Every 6th or 7th Folder transfer fails!!

[Jetjockey]

Morning. Now I have a real strange problem and don't know where to start.

 

Tried transferring all my movies to the Unraid server yesterday. Have done it before after trying different drives. I have now settled on 3 x 3TB WD Reds.

Have used them before (the exact drives) so just swapped them back into the machine. Pre-clearing and parity checking all done by the book.

 

The transfer fails on every sixth movie (folder). A window appears on the donor machine (Win 7) saying "Cannot connect to Tower, check network connections".

In the same error box it names the folder being transferred during the failure, and says " Try again, Skip, Cancel". Try again gets you nowhere and keeps displaying the same message despite me ensuring that Network is fine. Skip restarts the transfer but on the next folder. Cancel stops everything.

 

I have changed the router, disconnected any switches, checked cables, etc. I now have a system setup with my main Win 7 PC and the Unraid Tower down in my workshop, and another Win 7 PC upstairs in the house. All transfers between the two Win 7 PC's go like clockwork no matter which way. Any attempt to transfer a large amount of files from EITHER Win 7 PC to the Unraid Tower experiences the same problem with the "Cannot connect to Tower, check Network Connection" message box on the Win 7 machine after every 6th or maybe 7th folder. 

 

Dunno what to make of this, cant say I noticed or experienced this during trial Unraid hardware builds in the past week? The network card (Intel) is built into the motherboard and that has not changed? You can almost set your watch to it. The only clue I can find is that the Command line instruction "ifconfig eth0" is showing  maybe 280 dropped packets or bits during a typical 55GB transfer. 

 

Anybody got any ideas? Thanks.

[SSD]

You've omitted something very important from your post. If you had included it the mystery might be solved quickly. Please include it! The stickies may help you figure out what it is.

[Jetjockey]

Hello bjp999.

 

Errrr, im afraid you have me there. Didn't have time to study the stickies, I'm studying for a Simulator detail tomorrow.

 

More Info.

 

I am using the latest 64 bit build of Unraid, btw I used and formated a fresh USB stick (clean Install) and booted from that.

No difference.

 

I am using the free version of Unraid with only 3 drives.

 

I have now removed the 64GB of Corsair memory from the Motherboard slots and have fitted a single 4GB module and rebooted again.

 

The machines are now half way through a second major file transfer without incident. The first transfer from a Win 7 PC to the Unraid Tower and the second back the other way. Not sure what to make of it at the moment. Quite how the memory would make a difference I dont know but nothing else has changed. All cabling and router and switchs are untouched.

 

Im keeping my fingers crossed on this second file transfer which is going like a train. Previous reboots and a new USB Boot device did not cure the problem so I know its not that.

 

Thanks.

[BobPhoenix]

Post a Syslog that has entries from before, during and after a transfer that fails and one that doesn't is what I believe is being requested here.

[eroz]

Here is a link to the sticky on how to get your syslog.

[trurl]

I have now removed the 64GB of Corsair memory from the Motherboard slots and have fitted a single 4GB module and rebooted again.

 

The machines are now half way through a second major file transfer without incident. The first transfer from a Win 7 PC to the Unraid Tower and the second back the other way. Not sure what to make of it at the moment. Quite how the memory would make a difference I dont know but nothing else has changed. All cabling and router and switchs are untouched.

Have you actually done a memory test? Any system must have exactly zero memory errors to be considered stable.

[superloopy]

Strangely coincidental .... my system has started to display this exact same message since yesterday!

 

It's obviously not a network problem as i can connect to 'other' drives within the system, so it must be down to an individual drive in my case 'disk2'.

 

At the time it happened i put it down to space getting tight as i'm nearly at the end of a 4TB drive, 130GB freespace.

 

This morning ... after PC end of things rebooted alls ok a the moment and space is slooooowwwwwwwllllyyyy being filled. I've no idea why my transfers at the tail end of this disk are so slow, down into the 600bytes/sec figures but the transfers do complete and checksum out ok.

 

I'e not really looked any further as the disk is almost complete ... as i say, strangely coincidental.

[Jetjockey]

Just a quick update.

 

Didn't get a chance to do a memory test, but I did swap out the 4 x 8GB sticks and refitted a single 4GB stick at first and then a single 8Gb stick.

 

The file transfers have all completed without incident since I did this. Very strange!

 

The 4 x 8GB sticks were actually a quad channel 32GB set so should not have presented any problem. They were Corsair Vengeance Pro 1600.

 

Anyway, just doing a rebuild and pre clearing 2 x 160GB drives to use in the build together with a 500GB parity drive.

Lets see how that performs when its up and running.

 

At the moment I am just trying to make sure that Unraid is a stable and robust system before I go spending money on a 2 pack pro licence.

 

Any happy customers here?

 

Thanks. 

[lonix]

Yes there is quite alot Of happy customers here in fact most are glad to see your system shapeing up. You should do a memtest on that 32gb kit

 

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

 

[Jetjockey]

I think your correct. when the pre clears are all finished I will pop in the memory and run the test.

 

It was a strange one, you could almost set your watch to when the transfer would fail. Very odd.

 

just a quick question. I know that all the documentation says that Unraid can run on 1GB of memory, whereas FreeNas seems to want 16GB! is 1GB a realistic figure for Unraid? Does anybody have any experience in this area? I have a known good 4GB stick and 8GB stick laying about. Just wondering which one to use?

 

Thanks. 

[Moussa]

FreeNAS uses the ZFS filesystem, and for optimum performance and data safety, people generally recommend a GB of ECC RAM for every 1TB of data you're protecting.

 

unRAID is a very different beast and uses very little RAM. If you're doing nothing more on the server than running unRAID then 1GB of RAM is more than enough.