relliott64

Thanks, you've been a big help! I'm still copying data off my current array onto portable storage. It takes a long time to copy 24tb at 75MB/S! When the array is empty, I'll back up my v5 USB, and upgrade to V6, and start installing and configuring the new drives. Curious though..Did you make that chart above listing the sata ports and drives in excel or something? I need to create one of those once I get up and running again.

Sorry, I'm dense sometimes. In the picture, it was red, and the only gray ones I saw were the ASM1061's. I now understand that it was only highlighted in red for clarity. The manual clearly calls out the one marked red in the picture as the "SATA3 Connector (SATA3_0, Gray)" so that's where the cache drive will go. With the new 12TB drives, I may not end up with as many total drives in the array. Would it make sense to just use the one main board sata III connection for the cache drive, and hook all the other drives to the LSI sata card, or use the black MB sata ports also?

Since there are 2ea light gray intel SATA III ports and I will be connecting my cache drive to one of them, would it be a good idea to hook the parity drive to the other intel Sata III port, or does it not matter? BTW, my upgrade path has taken a turn. I just picked up 5/12TB WD external drives. I think what I am doing to do is copy all of my current server data to 2 of these new drives, then start from scratch with a new V6 array of 2ea data and 1ea parity 12TB drives, and then start copying my data back onto the server. As I empty the drives I'm copying from, I will add those drives to the array. Is this a crazy way to do it? I realize that the data will not be protected while moving files around, but the really important stuff is already backed up at a different location.

Your way of setting everything up jonathanm seems like a great plan that even I can follow, so I really appreciate the help. Rick

Ok, I think I got it going through mapping my network in Windows 7. Can see all the disks and whats on them. So, it appears that I can copy everything off of disk10 this way. It won't matter that my shares are spread all over all of the drives? Does Version 6 treat shares the same way, where you must select the option such as highwater 3, etc? I'm only backing up files.

I don't have enough free space on the server, but I have a couple external usb drives that I could move the data to if I new how to do that. Here is where I REALLY show what I don't know about unraid. The 3TB drive is disk 10 in the array. When I click on the little folder icon next to the DISK10, it opens up the page showing me what is on the drive. It must be they way I set it up, but all shares show under each drive folder icon, but of course the files inside are different in all of them. The shares are spread amongst all of the drives. Once I am looking at the content of the individual drive folder, how do I actually move the data? Drag and drop doesn't work. I'm accessing it though my windows 7 PC web browser.

I have a total of 24.5TB with 80.6GB free. Like mentioned prior, they are mostly 2tb drives with 1ea. 3tb drive, and a 3tb parity drive. I'm wanting to add 5ea. 10TB WD data drives and 1ea 10TB parity drive, eventually adding a SSD cache drive. I currently have 14 drives in my case, and that is all it will fit. So, I will be replacing 6ea 2TB drives with 10TB versions. I currently have 11 shares set up, in highwater 3 mode. (Note that I was always confused about how these should be set up for file storage only) It sounds like its going to be quite the process!

Awesome, Thanks for all the help.

Thanks for the reminder to back up the USB drive before doing anything. I have just purchased the LSI SAS 9207-8i and the Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX to cool it. Looks like the fan will just screw into the heatsink fins of the card, unless you use that fancy bracket that Zonediver posted a picture of but I can't find that for sale anywhere. So, next week, I'll replace the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with the LSI SAS 9207-8i w/fan, and make sure everything still works. Then, I'll back up my USB drive, and upgrade to V6. I plan to start replacing my smaller 2/3g drives with 10g WD models after that. (Hoping for black Friday sales on these) I'll worry about the ram/cpu upgrades once I get everything set up. Sorry, but I do have one more question. Zonediver mentioned to "Connect the cache-SSD at the light gray SATA-III-port (Intel) on the mainboard" Since that port is currently connected to a data drive, and I currently don't have cache drive is it a simple procedure to install the SSD cache drive on that port and switch the data drive connection to a different port and unraid is smart enough to make the proper changes? I'm also going to be loosing a drive when this is all said and done, because I have 14 drives now (13 data, 1 parity) with no cache drive and that use up my 14 sata ports. I will be adding a cache drive so one of the data drives will be going away. I'll have to factor that into my plan.

According to supermicro's website, their card has "Internal Connectors2 SFF 8087 connectors" so it looks like they are the same so I'm set on cables. Do you think it is safe for me to do the upgrade to ver 6 prior to replacing the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with the LSI card? Also, do you see any advantage one way or the other as to which drives you have connected to the MB sata ports vs the LSI?

Appreciate all the comments so far. Zonediver, your setup looks like what I should shoot for. The I7 processors can be had for a reasonable price, and extra ram also. Does the LSI SAS 9207-8i use the same breakout cables as the supermicro card? Also, is is just a plug and play process to remove the supermicro, and install the LSI SAS 9207-8i? Does it matter which cable goes to which drive or will unraid sort that out on it's own?

My current MB will support an i5 or i7 processor, so I could go that route with a bit more ram and be set for a while I would think.

Only 4GB of ram currently installed, although the ASRock B75 pro3m board will support up to 32. I have gotten the occasional parity errors like others (not corrected), and have ran parity again and not gotten any errors so this may be the fault of my supermicro sata card. With only looking at 7 drives going fwd ( 5 data, 1 parity, 1 cache) I may just eliminate the addon cards and go with the onboard sata ports. Not sure what that process would be like.

1st, I have been a long time, although basic unraid user since I purchased my license in 2010. I use unraid exclusively for backup of files. My current set up is the following: Unraid version 5.0 RC16c ASRock B75 pro3m with celeron g1610 @ 2.6ghz 2ea. SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 sata cards A combination of 2gig and 3gid drives (13 drives total) I am looking at replacing all my drives with WD 10gig Elements. (5 data drives, 1 parity) Can I just replace the the drives (parity 1st) one by one, until they they are all swapped out, and then upgrade to unraid 6? Is there an issue with the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 cards and ver 6? Should I upgrade to version 6 1st, and then start swapping drives? Or, should I replace the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 with something more compatible, and then start the whole process? My last option, I'm thinking of, is to purchase a new motherboard (with 6 or 8 SATA ports), and forgo the SATA card altogether, but this is a more expensive way to go, because of new board, ram, cpu. I have a lot of data on my current setup, so I want to be very careful when when I make my changes. EDIT: just realized that my current motherboard has 8 SATA ports on board (5 SATA 2.0 and 3 SATA 3.0) so maybe eliminating the 2ea Supermicro SATA cards is the answer because the 8 onboard sata ports should be plenty with the 10g drives. Now, I'm really confused! Just looking for suggestions before I start the process. Thanks, Rick