Hardware Compatibility Page (an other pages)

[prostuff1]

OK, for anyone that is interested I have done some reorganization of the Hardware Compatibility Page.  I mainly did this in the hope that the we will soon be able to have the table sortable.  The current Media Wiki version does not allow it but with an update from Tomm it would be possible.

 

Please feel free to criticize and make suggestions!!

 

If there is anything else that you all feel needs to be added please post it in this thread and I will get to it when I can, or add it to the wiki yourself.

 

 

 

I would also like to make this thread a general catch all for peoples input and suggestions for the wiki as a whole.  Voice your opinions, suggestions, and/or comments on stuff you would like.  I will try to get things added as time permits.

[RobJ]

Wow! That was a LOT of work, and a LOT of forum searching!  Personally I think we should throw it all out and start over ...  just kidding, just kidding!

[prostuff1]

Wow! That was a LOT of work, and a LOT of forum searching!  Personally I think we should throw it all out and start over ...  just kidding, just kidding!

 

Indeed it was a lot of searching.  I still want to do some more searching and try to add forum posts relating to each board in there respective place.  One of the hard parts was trying to separate things. More specifically the Northbridge/Southbdrige and NIC sections.  Like a said in my first post I was trying to separate stuff so that it would be more easily sortable if/when the wiki software is updated.

[SSD]

This is outstanding!  Thanks prostuff1.

 

I noticed a warning about the WD AAKS drives.  I have 2 of them - a 500G and a 750G.  They work fine.  Not sure where this came from, but based on my experience is not accurate.

[Biggy2872]

This is outstanding!  Thanks prostuff1.

 

I noticed a warning about the WD AAKS drives.  I have 2 of them - a 500G and a 750G.  They work fine.  Not sure where this came from, but based on my experience is not accurate.

 

i have two of the WD AAKS 640G, no problems here either.

 

Cheers.

Matt

[prostuff1]

I also have a couple of those drives and they are working fine.

 

I found this thread that talks about the problem.  There is also a part in there about it maybe being the controller card that the drives were hooked to.  I think I will leave that part in the wiki but put a link to that thread.

 

 

EDIT:  I have a question about the User Benchmarks Page.  I did some reorganizing of that and I am kinda wondering what the "+1" stands for beside some of them for the drive count.  If someone knows let me know as I want to add my info to page and want to get the format right.

[Romir]

EDIT:  I have a question about the User Benchmarks Page.  I did some reorganizing of that and I am kinda wondering what the "+1" stands for beside some of them for the drive count.  If someone knows let me know as I want to add my info to page and want to get the format right.

 

Most likey a cache drive is attached to those systems.

[PhilH]

I had a couple of WD AAKS 500 gig drives & had problems. If the drives were spun down & then they were accessed the system would crash. It was like the drives wouldn't spin up properly sometimes & would hang the server. I have since replaced these drives & the system lockups went away.

[prostuff1]

I did some reorganization to the User Benchmarks Page and tried to make it a little bit easier to understand.

 

If anyone had previously added information to that page please take a look at it and let me know if anything is out of place.  I know that separating some of the columns has made it so that some stuff needs to be specified a little better (i.e. if the cache drive is IDE or SATA, etc).

[RobJ]

I really appreciate all of the work you are putting into this.  I do have reservations though about the Cache drive column.  I know you added it to account for the +1 drives, but this particular benchmark does not involve the Cache drive at all, and it does not matter in the least whether it exists or not, or is an IDE or SATA drive.  If we were starting this table from scratch, it would be nice to specify that the first column is the number of drives in the array (parity and data drives only).  Extraneous info like the Cache drive column adds an importance to it, that may mislead new users into somehow relating parity performance with the Cache drive.  (Not that this is a big issue, feel free to ignore me!)

 

I think if I were starting this fresh, I would indicate only 2 columns for drive counts, the first for the total drives in the array (parity and data drives only), and the second for IDE drives, as they are becoming more and more scarce, and SATA drives have become the default.

 

Perhaps all we need are a couple of explanatory notes preceding the table.

