I've done so. So let's wait and see.

 

I wouldn't mind, if it was possible to have 50 Data Drives or what so ever. I don't care if my Box is the biggest one.

I just see, that for the moment I have to replace every 2TB with a 3TB, just to get 1TB more Space....

...and that TCO is absolutely bad, makes me sick when I think of.

 

From my point of view it should not be that impossible thing to make some more Data Drives possible.

Epecially when You are in the process of adding Drives.

 

I'd have no Problem at all to do some Beta testing.

 

I've done so. So let's wait and see.

 

I wouldn't mind, if it was possible to have 50 Data Drives or what so ever. I don't care if my Box is the biggest one.

I just see, that for the moment I have to replace every 2TB with a 3TB, just to get 1TB more Space....

...and that TCO is absolutely bad, makes me sick when I think of.

 

From my point of view it should not be that impossible thing to make some more Data Drives possible.

Epecially when You are in the process of adding Drives.

 

I'd have no Problem at all to do some Beta testing.

 

It's not impossible to add more data drives.

In the past it was more involved then just bumping a number in a #define.

I think there was another field or bitmap that needed to be expanded and it did not crop up until someone put in that last drive.

You should send a note to Limetech and request an increase to the amount of drives you can physically test.

 

I just see, that for the moment I have to replace every 2TB with a 3TB, just to get 1TB more Space....

That would only be true is you had only 2 disk drives, one for partiy, the other for data.  You would have 2TB of protected space.  To gain more space you would need to replace both drives with 3TB drives.  Your total data space increase would be 1TB as you said.

 

If you had 2 data drives + parity you would not need to upgrade all three drives to 3TB, you would only need to upgrade 2 of them... parity plus one of the data drives.

 

If you had 20 drives, all 2TB, to gain 1TB more space you would need to upgrade 2 disks, parity and one other.

No difference.  In both cases, all you need are a pair of 3TB drives, not 20 of them as with conventional RAID.  unRAID works perfectly fine with a mix of drive sizes.

 

Good point Joe, I missed that one.

I know that....

Beginning with two 3TB Drives, one for Data and one for Parity, I get 1TB more.

But for each 1TB more Space, I need to Replace a Drive, in my Box a 2TB with a 3TB.

 

What I mean, every 1TB more cost's me the Price of a 3TB Drive.

 

You mean I should use the support@lime-technology and ask for it or is there a better way?

 

cu

Yes, send an email to lime-tech for support. It won't happen overnight, but at least your request will make it to where it needs to be. You can point back to this thread in the email too.

well i am also a fan of a few more drives .....

especially because i have the drives laying around....

once you have filled up the 21 max for now is swapping drives with bigger ones, the only thing you can do

but what you do with these perfectly good working smaller drives ?

and since drives are still expencive for the moment would it be better to be able to add more drives and keep on using your drives till they break...

 

I know you will say you can build a second unraid with the old drives ... but not everybody lives in a house .... have hobby/server rooms.....my unraid is in my desk in the living room ... adding a second one will be hard to do

 

just my 0.2 cents

I agree to 100%.

 

Not only the Space for a second System, also there is not only the StandBy Power of the aditional Drive(s)....

 

You also have the PowerUsage of the CPU, MB, Controller(s), PSU and the Fans.

 

So it is far more environment friendy and more economical using the 'small' Drives in the 'old' server, then building a second one....

 

cu

I know that....

Beginning with two 3TB Drives, one for Data and one for Parity, I get 1TB more.

But for each 1TB more Space, I need to Replace a Drive, in my Box a 2TB with a 3TB.

Not true...  If you currently had two drives (one data, one parity) you could add an additional drive, even with the free version of unRAID.  You could add a 2TB drive and get 2TB more spare, OR

you could purchase a 3TB drive, install it as the parity drive and then re-use your old 2TB parity drive as a second data drive.

 

Either of these gains 2TB space for the expense of a 2TB or 3TB drive.

If you did install a 3TB parity drive at this time, a future upgrade could replace one of the 2TB data drives with a 3TB and gain 1TB more space, plus free up a 2TB drive to use as a third data drive for when you purchase a licensed version of unRAID.

