Kosti Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 G'day All, as you may have guessed I come from a land down under and I have UDC! I'm not the best photographer or story teller, but I have completed my first DIY unRAID build, which I will share my journey First up I have the parts list with some links to where these where bought or what they look like - some prices of the links could be in either AUS or USD, but will go through the numbers later. As you will find, if something is worth doing, I tend to go to extremes when really it's not necessary, that's just me! So here we go.. Parts List - some have seen this already - like I said over kill and probably sucks too much power! Here it the new list of parts that I have purchased and installed in the case UnRAID: Pro license Case: Xigmatek Elysium Motherboard: Supermicro X8DTH-iF CPU: 2 x Intel Xeon Processor X5670 (12M Cache, 2.93 GHz, 6.40 GT/s Intel QPI) RAM: 12 x Hynix 4GB 2Rx8 PC3L 10600R 9 10 B0 ECC DDR3-1333 Memory Module Mfr P/N HMT351R7BFR8A-H9 - 48GB Total PSU: Thermaltake Tough Power 1500W Active PFC ATX Power Supply TP-1500MPCSAU Hot Swap Caddy: 3 x Addonics AESN5DA35-A Snap-In Disk Array PRO Storage Drives: 2 x Western Digital Caviar Red 4TB - Will be used as my Cache Drives for now Storage Drives: 3 x Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB OS SSD Drives Raid0: 2 x Intel SSD 320 Series 600GB, 2.5in SATA 3Gb/s, 25nm, MLC Optical: LG BH10LS30 BluRay Burner Fans: 4 X Noiseblocker BlackSilent PRO PK-3 140mm fans 1700RPM CPU WaterBlock: 2 x XSPC RayStorm CPU Waterblock for Intel Reservoir: XSPC Photon 270 Tube Reservoir Radiator: Alphacool-NexXxoS-ST30-Full-Copper-420mm Raid Controller: 2 x Original IBM M1015 FW 2.130.314-1585, flashed to LSI 9211-8i FW 19.00.00.00-IT Connectors - Cables - 5 x 10Gbps INTEL / LSI Mini SAS SFF-8087 to 4x 7-Pin SATA with iPASS Conn G24109-001 The pictures and some steps taken to put MAIOS together The Case - Xigmatek Elysium Quick Mod - Larger Side Window The motherboard - Supermicro X8DTH-iF - bought reasonably cheap with RAM and 2xCPU (but they were all sold off to fund better gear) CPU - Intel Xeon 5670 HDD Caddy Units - 3 x Addonics AESN5DA35-A Snap-In Disk Array PRO Water Cooling Gear RAM Fans PSU Raid Card I begin was getting the Reservoir mounted and making sure it has enough room for the caddy's and PSU cabling doesn't interfere Next fitting the board in and getting the Radiator ready with the FANS Now that I knew the space I needed for the Rad, I made up some spacers and got ready for the final mounting of the RAD & FANS Now that the main water components were installed it was time for the tubing Here is the tool I used to cut those lengths From RES to first CPU block From RAD back to RES CPU Block to next CPU Block How did I get 1/2 inch Barbs to fit on 5/8th tubing - Easy Finishing off the loop - used some cable ties jut to keep some pressure and hold in place until I completed it Added in a flow meter - at this stage I done some other mods to the IOH heatsink and also added RAM fans to all the 24 sticks of RAM Taking a step back from the above pictured, I'd removed all motherboard heatsinks, cleaned them and re-sintalled with thermal paste and added the CPU & waterblocks IOH Chip sets - These get really hot, hence why I also added a fan unit on it Power Regulators HS removed and cleaned Thermal Paste I used CPU Water Blocks Raid Card Heatsink removal Cleaned sanded and refited Somewhat Completed and ready for water testing It runs - little video http://vid161.photobucket.com/albums/t214/Kostiz/Server/IMG_0910_zpstdbjdpiz.mp4 HDD added in Pictures to come Software loaded I will add in a breakdown on cost soon, I dare to think once I add this up the cost of it :'( Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 unRAID boots from a flash drive. It unpacks the OS from that flash drive, and then the OS runs completely in RAM. The unRAID license is tied to the GUID of that flash drive. Your RAID0 SSDs would be suitable for the cache drive though. The 4TB drives, one could be a data drive and the other should be parity, since parity must be at least as large as the largest data drive. Welcome and don't hesitate to ask lots of questions. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 VERY nice setup => definitely overkill on the power supply, but the only thing that will hurt is your electric bill, as it will be running well below the 80+ certification level => the bottom of the 80+ range (20%) is still FAR more power than your system will draw, so it could drop as low as the mid-60's in efficiency. Not a big deal, but I'd have used a PSU with perhaps half that load rating. