October 3, 200619 yr Gotta admit first... I am new to Unraid (been playing with it for about a week)... Had Dell SC420 running Windows Server 2K3 with 3 Sata 200 Gs with Software Raid 5. I use it for my data backup and some media stuff. The server only has an uptime of 25%. Came across UnRaid in avsforums. Sounded like a prefect solution for me (given all the flexiblity)... esp. being able to expand array without destroying exisiting data. Converted my file server to Unraid... came up like a champ... all drives were green. I then started copying all the files over. I use a file synchronization software (that way i dont have to start the copy process all over, if it stops)... But it never finishes all the files. It just stops in 1/2 way in the middle. The web interface shows array is up but exploring \\tower\disk1 or 2 doesnt respond. I am curious if this is just a media server solution where the data loss is not as critical. Though from everything i have read, UnRaid is more recoverable than your regular raid 5 system... SO WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT FOR CRITICAL DATA BACKUP (performance is not that big an issue)... OR SHOULD I WAIT FOR SOME MORE IMPROVEMENTS. Any comments will be appreciated.
October 3, 200619 yr I am using beta 4 and so far I could replicate the stopping data transfer - tower not connecting (even with telnet) issue. It happened twice so far. The first time I did not connect a screen to unraid to see if the actual server was frozen, I just rebooted. Will try tonight to see if that is the case (my unraid disconnected whilst I was at work this morning).
October 3, 200619 yr xbox4bob, I have been using the unRaid O/S since the beginning. I have the recommended Intel micro ATX motherboard and Promise controller cards. I am also using the recommended Sandisk 512MB Flash Drive. I am presently running beta2 as I am unsure about the stability of beta4. I have ripped all of my DVDs to one of my unRaid servers and have yet to have a problem accessing or writing to my no. 1 server. I use XBMC and Meedio to access my unRaid server and never have a problem having the drives spin up within 10-15 sec when they are spun down. I also have not had any substantial problems with the server parity checks that I run about once a month. Hope this helps. Regards, TCIII
October 3, 200619 yr Gotta admit first... I am new to Unraid (been playing with it for about a week)... Had Dell SC420 running Windows Server 2K3 with 3 Sata 200 Gs with Software Raid 5. I use it for my data backup and some media stuff. The server only has an uptime of 25%. Came across UnRaid in avsforums. Sounded like a prefect solution for me (given all the flexiblity)... esp. being able to expand array without destroying exisiting data. Converted my file server to Unraid... came up like a champ... all drives were green. I then started copying all the files over. I use a file synchronization software (that way i dont have to start the copy process all over, if it stops)... But it never finishes all the files. It just stops in 1/2 way in the middle. The web interface shows array is up but exploring \\tower\disk1 or 2 doesnt respond. I am curious if this is just a media server solution where the data loss is not as critical. Though from everything i have read, UnRaid is more recoverable than your regular raid 5 system... SO WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT FOR CRITICAL DATA BACKUP (performance is not that big an issue)... OR SHOULD I WAIT FOR SOME MORE IMPROVEMENTS. Any comments will be appreciated. Please let me know the motherboard model, hard drives, and how they are connected (ie, to m/b controller and/or PCI controller, etc.). Thanks.
