Hello, hello. Just building my first unRaid box... under duress you might say I had been planning on doing this for a while, so last week I pulled together some spare parts to set up a box to experiment with.  I currently have a WHS setup with 18TB spinning for our video server (been converting a 30 year collection of stuff to digital, DVD, VHS, BETA, Blu, etc...) that is the backend to soe XMBC setups, and it's been bugging me that the only 'backup' was scattered drives all over.. never had a problem with it (remember that) but finally decided to take the jump.. albeit slowly...

 

what I had in the closet...

 

M'board M5A78L-M LX

CPU AMD Athlon II X3 455 (which the M'Board unlocked to a Phenom II X4 B55, runs solid so no worries there)

8GB Ram in two 4GB sticks, on the QVL for the board

CoolerMaster SilentProM 700w Power Supply

 

since this would end up being a 10 drive box (for now) I picked up a Maxtop ICX-4889B-20 4U rack case on Amazon for $69 on Amazon.

 

SansDisk Cruzer Edge 8GB for the flash (was $5 at BestBuy at Xmas, I bought a handful)

 

for drives.. went down to CompUSA (still one here) and they had the Hitachi 2k3000, 2tb drives for $119.. POUNCE (haven't see drives that cheap in months) so got 3 of them

unRaid 4.71, added unMenu and supporting players.

 

Ran pre-clear on each drive 2 passes, all zeroes after each (that was a fun week).

 

Ok, got it up and running, all looked good, so I started to copy some of my shows/movies over to the unRAID..... (points back up to 'remember that')

 

Started to get some weird errors, files that would not copy over, they get so far then either hang, or give an 'unable to access the file' message.

 

Oh. Crap. Not a peep out of the WHS box, no errors, all drives show healthy.. and of COURSE I can't tell which drive(s) are giving me errors (rassen frassen drive extender). Sooooooo.... this goes from being an experimental setup to something to save my bacon.

 

Have copied over 4tb so far, so it's add-a-drive(s) time.. Ran back to the store and got two more of the Hitachis and are spinning and and pre-clearing (not ordered the key yet). As I get drives freed up from the WHS, (Hitachi, WD EADS/EARS and one Samsung) I'll migrate them in... and before I get deep in things, a few questions...

 

#1 any issue with the equipment I'm using? The CPU/Ram may be overkill.. but it's what I had. I have been reading and seeing that there is/may be some issue on the G'Bit lan on the m'board. If it's an issue, any suggestions on a PCI-e G'Bit card? (SysInfo shows it as RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller)

 

#2 the board has 6 sata ports, but I'll need a few more.. I have an bog standard PCI 4 Post SATA card now, SiI3114 non Raid. Would a PCIe card be better? Suggestions?

 

#3 Stay with the 4.71 or take a leap of faith to 5.x? Which release would be the most stable for this setup (after moving things over, 95% reading, little writing except when adding things). I know it takes 5.x to handle 3tb+ drives. Not there. Yet.

 

#4 when adding a drive, do I need to re-check parity after I bring it online or will it do it for me?

 

#5 is that a decent USB Stick? Any better suggestions? What if my stick goes belly up after I buy the key?

 

#6 if I eventually migrate this up to 3tb drives, I may not need another cabinet.. but if I do, I see I could buy two keys at once. Is there a price break if I need another on in a reasonable time frame (month? 3 months?) This project is being overseen by she-who-must-be-kept-happy Already bought 5 drives so... finances must be considered

 

#7 the Hitachis are not advanced format, the WD EARS are. I didn't pre-clear the 1st batch to 4-K align. For the WD EARS, 4-K align or not? Mixed environment work ok in unRAID?

