I need to replace my existing server because I can no longer expand it, and I can't buy the 320GB drives when one files.

 

I've settled on the hardware for the upgrade based on Raj's builds.  The motherboard I picked is in this thread:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=18049.0

 

but I will paste here as well.

 

My current server has:

 

Intel D865GLCLK i865G

Intel® Celeron® D 325

2 GB of DDR400

 

IDE cards:

2 - Promise Ultra133 TX2 ATA/133 (only one in use)

 

power supply:

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W

 

drives:

2 - sata (1x1TB and 1x750GB)

5 - ide (320GB)

1 - ide (250GB cache drive)

 

case:

COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UW

 

My upgraded server will reuse:

 

power supply

case

sata drives

possible one IDE as a cache drive

 

The new hardware will be:

ECS A885GM-A2 (V1.1) AM3 AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard

2 x Crucial 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model CT25664BA1339

2 x HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117) 2TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

Now I'm trying to figure out how to transfer the data from the old server to the new one.  This is where I'd like feedback.

 

I'm buying the 2 drives, one for parity, the other for data.

 

If I build the new system (temporarily I'll use an older 650W power supply) with the two new drives.  Then I'll copy all the data from the IDE drives (~1.3TB) to the new system.  At this point, I'd like to just bring over the 750GB SATA drive from the old system, and rebuild parity in the new system.  Then add the old parity drive 1TB into the new system as a new drive.

 

I would then add a parity drive to the new system using one of my Promise IDE cards and retire the remaining 320GB drive.  Maybe I could sell them here or on ebay to someone that wants them as spares for their system.

 

The other way I was thinking of would be to copy the data from old to new, but just a disk copy, then move the 750GB sata drive with its data, add them to the array and create parity.  Then add the old parity drive and expand the new array.

 

Which way would be better?  I think the first way would be safe in that parity is being created and it is all done in the array, but I'm afraid that it will take a long time, then I have to recreate parity when I add the 750GB sata drive over as well, because I need to keep that data intact.

 

Can I move a drive over and just recreate parity?

 

thanks,

dave

 

are you planning to swap out the motherboard or have two systems online at the same time?

 

I would suggest

1. Somehow, preclearing all the newly purchased drives before doing anything.

2. Doing a manual parity check to insure all drives are readable before doing anything.

 

Do you plan to do the drive swaps and copies on the current machine or the new machine?

I plan on having both machines up and running at the same time.  I have enough spare parts around to allow this.

 

So I could preclear the new drives on the new server prior to starting

Will definitely do a manual parity check.

 

I guess it comes down to

1. do I copy from old unraid to new unraid, or

2. copy from old unraid to new system, but not with the array build, just to the drive directly

 

Then how do I get the one sata drive from the old unraid into the new one?  I wont have enough disk to copy it, so I was hoping to physically move the drive from the old unraid to the new unraid and just "include" it

 

dave

If you copy from one system to another, do so with teracopy and enable test mode.

This will insure everything that is written is read back 100%.

 

you can move the 750gb drive to the other system at any time (carefully).

It's entirely up to you about enabling parity before or after.

 

If I were using teracopy, I would enable the parity after all drives are in place and data is copied where I want it.

as long as you preclear all new drives, you'll have a level of confidence on the new drives.

 

Ok that makes sense.

 

Do you know of an equivalent of teracopy, that would allow me to just copy from one unraid box to the next?  I could use something like scp, but I don't know if it is fault tolerant.

 

Maybe rsync?

 

thanks,

dave

As far as I know there's no single program that will do everything TeraCopy does.  However, you could move the data manually (via rsync, mc, or whatever you are comfortable with) and then manually run MD5 checks on the source and destination.  The end result would be the same.

Anybody know a teracopy alternative for mac? I could always ditto or rsync the data, but I like a GUI

Anybody know a teracopy alternative for mac? I could always ditto or rsync the data, but I like a GUI

 

Wish I did.  I've searched for just that, but haven't found anything.  I can gripe about the default Mac file handler all day long...no other OS has a file handler that can't manage to merge folders except for MacOS...I always end up using Windows or Ubuntu for my large data transfers (even then, Windows+TeraCopy is better).

The reason I was looking for a linux answer was to keep me from having to do the copy from the old unraid to my win7 box, then back to the unraid.

 

Is teracopy smart enought to run on the win 7 box, but actually have to data just go between the two unraid boxes, or does it stream it through the win7 box?  I would suspect the later.

 

thanks,

dave

My newegg order:

 

To think the HDD are 62% of the cost!  Darn flooding . . .

