June 10, 201313 yr Also, I've been reading about different PCIe standards here http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express As my board offers a PCIe x16 v1.0, and the card is a PCIe x8 v2.0, if, as I hope, it is backward compatible, it should give me 250MB transfer per hard disk. Am I right? Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2 The board is certainly backwards compatible, so yes, you'll have 250MB/disk available => i.e. you'll get 8 lanes of 250MB/s each in the x16 slot. If you really want to fill all 20 bays, I'd put a PCIe x1 controller in the x1 slot, but only connect 2 drives to it (that will give each 125MB/s bandwidth -- a bit of a bottleneck, but not too bad); then use two separate PCI cards with one drive on each.
June 10, 201313 yr By the way, don't forget to adjust the disk parameters to get maximum performance out of the SAS2LP-MV8 card. You may want to experiment a bit, but I'd suggest you simply set them to 1920/768/896 (total stripes; write limit; sync limit).
June 11, 201313 yr Author By the way, don't forget to adjust the disk parameters to get maximum performance out of the SAS2LP-MV8 card. You may want to experiment a bit, but I'd suggest you simply set them to 1920/768/896 (total stripes; write limit; sync limit). Thanks Garycase, where do I change the disk parameters for the card, in the bios, at bootup? Also I assume I don't have to perform the "Raid disable" check as this card should not have a Raid mode. The thread below is for the previous version of this card, and indicates that raid mode was introuced with a later firmware update. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=27129.0
June 11, 201313 yr By the way, don't forget to adjust the disk parameters to get maximum performance out of the SAS2LP-MV8 card. You may want to experiment a bit, but I'd suggest you simply set them to 1920/768/896 (total stripes; write limit; sync limit). Thanks Garycase, where do I change the disk parameters for the card, in the bios, at bootup? Also I assume I don't have to perform the "Raid disable" check as this card should not have a Raid mode. The thread below is for the previous version of this card, and indicates that raid mode was introuced with a later firmware update. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=27129.0 I don't know whether or not there are settings in the card you have to change => read one of the threads that discuss this card for that info. As for the tunable disk parameters => go to the Web GUI, Settings tab, and look under Disk Settings. The key parameter that needs to be adjusted for the performance issues with that card is md_sync_window, which I'd suggest you set to 896. You should also bump up the md_num_stripes so it is greater than the sum of the other two ... I'd suggest using 1920.
June 12, 201313 yr Author Thanks garycase, found it! Will test it once I receive and install the card.
June 21, 201313 yr Author Finally I got the expansion card, and I have good and bad news. The good. It works straight off the bat. The bad. Write speeds too the individual drives have not changed. I tested parity calculation, and it would take three days at 17MB/sec... Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
June 21, 201313 yr Looking at your signature, it seems you have this complement of drives: 1 4TB parity 1 2TB Samsung 2 2TB WD 9 500GB Seagates 1 320GB Seagate Is that correct? If so, your parity checks will be significantly slowed down by the 320GB drive and the 500GB drives. What kind of copy speeds do you get FROM one of your 2TB drives to an external PC over the network? [i assume it's a Gb network -- right?] Run a parity check, and watch the speed as it progresses (refresh the display every 30 minutes or so). Note in particular what happens to the speed when the check progresses past the 320GB point; and then again after it passes 500GB.
June 22, 201313 yr Author Copying a mkv file to my pc from the unraid tower reaches the dizzying height of 35MB/sec speed. Moving it then from one internal hard disk on my pc to another internal one reaches interestingly the same average speeds... They are sata hard drives too St3500 St3800 Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
June 22, 201313 yr Author Something is very wrong here. http://m.seagate.com/files/www-content/product-content/barracuda-fam/desktop-hdd/barracuda-7200-14/en-gb/docs/barracuda-desktop-hdd-ds-1770-1-1212gb.pdf According to this spec the drives should write at an average speed of 144MB/sec in my PC using Windows 7. I'm getting less than one fourth of the speed in my PC moving a file from one disk to another, both connected to Sata ports to my motherboards... forget about unraid being a problem..... Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
June 22, 201313 yr Are you using the latest release, 15a currently? It includes several improvements that may dramatically improve performance.
June 22, 201313 yr Copying a mkv file to my pc from the unraid tower reaches the dizzying height of 35MB/sec speed. Are you copying from one of the 2TB disks -- NOT from a share, but directly from the disk? Moving it then from one internal hard disk on my pc to another internal one reaches interestingly the same average speeds... This implies your PC isn't writing any faster than that ==> in which case the bottleneck may be the PC ... NOT your UnRAID server.
