Hello Group!

 

I have just completed my first build -- 5.0b6a. Currently running the free version with 2x brand new 2TB green drives (Hitachi 5K3000), 1 parity 1 data. I have not yet set up any shares or written any data. My current status is basically a new build with 2 drives added and all default settings, no add-ons.

 

The good news, after running the initial parity sync (check?) I have all green lights!

 

The bad news, I started reading a bit more on the forums about configuration recommendations and things and found out about preclear and unMenu. I did not use preclear on these disks before I got the server up and running.

 

 

Intended Use:

 

This server is primarily intended for serving up audio/video files for PLEX. It will have movie, tv, music data mostly, though I will also have pictures archived and time machine data as well. A long range goal will be to run PLEX on the server also, once more of the kinks are worked out.

 

 

Questions:

 

1) Should I run preclear now, even though I have all green lights? Is there any benefit to it at this point? Should preclear be performed on the parity drive, or just data drives? When adding drives in the future, will running preclear (one or more concurrent instances) impact server performance or prevent use of the server while running?

 

2) What is recommended for addons initially? It sounds like unMenu is a good start. What else is recommended based on my intended use?

 

3) Shares/Directory setups. I am confused about the difference between disk and user shares. I am also a little confused about how the share directory works with multiple folders of the same name.

In the case where the same object (directory or file) exists at the same hierarchy on multiple disks, the User Share will reference the object on the lowest numbered disk. For example, if Movies/Cars existed on both disk1 and disk2, then Cars under the Movies User Share would refer to the version on disk1.

In this example from the manual, what would happen if I had only 'Movies' on multiple drives (with movies files in the folder)? Would only the first drives contents be accessed? For the audio/video portion, is there a recommended tree structure? I will be using all single file style ripping methods.

 

 

TIA, erik

1) Should I run preclear now, even though I have all green lights? Is there any benefit to it at this point? Should preclear be performed on the parity drive, or just data drives? When adding drives in the future, will running preclear (one or more concurrent instances) impact server performance or prevent use of the server while running?

 

Are the drives brand new, or have they proven themselves trustworthy from extended use in other systems?  The only purpose of preclear in your scenario would be to test out the disks to see if they are prone to an early failure.  If you aren't worried about that and trust the disks, then no need to run preclear.  If the disks are brand new, then I HIGHLY recommend that you take the time to preclear them before trusting them with any data.  1 pass minimum, 2 is better, 3 passes max.  The parity disk is equally important as the data disks, so preclear all of them if you don't trust them.

 

If you do decide to run the preclears, you will need to stop the unRAID array, unassign all the disks from unRAID, and then start the unRAID array (to make it 'forget' about them).  Preclear won't allow you to run it on any disk that is assigned to the unRAID array, a nice little safety feature built in by Joe L.  Once the drives are all precleared, you can re-assign them to the array and run the 'initial configuration' script (on the utilities page).  Then start the array, and parity will rebuild.  Once it finishes, run a parity check.  There should be no errors.

 

2) What is recommended for addons initially? It sounds like unMenu is a good start. What else is recommended based on my intended use?

 

I agree, start with unMenu.  Browse through unMenu's package installer page and you'll probably find other little scripts and add-ons that interest you.  Outside of unMenu and a few unMenu packages, I also use cache_dirs (directory caching, helps prevent unnecessary drive spin ups, but works best with lots of RAM).  If you are interested in connecting external devices directly to the unRAID server, then also look into SNAP.

 

 

3) Shares/Directory setups. I am confused about the difference between disk and user shares. I am also a little confused about how the share directory works with multiple folders of the same name.

In the case where the same object (directory or file) exists at the same hierarchy on multiple disks, the User Share will reference the object on the lowest numbered disk. For example, if Movies/Cars existed on both disk1 and disk2, then Cars under the Movies User Share would refer to the version on disk1.

In this example from the manual, what would happen if I had only 'Movies' on multiple drives (with movies files in the folder)? Would only the first drives contents be accessed? For the audio/video portion, is there a recommended tree structure? I will be using all single file style ripping methods.

 

The bit you quoted explains unRAID's behavior in a special case in which you have duplicate folders.  Since you will be ripping all your movies to a single file, you should never run into this issue.  There's no recommended directory structure, unRAID is good about figuring it out and doing what you want.  User shares allow you to concatenate multiple folders on different disks into one big folder.  So if you have the folder 'Movies' on the root directory of more than one of your data disks, unRAID will automatically create a user share named 'Movies' that contains the contents of each and every one of those folders.  Alternatively, you can manually create a user share on the unRAID 'shares' page, and then unRAID will create the folders for you as needed.

 

Some people like to write to their disk shares and only read from their user shares.  The benefit of this is that you have full control over which files go to which disk, and you don't have to worry about some of the more complex user share settings, such as split level.  The disadvantage of this is that it is slightly more work for you to have to think about which movies go on which disks.

