Best way to expand beyond the case.


Naldinho

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I have a 5 hard drive + 1 SSD setup and that is plenty for my purposes. I have started to have an issue with the bottom slot on my enclosure where the drive was getting errors and unmounting and so I bought a new drive and I can't rebuild because again errors on the new drive. So I suspect the issue is with the enclosure. 

If I wanted to add 1 or 2 drives outside of the case what would be my best option?

A quick look at the back of the case I don't think I have an eSATA port although I might have a card with an eSATA pot somewhere in my pile of old parts. I believe it is a USB 2 only motherboard but again I likely have a USB 3 card somewhere I could use.

This is primarily a Plex server + NAS. 

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USB connections not recommended for array or pools.

 

eSATA is the same as SATA except for the plug on one end of the cable.

 

As for your actual problem

1 hour ago, Naldinho said:

an issue with the bottom slot on my enclosure where the drive was getting errors and unmounting and so I bought a new drive and I can't rebuild because again errors on the new drive.

attach diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread, preferably with the array started and without rebooting since attempting rebuild.

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23 minutes ago, trurl said:

Brand new disk3 looks OK, a few CRC errors which are connection problems. Having a problem creating the required partition on it though. Is this a shucked drive?

 

What do you get from the command line with this?

lsblk

 


NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0    7:0    0   9.1M  1 loop /lib/modules
loop1    7:1    0   7.1M  1 loop /lib/firmware
sda      8:0    1  14.9G  0 disk 
└─sda1   8:1    1  14.9G  0 part /boot
sdb      8:16   1   5.5T  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   1   5.5T  0 part 
sdc      8:32   1   5.5T  0 disk 
└─sdc1   8:33   1   5.5T  0 part 
sdd      8:48   1   2.7T  0 disk 
└─sdd1   8:49   1   2.7T  0 part 
sde      8:64   1   5.5T  0 disk 
sdf      8:80   1   5.5T  0 disk 
└─sdf1   8:81   1   5.5T  0 part 
sdg      8:96   1 111.8G  0 disk 
└─sdg1   8:97   1 111.8G  0 part 

 

I have not formatted the drive during the rebuild process -- I keep getting that as an offer because it says it can't be mounted.

I did try to format it using UD outside of the array but only after I was already having issues. The format said successful but was way too short an amount of time and then a yellow pop showed errors.

 

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11 minutes ago, Naldinho said:

I did try to format it using UD outside of the array but only after I was already having issues. The format said successful but was way too short an amount of time and then a yellow pop showed errors.

Format doesn't actually take a lot of time. All it does is write the filesystem metadata that represents an empty filesystem. (that is what format always does in any OS).

 

Formatting a disk in the array updates parity just like any write operation, so if you format a disk that needs rebuilding, all it can rebuild is a formatted disk.

 

Formatting a disk outside the array is OK, but pointless if you are going to use the disk for rebuild since the format would be completely overwritten with the rebuild.

 

May be the reason it can't partition that disk when it starts to rebuild it is because it disconnects.

7 hours ago, Naldinho said:

the bottom slot

Is this a backplane?

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The reason for the attempted format was because the message said something about a partition. My hope was that reformatting would have overwritten the partition.

 

I'm not clear on what a backplane is and google did not help much.

The system is an older server with a S3420GP mainboard -- the drives are in what I believe is called a cage -- basically a thing that holds four drives and makes them swappable. I don't have physical access to the machine at the moment but I guess I could try plugging the drive in directly to the motherboard. I don't think there is any place for it to physically go but just for testing purposes that would tell me if it is the drive or not.

This has been an ongoing issue where the previous drive in that slot would sometimes work then go offline and then with rebooting I could get it to come back online but it was always short lived and it would always go offline again.

 

Edited by Naldinho
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Thank you for all the assistance. I believe I have solved the issue but could use confirmation that this makes sense.

There were no empty SATA slots so I removed the cache SSD and connected the drive to Disk 3 using the cache wires -- I was able to start the rebuild. 

I cancelled the rebuild and returned disk 3 to the cage but did not return the cache drive to the system -- Again I am allowed to rebuild the array which is happening now.