 

 

Sales Order Date:        1/25/2012 11:04:41 AM

Shipping Method:        UPS 3 DAYS

2 x ($129.99) HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117) 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - OEM

$259.98

 

1 x ($74.99) ECS A885GM-A2 (V1.1) AM3 AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard

$74.99

 

1 x ($39.99) AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Desktop Processor SDX145HBGMBOX

$39.99

 

2 x ($14.99) Crucial 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model CT25664BA1339

$29.98

 

1 x ($27.99) COOLER MASTER STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module Hardisk Cage

$27.99

 

Subtotal: $432.93

Tax: $0.00

Shipping and Handling: $9.31

Total Amount: $442.24

 

 

 

Is teracopy smart enought to run on the win 7 box, but actually have to data just go between the two unraid boxes, or does it stream it through the win7 box?  I would suspect the later.

 

Yes, that should work just fine.  It will stream through the Win7 box, but it will work.  Your parts list looks good!

The reason I was looking for a linux answer was to keep me from having to do the copy from the old unraid to my win7 box, then back to the unraid.

 

Is teracopy smart enought to run on the win 7 box, but actually have to data just go between the two unraid boxes, or does it stream it through the win7 box?  I would suspect the later.

 

thanks,

dave

 

The one benefit of using teracopy and streaming through the windows machine is you will exercise all aspects of the new unRAID server.    windows7 -> network -> ram -> writes -> reads -> ram -> network -> windows

 

fwiw, via my profile on my google code page, I have a compiled version of md5deep.

 

You can use that to make an md6sum of a directory tree.

 

Move all your data with rsync.

Then compare the files on the remote side with the md5deep command and the md5sum file.

 

http://md5deep.sourceforge.net/

http://code.google.com/p/unraid-weebotech/downloads/detail?name=md5deep-4.0.0_beta1-i486-1_unRAID.tgz

The reason I was looking for a linux answer was to keep me from having to do the copy from the old unraid to my win7 box, then back to the unraid.

 

Is teracopy smart enought to run on the win 7 box, but actually have to data just go between the two unraid boxes, or does it stream it through the win7 box?  I would suspect the later.

 

thanks,

dave

 

The one benefit of using teracopy and streaming through the windows machine is you will exercise all aspects of the new unRAID server.    windows7 -> network -> ram -> writes -> reads -> ram -> network -> windows

 

This makes total sense.  I think I'll just get the second array up and running then use teracopy to stress test it while it copies from the old unraid.

 

thanks,

dave

The reason I was looking for a linux answer was to keep me from having to do the copy from the old unraid to my win7 box, then back to the unraid.

 

Is teracopy smart enought to run on the win 7 box, but actually have to data just go between the two unraid boxes, or does it stream it through the win7 box?  I would suspect the later.

 

thanks,

dave

 

The one benefit of using teracopy and streaming through the windows machine is you will exercise all aspects of the new unRAID server.    windows7 -> network -> ram -> writes -> reads -> ram -> network -> windows

 

This makes total sense.  I think I'll just get the second array up and running then use teracopy to stress test it while it copies from the old unraid.

 

thanks,

dave

 

make sure you are in test mode.

teracopy will calculate a checksum on reads, write the file out, then read it back, then double check the checksum.

 

It will take much longer then a direct rsync, but you will be sure the data is as it should be.

Ok I got my parts in.

 

Do I have to have the front panel connections to get it to power on?  I have the mother board, power supply, memory, cpu and hard drives all installed, but I don't have an extra front panel with power button sitting around

 

I'm thinking that is why it won't power up?

 

thanks

dave

Ok I got my parts in.

 

Do I have to have the front panel connections to get it to power on?  I have the mother board, power supply, memory, cpu and hard drives all installed, but I don't have an extra front panel with power button sitting around

 

I'm thinking that is why it won't power up?

 

thanks

dave

 

Absolutely!!!!!  You need that momentary switch to turn your power supply from "standby" to "on".

OK I found an old system that I scavenged the front panel off.  I got it up an running, kind of.

 

The one issue I currently have is that if I have no drives attached to the system it will boot into unRaid off the usb drive fine.  If I have the sata drives attached then it wont.  I had to hit F11 to go into the boot system menu and select the flash drive.

 

In the BIOS I do have the flash drive set as the first boot drive, with the sata drives set as don't boot.  Any ideas on why it doesn't want to boot?

 

For now I just selected it from the menu and am building parity to get the system up and running.

 

thanks,

dave

Some motherboards actually have power and reset buttons already installed for testing purposes.  Most don't.  You don't actually need a switch to power on or reset the server, you just have to momentarily connect the two pins.  Be sure to ground yourself so that you don't accidentally discharge static electricity into the motherboard.  All you need is a bit of metal (paper clip, screw driver, etc).  I use a flat head screwdriver with a plastic handle and take care not to touch the metal.  You only need to close the loop for a split second, don't keep it closed for much longer than one second.

Raj,

 

I'm using the ECS board you recommended, but am having difficulty getting it to automatically booting from the flash drives.  I've set the BIOS settings to boot off the flash first, but it seems to want to boot off the SATA drives first even with this setting.

 

Did you have to do anything special to get it to work?

