garycase

Note: You could actually build a 24 drive system without a port multiplier if you used a 12 drive controller ... something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115059

Agree any feedback from 3 years ago is not likely to be useful. You might get some useful info from this thread, which is less than a year old: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=27460.0 While you couldn't build a 24 drive system (unless you used a port multiplier), you could build a 20 drive system with this very nice little board and an 8-port PCIe x8 controller card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157475 From the reviews I've read, the board draws less than 30w when idle (no drives spinning). You'd have to add the idle draw of the PCIe x8 SATA card you added, but I'd still expect a 20 drive system to idle under 60w with this combination. A port multiplier would let you expand to 24 drives with a small additional wattage draw. Of course 24 drives all spun up will add ~ 100w, assuming you're using low-power drives. They'll also draw ~ 10 watts when all are spun down. [These numbers are based on WD Reds] So ... it's reasonable to assume you could build a 24 drive system that drew in the neighborhood of 60 watts when idle (drives spun down); probably 70w in typical use (1 or 2 drives spun up); and about 160 watts during parity checks, rebuilds, or while booting -- when all drives were spun up. I doubt you can do any better than that.

While I agree with the basic premise [i.e. only back up your important data [or, as I said it above, backup "... ALL data that you don't want to lose ..."], I also think that many folks under-estimate what that set of data is -- until they lose it !! As I said earlier, "... If your data is important enough to built a fault-tolerant server to hold it; and you've spent the time and money to acquire it, it's almost certainly worth backing up. " ==> Yes, I know you can always "recreate it" by re-ripping all your media; redoing the catalogs; re-compressing anything that needs to be in a different format; etc. But if you think about all the time and effort involved in doing all that, I suspect you may find that backups aren't really all that expensive !!

Yes, you understand that correctly. The paid version has an option to include a check of the file date/time and will notify you if the file has been modified (based on a new date/time stamp) or corrupted (unchanged date/time stamp but fails verification).

No, it's got a port multiplier included. What you DO need is an eSATA port that supports port multipliers. If your PC doesn't have one, then you'll need to add a card that provides that.

My understanding of the EX-50 (from reading the manual) is that it implements RAID internally, and you simply connect it via an eSATA port, where it will "look" like a big drive (equal to the storage on the RAID level you've selected). It does, however, have a "port multiplier" option, where I believe the drives will show up independently as long as your SATA controller supports port multipliers. Whether or not UnRAID would work with this specific port multiplier I simply don't know -- perhaps somebody has actually tried this and can confirm that. I'd expect it to work fine -- but you don't want to buy it and find out otherwise Since you don't need the RAID functionality, I'd be inclined to buy this instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111177

The Carbide is a very nice case with excellent cooling for the drives (2 front fans blowing directly across them).

Just remember ... the CX series is Corsair's "bargain basement low-end" power supply. If it works for your system, it's okay ... but I've seen several systems that aren't stable with a CX that work fine with their TX and HX series. I simply don't use the CX series units -- if I'm buying Corsair I only get HX or TX series units.

I don't like the idea of losing any of the data I've spent so many years collecting ... whether it's family pictures, financial records, or just all the music and movies I've collected over the years. When you factor in the cost and time involved in that, a couple thousand bucks to have it VERY well backed up is really no big deal.

My backups have checksums for all the files included on them. When the backup drive gets full, I run a full verify on it; then put it in a DriveBox and store it in my safe (waterproof, fireproof, data-rated). About once/year I pull all the backups out and run a checksum verification on them ... then put them back. I don't mention it in this write-up, as I don't think the average person needs to do it ... as you know I'm a "backup fanatic" ==> but I also have a complete spare UnRAID server that's powered up once/month to sync backups from my other two servers to So all of my data is on, as a minimum, two fault-tolerant servers and a backup disk in my safe AND, for all my non-media data (pictures, documents, spreadsheets, etc.) is also on at least 3 other hard drives on my two main computers, ALL of which are UPS-protected. [The non-media data is also backed up to the cloud.]

Is it normal for the Post Read on all his drives to be nearly half the Preread and Zeroing speeds? Yes. In rough terms, the pre-read takes 1/4th of the time for a cycle, the actual pre-clear takes 1/4th of the time; and the post-read takes 1/2 of the overall time.