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Also, pretty sure unRAID doesn't have drivers for bluray burners. You can run VMs within unRAID and use it there maybe. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Also, pretty sure unRAID doesn't have drivers for bluray burners. You can run VMs within unRAID and use it there maybe. No doubt I missed the point and didn't pay attention to the "All In One Server". Obviously VMs is what this hardware will be about. Are you planning to run unRAID as a guest or as the host? Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Wow! Not sure what you have in mind with this beast, but you are ready for it. unRAID is actually pretty CPU un-insensitive, but you will be able to run VMs out the ying yang. I actually tend to try to talk people out of water cooling, as unRAID doesn't tax the CPU, and the risk of a leak in 24x7x5 (or longer) years seems unjustified. But what you have seems very heavy duty and the risk should be low. The area where you seem light is in the disks themselves! I would have thought you'd have a couple of 8T Helios in there! Enjoy your array. Make sure to read my "What is parity" (see my sig) writeup and really understand how this system works. So many users make silly mistakes with new arrays by not understanding some of the basics. A common misconception is that the parity disk is sufficient to reconstruct a failed disk. It is not. Parity PLUS every other disk in the array must be present to do a rebuild. If you get a red-ball, do NOT assume a disk has failed. Ask on the forums for advice before attempting a recovery, which could easily make things worse not better. You have some work in front of you, take your time. And make sure you have data backups of everything, at least until the array is thoroughly burned in and you are confident in it. Remember, unRAID may make losing data less likely, but it is not a backup solution so you should always have backups at least of your critical data you can't afford to lose. Quote Link to comment
Kosti Posted January 2, 2015 Author Share Posted January 2, 2015 unRAID boots from a flash drive. It unpacks the OS from that flash drive, and then the OS runs completely in RAM. The unRAID license is tied to the GUID of that flash drive. Your RAID0 SSDs would be suitable for the cache drive though. The 4TB drives, one could be a data drive and the other should be parity, since parity must be at least as large as the largest data drive. Welcome and don't hesitate to ask lots of questions. I intent to ask heaps, I've been reading and reading my eyes are about to pop! VERY nice setup => definitely overkill on the power supply, but the only thing that will hurt is your electric bill, as it will be running well below the 80+ certification level => the bottom of the 80+ range (20%) is still FAR more power than your system will draw, so it could drop as low as the mid-60's in efficiency. Not a big deal, but I'd have used a PSU with perhaps half that load rating. Yeah it was some of the stuff I had unused especially the PSU so considering I plan to add as many large drives as I can, it may come in handy Also, pretty sure unRAID doesn't have drivers for bluray burners. You can run VMs within unRAID and use it there maybe. Planned for ripping my movie collection from their disc, it was also another spare unit I had lying around - BTW I changed this to another brand ASUS Bluray burner, only cause the LG will go into another project I have brewing Also, pretty sure unRAID doesn't have drivers for bluray burners. You can run VMs within unRAID and use it there maybe.No doubt I missed the point and didn't pay attention to the "All In One Server". Obviously VMs is what this hardware will be about. Are you planning to run unRAID as a guest or as the host? YES this machine is planned to do a whole lot more via VM's for the following Storage - the main one is for photo's as now with digital pictures/video you seldom delete or print so these need to be stored safely Plex/XBMC - wanting a simple solution for all the wifi devices including ATV, XIOS and other media capable devices to access and play movies TV shows. Transcoding a must for various file extensions Torrents/downloads - A place where they can be downloaded, scanned