July 27, 201114 yr Your parity build speed should go up considerably once you get past the smaller PATA drives. Hopefully you will be there soon. Hope so, 13000KB/sec w/1400 minutes left & 3 PATA Drives to still clear. Seems really slow, but probably pretty normal. I think all of the drives are working pretty well, though speed is not their forte! Have a good night, will update in AM. Dave Edit - PARITY VALID And Wonder of Wonders I have a SMART Report (attached)! I've also enclosed a copy of my Syslog. Brian if you have a chance, please evaluate. Thank you again so much for your help and patience! Warmly, Dave Congrats. Looks like your array is behaving again. Smart report looks okay - no pending or reallocated sectors. Make sure you run a parity check to make sure everything checks out. Remember parity builds are considerably slower than parity checks. Enjoy your array! (Long live PATA )
July 27, 201114 yr Author Congrats. Looks like your array is behaving again. Smart report looks okay - no pending or reallocated sectors. Make sure you run a parity check to make sure everything checks out. Remember parity builds are considerably slower than parity checks. Enjoy your array! (Long like PATA ) Hello Brian, Thank you again for the help and the analysis. Parity Check Valid no errors! Should I convert to SATA Drives "Long Like PATA ?" My guess is YES as per our previous discussions. What do you recommend? I have the WD20EARS drive that I was going to put into service as a "new" Parity Drive & free up the 1.5 TB Seagate, but there seems to be lots of comentary/difference of opinion re: the WD20EARS drives w/lots of possible failures. No one locally has the 2TB Hitachi Drives (though I saw the "deal") for the 3TB drive from Amazon that is only ~ $20 more than my WD Drive. I think I might be able to return the WD and order in the Hitachi if that would yield better results. Converting my PATA drives would use up the majority of my space so that eventually I will need a SATA add-in card. Looking at the SATA thread, I'm not sure of what is the best way to go. Would you recommend a 2port SATA PCIe or a SAS/SATA 4/8 port combo that can go in my PCIx16 (Video Card Slot), the Board has onboard Video? Also for grins, could/should I use one of the old (newest) PATA drives as a Cache Disk? Again much obliged for the help, recommendations and support! You've been a godsend! Warmly, Dave :)
July 27, 201114 yr Oops - was supposed to say "Long LIVE pata". Bit of tongue in cheek as I think they are getting pretty uncommon. As far as your upgrade path, please repost info about your system. What is your case and how many physical drives can your system hold? What is your motherboard and how many SATA ports are onboard? How many PCIe slots and what are their widths (x1, x4, x8, x16). Are you using any of them for other purposes (e.g., NIC) What are the sizes, ages, interfaces (SATA or PATA) and freespace of each? What is your PSU? How many watts / rails? What is the total amount of data currenyly on your array? Do you have any specific upgrade plans (e.g., hate my case and want to upgrade it, PSU has been giving problems and plan to upgrade, etc.) In one year, how much data do you expect to have on your array? Two years? With that info I can give you my opinion (or options) for you to consider I think it's best to have an idea of where you are going before starting to buy new equipment. If you have a small case that you want to keep, for example, but need a lot of storage, no need to get a lot of controller ports, but would be important to get highest capacity drives to avoid being faced with replacing disks before you want to. But if you've got a big case and more modest space needs, the biggest disks right now may not be a priority but you might want to be prepared to add more disks over time. With the information I asked above I think we can think through these and come up with the best upgrade plan.
July 28, 201114 yr Author Hello Brian, unRaid Version 4.7 - PRO License Foxconn P41A-G LGA 775 Intel G41 ATX Intel Motherboard - w/ 4 SATA & 1 PATA, 1 Promise IDE; 1 PCIeX1 & 1 PCIeX16 (Video slot available) Intel Core2 6600 CPU {MB, Chip, Memory updated ~ 1 year ago} WINTEC AMPO 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) 3 SATA Drives (1.5TB Parity) & 2x1TB Drives(<18 months) 5 PATA Drives (2x250; 1x300; 4-5 years old & 2x500's 2-3 years old - Maxtor/WDC/ Seagate) CoolerMaster Centurion - modified to hold 8-9 drives w/3 bay drive cage Currently I have 3.8TB available & ~ 1.6 TB in use, though by removing all 5 PATA's that would be reduced slightly to 3.5TB when replacing the current Parity drive. Aside from converting to the SATA Drives (thus using all currently available SATA ports) and possibly adding another 1-2 eventually moving towards "Green" drives, I think the present unRaid meets my needs. My typical usage is for a Music Server (repository for Airport Express) that I am trying to migrate all of my CD's and eventually my Vinyl Records to. My current Music Library amounts to ~ 65 GB with 2-3x as much to add, though I have no idea about the Vinyl #'s. I use a Data-Server as I call it to "store" most of my documents, accounting, tax back-up data and probably access it the most. Currently its has ~ 250 GB. The remainder is in Movie Files (Video_TS/*.vob) which I stream to my HD Projector primarily. I would like to have the ability to record various programs but have a Tivo so that is my present option and we rarely keep any recordings. At this time I have not tried to record any HD Movies (Blue Ray etc.) Hopefully this will give you enough information. Again my sincere thanks for your help and direction. Dave