A few thoughts on a somewhat related topic that also comes up fairly often ... Parity check errors. Correcting vs. Non-Correcting checks. UnRAID has a built-in capability to check the entire array to confirm that the parity information is still correct, and to update it if not. Note that BY FAR the most common cause of a parity error in the array is failure of a buffered write to the parity disk to be completed. This can be caused by a power "glitch"; by an unsafe shutdown; by a software error (almost always in a plugin -- not the core UnRAID NAS); or by a memory error. It is VERY rare that a sync error is due to an error on one of the data disks. If a read error occurs on a data disk, UnRAID will re-write the data on that disk to correct the data ... and if the write fails, it will disable the disk (so no inappropriate change to the parity disk would occur). So unless you have multiple drive failures at the same time, you can always recover a failed disk -- that's the whole concept of UnRAID's fault tolerance. ... it's also why you want to periodically do a parity check to ensure your parity information is good. Bottom line: I can really think of NO reason to do a "non-correcting" parity check. The whole idea of doing the check is to ensure your parity is good !! Nevertheless, others disagree -- and it was the "clamor" by the UnRAID community that led Tom to add the option of non-correcting checks. Unfortunately, that's all many folks do now, and there are frequent questions r.e. "what to do" when it finds sync errors. The answer is simple: run a correcting check !! How is this issue related to backups? Simple. If you DO want to isolate whether or not a sync error is "real" (i.e. an error on the parity disk), or is due to corrupted data on one of the data disks, the only way to KNOW that for sure is if you have a complete set of backups or, as a minimum, a set of checksums for all your files. Backups are best, as that guarantees you can do a bit-by-bit compare of your files, but checksums are certainly "good enough" to test whether or not a file has been corrupted (the odds of a corruption resulting in the same checksum are VERY low ... although it is possible). One major difference, of course, is that if a checksum verification shows that a file has been corrupted, there's nothing you can do about it if you don't have a backup to replace it with. A common question is "Which file was the sync error in?". That's not an answerable question. Remember that a sync error simply identifies the bit position within the longitudinal parity array where the error occurs. There is one bit from EVERY disk that contributes to each bit of parity ... so the only thing that's computationally possible when there's a sync error would be to provide a "set of files" (one from every disk) that contributed to the parity sync error => but remember that the likelihood is that NONE of those files have errors, as it's far more likely that the error is an actual sync error on the parity disk. IF you had a utility that would list that set of files; and IF you then verified the checksum or compared the file to its backup copy for every one of those files, then you could indeed confirm exactly what had occurred. But if you don't have either checksums or backups, then even if you have the list of "candidates", there's no way to confirm whether or not one of those was the reason for the sync error. In the 6 years I've used UnRAID, I've had 3 or 4 sync errors during parity checks. In EVERY case these have been errors on the parity disk -- which I've confirmed by doing a complete comparison of every file on the array against my backups after each parity check that resulted in corrections. It's been ~ 3 years or so since I've had a sync error; but the next time I see one I'll do it a bit differently, as I now have checksums for all my files stored on the array in addition to my backups ... so I can check everything without the need to pull out all my backups (which would now only be needed if a checksum verification failed). Bottom line: I never run non-correcting checks, and really don't think they're necessary. But if you DO want to use that alternative, be sure you have the ability to confirm whether or not you actually have any file corruption (by either verifying checksums or comparing with backups) and some means of dealing with it if you do (by either deleting the corrupted file or replacing it with your backup). If it makes you feel better, you could always do this: (a) Run a non-correcting check (b) If any sync errors are found, run a checksum verification against your entire array, and note any corrupted files -- either deleting them or replacing them from backups © Now run a correcting check Whatever you do, you do NOT want to leave your array in a state where you KNOW there are sync errors in your parity. That defeats the whole idea of fault-tolerance.