and stored as required TV - Currently have PayTV (Too expensive) and wish to move to a simpler and or less expensive option for TVshows, NEWS and other FTA programs. PVR option as well Security - Surveillance record and capture IP camera's Remote Access - Ability to securely access files or manage the AIO machine remotely I am also running unRAID via a GUEST VM in VMWare 5.5 via an vmdk uploaded http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=26639.255 Wow! Not sure what you have in mind with this beast, but you are ready for it. unRAID is actually pretty CPU un-insensitive, but you will be able to run VMs out the ying yang. I actually tend to try to talk people out of water cooling, as unRAID doesn't tax the CPU, and the risk of a leak in 24x7x5 (or longer) years seems unjustified. But what you have seems very heavy duty and the risk should be low. The area where you seem light is in the disks themselves! I would have thought you'd have a couple of 8T Helios in there! Enjoy your array. Make sure to read my "What is parity" (see my sig) writeup and really understand how this system works. So many users make silly mistakes with new arrays by not understanding some of the basics. A common misconception is that the parity disk is sufficient to reconstruct a failed disk. It is not. Parity PLUS every other disk in the array must be present to do a rebuild. If you get a red-ball, do NOT assume a disk has failed. Ask on the forums for advice before attempting a recovery, which could easily make things worse not better. You have some work in front of you, take your time. And make sure you have data backups of everything, at least until the array is thoroughly burned in and you are confident in it. Remember, unRAID may make losing data less likely, but it is not a backup solution so you should always have backups at least of your critical data you can't afford to lose. Thanks! - A few things has done my head in already, the biggest one is SHARES - still can't wrap my brain around it and the levels etc Parity I think I get but ran into some problems and need some idea's I have 2 SSD both are 600GB on the onboard SATA controller, I will use one for the VM DataStore drive and keep the VM's on here for fast spin ups and the other well I wanted to use as a cache drive for unRAID. Now I also just found a spare 500GB WD Black drive which I installed on the onboard SATA controller as well, and ready for pre-clear but I have two questions Which drive is suitable for cacheSSD or Mechanical - If SSD want the life of it be reduced if I am constantly writing and wiping and reading from it I also read that the motherboards onboard should be faster than a PCIe card in this case my RAID card? My other issue is I am having troubles trying to passthough the SATA onboard controller to the VM, is it because the DataStore drive is on the same controller Does that make any sense? As for the 8T Helios these are well priced but Seagate just aren't doing anyone favours with there current failure rate an this technology is bloody awesome, soon DataCentres will be a thing of the past as everyone will have heaps of storage Even that they are priced at about $260USD by the time it gets here it's cheaper to by RED WD 4TB Nice rig. Thanks! Now I've also noticed a few flaws in the caddy designs The heat from preclear.sh process seemed high temps to what the average use is showing in their logs My 3TB came in at about 38DegC and the $TB came in at about 42DegC - so the plan is to now try and reverse the fans so that they blow air into the caddy instead of pulling are in - I will be a PITA but I need to try it as I do not like these temps at all The other is how hot the RAID card heatsink gets, so I plan to dig out an out VGA card that had a simple fan on it to help keep it cools, I did lap/sand the heatsink down to make better contact but I've read these still get hot, so adding a little fan may help keep the temp regulated. I've seen on the card there maybe a provision for a 2 pin fan header so I will measure the voltage coming from it and see if it's suitable for a small fan. Thanks guys, really need some help in the cache side and ideas on how to setup Shares. Cheers Kosti Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 As for the 8T Helios these are well priced but Seagate just aren't doing anyone favours with there current failure rate an this technology is bloody awesome, soon DataCentres will be a thing of the past as everyone will have heaps of storage HGST makes the HeloSeals. They are filled with Helium to reduce friction. They are a tad more expensive than the Seagate SMRs. HGST 8T HeloSeal Quote Link to comment