 

Joe L.

PLMK why this is not true.

At the monent I have got only 2Tb Drives. I'm having 20 Data Drives,1 Parity Drive and also a Cache Drive.

If I now repalce the Parity and one Data Drive with 3TB Drives, I get 1TB more usable Space.

So I have to pay as a first step two 3TB Drives, got get 1TB more Space.

From now on I have to pay for each new 1TB of space a 3TB Drive, cause I have to replace a 2TB Drive with a 3TB.

 

So angain what is not true?

marcusone,

 

Your question/topic has been moved to Hard Drives and Controllers.

 

[iurl=http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=18244.0]http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=18244.0[/iurl]

 

let's continue that discussion over there.

PLMK why this is not true.

At the monent I have got only 2Tb Drives. I'm having 20 Data Drives,1 Parity Drive and also a Cache Drive.

If I now repalce the Parity and one Data Drive with 3TB Drives, I get 1TB more usable Space.

So I have to pay as a first step two 3TB Drives, got get 1TB more Space.

From now on I have to pay for each new 1TB of space a 3TB Drive, cause I have to replace a 2TB Drive with a 3TB.

 

So angain what is not true?

True, if your array is full..

But, you then have a pair of 2TB to sell on e-bay, probably for close to, or possibly more than you originally paid.

Selling my Drives on eBay is not the way I want to take...

 

Like sacretagent and I think also some other User's, I'd like to see more Drives.

 

If there wasn't a need for more Drives the existece of three different UnRaid Versions (3 / 6 / 20), (beside the CacheDrive Option) would be obsolete.

 

cu

 

 

there in lies another problem..

 

if you do not sell your drives (and assuming the 20 drives limit is not expanded), you will probably end up building a second unRAID box.

Maybe you might consider starting to piece together a second box and split what is on the first box.

 

I am aware that is not the answer you were looking for, but it might be better off for a power consumption point of view. if you have Files like backups you never or rarely access, you can offload them to a second uRAID  that you can power off when not in use. This will make room on your main box and allow all of those nice 2TB drive to stay in use.

 

Also if you are doing drive upgrades, I would probably think about 4TB drives. it would double your space at possibly a better cost per GB? I would have to check prices first.

If I look at 4 TB Drives at moment, they are not a option, cause the price is more then two times the price of a 3TB Drive.

You are right, a second Box is no option, cause I don't want to remember if I have something on Server 1 or Server 2.

 

May I find some more Users who like to have more DataDrives or may I find a other solution.....

 

cu

Ack on the price of 4Tb drives then.. maybe in a year...

 

Maybe it is time for an "enterprise license" with a max drive bump. or maybe call it "UCD License".

 

 

getting past that.

In this day and age of DFS's ... there must be a solution if you cant get the  # of drives increased.

even windows 8 is promising the "storage spaces" solution that lets you combine 2 or more NAS boxes (along with  other forms of media) as one storage object.

 

Tom had mentioned a while back about a possible feature to make 2 unraid servers look like one server on the network. allowing 1 share to be split across 2 boxes.

 

 

 

I agree.

This is also done by QNap, there You can combine several NAS Boxes.

 

But I would prefer one System, with a lager numer of Data Drives.

 

When You have my Board and the HighPoint DataCenter Controller in mind.

 

Would make 96 Dives via the Controllers adition the 8 onBoard....

 

My eyes suddenly start to shine.....

I'm sure if enough people ask lime-tech to increase the drive count it will be done.

After all I think the current beta has "slots" available for 2 more drives.

 

From what I remember there is a hard upper limit in linux as to the maximum number of drives.

/dev/sda -> /dev/sdz

From what I read there may be a two letter drive combo

/dev/sd?? -> /dev/sd?? if we go this route there are other tables that may need to be expanded.

I don't know that much about it and I have not found anything in a quick search.

The 5.0beta 14 has 20 DataDrive Slots....

 

BTW, it must be possible...

Synology has the Synology® DiskStation DS3611xs and it can handle 36 Disks.