I'm continually surprised at how many folks have NO backups ... and apparently think they don't need them because of UnRAID's fault-tolerance. Since I'm often writing the same thing over-and-over to point out why you should back up, I thought I'd just write a single post that I can refer to in future posts. So here's my nickel's worth on backups ... (1) ALL hard drives will fail ... it's not a question of IF, it's just a matter of WHEN. (2) A RAID system ... whether UnRAID or some other traditional RAID ... is NOT a backup. It provides fault-tolerance, so a system can keep running when a disk fails; but the RAID can be corrupted; there's no protection from accidental deletions; power-spikes can easily damage multiple disks (resulting in significant data loss); etc. (3) ALL data that you don't want to lose should be stored in at LEAST two different places. That's the whole idea of a backup. Ideally one of those should be off-site, but for personal environments that's often not the case. But at least have a backup!! [My backups aren't off-site either; but they ARE stored in a waterproof, fireproof, data-rated safe] (4) A frequent excuse is that it's too costly to have backups. I simply don't agree. If your data is important enough to built a fault-tolerant server to hold it; and you've spent the time and money to acquire it, it's almost certainly worth backing up. Obviously the economics vary depending on just what you're collecting, but using DVDs as an example: if you store all your DVDs compressed to a single-sided DVD size of 4.7GB, you can store 212 of them per TB. At ~ $40/TB (current disk costs) that's roughly $0.18 to backup a DVD. If you store them completely uncompressed, the average size is probably 50% more than that, so it might cost $0.27 to backup. BluRays would of course be more ... perhaps as much as $1 each (still a pretty small amount compared to the cost of everything else). Considering the time to rip the DVD; do any processing you may do [e.g. extract the movie; possibly recompress; perhaps change the format; etc.]; and catalog it with whatever media cataloging system you use; I'd think $0.18 or so to never have to repeat that is well worth it. "I'll just re-rip everything" is an easy excuse to avoid backups ... but when you lose a few hundred (or thousand) movies, that's suddenly not such a simple task. (5) The cost I noted above is just for the disks to store the backups on. In fact, that's all you really need, but it's even more convenient if you have a 2nd backup server that you simply run a synchronization utility against periodically. If you set it up with WOL, you can remotely turn it on; run the sync; and then turn it off. Doing this once/week (or at whatever interval makes sense for you) is a very simple way to ensure you'll never lose any data. If you don't want the expense (and space) of a backup server; you can easily keep current backups by simply ensuring that every movie you copy to your server is also copied to a backup disk. Just get in the habit of doing this, and it's simple to do. I keep a "current" backup disk (labeled as "Backupsxx", where xx is the disk#) in an external disk caddy; and simply copy everything I'm copying to the server to that disk. When it gets full; I put it in a plastic DriveBox and put a new disk in the caddy (storing the old one in my safe). I also save a copy of the disk's directory in a PDF file, so I can easily locate anything on any of my backup disks without physically accessing them. How much this costs depends on how quickly you're "growing" your array. I add perhaps 200GB/month to my server, so I need about 2.4TB/year of additional backup space -- a cost of less than $100/year to maintain backups. I consider that cheap insurance !! (6) In addition to backups, it's very convenient to have a way of confirming whether or not your data has been corrupted without having to do a full comparison of all your data against the backup disks [i've done this a few times, and it's a week-long process]. You can provide for this by keeping checksums of all your data on the UnRAID disks. I started doing this a couple years ago, and it's VERY convenient. I use and recommend the excellent Corz checksum utility, which lets you do this from Windows [http://corz.org/windows/software/checksum/ ], but there are Linux-based options as well if you prefer to do it on the UnRAID box itself. This provides a very simple way to check for any corrupted files .. which you can then recover from your backups. [i also have checksums on all my backup disks, so I can just as easily confirm that they're all okay as well]. (7) HOW you backup isn't nearly as important as the simply fact that you DO it. I've outlined how I do it with individual disks. A backup server; Crashplan; etc. are all alternatives that work fine. If you have data that you truly don't care about, then that's fine to leave unprotected ... just be sure that you truly don't care about it. A bunch of recorded TV shows clearly isn't as important to most folks as the last ten years of family photographs and home videos. It's always better to err on the side of caution => I've seen MANY folks who were sick that they'd lost things; but have never found anyone who was upset that they'd backed up stuff they didn't really need. ( If you don't have backups, and realize after a failure that you had important data on your failed disk(s), ONE recovery through a professional recovery service can easily cost more than a complete set of backups would have. $500 - $1000 is a typical cost for professional recovery for ONE disk. This can quickly change your mind about the importance of backups (9) Nobody NEEDS backups. Just as none of us NEED our movie/music/picture collections. But if it would upset you to lose it, it should be backed up It may sound expensive to back everything up; but when you consider it relative to what you've spent to acquire the media, and the cost you've already got in your infrastructure to store it and play it, it's a very modest cost. If you've ignored it while you grew a multi-TB collection, it can cost a bit to "catch up" ... but the ongoing cost to maintain good backups is very nominal. And you can always use your older disks as backups as you replace them with newer, higher capacity drives ... thus further reducing the number of disks you have to buy just for backups.

I agree that MOST units from Seasonic or Corsair are good PSUs. But I do NOT recommend the CX series Corsairs ... there are several design tradeoffs that simply make these less reliable units than the TX, HX, and AX series units. The wattage range is fine ... but I'd get a better unit, like one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139020 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151093

350w should be plenty as long as you're sticking with low-power drives like the Red series. I've set up a couple systems with 350w PSUs and 6 drives, and I've got no doubt there was enough "headroom" for two more drives (especially since the drives weren't as low-power as the Reds).

Absolutely !! With 9 500GB and a 320GB drive you could buy a pair of 4TB drives and go from 14 drives down to 6 drives in your array while ADDING over 3TB of additional storage. That would free up 8 drive slots; significantly reduce the power draw (by about 50 watts !!); and your system would run MUCH cooler. ... you could do the same thing with a pair of 3TB drives at a lower cost and still add over 1TB of space.

It's not perfect, but it's okay -- it passes SMART and only has 3 reallocated sectors ... and no new ones required reallocation during the pre-clear. I'd be more inclined to add it to your backup pool ... just use it as another backup disk; but if you already have enough backup disks, then it's okay to add it to your array.

If your temps are running that high, you may want to consider switching from a 5-in-3 hot-swap cage to these 4-in-3 cages with front fans. They cool notably better than any of the 5-in-3 cages. [A 120mm fan blowing directly over the drives instead of smaller fans "sucking" air in] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817993002

They all look fine. You're looking for all zeroes in the reallocation summaries; and no bad SMART values. With Seagate disks there are a few values that get reported that you won't see on most other brands; but you don't have anything in these reports to be concerned about.

Also a good choice

Definitely the right move

I agree I wouldn't use it in your array. Format it, and use it for backups.

I'd run another cycle or two -- run it until there are no more pendings.

You know what I'd do with it

The last 4TB drive I ran it on took 36:41:32