Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum.

After reading all your posts and Lime's Support and FAQ page, I'm really interested in this product (especially the FlashDrive only package).

Several questions to those who bought the flashdrive only product from lime-tech:

1.  If I ask for a satisfactory rating, do you give a 5 stars (very satfisfied) or 1 star only based on your experience?

2.  What about the reliability of the product?  Any failure so far due to hardware/software (not counting user error)?

3.  What about the customer support (I mean personal support instead of thru' this forum)?

4.  How long does it take for them to ship out the product once I place the order?

5.  Final question, do you think it's worth the money $150 for this product other than a hardware dynamic raid controller selling for $500 (12 ports)?

 

Base on your response, I will make my decision whether to buy it for my server.

 

Thanks in advance for any response.

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum.

Welcome!  This is a very interesting post.  I'm sure you will get a range of responses, and I'm very interested to see what others have to say.

After reading all your posts and Lime's Support and FAQ page, I'm really interested in this product (especially the FlashDrive only package).

Several questions to those who bought the flashdrive only product from lime-tech:

1.  If I ask for a satisfactory rating, do you give a 5 stars (very satfisfied) or 1 star only based on your experience?

2.  What about the reliability of the product?  Any failure so far due to hardware/software (not counting user error)?

3.  What about the customer support (I mean personal support instead of thru' this forum)?

4.  How long does it take for them to ship out the product once I place the order?

The Flash product is generally shipped the same day or next day using USPS Priority Mail or Global Priority Mail.

5.  Final question, do you think it's worth the money $150 for this product other than a hardware dynamic raid controller selling for $500 (12 ports)?

If you need the performance of a $500 RAID controller, you should buy the $500 RAID controller.  That said, there is not a huge risk in trying out an UnRaid product.  I think the warranty page says something like a 30-day return period, restocking fees, etc.  Reality is that we're a small company; if you want to return any product, you can return it and we'll instantly credit your charge card.

My experiences (I purchased a flash drive only, but used all the recommended components). I 'll rank each on a scale of 1-5 (5being best):

 

1.  If I ask for a satisfactory rating, do you give a 5 stars (very satfisfied) or 1 star only based on your experience?

4 - overall I'm very satisfied. The biggest thing I could hope for would be better performance when doing multiple read/writes, but overall it's the perfect solution for me and I feel a lot more comfortable than using a traditional raid.

2.  What about the reliability of the product?  Any failure so far due to hardware/software (not counting user error)?

5 - so far no reliability issues. I do have this nagging "format" disk button that stays in the managment UI even though there are no unformatted disks present (clicking it does nothing), but it's a nuisance I can live with until Tom corrects it.

3.  What about the customer support (I mean personal support instead of thru' this forum)?

2 - My personal experience with Tom would have been a 5 (I never had any isssues with support), but the combination of the 3 month dissappearing acts (it's happened twice now, and the lack of substantial software updates/upgrades (SATA support has been promised for close to a year) has knocked that down substantially.

4.  How long does it take for them to ship out the product once I place the order?

4 - I'd say 5 days, less if you nag Tom ;-) or indicate getting it quickly is important to you.

5.  Final question, do you think it's worth the money $150 for this product other than a hardware dynamic raid controller selling for $500 (12 ports)?

5 - For me, absolutely. I have 12 drives in a stacker case and all of the flexibility t swap and upgrade that I want. It's a perfect solution for me.

I'd agree totally with dschur, except that I'd change question 3.  What about the customer support (I mean personal support instead of thru' this forum)? to a 3. I agree with the disappearance being disconcerting, but forum aside Tom has NEVER failed to reply quickly to any emails for support I've ever had to make.

 

P.S. - It would be great to see the 'multiple read/write performance' better so I could use my unRaid as the direct storage for my SageTV PVR instead of having to do 'late night transfers' of the shows I want to keep. Otherwise, it's been GREAT.

 

-PGPfan

My experiences (I purchased a fully assembled system and two 500G drives). Using the same scale of 1-5 (5being best):

 

1.  If I ask for a satisfactory rating, do you give a 5 stars (very satisfied) or 1 star only based on your experience?

4 - overall I'm very satisfied. I'm still waiting for the long overdue security enhancements (SMB share security AND root password security), improved performance, and true power-management (wake on LAN, powerdown shutting off supplies) so I can implement an orderly shutdown when my UPS signals it can no longer continue in an extended power outage)

2.  What about the reliability of the product?  Any failure so far due to hardware/software (not counting user error)?

4 - Although I've not had issues with hardware, there have been several reports of flash drive failures. In those cases, Tom supplied a replacement flash drive.

