ufopinball

Okay, so I have installed Dynamix System Temp, and just added Dynamix Auto Fan Control. Both include "Detect" buttons, but neither button returns any information. I have NerdPack installed and added Perl. Here's what it says at the console: root@Cortex:~# perl -version This is perl 5, version 24, subversion 0 (v5.24.0) built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi Copyright 1987-2016, Larry Wall Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source kit. Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on this system using "man perl" or "perldoc perl". If you have access to the Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page. Trying to follow this wiki page: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Setting_up_CPU_and_board_temperature_sensing There is no mention of having to reboot, and it seems like Perl is available so I'm not sure what I may be doing wrong or differently that "Detect" doesn't detect anything? Running "sensors-detect" at the command line returns the following: Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe. Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): y Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... No Trying family `SMSC'... No Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'... No Trying family `ITE'... Yes Found unknown chip with ID 0x8665 (logical device 4 has address 0x290, could be sensors) Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... No Trying family `SMSC'... No Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'... No Trying family `ITE'... No If I type in IT8665E manually and click "Load drivers", it doesn't report an error, but none of the other pulldowns offer any new options. Otherwise, uptime is listed now at 5 hours. LAMP VM is running smoothly. I'm happy enough for now, but would still like to get the sensors running properly. - Bill

Well, for what it's worth ... I just upgraded my main server to the new Ryzen build. Since signature lines change over time, here's what I have: Cortex • unRAID Server Pro 6.3.2 (Dual Parity) • ASUS Prime X370-PRO MB • AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 8-Core 3.6GHz • Crucial CT16G4DFD8213 DDR4 2133 (64GB) • Seasonic SS-660XP2 660W 80 PLUS PLATINUM • Asus Radeon 6450 1GB (Desktop) Graphics Card • 12 x Seagate ST4000DM000 4TB 5400rpm (40TB) • 2 x SAMSUNG 850 EVO 1TB SSD (Cache) • Docker: PlexTV • VM: CentOS (LAMP server) Basically, I took screen shots of everything I had, and changed all VMs/Dockers to not auto-start. I pulled the old MB and put in the new one. Since I now have 8 SATA ports on the MB, I removed one of the SATA controller cards. I added the GPU, and also included a USB card that will be used later for Windows 10 VM support ... that is a phase 2 item, though. The main issue I had was system instability because the Dynamix System Temp plugin was looking for sensors from the old MB. I removed the plugin and things started working fine. I commented in the plugin thread asking for support for the new MB/chipset because that's apparently missing at the moment. I don't know if anyone else is running this plugin? For now, my system reports 1 hour, 32 minutes of uptime. The VM running is a LAMP server, not a Windows 10 VM. At present, it's not convenient to turn off the LAMP VM. The best I can do is continue to report on system stability as things move forward. FWIW, I'm still using slower memory than everyone else. Dunno how much difference that makes. Will check in again later... - Bill

Hi bonienl, I would also like to echo my thanks for your plugin. I just upgraded my unRAID to use the new AMD Ryzen 1800X 8-core CPU, with the ASUS Prime X370-PRO motherboard. I had to disable to existing Dynamix System Temp plugin because it was still expecting sensors from the previous system, and therefore was causing system instability. Looking around, I found this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/618nyc/linux_lmsensors_it87_support_for_some_am4/#bottom-comments They're discussing an update to the it87 driver that supports a chip (?) called IT8665E used on some X370 motherboards. I added a fresh copy of the Dynamix System Temp plugin, but at present these sensor options don't seem to be available. In order to support the newer drivers, does this require an update to the Dynamix System Temp plugin, or a newer unRAID? I'm running unRAID 6.3.2 PRO. Thanks!! - Bill

I was away for a few days, so I left my new Ryzen build running with unRAID loaded. I also had my Windows 10 VM running, but otherwise both unRAID and Windows had no specific tasks assigned. So on the older 0504 BIOS, I recorded 5 days, 21 hours and 35 minutes of uptime. From the website: PRIME X370-PRO BIOS 05111.Improve system performance.2.Make CPU temperature more precise. I just took the system down and upgraded to 0511. I have no idea how to measure system performance, but my CPU temperature dropped from 60c down to as low as 56c. Color me unimpressed. Dunno if you had a more significant delta for the temperature reading. Anyway, today was the day I was going to move the new CPU/MB into my main server. I kicked off one last MemTest just to be sure, and then I'll try and do the switch-over this afternoon. - Bill