July 28, 201114 yr Hello Brian, unRaid Version 4.7 - PRO License Foxconn P41A-G LGA 775 Intel G41 ATX Intel Motherboard - w/ 4 SATA & 1 PATA, 1 Promise IDE; 1 PCIeX1 & 1 PCIeX16 (Video slot available) Intel Core2 6600 CPU {MB, Chip, Memory updated ~ 1 year ago} WINTEC AMPO 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) 3 SATA Drives (1.5TB Parity) & 2x1TB Drives(<18 months) 5 PATA Drives (2x250; 1x300; 4-5 years old & 2x500's 2-3 years old - Maxtor/WDC/ Seagate) CoolerMaster Centurion - modified to hold 8-9 drives w/3 bay drive cage Currently I have 3.8TB available & ~ 1.6 TB in use, though by removing all 5 PATA's that would be reduced slightly to 3.5TB when replacing the current Parity drive. Aside from converting to the SATA Drives (thus using all currently available SATA ports) and possibly adding another 1-2 eventually moving towards "Green" drives, I think the present unRaid meets my needs. My typical usage is for a Music Server (repository for Airport Express) that I am trying to migrate all of my CD's and eventually my Vinyl Records to. My current Music Library amounts to ~ 65 GB with 2-3x as much to add, though I have no idea about the Vinyl #'s. I use a Data-Server as I call it to "store" most of my documents, accounting, tax back-up data and probably access it the most. Currently its has ~ 250 GB. The remainder is in Movie Files (Video_TS/*.vob) which I stream to my HD Projector primarily. I would like to have the ability to record various programs but have a Tivo so that is my present option and we rarely keep any recordings. At this time I have not tried to record any HD Movies (Blue Ray etc.) Hopefully this will give you enough information. Again my sincere thanks for your help and direction. Dave You didn't mention your PSU, but if you are running 9 drives, I'm assuming you have enough power. Although the old PATA drives might be lower capacity, they still pull more power than the newer, greener drives. You also didn't mention the 2T EARS drive that you said you had new, but I am assuming you have one. You could certainly jump to 3T drives if you want, but here is a more conservative plan. Basically you would add 1 more 2T drive to your other new 2T drive (Hitachi 5k3000 2T would be my first choice, but a second EARS is okay too), remove all of your PATA drives, and up your capacity from 3.8T to 5.5T, and parity from 1.5T to 2T. Assuming that would keep you for a year. By that time 4T drives may be out and reasonably priced, but more conservatively let's say 3T drives are the sweet spot. You could add 2 of them bringing your capacity to 10.5T (3T parity). Then a year after that, assuming 4T drives are the sweet spot, you would add 2 of them (4T parity). Your capacity would then be 17.5T data + 4T parity (2x4T, 2x3T, 2x2T, 1x1.5T, 2x1T). This is actually a very good way to grow your array. As drives get bigger, you start to incrementally drop the lower capacity drives and replace them with the larger capacity. (My general rule of thumb is if I can replace 3 physical disks with 1 physical disk for < $100, its time to upgrade.) You certainly couldn't complain to replace those 1T/1.5T drives with a 4T or even 6T drive 6 years from now. With 3 6T drives you'd be at 30T (6T parity) with 9 drives. Then replacing the 2x2T drives with 8T disks, for a 40T array. I could keep going but you get the idea. You've got an array that is incrementally growing as larger drives come out in a perpetual upgrade cycle. (I like this better than having a monolithic array of same sized disks as it means you have variety in age and technology, yielding less risk of simultaneous failures.) To achieve 9 SATA drives you will need 5 more ports. I'd recommend a SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 (~100 + $25 in cables) to put into your x16 slot. You could also opt for the cheaper BR10i (~$50 + $25 in cables) but know that the BR10i is limited to 2T drives. Your 4 motherboard slots should work with larger disks, so until you get past the 17.5T configuration above, you'd be fine. But then you'd be looking for a new controller to go beyond, and junking the BR10i. With the SASLP (assuming it will continue to handle larger drives), you'd be "set for life" IMHO. So I'd recommend the SASLP for $50 more. Sound reasonable?
July 28, 201114 yr Author In One Word - FANTASTIC! Very logical and reasonable and probably "overkill" in my case, but delightfully doable. I do have the 1 WD20EARS that I can use for Parity immediately, so would think that upgrading to that, re-purposing my current 1.5 TB and transferring all of my PATA data is the 1st step. If I find that its a bit short or that I'm starting to approach 75% usage, then opt for the next larger drive either a 2/3/4 + TB depending upon time/price/etc. Thank you again for all your help, solutions and professional recommendations! It has been a pleasure and a priviledge having your expertise and knowledge working on my problem. I hope some day to be able to offer you or another unRaider some meager assistance that they might find as useful! Gratefully, Dave
July 28, 201114 yr Glad to help! Thanks for the kind words. Let me know if you need any more help or suggestions.
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