 

thanks,

dave

No, I didn't do anything special, but some flash drives behave differently than others.  Try playing with the USB Emulation modes.  Try HDD, FDD, etc. until you find one that works.  Also try disabling all other boot devices besides the flash drive.

Hmm, I've tried two different USB drives with the same results.

 

Do you know if it matters which usb port I plug the drive into?  I can't get it to boot off the USB drive automatically even though I have the HDD set as disabled in the BIOS for booting.

 

I need to get this figured out, or I'm back into looking for a new motherboard

 

thanks,

dave

Overall the migration has gone smoothly.  Here is an outline of what I did just in case someone is interested, it's the least I can do for all the help I got.

 

When I purchased my new hardware it was based of Raj's excellent recommendations for his 15-20 drive budget build found here:

http://www.greenleaf-technology.com/blogs/prototypes/index.php

 

[*]I got my hardware setup and ran memtest on it for a couple hours and everything was clean.

[*]I then installed two 2TB STAT drives and set them up in unRaid as a parity and a single data drive.

[*]I shutdown Crashplan on the old server

[*]I edited /boot/config/ident.cfg to name the server Tower1 so that I could have both on the network at the same time.

[*]I used teracopy based on WeeboTechs recommendation above.

[*]I then copied all the data from each drive to the new drive.  I had about 8 files that failed CRC checks one because windows decided to power down in the middle of the copy and messed things up, but teracopy was great and just recopied the files with a simple click of the mouse

[*]There was one SATA drive that I wanted to move directly from my old server to my new one, so I did this next

[*]I then rebuilt parity after adding the drive that had data already on it

[*]Next was to move over my cache drive

[*]Installed the Crashplan plugin

[*]Set my strong password

[*]had to stop Crashplan and copy over my .identity file, then restart Crashplan

[*]Crashplan started up synced with the online service and is now up and running without a hitch

 

Open Issues:

I need to figure out why I cannot boot directly from the flash drive.  I have set all the BIOS options to boot only from the flash drive, I have tried two different flash drive, the original one from Lime, and a new one that I just bought, but none of the boot directly.  I have to hit F11, then select the flash from the list of drives.  This has to be fixed before I install the new system into the final case as I can't be hitting F11 and such on a headless machine.

 

My speeds:

Parity would start at 120MB/s then drop to ~80MB/s by the time it was completed.

Copy speed was ~25MB/s onto the array.  I've not tried the cache drive yet.

 

Stability has been perfect, I've not had a single glich, hickup or anything during the entire process.  I would have classified it as perfect had the stupid USB boot thing not been such a problem.

 

dave

 

 

Open Issues:

I need to figure out why I cannot boot directly from the flash drive.  I have set all the BIOS options to boot only from the flash drive, I have tried two different flash drive, the original one from Lime, and a new one that I just bought, but none of the boot directly.  I have to hit F11, then select the flash from the list of drives.  This has to be fixed before I install the new system into the final case as I can't be hitting F11 and such on a headless machine.

 

 

dave

 

I don't have a real solution to this problem but I would suggest that you next go to the motherboard's manufacturer website.  Find your  specific board on it.  Check to see if there is an updated BIOS package.  Next, look to see if there is a manual for the BIOS setup.  (Some manufacturers have a different manual for the BIOS in addition to the motherboard manual that is in the box.)  If there is a BIOS manual, read it carefully for options that effect the boot order.  (I say that because it seems like many of these manuals are written by persons for whom English is not their first language!)

 

 

Open Issues:

I need to figure out why I cannot boot directly from the flash drive.  I have set all the BIOS options to boot only from the flash drive, I have tried two different flash drive, the original one from Lime, and a new one that I just bought, but none of the boot directly.  I have to hit F11, then select the flash from the list of drives.  This has to be fixed before I install the new system into the final case as I can't be hitting F11 and such on a headless machine.

 

 

dave

 

I don't have a real solution to this problem but I would suggest that you next go to the motherboard's manufacturer website.  Find your  specific board on it.  Check to see if there is an updated BIOS package.  Next, look to see if there is a manual for the BIOS setup.  (Some manufacturers have a different manual for the BIOS in addition to the motherboard manual that is in the box.)  If there is a BIOS manual, read it carefully for options that effect the boot order.  (I say that because it seems like many of these manuals are written by persons for whom English is not their first language!)

 

I've downloaded the manual from ECS and it is the same as the printed manual in the box.  The BIOS portion is just generic and doesn't match what is installed on the system.  The BIOS on the system is the most up to date as well.

 

I called ECS and spoke to their tech support person and he is going to "research" it, but I think that just means go away and don't bother me.  He asked me to install windows on it then put that drive in a usb enclosure and see if that will boot of the USB.  What PITA.

 

I can get it to boot automatically as long as there are no SATA drives attached.  So with my promise controller and its IDE drive it will boot fine, but as soon as I plug any SATA drive in it just hangs, trying to boot from the SATA drive.

 

I'll take some pictures of my BIOS settings and post, maybe someone can spot my mistake.

 

dave