Dunno if this has affected anyone here, but I guess a big bug is getting fixed in Ryzen via a BIOS upgrade: AMD found the root problem causing its new Ryzen processors to freeze desktops Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ryzen-amd-bios-fix-fma3-crash/ Last BIOS release for the ASUS Prime X370-PRO was nearly a month ago. I hope the new release brings more fixes/features than just this ... whenever it's ready. - Bill

Did some power usage testing on my own rig. Specs: ASUS Prime X370-PRO MB (Bios 0504) AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 8-Core 3.6GHz Crucial CT16G4DFD8213 DDR4 2133 (4 x 16GB = 64GB) Seasonic SS-660XP2 660W 80 PLUS PLATINUM Asus Radeon 6450 1GB (Desktop) Graphics Card 4 x 4TB Hitachi/HGST Deskstar 7K4000 Crucial C300 128GB SSD (Cache) SYBA USB 3.0 PCI-e x1 2.0 Card StarTech USB Audio Adapter unRAID 6.3.2 Standby: 1 watt No drives, only CPU/RAM/GPU: BIOS Setup: 70 watts unRAID @ root login (idle): 44 watts 4 x 4TB drives (spun up) + SSD + SYBA USB card + USB sound BIOS Setup: 106 watts unRAID @ root login (idle): 78 watts unRAID w/ Windows 10 VM (idle): 86 watts unRAID w/ Windows 10 VM (idle), HGST drives spun down: 68 watts Note: HGST drives are connected to motherboard SATA ports 4 x 4TB drives (spun up) + SSD + SYBA USB card + USB sound + SAS2LP controller + Seagate 2TB external + 32GB thumb drive BIOS Setup: 118 watts unRAID @ root login (idle): 94 watts unRAID w/ Windows 10 VM (idle): 98 watts unRAID w/ Windows 10 VM (idle), HGST drives spun down: 68 watts Note 1: HGST drives are connected to SAS2LP controller ports Note 2: Seagate 2TB external & 32GB thumb drives are connected to the SYBA USB 3.0 card and are being passed through to the Windows 10 VM Power consumption was measured using Kill-a-Watt, and tends to fluctuate +/- 5 watts, depending on what the system is doing in the background. Your results may vary, but the above rough results seem reasonable. Ultimately, this will become the new "Cortex" unRAID server and will need to support 16 SATA devices ... that's why the SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 controller is included. I will take more power measurements once I make the full switchover, but due to other commitments, that won't happen for at least a week. For the moment, I'll run a parity check against the SAS2LP and see if there are still problems. See this thread for details. In the end, I'll likely stick with the Dell HV52W PERC H310 8-Port controller since when I measured last, it used slightly less power than the SAS2LP. Mainly this test is out of curiosity that a newer motherboard can make the difference with the SAS2LP issue. - Bill

My guess is the unRAID team compiles Slackware from the sources? That would certainly give them more flexibility when it comes to kernels and components/packages, etc. Also I think they have to so they can integrate the unRAID code as well. When I was doing IOMMU testing, I ran Ubuntu Desktop version 17.04 downloaded from here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ I installed the above then followed similar steps to those shown here: https://www.linuxbabe.com/ubuntu/install-linux-kernel-4-8-ubuntu-16-04-16-10 This allowed me to test kernels 4.10, 4.10.1, and 4.11-rc1. Best to go here first and scroll to the bottom: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ Decide which version you want to test, and adjust the parameters for the second link appropriately. Note: It turns out my IOMMU issue was in the BIOS because ASUS put the setting on a different screen than what's in the manual. - Bill