 

If we do make that heading clearer, it would also be good to better specify the last column, the "Average Parity Check Speed".  I have noticed that some users may have thought it was for the fastest speed they saw, when it should have stated that it was for the overall average speed, as indicated in the syslog.  Perhaps we could split it into 2 columns, one for the syslog referenced average parity check speed, and a second column for additional notes, such as the varying speeds noticed.  But at this point, you have to work with what users have written, and I never like to alter or make assumptions about what others have reported.

 

For those who don't know where to find the speed in a syslog, either look for the highlighted line in the UnMENU Syslog plugin similar to the one below, or search for "md: sync done":

kernel: md: sync done. time=9665sec rate=50531K/sec

[prostuff1]

I really appreciate all of the work you are putting into this.  I do have reservations though about the Cache drive column.  I know you added it to account for the +1 drives, but this particular benchmark does not involve the Cache drive at all, and it does not matter in the least whether it exists or not, or is an IDE or SATA drive.  If we were starting this table from scratch, it would be nice to specify that the first column is the number of drives in the array (parity and data drives only).  Extraneous info like the Cache drive column adds an importance to it, that may mislead new users into somehow relating parity performance with the Cache drive.  (Not that this is a big issue, feel free to ignore me!)

 

I think if I were starting this fresh, I would indicate only 2 columns for drive counts, the first for the total drives in the array (parity and data drives only), and the second for IDE drives, as they are becoming more and more scarce, and SATA drives have become the default.

 

Perhaps all we need are a couple of explanatory notes preceding the table.

 

If we do make that heading clearer, it would also be good to better specify the last column, the "Average Parity Check Speed".  I have noticed that some users may have thought it was for the fastest speed they saw, when it should have stated that it was for the overall average speed, as indicated in the syslog.  Perhaps we could split it into 2 columns, one for the syslog referenced average parity check speed, and a second column for additional notes, such as the varying speeds noticed.  But at this point, you have to work with what users have written, and I never like to alter or make assumptions about what others have reported.

 

For those who don't know where to find the speed in a syslog, either look for the highlighted line in the UnMENU Syslog plugin similar to the one below, or search for "md: sync done":

kernel: md: sync done. time=9665sec rate=50531K/sec

 

I agree with everything that you have said.  I split the columns apart and then actually thought about what I had done (should have done it the other way around  ).  I will probably be removing the cache drive column because, like you said, it is not included in the calculations for parity speed and could confuse new unRAID users.  I will add some explanation for the Drive Count column that will hopefully make it easier to understand

[prostuff1]

Hello again everyone,

 

First I want to thank Tomm for the work he has done getting the MediaWiki software upgraded.  I believe he flipped the switch last night and got everything upgrade correctly.  If anyone sees some stuff that might be missing let me/him know and we can get it added back into the wiki.

 

Now for the fun stuff.  With the new version of MediaWiki we can now make sortable columns!!  I have gone ahead and made the necessary changes oon the Hardware Compatibility Page and the User_Benchmarks Page.  This should give you an idea on how it works and what this could allow us to do with tables in the future.

 

Now the "gotcha" in this is that the columns do not like to sort quite correctly is there is a combination of info in them.  A good example of this is on the User_Benchmarks Page.  I had to reformat a few things so that the "Smallest" and "Largest" columns would sort.  I could not get it to sort reliably with a disk specified as 1.5TB vs 160GB.  The sorting thought those were similar and caused problems.  Writing it 1.5 TB and 160 GB (notice the space) helped a little but was still not quite correct.  The only way I could get it to do it reliably was to remove the GB/TB ending and specify that the "Smallest" and "Largest" column were in GB's.  This has fixed the sorting problem but is not really what I wanted to do.  I am still new to this sorting thing so I will try to figure it out a little better and see if I can get it to work with the 1.5TB and 160GB values.

[cbr600ds2]

I hate to bring up a dead thread but I was wondering - running preclear probably wouldn't tell if I've got a defective system?  I've got an old 250 GB HD that I was going to throw in there for S&G's.