Syndacate

Gotcha, OK, makes sense. I think I understand! Gotcha, yeah I'll leave it alone, planning on doing everything as standard as possible, not getting fancy with it. So I gave that a try and it worked as expected, rebuilt the drive and was usable in the meantime. Thanks for your help!

What is different when the "parity is valid" checkbox is checked? Does it just skip the parity rebuild? I assumed it meant it would use parity as a source of truth and trigger a rebuild on DATA1, but it didn't. That assumption doesn't make sense in hindsight though, because if there were multiple drives in the array and all unique identifiers in all the slots were the same, it wouldn't know which DATA drive I had wanted to "rebuild", I'd imagine. Do note, there was just random files on there, I did this method without digging much into it knowing it may blow everything away and was OK with it. The experiment was to just trigger a rebuild. After I formatted the DATA1 drive, there is an obvious mis-match, which I wanted to see it rectify. Is the "New Config" usage common? If I add drives I thought I'd just need to assign the new drives to the array. What's the difference between using "New Config" to re-assign versus just unassigning/assigning as preferred then spinning up and hitting "check" with "write corrections to parity" set? I was just surprised to see the parity drive was mountable and all files readable, I expected it to be just garbage without the context of the data drive. But I guess when there's only 1 DATA + 1 parity and there's even parity it becomes a mirror automatically, allowing the valid FS to be mirrored? Am I right in assuming if there were more drives it'd just be garbage & no valid FS on the parity? I'll give this a whirl, thanks.

Hi, I'm using the trial of 6.10.3 and I wanted to simulate a drive failure. Right now I have 1 1TB drive + 1 1TB parity. Initially I had only the former, and then I added the parity and it built the parity - both drives had the same data when individually removed & checked, it was a pseudo-RAID1, everything was good. So that essentially tests a failure one direction. I wanted to see it rebuild the array though, so I removed DRIVE1, formatted it, popped it back in hoping to get prompted for rebuild, which didn't happen. It then hit me that the problem is likely that the unique identifier (mode+serial?) is known to the config and therefore maybe it's the case that DRIVE1 without any data is now the "source of truth" and the "valid data" on the parity drive is interpreted to just be a drive full of parity errors? It indeed shows many errors. I did some Googling and I saw what I thought was a solution, which was to: 1. Remove the parity 2. Up/down 3. Remove the DRIVE1 4. Tools -> New Config 5. Add DRIVE1 + Parity back in their respective slots 5. Check "Parity is valid" 6. Up Didn't quite do what I'd hoped, drive shows empty, but with parity errors (I did not have it do parity corrections). So I think this is just an invalid test because the unique identifier is the same, do I have the correct interpretation that if a different drive with a previously unknown identifier was put into SLOT1 it would prompt me to rebuild based on the parity data? And then it would behave similarly if I was to add more 1TB drives o the array, correct? Always prompting for a rebuild when a previously unknown drive is inserted into a slot which is assigned to a different unique identifier? Then as a side question, without deviating too much from the topic: Is the parity file level or drive level? Thanks!

Oh wow, I just bought mine here in mid-October '19, very recent: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I5JHB0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Now it says 'unavailable', so they must have JUST discontinued it. I *believe* Newegg sold it in October, too, but I went with Amazon because it was cheaper. I guess they finally discontinued it starting in 2020 or late 2019.. Think you'll need to dig around for it and see who has stock left, it seems some people do, this is $150 shipped new via Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Antec-Nine-Hundred-Black-Steel-ATX-Mid-Tower-Computer-Case-with-Upgraded-USB-3-0-/153764530849?_trksid=p2385738.m4383.l4275.c10 Yeah, the pickings really suck now, it's crazy. The Antec 900 can give you 12, but apparently just discontinued, so pick one up while you can find one. I've never heard of it before, and know nothing about it, but there's an "Antec One" which has 8 bays, which could give you 10 3.5's with the 4->3 bays, or 12 drives if you go with one of the few 5->3 options. https://www.amazon.com/Antec-Mid-Tower-Computer-Pre-Installed-Mini-ITX/dp/B006TVQU6C Also, since you don't care about hot swappable bays, you can go with the Antec three hundred, which will give you 9 bays w/o any additional drive bays: https://www.amazon.com/Antec-Three-Hundred-Gaming-Computer/dp/B000GQMHBI This is the one I like the best if you don't want hot swappable, the P101, 8 bays native, easy to remove them: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07LBXP8KZ/ref=twister_B082HRQ9B2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 All these Antec options I feel like a fan boy, but they seem to have many of those style cases for it. One case I almost bought instead of the 900 was this Silverstone which is cheap and has 8 hot-swap bays built-in for low $$, the only reason I didn't go with this one is because I didn't want to be tied to a particular back plane if it didn't work out for some reason (ie. say a port died). Though that's just me being kind of paranoid I think, it looks like a very good case for NAS purposes: https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-SST-CS380B-USA-Computer-CS380B-USA/dp/B07KTCSWPP

The 1200 is my desktop system and I absolutely hate it. In terms of capacity it's good I guess, it's got the volume, but: A. It's heavy as fu*k B. Where my EVGA mobo puts the SATA ports works horrifically with this case if you want to wire tuck C. It's gigantic So I have some case (I forgot which, something mundane) that I'm going to transplant my desktop into, but for building my server I just bought the 900 because it's significantly smaller (the 1200 is hard to pull out from under my desk), significantly lighter (I gotta haul its ass outside to clean it), and I can't foresee myself wanting more than 12 3.5 HDD's in my NAS setup; my goal is like ~5, but extensibility if need-be, I only bought 1 (3x 5.25 -> 4x 3.5) cage to start with. So my 1200 is going to be idle once I build/move/transplant all of this. Personally I want to drop this 1200 off the tallest building I can find because it's given me so much grief hauling it around, but maybe somebody can make use of it.

Yeah it's a damn shame that the trend in cases has shifted. I wanted the 5.25's for the hot swap bays, like most people. If I don't stick strictly to a stack of 5.25's, there's some stuff. There seems mostly to be lots of options with the Mini ITX form factor such as the Norco Mini-ITX or the Node 304, both of which have high amounts of easy to access 3.5's, but I have an ATX mobo + I7 just taking up space, so seems like a super waste not to use it. There are in fact some ATX options available, the Antec 900 is still made with its 9x 5.25's, but with all that raised plastic it has on top (unlike the 902) the specs say the height is only 1" shorter than my 1200, which is crazy tall, to me. Another option I found was the SilverStone Case Storage Series SST-CS380 - which has 8 hot swap bays in front, which looks good, but I hear some woes about drive cooling & you can't use a good bay with a fan, need to use their deal. It seems to be in a league of its own, though, I don't see any other ATX cases with hot swap bays. I mean hell, even 6 5.25's can give 10 hot swap bays, which is more than enough of a place to start with, but even they seem few and far between. The case market really sucks right now for this specific niche. EDIT: Looks like Newegg has their specs mixed up on the 1200, the H and the D are switched, it's actually 20.X" deep and 23" tall, I just measured mine, but Newegg has them flip-flopped. At least that explains why the 900 was looking only 1" shorter than the 1200. Maybe that's what I'll go with. I dislike my 1200, but I think the 900 will work well for the NAS scenario with some hot swap bays in it.

I think this list needs to be updated for 2019. There's some real nice cases here in the original list but none of them are made anymore. I'm looking for a mid-tower chocked full of 9 5.25's and can't find any of them.