I make a sleeper build from spare parts. Unleashing the extreme capacity monster.


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Hello friends,

 

Which cool apps can I fit on the hardware?

 

Planner spreadsheet:

 

 

 

Please help me, I also may need to

 

1. flash firmware and (edit - did it through Strelec PE and Ubuntu LTS Daily)

2. check SATA stability and check if the disks can be used without new SMART errors appearing (did it by clicking Acknowledge current SMART errors in Unraid GUI)

3. check if I can do HDDRegenerator or how to handle stale disks

(Seagate support are slow bit I have UBCD and SeaChest to experiment with. Forgot where was the option to drop the current bad secotrs so I can recheck them after resurface operations, maybe MHDD. Forum dudes said modern HDDs do that automatically however I want to double check that since the HDD firmware may be doing remap rather than resurface of the sectors so too many remapped sectors would mean slower performance)

 

4. Mount disks directly or export iSCSI - what if it has Bitlocker ?

(I am Decrypting the disks on a Win machine before since there may not be dislocker on the Unraid or it may not be fully compatible and so on)

 

Thank you, are the best. After myself.

 

I start with the following fire hazard before adding 20 more:

Spoiler

 

Dev 3 HGST_HDS5C4040ALE630  - 4 TB (sdd) FW MPAOA580

 

Dev 7 ST4000DX001-1CE168 - 4 TB (sdc) FW CC44 (no upd, no4kn)

Dev 1 ST4000DX001-1CE168 - 4 TB (sdh) FW CC44 (no upd, no4kn)

Dev 5 Hitachi_HDS723020BLA642 - 2 TB (sdb) FW MN6OA5C0

Dev 6 Hitachi_HDS723020BLA642 - 2 TB (sdf) FW MN6OA5C0

Dev 8 SAMSUNG_HD204UI - 2 TB (sdi) FW 1AQ10001 (no upd)

Dev 4 SAMSUNG_HD154UI - 1.5 TB (sde) FW 1AG01118 (no upd)

Dev 2 ST31000528AS - 1 TB (sdg) FW AP63

(edit: couldn't update this firmware because Seagate are duckheads)

 

 

root@Tower:~# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02) (flashed it easily with the smaller firmware not the 128kb one however nothing changed still didnt work with Seagate SSHds but works with the HGSTs)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0)
03:00.0 RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC40519 (FastTrak TX4200) (rev 02) (fw upd supposedly flashed under FreeDOS? however there is no BIOS and the vendor tools do not work. Works as jbod without additional config)
03:01.0 RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC40519 (FastTrak TX4200) (rev 02)

 

 

 

Edited by GRRRRRRR
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  • GRRRRRRR changed the title to First Unraid build - need help with Firmware update and SMART errors

No diags needed the Logs are fine and the hardware is Free I am not replacing things to make it more theoretically stable/better. Let it burst into flames I am not giving Seagate or anyone any money GRRRR.

 

FastTracks updated with a FreeDOS made with Rufus and the firmware files from Promise website. CLI tool extracted from rpm and will try to run that under UNRAID to see what happens.

 

Seagate fw update found drive but didn't find compatible firmware.

 

ASM firmware update I will try latest from station-drivers under Gandalf or Strelec WinPe. Will also try HDDRegenerator (edit MHDD or other old stuff from UBCD to drop bad sectors and then SeaTools and Seachest Vendor format, under Ubuntu LTS) from those.

 

Please let me know some hints about all this.

 

Thank you.

Edited by GRRRRRRR
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Correct guess, it seems to be weirdly static to old Linux versions. I can try those some time later if I feel like it. But I should try to revive the firmware/ oprom on the PCI cards. Still would be cool to make that tool run by adding some libraires and debugging it properly.

Edited by GRRRRRRR
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i was hoping to be able to do HDD Regenerator / Revitalize / slow sector repair / low level format / bad sector circumvention, under the UNraid itself, and not have to run DOS programs and stuff :)

 

Does anyone have some CLI spells for it ?

 

Edited by GRRRRRRR
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12 minutes ago, GRRRRRRR said:

HDD Regenerator / Revitalize / slow sector repair / low level format / bad sector circumvention

Why do you want to do this?

 

Unraid has to format any disk it will use in the array or pool. If there is something wrong with a disk or its quality is in doubt, don't use it.

