Hi. Started my first array ever. I've added a 8TB parity drive, another 8TB and 6TB drives for the array and a 512GB SSD for cache.

 

Currently my first time parity sync on empty drives (or well, they for some reason each have ~50gb worth of data on them for no known reason to me? Why do they have some data if unraid formatted them after they were added to the array?) is running for the past 2 hours and unraid estimates it'll keep running for next 10 hours. Why is it this long and is it always this long? Write speeds are ~170 megs per sec.

 

Is this normal? Does this mean my next parity sync once I add all my existing data (~9TBs worth of data) will take like 7 days?

Edited September 2, 20223 yr by Victor90

1 hour ago, Victor90 said:

for some reason each have ~50gb worth of data on them for no known reason to me?

I'm assuming its been formatted with XFS, this is an overhead for the filesystem.

 

1 hour ago, Victor90 said:

Currently my first time parity sync on empty drives is running for the past 2 hours and unraid estimates it'll keep running for next 10 hours. Why is it this long and is it always this long? Write speeds are ~170 megs per sec.

That's a fairly normal speed for parity, it will go up and down at various stages of the check.

For comparison my array made up of 10TB drives takes about 20hrs to check parity.

 

1 hour ago, Victor90 said:

Does this mean my next parity sync once I add all my existing data (~9TBs worth of data) will take like 7 days?

The time for parity checking is primarily impacted by the capacity of the largest disk in the array, whether the drives are full or empty makes no difference as the system is checking it all to verify parity is correct.

@SpaceInvaderOne has a great video explaining how parity works in Unraid if you'd like to learn more.

 

11 hours ago, Victor90 said:

Is this normal? Does this mean my next parity sync once I add all my existing data (~9TBs worth of data) will take like 7 days?

 

Honestly your numbers seem pretty much on par with what is considered Normal. I've come to the conclusion that things moving on unraid simply take as long as they need to take when your numbers seem normal. 

 

No because your parity will be syncing at the same time your adding data. However when you run your Next Parity check Id guess since my system takes 9hours on my 4TB Parity that yours would probably take close to 15-20hours with your 8TB drive.  I personally have my Parity check set to run on the first of the month at 12AM. So when I'm sleeping it does its thing. 

 

 

I just did my first install. 14tb parity and 60tb formatted array.  26 hours. FYI ymmv

 

CD

I have 4 x 8tb disks; 1 disk is being used for parity. It is going to take 9 days. 😞

2 minutes ago, stevenxl said:

I have 4 x 8tb disks; 1 disk is being used for parity. It is going to take 9 days. 😞

Why do you think that?     The time is determined basically by the size of the largest parity drive, and one normally assumes something like 2-3 hours per TB so it should take around 1 day.

That's what the system is telling me:

 

https://ibb.co/5FNrSSv

 

Maybe it's because I have drives that spin at 5,400 RPM? 

4 minutes ago, stevenxl said:

That's what the system is telling me:

 

https://ibb.co/5FNrSSv

 

Maybe it's because I have drives that spin at 5,400 RPM? 

Unlikely - that seems to make very little difference.   There is almost certainly some other factor at play so you should post your system's diagnostics zip file in your next post in this thread to get more informed feedback.  It is always a good idea to post this if your question might involve us seeing how you have things set up or to look at recent logs.

I'm adding the latest diagnostics file here. 

 

I will say that part of the reason I am trying to turn my laptop into an unraid server is because when I was using it as a daily driver, it kept "freezing" intermittently, even when not much was going on. I think there might be a hardware issue...? 

unraid-diagnostics-20240530-1542.zip

11 hours ago, stevenxl said:

I am trying to turn my laptop into an unraid server

You are using USB for array devices, that is not recommended for multiple reasons, including performance.

Hi @jorgeB. Thank you for taking the time to respond. My drives are on a DAS - this is the model: https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/tr-004. 

 

Is that the limiting factor here? What alternatives would you recommend? What should I have been looking for? Sorry - real newbie here. 

A proper server with SATA-connected drives and not an already unstable laptop, you typically want a server to be as stable as possible...

@kilrah point taken on the laptop, but let's skip that for now. I'm looking for advice on the "thing" that holds my hard drives. The product I linked above does use SATA-connected drives, but that DAS is connected to my server via USB 3.2 Gen 1. Wikipedia says:

 

USB 3.2 Gen 1×2 – new, 10 Gbit/s signaling rate over 2 lanes using 8b/10b encoding (nominal data rate: 1000 MB/s).

 

Is the DAS enclosure the issue? Because it is SATA and the nominal data rate is 1000 MB/s, doesn't seem that it should be that slow. 

The USB link will be shared by all the disks, still should be much faster than what you are seeing, possible it's working as USB 2.0, or you are using SMR disks.

So I was connecting the DAS to a USB-C hub and then connecting the USB-C hub to the USB-C port on my computer.  I did this because I thought USB-C was faster than USB-A. What I failed to understand is that the USB-A and USB-C are references to the port type. I need to look at USB 3, etc. which is what determines the data speeds. 

 

All of that to say that I fixed this by plugging in the DAS directly to the USB 3.2 Gen 2 port on my computer. Now I am getting much faster speeds. I stopped the parity-sync, to do some other work, but it was reaching 40+ MB/s and the time was going down to at most 1 day. 

 

Thank you @JorgeB. 

Glad to hear, but keep in mind that USB is prone to disconnect and bad at error handling in general, also in your case SMART won't work for the disks, but some users do use it with some success.

Hi there

450 -650 days for a parity sync?  6TB drive.  Surely that has to be finger trouble...

 

3600 days now....  looking bleak.

 

19087 days!  That's like 52 years!  Will we even be using HDDs in 52 years?

 

fatman-diagnostics-20241027-1118.zip

Edited October 27, 20241 yr by Exsol
added image

I see this error alot:

Oct 27 11:19:38 FatMan kernel: ata4.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED

 

Think that is this drive:

[4:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      WDC WD30EFRX-68E 0A80  /dev/sdf   /dev/sg5 

 

Check it's data and power cables.  If using power splitters, try and replace with direct power cable.

 

Thanks Veah.  Are you suggesting that this could be causing my slow sync?

Yes.  That drive is not staying connected (edit: it has a problem rather which could be a failing drive.  Run smart on it) for some reason.  That needs solved.  Parity reviews all the drives together so if there is a lame duck, it will hold up the whole process 

Edited October 27, 20241 yr by Veah

Thanks Veah.  I will get onto it.