Hi guys.  I'm not too technical and hopefully someone will save me hours of research.  I have the original Lime Technology setup with IDE cards.  Lately, I've noticed I can buy a 1TB SATA drive for only $10 more than the 500GB IDE drive.  So, I need to bite the bullet and more over to SATA.  I'm running version 4.4.2 of the server software.  A few questions:

 

Can I easily run a mixed SATA/IDE environment?

If so, can you recommend a specific SATA internal card (since the old MB does not included SATA on the board)?

Any other recommendations or cautions?

 

Thanks much.

Hi guys.  I'm not too technical and hopefully someone will save me hours of research.  I have the original Lime Technology setup with IDE cards.  Lately, I've noticed I can buy a 1TB SATA drive for only $10 more than the 500GB IDE drive.  So, I need to bite the bullet and more over to SATA.  I'm running version 4.4.2 of the server software.  A few questions:

 

Can I easily run a mixed SATA/IDE environment?

If so, can you recommend a specific SATA internal card (since the old MB does not included SATA on the board)?

Any other recommendations or cautions?

 

Thanks much.

 

You can easily match IDE & SATA drives. Your biggest issue will be the bottleneck of the PCI bus during parity checks, which is only really a time issue. The attached link is a 4 port PCI SATA controller for less than $18.00 before shipping:

 

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=2667&seq=1&format=2

Hi guys.  I'm not too technical and hopefully someone will save me hours of research.  I have the original Lime Technology setup with IDE cards.  Lately, I've noticed I can buy a 1TB SATA drive for only $10 more than the 500GB IDE drive.  So, I need to bite the bullet and more over to SATA.  I'm running version 4.4.2 of the server software.  A few questions:

 

Can I easily run a mixed SATA/IDE environment?

If so, can you recommend a specific SATA internal card (since the old MB does not included SATA on the board)?

Any other recommendations or cautions?

 

Thanks much.

I know my original Intel D865GLCLK Motherboard has 2 SATA ports, and they work just fine.  If you have the same MB, odds are you just need a cable or two to get going.  With any luck, you'll just need a cable or two.

 

In any case, I've also used inexpensive no-name Silicon-Image based 2-port PCI SATA and 4-port PCI SATA expansion cards on that server.  They too work just fine.  As another possibility,  I've even used IDE-to-SATA converters to plug into the back of an SATA drive and hook it to an IDE cable.  They worked too.  I'm currently using a mixed array exactly as you are describing. 

 

I ended up replacing the original parity drive and one data drive with SATA in my array. (I put 1 TB drives in both) and with 8 other IDE drives I get parity check speeds that about 16-17MB/s.

 

Basically, I installed the new drives then (one at a time) I stopped the array, un-assigned the old drive, then assigned the new larger drive.  I did the parity drive first, let it build parity on the new drive, then stopped the array once more and did the same with the smallest/oldest of my data drives. All I needed to do was un-assign the old drive on the devices page, and assign the new, and then press "Start." 

 

When I was done, I had freed up an old 250Gig drive, and had a new SATA 1TB parity drive, and a new 1TB SATA data drive online, with 750Gig of additional space.

 

Joe L.

I'm currently working with a 1TB SATA, a 400GB SATA and a 250GB IDE just to see how badly I can screw things up and so far everything works.

 

I was nervous about mixing as well and while this should in no way be viewed as an expert summary, it looks like unRAID basically doesn't care how the drive is attached, so long as it can be read/written to.

Thanks for the reply's.  I looked at the MB again and now see the 2 SATA connectors.  I completely missed them before (I did look, honest).

 

So, I think I will buy 2 1TB SATA drives.  Swap the parity first.  Then add the other new 1TB drive (and, after that, add the old 500GB parity drive as a data drive). I'll probably also pick up a couple internal SATA cards.  Some of my old drives are pretty small and will need to be replaced, when the time comes, with SATA drives.

 

Doesn't sound too bad.  Now, if I can just track down that pesky problem with my slow network (only 10MB/sec throughput on a 1Gb switch in a full 1GB environment).  Always something to "optimize"...   

Now, if I can just track down that pesky problem with my slow network (only 10MB/sec throughput on a 1Gb switch in a full 1GB environment).

 

Which direction is the 10MB/s, reading FROM the unRAID server, or writing TO it?  Writing to a parity protected drive on an older server will usually be about 8 to 10 MB/s.  Reading from it should be about 24 to 35MB/s.

 

The Console commands for networking wiki page has some tools for checking your network setup.  Make sure that the speed says 1000Mb/s, not 100Mb/s.

I get about 9 MB/s up and 10 MB/s down.  I've tested with multiple cables.  The card lights are green and amber on both cards (with only 2 PC's connected).  The lights on the switch show 1Gb/s.  I have a cheapo SMC switch (smcgs5).