June 24, 201313 yr I'm toying with the idea of upgrading my unraid server to 3tb drives and the first thing I came across in the Wiki is this "Note that your disk controller must also support drives larger than 2.2TB. (many do, some do not)". So my question is, how can I tell if my disc controller will support these drives? (Please bear in mind that you are talking to a 59 year old carpenter with only just enough savvy to build an unraid server, and not a 20 something computer wizard). Many thanks
June 24, 201313 yr Easiest way would probably be to post a current system log and let the wizards here dissect it and tell you.
June 24, 201313 yr Easiest way would probably be to post a current system log and let the wizards here dissect it and tell you. it would also help if you list the motherboard make/model and that of any additional disk controller add-on cards you might have plugged into the server as well.
June 25, 201313 yr Author Ah OK. I thought there might be a really simple way to check. I can't lay my hands on the manuals for the motherboard and add on card so I'll have to dig around inside the case and get back.
June 25, 201313 yr Ah OK. I thought there might be a really simple way to check. I can't lay my hands on the manuals for the motherboard and add on card so I'll have to dig around inside the case and get back. There IS a very simple way to check: Buy ONE 3 or 4 TB drive and connect it to your system. Boot to your UnRAID system; STOP the array; and see what size the system shows for your unassigned disk. If it's the correct size, it supports them
June 25, 201313 yr Author @garycase. Thanks - I take it you are in market for a hardly used 3TB drive Ok so syslog attached (from a clean power down and re-start as the server had been running continuously for many months). Motherboard is an Asus M4A78L-M LE but with a Netgear GA311 Ethernet adaptor. There is also a generic SATA II 2 port PCI Express card. All I can find in the limited documentation is that it seems to use a Silicon Image SiL 3132 controller. Current Unraid version is 4.7 but I understand that I would need to change this to 5. something. Hope that helps. syslog.txt
June 25, 201313 yr @garycase. Thanks - I take it you are in market for a hardly used 3TB drive Ok so syslog attached (from a clean power down and re-start as the server had been running continuously for many months). Motherboard is an Asus M4A78L-M LE but with a Netgear GA311 Ethernet adaptor. There is also a generic SATA II 2 port PCI Express card. All I can find in the limited documentation is that it seems to use a Silicon Image SiL 3132 controller. Current Unraid version is 4.7 but I understand that I would need to change this to 5. something. Hope that helps. No, I have plenty of drives already It's simply the easiest way to absolutely confirm support. But both your motherboard and the Sil 3132 support > 2TB drives, so you're fine. All you need to do is update your UnRAID version to v5 (current version RC15a, but there will be an RC16 very soon, and v5.0 should be released very shortly thereafter).
June 25, 201313 yr Author Thanks for that. For my future reference, how can you tell that the motherboard and card will be fine? I tried Google but couldn't find that info anywhere. Was there a clue in the syslog?
June 25, 201313 yr Thanks for that. For my future reference, how can you tell that the motherboard and card will be fine? I tried Google but couldn't find that info anywhere. Was there a clue in the syslog? I found both with Google ... I just Googled "Sil 3132 with 3TB" and found a couple of references on other forums that noted support for large drives worked fine with the Sil chip; and then repeated that with the motherboard, and found a discussion about how you had to use GPT partition structures to use the full capacity of the 3TB drives the user had asked about -- clearly the 3TB drives were working if he had that problem
June 25, 201313 yr I believe the board can support it... http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M4A78LM_LE/#support_Knowledge_B2EED94B-A58D-05F5-0DAF-864FC6F34066 Silicone image should also support 3tb
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