Okay, so MemTest86 is "The original industry standard memory diagnostic utility", located here: http://www.memtest86.com/ -- latest version is V7.3, released 27 Feb 2017. This is the version I used and is not Windows based. It boots off a thumb drive, I believe in non-UEFI mode. I unplugged everything else and let the BIOS decide what's best. Memtest86+ is "Based on the well-known original memtest86", located here: http://www.memtest.org/ -- latest version is 5.01, released 27 Sep 2013, and appears to be the edition included with unRAID. I think both are similar in terms of the base code. It seems that the 7.3 version should be more advanced, but I don't know if it will uncover any issues or point to any culprits. It runs a stock 4 passes unless you configure it otherwise. It would be nicer if it would run "forever" and just keep track of how many passes it has completed. There's also an option to save an HTML file with your test results, so mine are attached. The first two sessions (2x4 = 8 passes) are complete. For the last test I removed #13 the RowHammer test since I'm less interested in that as a test parameter. RowHammer also takes forever. This time I set it for 25 passes, and just ended it partway through the 12th pass since I felt the results were satisfactory. I also wanted to spend some time measuring power consumption today. - Bill MemTest86-Report-20170303-234108.html MemTest86-Report-20170317-202218.html MemTest86-Report-20170318-161210.html

Sooooo, it seems like you are primarily seeing errors in MemTest and unRAID. Not to throw more fuel on the fire, but I noticed your screen shot showed "MemTest86 5.01"? My screen is showing "PassMark MemTest86 V7.3". I don't remember all the details on the various different MemTest versions. Might be worth checking both in Google to see which is latest, and if the PassMark version is better suited to your configuration? Especially if Windows 10 and open SUSE are both happy on this RAM? - Bill

Yeah, I have a lot of G.Skill memory, both DRAM and SDHC. I recall doing some research, but don't remember exactly what led me to purchase the Crucial memory. It's a shame about Kingston. They were once very highly regarded, but they seem to get a lot of unhappy reviews about their thumb drives these days. Apparently they sell a USB 3.0 compatible thumb drive that doesn't actually spec at USB 3.0 speeds. If you need the high speeds, they have a Premium USB 3.0 line, which really feels like a bait and switch, and I understand why customers are disappointed. Their headquarters are located up the street from me. I've considered looking for a job there, I heard it was once an amazing place to work. Not sure how things are going now, but last I checked their current openings weren't in my areas of expertise. - Bill

Not sure what to tell you. Might be worth contacting the MemTest people to see if they have any advice? Some say you should try reverting to BIOS defaults and testing again. Others suggest trying a different power supply? If you have a spare, it's an easy thing to test. How do you judge your cooling setup? Do you have a separate temperature display? It would be nice if that were integrated into MemTest. - Bill

Thus far, I haven't had any issues with the memory. I installed them once, and haven't had reason to (re)move them. At least one web comment indicated that a single MemTest pass will catch 99% of memory issues, but certainly more passes are going to be better. Since system stability is looking good, and there isn't much more configuration for me to fiddle with, another round of MemTest is certainly worth doing. I'll probably start it today and just let it run through the weekend. That should come in at around 10 passes or so? - Bill

Sounds like you know more than I do about this. I didn't get that you were also testing 64GB of memory, at much higher speeds than I was. I bought my CPU/MB on launch day, but I had pre-bought the memory prior to the QVL being available. There wasn't even a QVL from ASUS on launch day (!!). I ended up installing it anyway and getting lucky, but then I'm also not pushing the envelope on memory speed. So maybe going with QVL-approved memory is the best way to go? At least saves on frustration, which can amount to a lot when dealing with all new hardware. I bought my RAM from NewEgg so if it's mail-order you'll still have time to test the individual sticks, etc. - Bill

I'm running my 64GB or DDR4 2133 dual-rank at rated speed. Can't expect much more with that much memory. CPU-Z shows 1064.5 MHz, so you double that (DDR) to get to ~2133. This is on straight Windows 10, not in an unRAID VM. The stuff I have read suggest you have to install and test each stick individually. I only completed a pass or two with all four, but my memory completed the test without any errors ... otherwise, I'd be doing the same. Was this a 4 stick kit, or individual sticks? Mine was the latter because no one sells a 64GB kit. I also heard that if one stick is bad out of a 4 stick kit, they make you send all of it back. Possibly for the best?