 

While each data disk in the Unraid parity array is an independent filesystem that can be read all by itself on any linux, you still don't want questionable disks in the array because all disks are required to rebuild a disk from parity.

 

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I want to reuse my disks first and foremost for kinky reasons I find it satisfying to reuse HDDs and store data around the failing areas with slow sectors. It feels like cheating death. Also some of the disks are gifts and represent cool memories and experiences. The entire machine is like this almost all parts are heroic parts. It's a big mod project, one big part of the project is to denoise the disks and the case which is a next step after I load it with noisy disks.

 

New disks I can use in the next build already have the parts for that as well.

 

I would like to not have single parity in this case, I would either use without protection for entertainment purposes or with 3x protection. Or selectable protection per folder if we have this feature yet?

 

My storage kink also leads me to vsan and storage spaces refs from the latest dev win11 build. However for this machine I need Unraid.

 

The /usr/sbin/fastconsole app for the promise ft4200 seem to requre a /lib/ld-linux.so.2 file upon checking with 'file fastconsole' command. I can try to supply this .so file from somewhere such as an slackware iso ?

 

Thank you.

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1 minute ago, GRRRRRRR said:

without protection for entertainment purposes or with 3x protection. Or selectable protection per folder if we have this feature yet?

Recommend no parity for this "project" since with parity it will likely require frequent rebuilding due to out-of-sync. Without parity, there is nothing in sync anyway.

 

Single or dual parity is all that is supported in the parity array, and probably won't be adding more parity disks since it wouldn't add any significant benefit.

 

Protection by folder is definitely NOT happening ever. Parity doesn't know anything about files and folders.

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Unraid is a NAS OS which can host dockers and VMs.

 

It is not intended to be a general purpose, multi-user linux environment. Only root user has access to the webUI and command line. Other users you create in the webUI are strictly for network file access. These users don't access the OS. Many things you might expect to find in a general purpose Linux environment are not included.

 

The Unraid OS is unpacked fresh from archives on flash into RAM at each boot, and runs completely in RAM. Think of it as firmware. Any modifications to any OS folders will not survive reboot and would have to be reapplied at boot.

 

Plugins provide additional functionality, mostly by adding to the webUI.

 

Dockers are typically single application tiny VMs.

 

If you want a general purpose linux environment, create a VM. Then you can passthru these disks to play with them.

 

They won't be available to the Unraid OS when a VM owns them. And you shouldn't allow any other OS direct access to disks assigned to Unraid.

 

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These RAID cards that I want to use as JBOD mode, do not present me a BIOS option to config them. The Motherboard does not seem to have options for PCI optionroms. The disks are available in JBOD so we are good. I just wanted to make it easer to access the cards configs. These cards are super legacy however this project is a kind of like a PoC for denoising and PoC for the features of Unraid.

Edited by GRRRRRRR
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For the SMART errors, I want to do the following:

 

1. clear the bad/reallocated sectors and run vendor tools to resurface and repair them

2. It would be super cool if I could use some low level tools to clear the SMART because the crc errors are from when I used the wrong SATA cables.

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31 minutes ago, GRRRRRRR said:

For the SMART errors, I want to do the following:

 

1. clear the bad/reallocated sectors and run vendor tools to resurface and repair them

2. It would be super cool if I could use some low level tools to clear the SMART because the crc errors are from when I used the wrong SATA cables.

As far as I know there is no way for end-users to reset the CRC error count.

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the HDDs were in storage so the sectors got weak or something

 

Im just reviving them with hope to get full speed

 

It's not fully true that "already done by modern hard drives" no don't trust rumors. Running service tools and doing service things, is the right thing.

 

I am using Unraid parity as well I have many HDDs in the system so I can turn that on, for some of them.

 

We are good the project is moving along nicely.

 

 

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Well yes the HDD rejuvenation, SMART,  and HBA/Raid JBOD configs, firmwares - all this is done with custom tools from Vendors as well as thirdparty tools many of which DOS based for slightly older HDDs. So yeah I am handling that and stabilizing the things, before I can start making a more interesting Unraid config. Would have been nice not to leave the Unraid console for all this but .... maybe with more Right To Repair action this will be easy.

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  • GRRRRRRR changed the title to unRAID-ing old-is-gold G41 chipset with junk parts, in a fireproof room. 🔥🔥🔥🔥
  • GRRRRRRR changed the title to I make a sleeper build from spare parts. Unleashing the extreme capacity monster.

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