hello all!  finished copying 20tb of data over to my brand new unraid server (phew)

 

i have an old ssd lying around... its 80gb.  i think it will work well for me as i would never typically download more than 80gb in one day...

 

do i need to preclear it?  i've recently cleared about 14 drives so i know what i'm doing and how to do it, but i know ssd's are built different than normal drives...is the preclear process identical (ie through screen?)  i expect it will likely take far less time due to its size and speed!

 

while i have your attention, i'm also not sure how to set it up... i assume i'll power down, install drive, power up, check drive label (ie sdX), then NOT assign it, but instead preclear it, then assign it to array in the 'cache' slot.

 

anything else to do?  anything to do with the mover script, do i need to define move locations or anything, or will it just 'work'?

 

PS should have mentioned but i'm on 5.12a

 

 

You do not have to preclear the drive for the cache slot. Preclearing only applies to data disks(array) and parity.

 

Also you don't have to define locations, when you download, specify the download folder as /mnt/user/Sharename as if you were putting the file into the array disk, and unraid will put it on the cache drive automatically, and the mover script will move it to the actual disk at 3:40 am.

 

I can't remember 100% but after adding the SSD, go to Settings and Share Settings to make sure that "Use Cache Drive" is set to "Yes" and that is also where you could configure the mover script to run daily, weekly or monthly, and change the time it would run.

There is no reason to pre-clear a SSD. Pre-clear is only for HDDs.

yeah sorry, I was thinking of preclear as unraid writing zero's and its special signature, not in the sense of JoeL's preclear script to stress test the hard drives. No reason for that.

You will degrade the drive for no reason. DO NOT DO IT!

Do not preclear SSD's.

I would preclear a mechanical cache drive just to make sure it is good, in this case, no.

 

I have a 120GB SSD cache drive. I have my mover set to every 2 hours. I am thinking about changing it to every 6 hours.

hi all, thanks for the advice

 

got my cache drive installed and setup in the cache slot

 

i have enabled the cache drive for each share

 

under settings, share settings, there is a mover settings area.  mover schedule says "40 3***"  in my reading i think this means 3:40 am every day?  i really want to make sure it will move every single day... does this setting look correct?  does teh 40 mean 40 minutes?  why the 3***?  i'd like to understand these in case i want to change them later... i may want the move more frequent

 

hi all, thanks for the advice

 

got my cache drive installed and setup in the cache slot

 

i have enabled the cache drive for each share

 

under settings, share settings, there is a mover settings area.  mover schedule says "40 3***"  in my reading i think this means 3:40 am every day?  i really want to make sure it will move every single day... does this setting look correct?  does teh 40 mean 40 minutes?  why the 3***?  i'd like to understand these in case i want to change them later... i may want the move more frequent

google "man crontab"

got it

 

This is how a cron job is laid out:

 

minute (0-59), hour (0-23, 0 = midnight), day (1-31), month (1-12), weekday (0-6, 0 = Sunday), command

ok sorry one more q...

 

i have it installed, and set all of my shares to use the cache drive.  i can't tell yet if its actually being used though!

 

i have downloaded a few things, but they seem to be going direct to the folders, not into the cache?  when i look at the main web page, and then use the folder view for the cache drive, there are no items in it... i expected there to be my files in there, until 3:40 when they get moved to their proper destination...am i misinterpretting how this is supposed to work?

 

When you download make sure they are set to download to /mnt/user/sharename and not /mnt/disk#/

 

You can try using MC and just copy a file from your flash to a share, I'd make a blank text file on the root of the flash drive, log into telnet and type

 

cp /boot/test.txt /mnt/user/Movies

 

Obviously replacing the share name with whatever you have.

 

Then you can do this:

 

ls /mnt/cache/sharename/

 

that will show if it transferred or not, if the folder cannot be found then its not using the cache drive. You can alternatively go through the webgui like you did before to browse the cache drive.

 

You are correct in your interpretation, anything saved to a share will instead be saved to the cache drive until 3:40 am when they are moved to their destination.

hmmm well this may be a part of my problem.  currently i have a share called 'Media' however SAB is set to extract movies to 'HD Movies' which is a folder within the share "Media"

 

In order to have SAB utilize the cache, do i have to make "HD MOvies' a share, and not just its parent folder 'Media'? 

 

i can do this, but it does create a bit of a problem for me... i have a second share called 'Stuff to burn' which contains about 15 folders which are 'books to burn' 'music to burn' 'pics to burn' etc.  i'd rather not have shares for each and every folder just to use the cache drive...

 

maybe i'm misunderstanding how this works?  any advice?

No, you don't have to make HD Movies a share, as long as the path is in a share it will work fine.

 

For example:

I have stuff downloading to /mnt/user/Movies/HD Movies/Movie Name/Movie.avi

 

Those items get placed on the cache drive in a folder replicating the share path, so:

 

/mnt/cache/Movies/HD Movies/Movie Name/Movie.avi

 

at 3:40 AM it will be moved to the share.

When you download make sure they are set to download to /mnt/user/sharename and not /mnt/disk#/

 

You can try using MC and just copy a file from your flash to a share, I'd make a blank text file on the root of the flash drive, log into telnet and type

 

cp /boot/test.txt /mnt/user/Movies

 

Obviously replacing the share name with whatever you have.

 

Then you can do this:

 

ls /mnt/cache/sharename/

 

that will show if it transferred or not, if the folder cannot be found then its not using the cache drive. You can alternatively go through the webgui like you did before to browse the cache drive.

 

You are correct in your interpretation, anything saved to a share will instead be saved to the cache drive until 3:40 am when they are moved to their destination.

 

hi, sorry to be so thick but can't get this to work... when i open putty, then login using root, then do i enter the command?

 

i get the error cp: cannot stat '/boot/test.txt': No such file or directory

 

any advice?

did you create the file test.txt on the root of the flash drive? It just needs to be something for you to test and make sure the cache drive is working right.

 

But yes you enter the command after logging in through putty.

did you create the file test.txt on the root of the flash drive? It just needs to be something for you to test and make sure the cache drive is working right.

 

But yes you enter the command after logging in through putty.

 

oops sorry no i thought the command created the file.  so tried what you suggested and it worked, i can see the file, thanks!  it seems to be working now!

 

after adding the cache, changing the shares to use cache, i never rebooted the server...  i just did this 30 min ago and the cache seems to be being used now!

 

Good to hear, can't remember if I rebooted my server or not...actually I did because when I added my cache drive I was in the process of moving the server to its new home.

 

For future reference, from the command line if you want to create a file you would do:

 

touch test.txt

 

cp is CoPy, 

 

I'm starting to get the hang of this, I've been around command lines and shells plenty, but never have done it consistently so I usually forget commands