Update: I have effectively completed my Ryzen build from a component perspective: unRAID Server Pro 6.3.2 (Dual Parity) • ASUS Prime X370-PRO MB • AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 8-Core 3.6GHz • Crucial CT16G4DFD8213 DDR4 2133 (64GB) • Seasonic SS-660XP2 660W 80 PLUS PLATINUM • Asus Radeon 6450 1GB (Desktop) Graphics Card • 4 x Hitachi/HGST Deskstar 7K4000 4TB • Crucial C300 128GB SSD (Cache) • VM: Windows 10 Specific to the Windows 10 VM, I am passing in the Radeon 6450 GPU, and have added USB audio and a PCIe card for USB support: Startech USB Audio: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829128004 Vantech UGT-PC341 USB Card: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815287016 I had to download the drivers from the Startech website to get clean audio in Windows 10. The USB card provides 3.0 speeds and seems happy with plug-and-play. On my MB, I had to put it in the second PCIe x16 slot just to get it into a properly isolated IOMMU group ... it's the VIA controller at the bottom: IOMMU group 2 [1022:1452] 00:03.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 [1022:1453] 00:03.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1453 [1022:1453] 00:03.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1453 [1002:677b] 28:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Caicos PRO [Radeon HD 7450] [1002:aa98] 28:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Caicos HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6450 / 7450/8450/8490 OEM / R5 230/235/235X OEM] [1106:3483] 29:00.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VL805 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 01) To pass in 29.00.0 (USB), I have to pass in both 28.00.0 (GPU/VGA) and 28.00.1 (HDMI sound), even though I'm not using the latter. Sad that there are two completely empty IOMMU groups, yet all the other slots wanted to put the USB card into IOMMU group 1 where all sorts of stuff lives that I can't pass through. For now, I'm still on my test setup. I'll merge this system with "Cortex" (see signature) so I'll have to add a Dell PERC H310 controller at that point ... hope the existing balancing act holds together. Otherwise, the talk about power consumption intrigues me. I'll have to run some tests on my own system, and see if I can disable things like the onboard audio that I'm not using to save on power. So far uptime has been good, though I had some hangs earlier on. I'm chalking that up to oddball VM/IOMMU configurations that can crater the system. Haven't had a hang situation in days, so knock on wood.

Can you post your system specs, and what it is you're trying to pass through? What are the VM's specs as well?

Thanks, I found my IOMMU setting, but still don't know why it's disabled by default? It also turns out that "Auto" is the necessary setting. "Enabled" didn't work for me on the Asus Prime X370-PRO. So now I have a Windows 10 VM running with the GPU pass-through. Thus far, I also have the USB keyboard, mouse and a sound device being passed through. The USB sound is kinda crackly, so I may have to replace it with a PCIe card. Also, I don't seem to be able to find a happy combination of IOMMU groups and the available USB hubs, so I'm looking at getting a USB PCIe card as well. Specs: AMD 1800X CPU, Asus Prime X370-PRO MB, Crucial CT16G4DFD8213.16FA1 DDR4 2133 (4x16G), Asus Radeon 6450 GPU (desktop, not for gaming) At some point, I'll add a Dell HV52W PERC H310 8-Port controller card, so combined with the 8 SATA ports on the MB, I can still support 16 drives. Hope all those PCIe cards work smoothly together (GPU, SAS/SATA, USB and sound). Need to dig through the manual to see if there are any gotchas.

Greetings all, I'm late to the party. Glad to hear the Ryzen tests are looking good. I actually picked up my Ryzen build on launch day, and then started running things like MemTest or Prime95. My rig: AMD Ryzen 1800X CPU ASUS Prime X370-PRO MB 64GB RAM (Crucial 16GB Single DDR4 2133 x 4) Asus Radeon 6450 1GB Graphics Card (for VM support, not gaming) Right now I have unRAID Pro 6.3.2 running with some older 4TB drives (dual parity, two data drives) and a 128GB SSD cache drive. I have configured a Windows 7 and Windows 10 VM, but not a lot else. So far, HVM is Enabled but IOMMU is Disabled. In the BIOS, I had to enable SVN (?) to get HVM working, by default is is disabled for some reason. I didn't see anything else obvious to enable IOMMU. The BIOS still feels pretty early, so I don't know if there are problems. The two Windows VMs seem pretty happy. Current BIOS for this mobo is 0504. Here are the IOMMU groupings from lspci: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1450 00:01.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:01.3 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1453 00:02.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:03.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:03.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1453 00:04.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:07.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:07.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1454 00:08.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1452 00:08.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1454 00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SMBus Controller (rev 59) 00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH LPC Bridge (rev 51) 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1460 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1461 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1462 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1463 00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1464 00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1465 00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1466 00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1467 03:00.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b9 (rev 02) 03:00.1 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b5 (rev 02) 03:00.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b0 (rev 02) 1d:00.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b4 (rev 02) 1d:02.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b4 (rev 02) 1d:03.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b4 (rev 02) 1d:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b4 (rev 02) 1d:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b4 (rev 02) 1d:07.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43b4 (rev 02) 25:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. Device 1343 26:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03) 28:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Caicos PRO [Radeon HD 7450] 28:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Caicos HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6450 / 7450/8450/8490 OEM / R5 230/235/235X OEM] 29:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 145a 29:00.2 Encryption controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1456 29:00.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 145c 2a:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1455 2a:00.2 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 51) 2a:00.3 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1457 Will keep tabs for updates on the unRAID software, if that helps iron out any odd behavior. Thanks for all the hard work, LimeTech!

