garycase

As I noted earlier, as long as the controllers are operating in AHCI mode, that's how it's supposed to work (hot-swap is fine) -- and as long as the array is stopped, clearly it does from the experiences outlined above. Nevertheless, I'm "old school" r.e. plugging drives into a running system, so I always shut down to do this. It's not exactly something that I do with enough regularity that it really matters

The whole idea of a hot-swappable drive is that you can indeed change them while the system is on (i.e. "hot"). I have NOT tried this on UnRAID, but as long as the controllers are operating in AHCI mode, they SHOULD support hot swap -- so if, for example, you added a drive I'd expect UnRAID to "see" it without requiring a reboot. You would, I presume, have to stop the array to assign it -- but I believe it would work fine. How a replacement would work is another story -- I do NOT know what would happen if you hot-swapped a drive while the array was actually started. (and I'm not inclined to actually DO that to find out !!). You should, however, be able to swap them while the array is stopped. Having said both of those things, I'm a conservative old guy who still shuts down my systems before making any drive changes.

By the way, there are a LOT of posts in various forums r.e. problems getting an HDMI output from an Intel HD 530 graphics adapter (which is what you have). I suspect your VGA output is working; but without a monitor to test that with there's no way to be certain (unless you're confident the projector is working and compatible). The other alternative is to get an inexpensive card, as I noted above.

Okay ... just wanted to be sure you weren't using a CPU without integrated graphics. It's POSSIBLE that the board is defaulting to PCIe graphics and NOT auto-selecting => seems unlikely, but definitely possible. If that's the case, you need to install a PCIe graphics card (ANY inexpensive card will do) so you can get to the BIOS and enable the on-board graphics. There are plenty available on e-bay for < $15 ... and plenty of new ones in the $30 range on Amazon or Newegg. https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Passive-Graphics-01G-P3-1313-KR/dp/B004KABG1I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483603295&sr=8-1&keywords=PCIe+video It's also possible that the system works with the VGA output, but isn't working with your projector (these can be tricky sometimes to set up, so it may be a compatibility issue and not that the port isn't working). Bottom line: I'd try to find a VGA display first; but if that's not easily possible, just get an inexpensive video card so you can at least get to the BIOS and see if there's just a setting that needs changed to work with the integrated graphics.

Only connect ONE display to ONE of the ports -- preferably the VGA port. [i thought you didn't have a VGA display??] What processor did you buy ??

... or an adapter like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IDFGK1W/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=&gclid=CNXk_P-9qtECFVA6gQoduNsOFw

Downloaded the manual for this board, and on page 32 there's an option to "Select a primary VGA" => with the option shown as PCIe for default. I suspect this has to be changed to the integrated adapter for the HDMI output to work. It would seem you're going to need to find a VGA-capable display to set this up.

Might be an interesting Catch-22 => I wouldn't be surprised if you have to change the default video in the BIOS to HDMI ... and possibly even enable it; but to get to the BIOS you need to connect a display to the DSUB port (VGA).

Try the VGA port.

I remember when you bought that bracket -- in fact, I had bookmarked it when I saw your original link, as I planned to use it the next time I did a mini-ITX build. But I also thought $16.99 was steep -- it's definitely nice to see it down to $8.99, which is not only very reasonable, but low enough that I decided to replace the bracket in my current Q25B with one "just because" [Ordered it right after I posted the note above.]

Yes, that will work fine. It's just like the bracket that Silverstone ships with their SFX supplies. Note that the after-market bracket Silverstone sells is slightly different => it positions the power supply towards the top of the hole, instead of centering it in the hole. That's actually a slightly nicer location, as it leaves more "working space" below the power supply. But either bracket will do the trick just fine.

Just realized you didn't buy the Silverstone STX unit => you bought the Corsair STX power supply. Apparently it doesn't come with an adapter plate -- so all you need to do is buy the adapter plate I linked to above. The STX power supply with that adapter plate fits FAR better in the Q25B than an ATX unit would.

The Silverstone STX 450 fits just fine in the Q25-B using the SFX->ATX adapter plate it comes with. Did you lose (or misplace) that adapter?? If so, you can simply buy one: https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-Universal-Bracket-RL-PP08B/dp/B01BYB33J8

Agree. The old adage, "don't fix what ain't broken" is good advice. If the system's working well with Reiser, there's no compelling reason to switch. From my perspective, the only reason to change a drive from Reiser to XFS is if it's a very active drive that's also very close to full => Reiser tends to result in slow writes to the drive in that situation, whereas XFS doesn't slow down at all. Otherwise, a Reiser drive will perform quite well.

Nothing at all wrong with that approach. It does take longer; BUT it's all "computer time" and not "human time". In other words, the whole process probably doesn't take you more than 5-10 minutes/disk ... perhaps an hour TOTAL of actual time you will be doing anything to convert ALL of your disks. All of the rest of the time is just letting the computer do its thing. ... so, as you noted, time is really not an issue.

As long as all of the data on a drive will fit on another drive, the size doesn't matter. i.e. Yes, you can use the 2TB drive to hold the data from your 3TB drive if you want to convert the 3TB drive to XFS.

Yes, that's a reasonable copy speed -- remember, you're writing to a parity-protected array, so writes are much slower than reads.

A bit of counterpoint ... ... the SAFEST way to do a conversion is simply to not do it => at least not in the array. If you want to take ZERO risk, then just (a) copy all of the data from the disk you want to convert to another system; (b) validate the copy (either while doing it; or via a compare operation after it's done; or using checksums if you have them; © Stop the array and change the file system type for the drive to XFS -- then Start the array and it will format in just a couple minutes; and then (d) copy the data back to it (validating this as well). Yes -- it's a long process => but almost all "computer time" and just a few minutes of "your time". And there's virtually NO risk. [The only real risk is that you reformat the wrong drive !!]

Yes, I'd say that's working just fine

I haven't done any USB-based pre-clearing; but my understanding is the newest version supports USB v3, so as long as your computer has USB3 ports, pre-clearing via USB should be just about as fast as a direct SATA connection -- and has the advantage that you'll know the drive is good before opening the case to remove it (thus voiding the warranty).

Remember these are called "shingled" drives => the name is derived from the fact that the writes overlap each other, as c3 noted above -- think of the shingles on a roof (this is why they named the technique "shingled"). The drives perform very well for reads (no different than standard PMR drives); but to write anything on a specific track requires re-writing the entire track as well as every track after it up until the next "buffer" track (where there's no shingling). This could result in TERRIBLE write performance, except there is an area reserved for "buffering" all of these random writes, known as the "persistent cache", which buffers writes to a non-shingled area, and then moves them to the shingled sections later (during idle time). Seagate has done a very good job of mitigating these issues, as I've outlined in this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39526.0

That's the right sector count for an 8TB drive, so you're good to go. In fact, you don't even need to bother removing the old partitions => UnRAID will re-initialize the drive anyway.

Thanks for correcting that -- not sure where my mind was :)

That 134MB appears to be a 2nd partition, NOT an HPA (which wouldn't show up on the display) If you attach this drive to a PC, and go to Disk Management, you should be able to simply delete both of the existing partitions ... then have another look and see what it shows. Run a /dev/sdX (where X is the assigned letter for that drive) to see exactly what the sector count it. Then you'll know if there's an HPA or not.

Sure, it'll work fine. Gives you more power than you need, but it's still a very nice unit.