 

#8 if for some reason I have to change out hardware, m'board, G'Bit card, Sata card, will I have to start over or will UnRaid adjust when I reboot with changed eq? (Already found out what happens if you put the drives back in wrong after adding drives... GENTLY power down and re-arrange the cables)

 

#9 any words of wisdom, encouragement, warning would be gratefully appreciated

 

 

#1 any issue with the equipment I'm using? The CPU/Ram may be overkill.. but it's what I had. I have been reading and seeing that there is/may be some issue on the G'Bit lan on the m'board. If it's an issue, any suggestions on a PCI-e G'Bit card? (SysInfo shows it as RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller)

Sometimes there are issues with the RTL cards - you can get an Intel based one if you have enough expansions slots, but if its working, leave it alone.

 

#2 the board has 6 sata ports, but I'll need a few more.. I have an bog standard PCI 4 Post SATA card now, SiI3114 non Raid. Would a PCIe card be better? Suggestions?

That should be fine - may not be the fastest, but really even the large SAS controllers aren't going to get great speeds writing to the protected array (just the way unRaid works, avg write to array is 30ish MB/s)

 

#3 Stay with the 4.71 or take a leap of faith to 5.x? Which release would be the most stable for this setup (after moving things over, 95% reading, little writing except when adding things). I know it takes 5.x to handle 3tb+ drives. Not there. Yet.

Stay on 4.7 if you are using as backup.  5 should be final in a few months with luck.  Right now the only reason I would switch is for the LSI SAS support in 5b12a.

 

#4 when adding a drive, do I need to re-check parity after I bring it online or will it do it for me?

Not if you pre-clear the drive.

 

 

#5 is that a decent USB Stick? Any better suggestions? What if my stick goes belly up after I buy the key?

should be fine - or you can get the Kingston G2lite card reader like some of us have.

 

 

#6 if I eventually migrate this up to 3tb drives, I may not need another cabinet.. but if I do, I see I could buy two keys at once. Is there a price break if I need another on in a reasonable time frame (month? 3 months?) This project is being overseen by she-who-must-be-kept-happy Already bought 5 drives so... finances must be considered

just buy both at the same time - not a bad idea to have a backup and its much cheaper that way.

 

#7 the Hitachis are not advanced format, the WD EARS are. I didn't pre-clear the 1st batch to 4-K align. For the WD EARS, 4-K align or not? Mixed environment work ok in unRAID?

Mixed works fine.  But I've started doing 4-K to all new drives (EARS or not).

 

#8 if for some reason I have to change out hardware, m'board, G'Bit card, Sata card, will I have to start over or will UnRaid adjust when I reboot with changed eq? (Already found out what happens if you put the drives back in wrong after adding drives... GENTLY power down and re-arrange the cables)

Should be fine, unraid should tell you what drive it is expecting in what slot.  in v5 I believe its even less of an issue.  the beauty of unraid!

 

#9 any words of wisdom, encouragement, warning would be gratefully appreciated

 

Stay away from Windows for a backup solution (expect if using the integrated Windows Desktop backup, about all that WHS is useful for IMHO )

 

Otherwise, unraid works great as a media center backup/streamer.

Quote

 

   

#2 the board has 6 sata ports, but I'll need a few more.. I have an bog standard PCI 4 Post SATA card now, SiI3114 non Raid. Would a PCIe card be better? Suggestions?

 

That should be fine - may not be the fastest, but really even the large SAS controllers aren't going to get great speeds writing to the protected array (just the way unRaid works, avg write to array is 30ish MB/s)

 

If you place 6 drives on the MB and 4 drives on the PCI bus, parity check/drive rebuild times will increase from ~7 hours to 20+. Use the PCIe bus if at all possible.

Quote

 

   

#2 the board has 6 sata ports, but I'll need a few more.. I have an bog standard PCI 4 Post SATA card now, SiI3114 non Raid. Would a PCIe card be better? Suggestions?

 

That should be fine - may not be the fastest, but really even the large SAS controllers aren't going to get great speeds writing to the protected array (just the way unRaid works, avg write to array is 30ish MB/s)

 

If you place 6 drives on the MB and 4 drives on the PCI bus, parity check/drive rebuild times will increase from ~7 hours to 20+. Use the PCIe bus if at all possible.