Ran the script from the above post, selected the 10 minute test, and the full iterations ran for 2 1/2 hours ... results were: Tunable (md_num_stripes): 1280 Tunable (md_write_limit): 768 Tunable (md_sync_window): 384 Basically what I had before, but for some reason "md_write_limit" was blank? I don't have a screen shot, but that's what the tool reported. Anyway, I guess my Cortex server has been running reasonably optimally all along. Good to know, though... Squid updated it so it would run, with 6.2, but it's not actually valid for 6.2. As of 6.2, md_write_limit is gone and md_sync_thresh has been added, with a default value of 192. Your md_sync_window would be fine at 384, twice the value of md_sync_thresh, but would probably show worse performance with higher values of md_sync_window. According to Tom, md_sync_thresh needs to be in the range of (md_sync_window/2) to (md_sync_window-1). We're waiting for an updated tunables script. Thanks RobJ ... was wondering what all the hub-bub was about waiting for a 6.2 script if we had one. Guess we don't really... I just looked in my disk.cfg file, and there is no entry for md_write_limit ... so I guess the setting added by the older script was removed by the system? I'm not sure where else to look. The rest of the md_* settings look like this: md_num_stripes="1280" md_sync_window="384" md_sync_thresh="192" md_write_method="auto" The older tunables script reported 131.9 MB/s with these settings. Does that look/sound decent? Thanks!

I too have been enjoying this tool, has helped with some testing I've been doing. Thanks! We're getting off-topic though, perhaps it deserves its own thread? Running the latest version - the Total column looks more like an average to me. I would have expected a sum? Is this plugin still around? The link doesn't work... Squid updated it to 6.2 here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=29009.msg492140#msg492140 Ran the script from the above post, selected the 10 minute test, and the full iterations ran for 2 1/2 hours ... results were: Tunable (md_num_stripes): 1280 Tunable (md_write_limit): 768 Tunable (md_sync_window): 384 Basically what I had before, but for some reason "md_write_limit" was blank? I don't have a screen shot, but that's what the tool reported. Anyway, I guess my Cortex server has been running reasonably optimally all along. Good to know, though...

Nope

16GB (4x4GB) of DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

I installed this plugin and appreciate the ability to rescan the list of drives in the case of a hot swap. That said, now there are no more "spin down" icons next to the list of Unassigned Devices. Has this functionality been moved elsewhere, or is there a way to have both this plugin as well as the spin-down feature? Thanks a bunch!

+1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1

The pre-read throws away the contents of what is being read (sends it to /dev/null) Its whole purpose is to let the firmware on the disk identify un-readable sectors. The post-read verifies all that is being read is all zeros. (actually analyzes what is being read) It is normal for it to take longer because of that. Joe L. Thanks Joe ... my apologies for not digging through the 110 (!!) pages of this thread. Your tool is most helpful, and obviously very popular! With 4TB drives being available, and assuming larger drives will be in our future ... are there any ways to boost the post-read speed? This is a test rig running on an AMD Phenom 9950 X4 2.6GHz cpu and 8gb of DDR2 RAM, if that helps at all ... or is the bottleneck still the drive (and interface?) itself?