unRaid review and install walkthrough

[ixnu]

Hey guys, I just put together a review and install guide  at http://www.mediasmartserver.net/. This is mostly a site for WHS, but my article gives an alternative storage solution for users who are frustrated with Microsoft's new version. Tell me what you think if you get a second to look at it.

[Chris Pollard]

nice write-up

[neilt0]

A special note if you are using the Western Digital Green 2TB EARS drives from your WHS or other system. If you have the jumper installed, you need to remove it prior to installing it into your unRAID server.

 

That's not right, is it? Once an EARS is formatted, you should leave the jumper on, n'est ce pas?

[ixnu]

 

That's not right, is it? Once an EARS is formatted, you should leave the jumper on, n'est ce pas?

 

Please correct me.

 

Assuming you don't care about the data on the disk, shouldn't you be OK on 4.7 if:

 

remove the jumper and install disk

preclear with "-A"

format with "4k-aligned"

 

 

[ixnu]

Also, from http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9936.msg94815

 

Action items for the WD20EARS drive:

If you are installing a new WD20EARS drive, and you are running version 4.6.1/5.0-beta3, do not install the jumper.

If you already have the jumper installed, and the drive has already been formatted by unRAID version 4.6/5.0-beta2 or earlier, you do not have to do anything.  Your drive is already operating at full speed, and I recommend you just leave it this way. [glow=lime,2,300]If however, later you re-format the drive in version 4.6.1/5.0-beta3, you should first remove the jumper[/glow] (see next point).

If you have O.C.D. and must remove that jumper from an already-formatted hard drive, you must first backup any data you want to keep.  Then shutdown your server, remove the jumper from the drive, and power up your server.  You then may Format the drive using version 5.0-beta3 by clicking the Format button in the webGui page for the disk.  This will position the start of partition 1 on sector 64.  You MUST then run a parity-sync operation because parity will be silently invalid.  So, if you already have that jumper installed, and the drive has already been formatted, just leave sleeping dogs alone if you possibly can!

[lionelhutz]

In my opinion, it's not worth the hassle. EARS drives can act really stupid when the jumper gets changed. Just leave the jumper and use the preclear with -a option or the unaligned setting when you install it.

 

Peter

[ixnu]

lionel,

 

Thanks for the feedback, but yikes. Now I'm most confused!

 

Forgive me because I don't have much experience with these EARS drives, but are you basically disagreeing with this stated guidance?

 

 

[dgaschk]

Under version 4.7 a jumper is not needed if the drive is formatted starting on sector-64/4k-aligned. Versions previous to 4.6.1 do not support 4k-aligned partitions and a jumper should be used for optimal performance. Version 5.0beta3 and later default to 4k-aligned and previous 5.0 betas only supported 4k-UNaligned. There is no benefit to removing the jumper if an EARS drive was used in unRAID as 4k-UNaigned with a jumper and best practice is to leave the jumper on and retain 4k-UNaligned format.

 

No guidance has been discussed if the drive comes from a system other than unRAID with a jumper. In this case, unRAID will reformat the drive in unRAID style regardless of any previous formatting. 4k-UNaligned should be chosen if the jumper is on and 4k-aligned if no jumper is present. There is no performance difference.

 

There were reports of unRAID formatted EARS drive presenting problems when a jumper is removed and unRAID reformats the drive as 4k-aligned. This happened when 4.7 was first released and I've not seen such a report since. There is no just reason for these issues. It should not cause a problem when a jumper is removed.

 

The advise to remove the jumper is not wrong and makes the instructions simpler. Otherwise, two options must be described for EARS drives and I believe this would cause more problems due to confusion than it might solve.

 

AF clearing thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9936.0

 

Also note that non-AF drives can be formatted either way without penalty. Current best practice is to format all new drives as 4k-aligned and add no jumpers. Existing drives formatted as 4k-UNaligned continue to operate without penalty.

[ixnu]

dgaschk,

 

Thanks very much for your response.

[lionelhutz]

lionel,

 

Thanks for the feedback, but yikes. Now I'm most confused!

 

Forgive me because I don't have much experience with these EARS drives, but are you basically disagreeing with this stated guidance?