June 22, 201313 yr According to this spec the drives should write at an average speed of 144MB/sec in my PC using Windows 7. I'm getting less than one fourth of the speed in my PC moving a file from one disk to another, both connected to Sata ports to my motherboards... forget about unraid being a problem..... Is your PC using AHCI mode for the SATA ports? (Look in the BIOS)
June 24, 201313 yr Author Upgraded to the latest version of software, now states PARITY is WRONG, and is recalculating parity. In unmenu it says Status DISK_INVALID (rebuilding parity). Estimated speed using Simplefeatures started on 17.5MB/sec. When I switched to unmenu it rallied to 52MB/sec. I loaded simplefeatures, which registered the speed, when I clicked on refresh, it dropped immediately. It would appear that on my system having the SF window open has a negative impact on running a parity check. Finish: 927 minutes (15 hours) What can I say, I would settle for 52MB parity calculating speeds! PS: should I be worried about the DISK_INVALID message. It showed 3TB and 4TB for the same drive, but it is a 4TB...
June 24, 201313 yr Upgraded to the latest version of software, now states PARITY is WRONG, and is recalculating parity. In unmenu it says Status DISK_INVALID (rebuilding parity). Estimated speed using Simplefeatures started on 17.5MB/sec. When I switched to unmenu it rallied to 52MB/sec. I loaded simplefeatures, which registered the speed, when I clicked on refresh, it dropped immediately. It would appear that on my system having the SF window open has a negative impact on running a parity check. Finish: 927 minutes (15 hours) There is a known issue in that having the Simple Features GUI open during a parity check can badly degrade the speed of the parity check.
June 24, 201313 yr Author Now showing Total Size 2,930,288,516 KB Current 1,525,763,876 (52.1%) Speed 71,237 KB/sec Finish 327 minutes Sync Errors 0 (corrected)
June 24, 201313 yr Author ST4000DM000 is my parity, why does it say Total Size 2,930,288,516 KB Current 1,525,763,876 (52.1%)
June 25, 201313 yr ST4000DM000 is my parity, why does it say Total Size 2,930,288,516 KB Current 1,525,763,876 (52.1%) Your Promise cards do not support 4TB drives, same goes for your motherboard. Your best bet is to attach it to your SAS2LP-MV8 card. It should support 4TB depending on the firmware. It will need to be pre_cleared/partitioned/formated again after it is moved to the SAS card before you can use it so the partitions are corrected. Your array is vulnerable at this point since it involves your parity drive. From your syslog: Jun 24 10:16:12 Tower kernel: ata15: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) Jun 24 10:16:12 Tower kernel: ata15.00: HPA detected: current 5860577134, native 7814037168 Jun 24 10:16:12 Tower kernel: ata15.00: ATA-8: ST4000DM000-1F2168, Z3008G1J, CC51, max UDMA/133 Jun 24 10:16:12 Tower kernel: ata15.00: 5860577134 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA Jun 24 10:16:12 Tower kernel: sd 16:0:0:0: [sdg] 5860577134 512-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB) Jun 24 10:16:12 Tower kernel: sdg: unknown partition table Jun 24 10:16:37 Tower emhttp: ckmbr: open: /dev/sdg1 No such file or directory Jun 24 10:16:37 Tower kernel: md: import disk0: [8,96] (sdg) ST4000DM000-1F2168_Z3008G1J size: 2930288516
June 25, 201313 yr Author ... Your Promise cards do not support 4TB drives, same goes for your motherboard. Your best bet is to attach it to your SAS2LP-MV8 card. It should support 4TB depending on the firmware. It will need to be pre_cleared/partitioned/formated again after it is moved to the SAS card before you can use it so the partitions are corrected. Your array is vulnerable at this point since it involves your parity drive. .... I believe this is an issue with the latest version of unraid. Parity was recognised as a 4 TB drive when I was using version 5.0-rc12a. The problem only occurred when I upgraded to version rc15a. Unraid now things that it is a 3TB drive, and has created parity accordingly. As a matter of fact it has finished creating parity, and is telling me that all is well, all the disks are green, including parity. So I switched the parity drive to the SAS card, still green, still 3TB. Stopped the samba, unselected parity, rebooted, it automatically re-adds it and starts the samba. Swapped my key with the old 4.7 key, and this one does not appear to support the SAS card, as none of the drives connected to the card are now missing, and they don't appear in the drop down selection. Can I live with the system thinking that parity is 3TB? I can (no difference in the real world) but more importantly are my drives protected?
June 25, 201313 yr You can live with is this way until you try to add a 4T data disk. Pre-clear might fix the parity drives size.
June 25, 201313 yr Author Agreed, server is back on now. All is well in the land of unraid..... Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
June 27, 201313 yr Just as a idea dd-wrt can be set up in the way you want. Try to reflash your router to that and do the acess point setup. Warning reflashing csn brick your router but if you do it correctly you get what you wanted. Thornwood Sent from my YP-G70 using Tapatalk 2
June 27, 201313 yr Author Router is gone, I drilled holes and run gigabit lan Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
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