're getting hard to source in the US as well. I had two spares ... picked them up when Newegg had a REALLY good sale price on them -- figured I'd use them for my next builds when I moved to 6/8TB drives. HOWEVER, a couple friends really liked the chassis and convinced me to build them systems in those cases ... so now I don't have any "laying around". Like you, I regret that I did that, as if I wanted another one right now it'd be hard to find - and those that are available are ~ $50 more than they used to be. If Newegg should happen to get more in stock (currently "out of stock" and "may or may not be restocked") I'll definitely pick up a spare.

Agree. With your current config, you could grow VERY substantially in capacity without any need to upgrade the chassis. The Q25 can easily (as you know) handle 7 drives (8 if you use a 2.5" -- which makes sense if you want a cache) ... and it's a MUCH nicer size than the Q26. Next time you need space, I'd be inclined to get a 6TB WD Red as the parity drive and add your current parity to the array. Then you can add 6TB drives as your needs grow ... and eventually replace your smaller drives with them as well. The Q26 is not only larger than I'd like; but it's also a bit pricey ... it's retail price is $189.95, and it only includes 2 hot-swap backplanes; so you'd need 8 more to really set it up the way I'd like. Two BP3SATA's and one BP2SATA would take care of that ... but that adds another $80 or so to the cost. That wouldn't deter me if I wanted support for 10 drives; but (a) I'm happy with the 7 drives the Q25B supports; and (b) I really don't like the much larger size of the Q26 [it's still "small", but not compared to the Q25].

That's a nice touch ... definitely a good idea and adds very little to SM's cost.

Your post reminded me I had meant to check my Syslog to see if I have the same "Machine Check Errors" ==> just looked through the log (actually searched it) and there are none of these in my log. Of course I have a completely different motherboard/CPU [Atom-based Supermicro], so its almost certainly something related to your motherboard/CPU combo. I suspect that (a) a BIOS update may eventually resolve it; and, more importantly, (b) it's nothing to be concerned about By the way, in recent months I've had a chance to look at the Silverstone DS380 (helped a friend build a system with one) and I definitely prefer the Q25B ... just a much nicer "feel" and clearly better made. Haven't had a chance to see one of the new Lian-Li PC-Q26 cases, which I suspect are very nice and have 10 drive support; but they're MUCH larger than the Q25's, so I doubt I'll use them.

A high quality 600w PSU is plenty for 14 drives. I've got 16 in my older Media server using a 650w Corsair TX series PSU, and it doesn't use drives nearly as efficient as modern WD Reds. The Seasonic X series units are also excellent choices. Either of the following would be good choices for what you're planning to build: Seasonic: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088 Corsair: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010 The Corsair's a particularly good deal right now ... with the rebate, the 750w unit costs the same as the 650w HX unit normally would.

Yes & No While 600 watts should be enough for 9 3.5" drives plus a half dozen laptop units, I do NOT recommend the CX series supplies. It will probably work, but I've seen many cases where there were issues with CX series units on the Core series CPUs. Corsair is a good brand, but I only recommend the TX series and above units (TX, HX, AX, etc.). One other thought on your proposed build: You're planning to use 6 laptop drives with a total storage capacity of 3TB ... I'd suggest you simply add an additional 3 or 4 TB drive instead. Much more power efficient; saves 5 SATA ports (probably eliminates the need for the 2 extra SIL3132 cards; and your system will have MUCH better parity check and drive rebuild speeds.

Hadn't noted the pricing, but that is indeed a bit much. Other than the parity sync/check and rebuild bandwidth limitations, however, I don't think performance is an issue. Even streaming 2-3 simultaneous HD movies from one SATA port isn't an issue => the SATA port speed (600MB/s since the ports are SATA-III) is plenty for as many movies as you might want to stream. Any streaming constraints would be due to network bandwidth long before the SATA interface speed came into play.

Those are indeed very nice looking enclosures that make it very simple to add a significant number of drives to a server. They'd be an excellent choice for bumping up the drive count of a mini-ITX box. However ... be sure you understand the performance implications of the port multipliers => these boxes connect 5 drives to each of their SATA connections using a built-in port multiplier. This will have a notable performance impact on operations that use multiple drives at once ... e.g. parity syncs, parity checks, and drive rebuilds. For normal operations they'd have no impact.

Yes, the initial power-on surge would be an issue unless your drives were connected through a controller that had staggered spin-up ... and this is typically a feature of higher-end RAID controllers that aren't likely to be used with most UnRAID systems.

Agree -- most UnRAID systems have power supplies that provide FAR more power than the system will ever draw ... EXCEPT during drive spinups. The problem is simply that you need to have enough current capacity to handle ALL of the drives spinning up at once. If UnRAID supported staggered spinup, we could use FAR less powerful power supplies. It's equally true, however, that as long as you're using high-efficiency 80+ Gold or Platinum units, even the very low current (2-5%) draws are likely still no worse than 65% or so efficient ... and with very low current draw, the lost energy is small enough that it doesn't matter.

Definitely agree -- that's by far the best way to GUARANTEE that you don't accidentally pre-clear the wrong drive ... and it happens -- as several postings in this forum have shown over the years.

I do wish they would publish actual efficiency numbers for both 5% and 10% loads, given the much more efficient systems that are available these days. But the simple fact is that any high-quality 80+ Gold or better PSU unit is probably "efficient enough" at any load above 5% of its rated capacity.

Do you have a source, as a qualitative example, how the 0-20% relation is? I'm not sure if you can simply extrapolate it (linear). The Plug Load Solutions link he provided for Corsair has charts for virtually all 80+ certified PSU's: http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/80PlusPowerSupplies.aspx The Platinum spec requires a 10% efficiency rating; and for many lesser certification levels these are provided as well -- you can see them in the charts. Note, however, that there are no figures for efficiency at even lower power consumption -- and the efficiency does drop rather sharply at exceptionally low levels. However ... even if it drops 10-20%, when you're drawing very little power, that equates to a fairly low "waste". e.g. if you're only drawing 30w [Perhaps a 600w unit running at 5% load], then even a 70% efficient unit would only be drawing about 43w from the wall, compared to 38w if it was running at 80% efficiency -- a "waste" of 5 watts. A 750w unit running at 30w [Not an unrealistic idle figure with modern Haswell systems] would be running at 4% load, but I'd expect an 80+ Gold or Platinum unit to still be running at 70% efficiency, even at that low a load.

Not sure why you think that. 24TB isn't really all that much these days ... on 4 6TB drives. A small 2nd UnRAID server with that much (or more capacity); and it takes ~ 5 minutes of "your time" to backup your entire collection [Clearly the copy would take a few days cross the network, but that doesn't require any action on your part except to initiate the copy.]

Sounds like you'll need a few friends to help carry that beast upstairs !!

!! What??!! You're not showing this off ??

Par2 does seem to provide some good recovery capabilities, but aside from the fact that it gives you a high probability of recovery without the need for total replication, is there any reason you suggest using it instead of full backups? At the very modest cost of drives these days, it seems like a full backup is a decidedly better alternative ... especially if you maintain MD5s on all of your files (and all of the backups). Just seems like Murphy would almost guarantee that the first time you had significant data loss it would happen to be something that your par2 couldn't fix

ANY computer is a huge generator of electrical interference ... that's why they're in metal cases, or at least have metal shielding. I think it's highly unlikely you'll be able to mount a radio in the case UNLESS you install some shielding to neutralize the RF interference. A small aluminum foil "box" for the radio may work okay, depending on how you route the antenna for it. But you'd also want a radio with a better audio output than the small unit you've tried so far.