 

Software has been a different issue.  Although I've never had an issue with basic functionality of serving files and expanding the array with new drives (other than speed) it was recently discovered that replacing a failed drive, or upgrading an existing drive has been broken since the original release.  This was only corrected in the most current release after a number of us were able to prove to Tom how to duplicate the problem. 

 

Worse yet, this occurred during his last absence so we effectively were on our own.  Our calls went unanswered, our e-mails unanswered.  We actually set up a separate User-Support forum for fear Tom might shut this one down and leave everybody stranded.  Eventually, as we were narrowing down where in the code the problem might be he did answer, and to his credit did quickly fix the problem. He never encountered it in his tests because he re-used the same drives again, and again in his development and testing he never saw the bug we did with new, unformatted drives.

 

Tom has not kept his web-site up to date with much of this. The FAQ is essentially unchanged.  We still have no idea of any release planned scheduled. He said he has made some progress porting unRaid to the newest Linux kernel  and that it will support SATA spindown and improved performance, we have no idea when he is targeting this release.

3.  What about the customer support (I mean personal support instead of thru' this forum)?

2 - Prior to my purchase (October 2005) it would have been a 10 out of 5, subsequent, with his disappearances, I would give it a 0, most recently he seems to make a few posts per week in this forum, so perhaps a 3.  I've left calls, sent e-mails, and they went unanswered during his periods of absence. 

4.  How long does it take for them to ship out the product once I place the order?

No recent experience.  When I originally ordered it (October 2005) was several weeks as he was waiting for a shipment of disk drives and wanted to burn them in before shipping the assembled server to me.  This was communicated to me when I placed the order, so I expected the delay (and wanted him to burn in the system while it was in his shop) Overall, a great experience for product shipping.  It was VERY well packed. At that time it would have been a 5.

5.  Final question, do you think it's worth the money $150 for this product other than a hardware dynamic raid controller selling for $500 (12 ports)?

5 - Absolutely, in my opinion, your data is safer than with a hardware solution... now that we have the basic functionality working... as long as you do not need security, or concurrent read/write of media, or SATA spindown, or controlled power-management shutdown during power failures.  It is even more attractive if you are a Linux person. (Linux skills not needed to administer the system, but it does not hurt)

 

Joe L.

Hi

I have been reading these forums as well, and i have a few questions myself.

 

* Do i need too spread the data across the harddrives or can i fill up the first drive and then move on the the next one? (will i still have parity this way)

 

* If i do need to spread the data, will i need to move/"respread" the data when i add another harddrive? (that would be irritating with my media library which is path focused)

 

ty

Hi

I have been reading these forums as well, and i have a few questions myself.

 

* Do i need too spread the data across the harddrives or can i fill up the first drive and then move on the the next one? (will i still have parity this way)

 

* If i do need to spread the data, will i need to move/"respread" the data when i add another harddrive? (that would be irritating with my media library which is path focused)

 

ty

 

No, there is no need to spread the data. I am sure one of the more technicals guys can chime in as to why this is, but you can put data onto the HDs in any fashion that you want.

Yes, i am not an expert either, so until one of them answers you:

 

UNRAID does not permit you to spread the data across the drives. It achieves parity through the main (parity drive) and space on the other drives (to some extent/not as much as RAID as i understand it).

 

I have about 6 drives that i copy different stuff to any given time.

 

The check-parity function allows you to save this information at any time (data, structure, etc)

 

You can add another harddrive and copy stuff to it any time you want.

Yes, i am not an expert either, so until one of them answers you:

 

UNRAID does not permit you to spread the data across the drives. It achieves parity through the main (parity drive) and space on the other drives (to some extent/not as much as RAID as i understand it).

More accurately, a single file cannot span more than one drive.  In other words, if you had two 5 Gig drives you could NOT store a single 10 gig file.  You could store two 5 gig files, or any number of smaller files.  Each disk is its own drive (similar to drive letters in windows).  parity needs NO space on the data drives, it only needs a single "parity" drive as big, or bigger than any of the other drives in your array. Each of the data drives in the array is formatted with its own standard rieserfs file system.

The check-parity function allows you to save this information at any time (data, structure, etc)

You do not need to do anything special to create "parity" data to protect your array.  if you have a parity drive, and if the array is on-line, you are protected.

 

There is a manual "Check Parity" button on the interface that when pressed will perform a background verification that the parity drive is correct.  Note: it should NEVER be incorrect unless a drive is failing.  Since the parity drive will be spun down and not active at all unless adding or changing a file on the array the button is available just so you can spin up the drive once a month or so to make sure it is still OK.  I rarely verify my parity drive. others may do it monthly, or weekly.

 

You can add another harddrive and copy stuff to it any time you want.

This is true, you can add new drives at any time to the array.

 

Joe L.