1. What's the fastest way to transfer a large amount of data to an unRAID server the first time?

 

I might be wrong, but I think having the Parity drive turned on, slows down the transfer speed.

 

2. If so, how much does it slow it down?

 

3. Should I turn off the parity drive at least in the beginning to speed up the transfer speed and then later turn it back on and do the initial Parity-Sync at that point?

 

Note, I don't have a cache drive installed at the moment.  I'll probably install one later if it make sense though.

 

I have a Macbook that accesses the unRAID system through wifi, but I'm assuming through Ethernet, the transfer would be faster.

 

I'm kind of new to owning a Media Server, but does unRAID actually alter the parity drive as well as the destination drive at the same time while transferring?  I'm assuming that's how it keeps everything safe incase a drive was to die during a large transfer of file.  I also assume that's why transfer speeds slow down.

 

(sorry if this is a little rambly, it's kinda late in my neck of the woods...)

It is significantly faster to transfer data to an array without a parity drive. And that can be a good strategy so long as you keep your original copies of your data. But in general we tend to recommend parity protection from the beginning so you are burning in the entire array and confident the data is stored and protected.

 

A cache drive for an initial data load is not needed or recommended. The cache drive defers the write to the array until the middle of the night. If you have lots of data to copy it will not help. In fact it will slow things down because the write to the cache + the move from cache to the array is more time consuming than just writing directly to the array. The use of the cache after the array is loaded works well as you get faster speed copying and the slowere move to the array completes overnight. The negative of the cache is that your data is not immediately protected.

 

And yes, parity is maintained in real time. This is why writes are slower than unprotected writes.

 

Make sure to check out the stickies at the top of the general support forum.  You'll find stickies geared specifically towards users like yourself that are just getting started with unRaid.

 

Good luck!