HP Proliant server N40L, four 3TB Hitachi HDs but which Beta version to use?

[One2go]

Just got my HP N40L micro server and are about to set it up with four 3TB Hitachi drives. The only remaining question is which one of the many Betas is to be recommended? Do I have run a permissions script on these 3TB drives? Since it came with cough, cough WHS2011 is that worthwhile to run in an  environment of 1 Unraid server and 1 WHS?

[dgaschk]

Try the newest beta.

[daniel.boone]

What I did was start with latest and work backward until I found something that worked best for me. Copy speed was one of the things I looked for. Some of the betas are really slow in moving files over the LAN.

[One2go]

And which Beta are you using at this time? I noticed that many went back to v5b11

[Chris Pollard]

v5b12 is running well on my N36L.

[One2go]

Thanks that gets me one step closer. I presume you are running version 12 and not 12a is that correct?

 

Thanks

O2G

[daniel.boone]

And which Beta are you using at this time? I noticed that many went back to v5b11

 

I'm running B9 but I have a Gigabyte MB with the dreaded Realtek nic, a supermicro sata card and 12 drives. B11 transfer speed was hurt in my case. It's easy enough to try the various betas. I will be trying the latest beta soon to see if that improves things.

 

I almost picked up one of the HPs the other day. They look really slick.

[One2go]

So far so good. Installed an extra 2Gig of memory, Installed four 3TB Hitachi drives, Installed a 2 port PCI-e card which was a fiddly project. Stuck in the USB key and installed v.5b14. Configured it and installed the Plus key as well as UnMenu. Now to the ardent job of preclearing those 4 drives.

 

So far the log only indicates a few minor issues that maybe just idiosyncrasies. Tried to enable Jumbo Frames but no go always got the message invalid argument. A search revealed this:

 

The HP NC107i 1Gb NIC, based on Broadcom's BCM5723 chip, DOES NOT SUPPORT JUMBO FRAMES! This HP "ProLiant" server actually comes with a NIC with no jumbo frame support.

 

Guess I'll have to run MTU = 1500 because I am not opening this thing again and stick an Intel NIC in the PCI-e 16 slot.

[One2go]

47hours and 27 minutes later my four 3TB Hitachi drives have finished successfully the preclear stage. I have installed version 5b14 and so far had no problems with the HP N40L micro server. It helped to read the forum and I benefited by following the advise just do what UnRaid tells you and forget the Linux commands. The instructions are excellent and clear.

 

The only abnormality that I encounter was after the preclear finished. I rebooted the server, assigned the precleared discs to slots, Hit Start to set in motion bringing the array online, then formatted the drives. All that proceeded as expected. What I did not expect was that it automatically went into a Parity-Sync. With an estimated speed of 36 MB/sec it will take another 19 hours before the Parity-Sync has finished. I thought since all the drives were precleared and empty that either it would not go into a Parity Sync or it would finish it quickly.

 

Anyhow sometime tomorrow evening I should be able to finally put data on the box. What kind of Parity-Sync speed can I expect with version 5b14?