Noob with two questions: SMB and PreClearing


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First - I am liking what I see with UNRAID.  Initially aiming to use this as an urbackup server.

 

Setup going well, even if some of the documentation is a little confusing \ out of date.

 

Two different questions:

 

1\ I want to make use of SMB user rights fully.  Different users will need different access to the directories on the server.  Do I have to buy a PRO licence for this?  Or will BASIC be okay for full SMB use.  I see a confusing contradiction in the documentation and my search abilities have failed me.

 

2\ Pre-clearing drives.  Wow!  is it really supposed to be this slow?  I have an old ProLiant N40L server, 8GB RAM, drives running at 3Mbps, and I have started with a 12TB (parity) and two 4TB drives in there.  I installed the handy Pre-clearing addon so I could get at this from the web GUI.  I set going on all three drives... ouch.  22 hours later and the 12TB is still 94% through pre-reading, and the 4TBs are 94% through zeroing.

 

At that rate it implies to me that it will take me three days to get the 12TB zeroed!  Please tell me that the next steps aren't as long!  Seeing "step 2 of 5" is a little scary.

 

BTW - these are brand new, never used, WD Reds.  More disks will be thrown in at a later time as this is just a start.

Edited by Batter Pudding
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22 minutes ago, Batter Pudding said:

1\ I want to make use of SMB user rights fully.  Different users will need different access to the directories on the server.  Do I have to buy a PRO licence for this?  Or will BASIC be okay for full SMB use.  I see a confusing contradiction in the documentation and my search abilities have failed me.

This is baked in Unraid, the only difference between the tiers is the number of drives allowed.

 

24 minutes ago, Batter Pudding said:

2\ Pre-clearing drives.  Wow!  is it really supposed to be this slow?  I have an old ProLiant N40L server, 8GB RAM, drives running at 3Mbps, and I have started with a 12TB (parity) and two 4TB drives in there.  I installed the handy Pre-clearing addon so I could get at this from the web GUI.  I set going on all three drives... ouch.  22 hours later and the 12TB is still 94% through pre-reading, and the 4TBs are 94% through zeroing.

Yes it is quite long, It is a way to thoroughly check a drive in read and write on all sectors.

But not mandatory if you trust your drives.

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Thanks for confirming that.  So I can just buy BASIC today as this box maxes out at six drives and be happily using the same full SMB support as in the PRO.

 

With the pre-clear, I assume now I have started I can't skip out of it without other consequences.  I'm patient.  :)  One of the help files seemed to imply that the zeroing part of the actions are run when formatting anyway.  I just hope I don't re-trigger that by a noob blunder.  Haha.

 

So, to check, some point later this week when the pre-clearing has finally completed, my steps are to Allocate the drives on the MAIN page - parity, disk1 and disk2.  And then is it that same page I'll find an obvious FORMAT button?  And let it format to XFS?

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3 minutes ago, Batter Pudding said:

Thanks for confirming that.  So I can just buy BASIC today as this box maxes out at six drives and be happily using the same full SMB support as in the PRO.

Absolutely.

 

3 minutes ago, Batter Pudding said:

With the pre-clear, I assume now I have started I can't skip out of it without other consequences.  I'm patient.  :)  One of the help files seemed to imply that the zeroing part of the actions are run when formatting anyway. 

When adding a new drive in the Array, Unraid will format clear the drive and format it (create an empty file system). If Unraid finds a Preclear signature, Unraid considers that the drive is already cleared.

 

5 minutes ago, Batter Pudding said:

So, to check, some point later this week when the pre-clearing has finally completed, my steps are to Allocate the drives on the MAIN page - parity, disk1 and disk2.  And then is it that same page I'll find an obvious FORMAT button?  And let it format to XFS?

Yep, you will have to tick a small box next to the format button and VERIFY that the drives proposed for format are the ones you want.

Then you will be quickly done.

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So I guess what I have learnt today is to skip pre-read and post-read on new disks...  the first of the 4TBs have just flipped over to the Post-Read stage 24 hours after turning the box on for the first time.  Meaning the 12TB may be ready by Wednesday? 

 

12TB has taken exactly 24hrs just to get through Pre-Read! :D I am hoping it will speed up a bit once the other two drives have completed their post-reading.

 

And thanks for the formatting confirmations.  Much appreciated.

 

Edit: Little update for any other noobs reading.  On a 3GB\s SATA2 system it took 3 days to complete the pre-clear.  All three disc happily running at the same time, with the 12TB finishing up after 70.5 hours.  Formatting was instant, and there was another 23hours wait after that for the parity to build.

 

So after four days we have a happy server.  Now onwards to sorting out urbackup...

Edited by Batter Pudding
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