This system had worked perfectly for many years with 4 drives + cache. The problems started around 6-8 months after adding a 5th drive although it might have been sooner and I did not realize it.

Based on this my conclusion is that the SATA controller on the mainboard despite having 6 SATA connections is only able to handle 5 drives. 

My solution seems to be to buy an external eSATA enclosure and add a eSATA card. The card would be a separate controller so not limited by the current issue.

Does this make sense?

 

------------------------------------------------------


I'd be looking for an enclosure with at least two drive bays -- possibly four if the price difference is negligible.

For the enclosure how does the connection work -- specifically do I need a eSATA card with the same number of eSATA ports as the number of drives I am looking to add or is the transfer rate higher than the hard drives transfer rate so a single connection to the enclosure is sufficient? I'd prefer one enclosure with multiple drives but I don't want to create a bottleneck so am willing to do it whichever way is best.

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5 minutes ago, trurl said:

Are you sure it isn't power supply?

I'm not and I had considered that but since there are no gfx cards or any cards I figured the controller was more likely but now I realize that was probably incorrect

The power supply is a Seasonic SS-400ET so a quick googling of what various components use the power supply at 400W might be too low

CPU is a Xeon X3440 = 135W when at max. 
Drives 5 mechanical + 1 SSD seems to be 30W each so 180W total
Mainboard S3420GP can't find specs but mainboards seem to be 100-150W

That seems to add up to very close to or even over 400.

If the issue is the power supply then I assume trying to go external won't work as even if I move a drive out of the case the card's power consumption will be added.

I'm actually thinking the best solution might be to just return to a 5 drive setup. 
 

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25 minutes ago, trurl said:

But I wouldn't think cache SSD would make so much difference so maybe it is a bad port on the controller.

Not a bad port -- Disk 3 is back connected to the port it would not work on and working fine. 

The problem is appears to be having 6 drives. With the SDD not connected the array is rebuilding with no errors. 

Once it is done rebuilding I'll add the SDD back in and I assume the errors will return.

I think this has to be either the SATA controller or the power supply

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4 minutes ago, trurl said:

I always upgrade disks to get more capacity since my ITX case won't hold any more.

That is an long-term option as drives fail but I'd need to find out if my server can handle bigger drives as I kind of remember that being an issue with a previous server. I love unRaid and my main build was carefully researched but the second one was just a server I got 2nd hand. It has been around five years so I've forgotten most of what I learned for the original build and right now I don't have the time to learn again. That is why I so apricate the assistance from the community. Of all the projects I'm involved with this forum is the most helpful when people have issues.

The build is currently 4x6TB+3TB+cache for 21 TB. If I remove the 3TB I go to 18TB but I suspect I'll have a working server and going from 21 to 18 isn't that big of a deal.  

If I could just plug something in for $200-$300 that would solve the problem and give me further options to expand in the future I'd do it but reading topics on external enclosures I immediately got bogged down on what is SAS and is it what I want rather than eSATA.   

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4 minutes ago, Naldinho said:

if my server can handle bigger drives

Some older controllers only supported 2.2TB and your larger-than-that disks are already working.

 

6 minutes ago, Naldinho said:

long-term option as drives fail

I just repurpose the smaller drives instead of waiting for them to fail.

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7 minutes ago, trurl said:

Some older controllers only supported 2.2TB and your larger-than-that disks are already working.


Thank you -- i wish I knew all this stuff.

I wish I hadn't just bought another 6TB to replace a 6TB that wasn't actually failing -- I should have bought a 10 or a 12 to start the process but I wasn't thinking. I think going larger is the eventual goal but the cost right now doesn't make sense given in Canada it is around $900 for two 10TB or 12TB which would take me from 18TB to 22-24TB. If it was for something important then sure but for a Plex server I can just trim my media collection instead and look at going to 12s sometime next year.

Thank you both for the help. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 12/15/2021 at 5:06 AM, Naldinho said:

My solution seems to be to buy an external eSATA enclosure and add a eSATA card.

 

Did you end up going with any particular enclosure?  Recommendations for eSATA enclosures seem to be slim, at least ones that aren't 5+ years old

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