WHS v1 to unRaid to WHS 2011 + StableBit DrivePool & StableBit Scanner

[Trunkton]

I still have a Pro license and will be checking back periodically to see if 5 comes out of beta with further refinements. Reversing the data migration from partial unraid/whs v1 to WHS 2011 (7/12TB reiserfs data) took a couple days, however now I am all setup!

The mechanism of getting files off of ReiserFS to NTFS was either through network file transfer or using windows to format a disk, then rsync copying all data over for inclusion. I used LinuxMint and copied files with rsync (a better alternative to the 'cp' command when doing large file moves)

 

My current experience with unraid where needed has been negative despite my best efforts. Purchased WHS 2011 OEM for $60 + running StableBit's DrivePool add-in which has just come out of beta last week.

The good thing there is I could either move files into \\shares or straight to "E:" (pool share) without worrying about file sizes or filling single disks unknowingly then getting errors. Every night it balances the files across all drives so that none are full.

 

My posts:

(My short tut) Mount NTFS disks to copy data from with full character support - http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5904.msg169857#msg169857

(Self-resolved) 5b12 one drive full to capacity, can't access shares anymore - http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=19060.msg170247

The game-ender

If learning about setting the shares "Min allocation size" to 20GB early on it would've been better to stay with unraid. I got frustrated at the lack of support response and figured it was time to cut my losses

(Informational) Duplicate files by using /mnt/diskX instead of /mnt/user - http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=19162.msg171742

[dikkiedirk]

The game-ender

If learning about setting the shares "Min allocation size" to 20GB early on it would've been better to stay with unraid. I got frustrated at the lack of support response and figured it was time to cut my losses

(Informational) Duplicate files by using /mnt/diskX instead of /mnt/user - http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=19162.msg171742

 

Can you please explain what you mean by min allocation size? I like to learn.

[marcusone]

unRaid still has WHS beat IMO:

 

DrivePool:

If you choose to uninstall, you will need to move your data out of the pool prior to removing the add-in.

 

Still the best part of UnRaid for me; all drives can be removed at will and read on another system.

[emagsamurai]

I can understand the OP's frustration. I recently migrated from WHS v1 (as in I finally finished yesterday after 3+ weeks), and it has been painful. My experience has been that unRAID is NOT plug and play. I ran into issues at every step. UnRAID didn't like my motherboard, so I had to upgrade that right out of the gate. Having no experience with Linux, I had to depend entirely on the wiki and this forum for setting up my server. Even simple tasks like copying data from another hard drive are difficult if you're not familiar with the OS. The way unRAID distributes data is not as "smart" as I would have hoped either. Similar to the OP, I've had problems with drives filling to capacity despite having many other available drives in the array. Then there are hardware issues like adding hard drives causes my motherboard to change the boot order, which means I have to drag a monitor out to reset it. Formatting a flash drive properly was even an issue (I would have expected the OS to include a format routine considering this is a fairly common occurrence). There are a lot of loose ends in unRAID that could use some cleaning up to make it appealing to a larger audience. And considering a Pro license is roughly twice the cost of WHS, I would have expected a more polished product.

 

However, with all of that said, at this point I'm glad I stuck it out. There were several times when I was strongly considering going back to WHS, but I believe the added space that I will gain by using unRAID will be well worth the growing pains. And once I get the thing setup, I don't anticipate needing to "interface" with unRAID that often. Fortunately, the community here is great, and as long as you're patient, you can likely get the answers to any of your questions.

[Trunkton]

The game-ender

If learning about setting the shares "Min allocation size" to 20GB early on it would've been better to stay with unraid. I got frustrated at the lack of support response and figured it was time to cut my losses

(Informational) Duplicate files by using /mnt/diskX instead of /mnt/user - http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=19162.msg171742

 

Can you please explain what you mean by min allocation size? I like to learn.

 

See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=18977.0 & here for a more descriptive meaning http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Plugin/webGui/Share_Settings - It's actually called "Min Space" and without that setting one can fill up a disk and jam up the whole share from adding any more files. The value for 20GB is "20000000".