October 3, 200619 yr Well.... so far as I know I'm one of the first users to actually LOSE data with the unRAID. Mind you I have been using the software since some of the very first versions and have the recommended motherboard and Promise drives. I am also one of the few (and I think first) users to have had a flash drive go bad under the previous version of the software. My thoughts are as follows: Tom has been pretty responsive. Yes there have been times when he's disappeared for a bit but he has never taken off with anyone's money that I'm aware of and when I've run into problems - and I've had a couple - Tom has been as helpful as can be expected. When my Flash media went bad Tom had one overnighted to me no questions asked. During this most recent problem Tom was fairly responsive despite the weekend and I think both he and I learned a bit. I to be a bit more paranoid and he to perhaps add some features to help prevent my situation from occuring again. Bear in mind this is still Beta software. Pretty stable in my experience so far but still being tweaked. Tom is pretty responsive to suggestions, seldom has he taken the I'm right so like it or leave it stance and if you suggest something that will benefit more than just you he's willing to listen. I use my array to store my ripped DVDs, my MP3s (I'll be MAD if I ever lose those!), downloaded files\torrents, and backups for the rest of my network - about 4 other machines including the woman's which is about as important to her as my MP3s! As for my data loss... This was some sort of software glitch or a stray bit that tweaked a drive I wasn't working with at the time. It occured during a drive expansion and SHOULD have been recoverable completely since paity and good data for all but one drive existed. However in the end the situation went from bad to worse and I wound up with a dreaded "double failure" - two disks with bad data. That means data loss with this system, a known fact. Of note - had this been a standard RAID5 (as if I could've had so many dissimiliar disks) I'd have lost it all. In my case "all" approaches 4TB worth of data. I don't like striped data for a reason and that's the biggest reason of all. Suffer a multiple failure with this system and the data you lose is just those disks. You can get crazy with other systems to prevent this but you'll be burning up disk space on redundancy instead of data and that's expensive - don't forget power to all of the disks including redundant drives anytime you want to access data. Would I store "mission critical" data only on an unRAID? Data that was priceless and couldn't ever be retrieved? No nor would I store it on any other RAID solution! RAID isn't backup even in business (or shouldn't be!). If you want backup then do redundant things like tape or optical and recognize the threat of water, fire, and power surges (600volts hit some homes not far from me the other day!). Truly priceless data shouldn't be stored in just one place period. So, tonight I'm going to swap in larger drives for the two that went Blooey! It was a software error but I wanted to swap in larger drives anyway and it's not like I'll be rebuilding data on these drives <ahem> Note that I'll be building a second array here soon that will use drives "overflowed" from my existing array as I upgrade it. I will continue to load data onto this array and I will hope that Tom gives us some additional control so that my previous situation can be avoided or at least recovered from more easily. I do have an offline backup of my MP3s but it's older so I'll be backing it up again soon! I guess the bottom line is that yeah I trust this software setup and I also recognize the limitations. It works GREAT for streaming video and music and storing my data pretty securely. However realize that nothing is perfect and that you'll always want for more performance... P.S. I am seeing decent stability from Beta4 - no lockups. All of version 3 has been faster than the previous version1 & 2.
October 4, 200619 yr Author Gnoll... thnks for the link. Blkmgk... Thanks for your reply. That was very comprehensive. Very helpful. Tom: First off ... very excited about UnRaid... this could be a huge... have all my colleagues looking into it. Server : Dell SC420 My Motherboard is : E7221 chipset, probably Intel OEM with 2 onboard SATA ports. Promise Sata 2 port PCI card (came with one of my maxtor sata's) 2 Western Digitals 200 GBs connected to Onboard Sata 1 Maxtor 200GB Sata connected to PCI card (This is my parity drive) And I get around 10mb/sec parity sync. Lemme know if you have any suggestions... Bobby
October 4, 200619 yr If possible please email to me the system log. Instructions for obtaining the log can be found here. Thanks!
October 5, 200619 yr I feel pretty confident about the system the way we use it. I have had one unraid server running for a while now as a personal business backup, and am now putting one into our church network (when it gets here). But it is not setup as a massive single storage device. I have multiple drives with the same data on them... or different dates/versions of the same data. For our photography business (and personal photos), we have parity as a backup to any single drive failure, two current backups (of our main workstation/server which has raid 1 drives) of all the photos, and more drives acting as time snapshots with older backups. Fortunately, I haven't had any failures... except for the USB drive, which Tom replaced soon after I emailed about the issue. But I HAVE been able to go back and find old pictures that I deleted... and old versions of business documents that I saved over. I know that it would be cheaper to use actual backup files, rather than duplicating the contents of our data drives... but it's just a lot easier browsing to an old file on a different drive than it is to open up a program and decide to restore a file or two.
October 15, 200619 yr Author Ok, I built another box Dell SC430 which has 4 sata controller right on the motherboard... put 3 drives in... initialized array... and check this out (and this is after 11 hours of parity synching already elapsed... thats 855 more minures... almost 15 hours... WHAT GIVES... Total size: 199,148,512 KB Current position: 77,952,256 (39.1%) Estimated speed: 2,360 KB/sec Estimated finish: 855.6 minutes Also.. i used to work with Unix (HP Flavor)... reason i say that... i would like to know if there is some kindov guide to the syslogs... so that i can parse them for information myself.
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