Unusual setup / 6tb pool

[eMP3Danie]

Hi guys,

 

Hi have been using and experimenting with unraid for the last few months and I have a couple of questions I am hoping to get answers too... I don't think I have unique setup but one that's most likely different from many.

 

 

I have a Dell R710 and its simply being used for media only... the process for acquiring and storing all happens on this server. Where this differs is I have a couple PCIe SATA cards that in it and some extra long SATA cable and my array is technically powered by another server. (This is kind of irrelevant to be honest)

 

This is the only way I can get drives powered without spending a fortune on a dedicated storage server.

 

Where things get a little extra is where I pool a 1tb HDD to act as a torrent storage area... I found this was the best way to keep things moving without constantly keeping the array in use.

 

I don't run any parity at all as its starting to bite me in the ass because I ran into some corruption on one of my drives last night and I didn't realise how much I have come to depend on it.

 

My array looks like this.

1x6tb

3x2tb

1x500GB - Cache  

1x1tb - Downloads

 

What I would like to know... essentially is if I buy in another 4x4tb drives and put the other two into the array and use the 6tb as the download drive would that parity become invalid with having a 6tb pool or can I exclude it... the data on this drive is simply junk once moved away and is too large to fit on the parity. Long story short... would this cause me any issues with parity?

 

 

[itimpi]

I am confused - you start of by saying you are not using parity and then ask about parity becoming invalid  

[eMP3Danie]

Sorry, I'll attempt to clear this up. I have been up working on getting my data back over night so you can probably understand the lack of sleep in these situations.

 

I do not have a parity setup and its only the last 24 hours I have realised that I do in fact require one as me and the family have come to using plex more than any other media service.

 

If I were to move a few things around I could us the 6tb HDD in a pool on its own but I fear I cannot set up a valid parity with 2x2tb because that pool may or may not want to be included.

 

Can I some how exclude it as its not part of the array?

[itimpi]

Still not clear to me if you want to keep the 6TB drive in the array or if you are thinking of moving it to an (unprotected) pool outside the array? 

 

If you wand to keep it in the array then it would need to become the parity drive as no data drive can be larger than the parity drive.  In that case you would have to first get its data copied to the array (presumably using the new 4TB drives you mentioned) before building parity on it.

 

If it will not be in the array then one of the new 4TB drives could become the parity drive for the array.

[eMP3Danie]

Yeah It will move to a pool as you said unprotected... I would be OK with this and then build an array with 2x4tb Parity and the array will be 2x4tb +2x2tb.

 

I think you have answered my question anyhow... I am going to change my thinking and buy 3x6tb as I already have a 6tb in the array. New Config time I think.

 

Thank you for your help!

[trurl]

1 hour ago, eMP3Danie said:

2x4tb Parity and the array will be 2x4tb +2x2tb.

I wouldn't bother with dual parity until you have several more data drives

[eMP3Danie]

So I would be good with only one drive as parity? I think I understand the concept of what a parity drive is but wouldn't that allow for more than one disk to go down at a time?

 

Edit**

 

My bad drive turned out to be a temperamental sata cable. Who knew.

Edited September 8, 2021 by eMP3Danie

[itimpi]

37 minutes ago, eMP3Danie said:

So I would be good with only one drive as parity? I think I understand the concept of what a parity drive is but wouldn't that allow for more than one disk to go down at a time?

 

Edit**

 

My bad drive turned out to be a temperamental sata cable. Who knew.

Agreed that dual parity allows for 2 simultaneous disk failures but with so few drives in the array that is extremely unlikely to happen.

 

probably more important is just to make sure that anything REALLY critical is kept backup so that in the very unlikely case of 2 simultaneous failures it is not catastrophic (just very inconvenient  ).

[eMP3Danie]

I feel a little bit offended 🤣 its not my fault its so tiny!

The data is all just media, anything that would be is else where on other devices but what shocked me into posting was that I had errors but the drive is less than 4 months old and nothing has happened that would physically jeopardise the disks integrity but I also added about another 80gig ram.

 

After I removed the disk that was erroring is reorganised and ended up plugging in the same sata cable into another drive and that started to error too... so it looks like my drives are OK but I will need to order some more 2 metre sata cables.

 

Do you really think a 1 disk parity will suffice... all I have is media really.

[trurl]

One parity is plenty for so few data disks, as long as you are careful to have good connections, and diligent to monitor disk health. Unraid will take care of the diligent part for you if you setup Notifications to alert you by email or other agent as soon as a problem is detected.

 

Parity only helps with disk problems, whether disk failure or some other cause. There are other, more common, ways to lose data, including user error, and parity won't help with that even if you have 2.

[eMP3Danie]

Trust me when I say... Unraid was confusing when I loaded it up... I had 3 builds before I fully committed to buying the pro license.

 

Thank you all for putting my mind at rest, Ill have a 6 disk array 1 parity and 6 disks for cache overall.