 

cu

There is also the idea that as you add more drives the chance of multiple failures increases ... as in, a failure while rebuilding the array. Personally, I'd be tempted to build another server once I get to about 10-12 drives.  I pick 12 because at that point of expansion I have to start looking are pricier methods of SATA port expansion than using fairly inexpensive 2-port PCIE cards.  At that point I'd rather spend the extra money on another server and know that I also now have a second parity drive and I've segmented my risk between the two boxen.

 

Just a thought as we get larger and larger drives (increased rebuild times) and larger and larger drive counts (increased probabilty of a drive failing) [shrug]

I recently grabbed an HP Microserver so I could move my Crashplan install to it and set up a backup for some of the data on my Main server (iTunes Library and the like).  For the 200(ish) it cost me (not including hard drives) it is a great little box.

I'm planning to segment my data as well.  I have so much music that I think I want to keep it separate.

I have the Norco DS-520g with 3 eSATA ports for PMP 5 drive expanders.

 

I may choose to move my rsync file by file backups to one of these HP Microservers, then automate the power up and power down.

 

With 7.8 million files and growing, a 20 drive server becomes a bear to maintain and index.

Even with 8GB of ram, I cannot cache the directories, there are just too many files.

There is also the idea that as you add more drives the chance of multiple failures increases ... as in, a failure while rebuilding the array. Personally, I'd be tempted to build another server once I get to about 10-12 drives.  I pick 12 because at that point of expansion I have to start looking are pricier methods of SATA port expansion than using fairly inexpensive 2-port PCIE cards.  At that point I'd rather spend the extra money on another server and know that I also now have a second parity drive and I've segmented my risk between the two boxen.

 

Just a thought as we get larger and larger drives (increased rebuild times) and larger and larger drive counts (increased probabilty of a drive failing) [shrug]

 

Part of this becomes having the users benchmark their rebuild or parity check times.

Seeing various architecture vs parity check/sync times could provide data in deciding to enlarge your server or split data between multiple servers.

In my case, it's half a day to rebuild. Which is not all that bad for 17 drives.

There is also the idea that as you add more drives the chance of multiple failures increases ... as in, a failure while rebuilding the array. Personally, I'd be tempted to build another server once I get to about 10-12 drives.  I pick 12 because at that point of expansion I have to start looking are pricier methods of SATA port expansion than using fairly inexpensive 2-port PCIE cards.  At that point I'd rather spend the extra money on another server and know that I also now have a second parity drive and I've segmented my risk between the two boxen.

 

Just a thought as we get larger and larger drives (increased rebuild times) and larger and larger drive counts (increased probabilty of a drive failing) [shrug]

 

+1

 

I'm new to all of this, but it seems to me that if the max number of drives is increased significantly then there also needs to be some thought about an increase in the data protection features.

 

A few of ideas off the top of my head:

• Hot Spare - From reading these forums it seems that several people have a spare drive installed but not included in the array, ready to switch in if there's a drive failure. Would is be possible to have unRaid handle this automatically? The drive is set as the hot spare and as soon as unRaid red-balls an active drive it swaps in the hot-spare and starts to rebuild.
   
   
   
  
• Split Array - Basically two arrays in one box. Add a second parity disk and have half the disks protected by one parity disk and the other protected by the second. Since it is still all controlled by the one server, all the shares etc should still look the same when connecting in. I guess this would also improve things like write times and parity checks etc since you'd only have to deal with half the number of disks. Also, no reason why the number of parity disks should be limited to 2.
   
   
   
  
• Split Array with Auto Migration - As above, but if a disk red-balls then the remaining disks in that half of the array are automatically migrated to the good half. Unsure about the pros/cons on this one. The idea of moving the remaining disks over to the good half means that they can stay protected, but it means that you're going to have a lot of disk activity when there's a disk down - precisely when you don't want it.
   
  

 

Any thoughts on these?

 

Edited to add - Just been reading round some more and can see that these and others have already been discussed on other threads. Really should read more before I post.... 

From allot of the posts, Many do not want a hot spare to be automatically migrated.

From my point of view I want it to be part of the array with some button that says to rebuild onto the new drive. (without stopping and starting the array or forcing a reboot).

 

As far as multiple arrays. I think it was decided via the roadmap to not do this.

Although P&Q parity is on the roadmap. Who knows when though.