 

 

 

Yes, I am. Some people try switching the jumper on formatted EARS and the drive would then throw errors and act up.  A few people had their system crash trying to prepare the drive due to syslog filling/preclear issues and others had to use dd to write zero's to the drive multiple times before it would work again. A few even just RMA'd them after trying to get them working again. If the drive is working with the jumper then it's not worth exposing yourself to the potential hassle due to removing it.

 

You definately can't expect everything to work if you remove the jumper, set 4k-aligned and then just stick an EARS in the system and have unRAID do it's own clearing. Some of the people who did that were getting a syslog error for every block written to the disk, both during the clearing and after during data writes too.

 

Peter

 

[neilt0]

This is what I was referring to. I have a couple of WD20EARS drives with jumpers and recently moved them to a new unRAID 4.7 setup. I didn't consider removing the jumper because of these issues.

 

However, I didn't reply with any further comments as I haven't tried removing the jumper. Hopefully people who have tried removing the jumper with 4.7 can post their experiences.

[ixnu]

 

Yes, I am.

 

 

Well just damn. I feel stuck with my review and like I have stepped into a quagmire.

 

Thanks for your feedback Peter.

 

I truly love unRAID and feel like it has the potential to really conquer the media storage market, but little issues like this are what scare common users away.

 

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[aiden]

 

Yes, I am.

 

 

Well just damn. I feel stuck with my review and like I have stepped into a quagmire.

 

This particular problem is related to the drive in question, not to unRAID.  Samsung had problems with their F4 models until the recent firmware update.  The 2TB Hitachis have seemed to be most problem free, in both the 7200 and 5400 rpm flavors.  Too bad Western Digital is going to screw all that up.

 

I agree unRAID is not layman friendly, and it does require a fair amount of personal research before you can use it to its full potential.  unMENU attempts to mitigate some of that, and the new GUI designs that have been presented in the beta releases look promising.  However, imo the biggest current hurdle in capturing the "media storage market" will be getting past the 2.2TB barrier.

[ixnu]

Aiden,

 

I agree that the root issue is certainly WD's. It's just unfortunate that there is not a consensus on a popular drive.

 

Thanks for your feedback.

[prostuff1]

Aiden,

 

I agree that the root issue is certainly WD's. It's just unfortunate that there is not a consensus on a popular drive.

 

Thanks for your feedback.

 

The problem with finding a "popular" drive is that EVERYONE has there own opinion on the subject and EVERYONE has there own experience with different brands.

 

Some will not use Hitachi because of the "deathstar" incident, some will not use seagate becuase of firmware issues a little while back, some won't touch samsung becuase of the more recent silently data corruption firmware and how that was handled, some won't touch WD because of the jumper, no jumper, etc situation.

 

Frankly, it's all a users opinion.  The one thing that gets me with the WD drives is that setting the drive up with the jumper and then trying to remove it can, and often does, cause problems later on where the drive does not like to play nice.

 

I lean towards Hitachi drives right now, follows by WD and seagate, then samsung.  Hitachi's do not require any messing with, new WD's don't require much/any messing with, Seagates might still require a firmware update, and the samsungs do need a firmware update (for all intents and purposes).

[dgaschk]

The WD EARS problems after jumper removal have happened after the drive was formatted with unRAID as 4k-UNaligned and after jumper removal reformatted as 4k-aligned. Drives formatted by another system, e.g. XP, and then formatted by unRAID after jumper removal may not have any problems. This issue may be due to how unRAID formats drives and may not effect drives coming from other systems. The jumper only adds one to the sector reference and removal should not cause any formatting problems.

 

Perhaps it's not that confusing to describe 2 options for EARS drives; informing the reader to not change to jumper setting.

[ragnar]

thanks for this guide, i will pretty much be following it for when i install my setup.

 

my drives will be the Samsung 2TB F4EG EcoGreen HDD HD204UI - SATA II 3.0Gbs, 32MB Cache.

 

I have a few of these already and have had no problems with them, and at $88AU each there cheap!

 

hopefully these will be fine to use with unraid.

 

i also have a 2TB Hitachi desktar 7200RPM drive, firmware JKAOA20N .