 

Not sure about 4 drives, but for 2 drives it doesn't matter (remember, each drive only needs to be read at about 30MB/s, PCI buss has 127MB/s available, so with 4 you may see a little bit of a slow down.

 

But i've had 2 on mine and it didn't slow it down at all.

Not sure about 4 drives, but for 2 drives it doesn't matter (remember, each drive only needs to be read at about 30MB/s, PCI buss has 127MB/s available, so with 4 you may see a little bit of a slow down.

 

If parity check/drive rebuild happens at 127MB/s shared by 4 drives then 17.5 hours for a 2T. array. In practice you will not quite be able to get those speeds. I would recommend using the 2 PCIe x1 slots for two cards with two ports each for less than $9 each shipped from ebay.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-PCIE-RAID-Express-Card-2-Port-SATA-Controller-/150719596527?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23179687ef

#6 if I eventually migrate this up to 3tb drives, I may not need another cabinet.. but if I do, I see I could buy two keys at once. Is there a price break if I need another on in a reasonable time frame (month? 3 months?)

I think you can pay for both licenses up front, and only assign one USB stick for now. That's what I did a few years ago. I paid for a Pro two pack, assigned one immediately, then emailed Tom the second stick's ID several months later.

#2 the board has 6 sata ports, but I'll need a few more.. I have an bog standard PCI 4 Post SATA card now, SiI3114 non Raid. Would a PCIe card be better? Suggestions?

UnRAID reads all disks concurrently during parity build, parity check, failed disk emulation, and disk rebuild. The PCI card will slow all of these operations. A parity check will take 4 times as long perhaps longer than 24 hours.

#4 when adding a drive, do I need to re-check parity after I bring it online or will it do it for me?

unRAID will not do this. It is a good idea and you should.

 

#5 is that a decent USB Stick? Any better suggestions? What if my stick goes belly up after I buy the key?

Lime Tech has been helpful issuing replacement keys for failed flash drives.

 

#6 if I eventually migrate this up to 3tb drives, I may not need another cabinet.. but if I do, I see I could buy two keys at once. Is there a price break if I need another on in a reasonable time frame (month? 3 months?) This project is being overseen by she-who-must-be-kept-happy Already bought 5 drives so... finances must be considered

There is no function on the Lime Tech retail site to allow this.

 

#7 the Hitachis are not advanced format, the WD EARS are. I didn't pre-clear the 1st batch to 4-K align. For the WD EARS, 4-K align or not? Mixed environment work ok in unRAID?

Mixed is fine. In the future format all drives as 4K-aligned. It works just as well for both drive types.

 

#8 if for some reason I have to change out hardware, m'board, G'Bit card, Sata card, will I have to start over or will UnRaid adjust when I reboot with changed eq? (Already found out what happens if you put the drives back in wrong after adding drives... GENTLY power down and re-arrange the cables)

No. Moving the flash and HDDs to a new platform is not difficult.

 

#9 any words of wisdom, encouragement, warning would be gratefully appreciated

Don't take shortcuts. Use the safest procedures even if they may take longer.

#1 any issue with the equipment I'm using? The CPU/Ram may be overkill.. but it's what I had. I have been reading and seeing that there is/may be some issue on the G'Bit lan on the m'board. If it's an issue, any suggestions on a PCI-e G'Bit card? (SysInfo shows it as RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller)

If you do have problems with the network chip get an Intel PCI network card, save the PCIe slots for SATAs.

 

Agree with staying away from PCI and 4 SATAs, too much of a slow down.

 

Otherwise all the above sounds good.

 

Josh

Thanks for all the comments. I'm picking up the Intel NIC tonight, ordering the pci-e SATA cards and got a Cruzer Fit stick (heh, stick, the USB plug is bigger than the drive, it's a wart, but won't stick out of the board so much, I'm paranoid on that, afraid it will get broken off). Only 2 more drives to clear then I can get started moving over in earnest

(heh, stick, the USB plug is bigger than the drive, it's a wart, but won't stick out of the board so much, I'm paranoid on that, afraid it will get broken off).

 

You could always mount it internally with a product similar to this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815201028