 

Personally, I like to write to my user shares and let unRAID take care of everything.  This also means that I have to think about all my user share's settings, such as the disk allocation method and split level, when initially creating the share.  However, once that is done, I never have to touch them again.  I like this method because I ultimately don't care how my movies are organized by unRAID, just as long as they appear on my HTPC in the correct way.

 

There's a lot of minutia to cover when it comes to configuring user shares, they are a very flexible system and allow you to really fine tune things, but of course more control also means more complexity.  If you have any specific questions, ask away.

The following add-on are available via unMenu and are good for any build:

• apcupsd - A daemon for controlling APC UPS devices
  
• mail and ssmtp - Configure unRAID to be able to send e-mail notifications via the "mail" command.
  
• unRAID Status Alert sent hourly by e-mail (Can send only if a problem)
  
• Monthly Parity Check
  
• unRAID Power-Down on disk overtemp
  
• Clean Powerdown
  

If this is a test system with nothing on it, try different things and see how they work. You can also delete everything, and if things don't work the way you think they should, ask and hopefully we can help figure out why.

 

Shawn

 

Thanks for the input guys. I think I will take the consensus advice and preclear the brand new disks with at least two passes before moving forward.

 

I now have the latest unMenu installed and running and pretty much ready to begin the preclear process. I have two 2TB drives, so it looks like it could take a couple of days per drive. A couple of questions on using preclear:

 

1) Can I run preclear on multiple drives simultaneously? At this point I would not be affecting server performance as there will be no drives assigned to the array. What, if any, impact will running multiple preclear scripts have on my live server in the future (assuming I can run multiples at one time  )?

 

2) I am running my server headless. If I am telnet to the server, how can I complete this process without keeping the terminal open? Is there something built in to unMenu to allow me to do this? Can I use nohup and redirect output to a log file to accomplish this without worrying about closing the terminal?

 

3) If preclear results indicate a potentially bad drive, how would one go about convincing the vendor (newegg) or manufacturer to RMA the drive?

 

 

 

TIA for any assistance you can render.

 

erik

 

basic server stats: SM C2SEA, Intel E5700 3.0G, 4GM RAM

I think this has most of the answers you are asking. http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial

 

 

1. Simple answer Yes. since i dont know your build specs, that's hard to answer how many at once. If you have 2 gigs of ram, 4 should be OK at once. I think raj said 6 at once started resulting in errors with budget hardware?

 

also if you have 2 drives on a PCI controller, you will start to see a performance hit on any other drives on that PCI bus.

 

I am doing 2 at a time personally. while drives 3 and 4 are preclearing. I am filling drives 1 and 2 with Data.

 

I have done 5 at once myself before i put mine online, but i have a beast of a system.

 

 

2. Yes, look at "Screen" in the tutorial.

 

3. It depends on where you got it. and how old it is. if it is under 30days from Newegg, they wont ask questions. tell them it whatever it is that goes wrong. "if has a smart failure" or "it  is suffering from click death" or "it just flippin' died... " or what ever happens. they are really good about it.

 

4. these are not the droids you are looking for.

 

... one thing i have learned with data management, take your time. if you are not paying attention, tierd or make a wrong mouse click or get impatient, you could erase or crash something...

 

.. it is best to stop and get an answer if you're not sure of the next step..

Screen can be installed via unMenu.

Thanks everyone for the assistance. Thank you Johnm for sharing your info. The link was excellent.

OK, so I am 8.5 hours into running preclear on my two 2TB drives. Pre-read was getting read speeds in the 70-80 MBps range, writing the zeroes is going at about 120-125 MBps. Crossing my fingers that everything goes well with these drives and I can move on with more testing, configuring and finally data population!

 

On the web management page, my parity disk shows missing, and data1 as not installed. I am also showing invalid configuration, I'm fell sure this is because I removed the two drives.

 

Question: How can I make unRAID think that this is a new install and never had any drives assigned to the array? Should I even worry about this?

 

I have the impression that since I added drives to the array, then unassigned and precleared them after the fact, I may have some screwy behavior when I add the precelared disks back to the array and may have introduced some complication into getting the server back running correctly again after preclear. I am also trying to make sure that I reap the benefits of preclear like time savings on drive formatting and initial parity sync. If I am assuming in error and have nothing to worry about, please tell me so.

 

After rereading the above paragraph, I guess what I am really looking for is: What are the next steps after preclear (assuming good results) to get me back on track to add drives to the array and start creating and testing out my shares with test data? This relates to steps 7 and forward of the config tutorial that Johnm hipped me to.

 

TIA (again) for any insight.

 

PS - Johnm, that link to initial config tutorial was precisely what I needed, thanks again.

 

 

USe the "New Config" utility under the Utils tab.