Chris Pollard Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 My other issue is I am having troubles trying to passthough the SATA onboard controller to the VM, is it because the DataStore drive is on the same controller My understanding is that you have to passthrough the whole controller so wherever you put your datastore drives you can't pass through those sata ports to a VM. Certainly this was the case when I tried ESX... I didn't have fast drives for datastores so I just used an ancient LSI card for them.... gave up with ESX in the end as I was getting purple screens of death all the time and I didn't have the inclination to work out why. Quote Link to comment
Kosti Posted January 2, 2015 Author Share Posted January 2, 2015 My other issue is I am having troubles trying to passthough the SATA onboard controller to the VM, is it because the DataStore drive is on the same controller My understanding is that you have to passthrough the whole controller so wherever you put your datastore drives you can't pass through those sata ports to a VM. Certainly this was the case when I tried ESX... I didn't have fast drives for datastores so I just used an ancient LSI card for them.... gave up with ESX in the end as I was getting purple screens of death all the time and I didn't have the inclination to work out why. Hey Mate Yes, it seems that way, but I was reading a thread on here about XenServer that appears to be able to share single ports off a controller and not the whole controller which is really good I've got Esxi up and running and unRAID working so next will be to assign the drives My plan was to use the 3 x 3TB as storage, the 4TB as the parity the other 4TB as a backup for the Parity (is that a waste)? then use the 500GB as a cache drive, it leaves me with one spare 600GB SSD, which I am not sure it it's a good idea to use as a cache drive due to the amoun of writing and purging that will be done on it as I figured it would reduce the life of it? Also I am getting a weird display in unmenu with duplicated drives? It's about 32DegC today and my house is hot, the HDD are hot as well and reversing the fans around on the caddy didn't really reduce the temps at all My thermal Gun reads then as 32 but unmenu reads it at 39-40 Cheers Kosti Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 My plan was to use the 3 x 3TB as storage, the 4TB as the parity the other 4TB as a backup for the Parity (is that a waste)? It's not necessary to do that. But if you are, set parity up as a RAID-1 array of the two 4TB drives. But there's really no particular advantage to that -- it would give you an extra layer of protection for ONE drive, but all your others would still have the same single-failure level of fault tolerance. Your parity drive is already protected from failure by the other drives. Quote Link to comment
Benoire Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 How much power is this system consuming? I'm tempted by xeons of that era but I did here they pull a lot and that the power costs may outweigh the eventual price of the new ivybridge or sandy bridge xeons, especially in nz with our power charges. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 Power consumption would be interesting, but I doubt it's too bad. The X5670's have a 95w TDP, but will pull FAR less than that when not under load. Nevertheless, it's true that the newer generations are appreciably more power-efficient. I just built my wife a new system last month with a Haswell Core i7-4790, 16GB of RAM, and a 480GB SSD. The system draws about 35 watts in normal operation, INCLUDING a 23" touch screen display Ramping it up to full CPU load it tops 100w, but that's a VERY rare occurrence. ... and the equivalent Xeon would draw even less Quote Link to comment
Kosti Posted January 3, 2015 Author Share Posted January 3, 2015 My plan was to use the 3 x 3TB as storage, the 4TB as the parity the other 4TB as a backup for the Parity (is that a waste)? It's not necessary to do that. But if you are, set parity up as a RAID-1 array of the two 4TB drives. But there's really no particular advantage to that -- it would give you an extra layer of protection for ONE drive, but all your others would still have the same single-failure level of fault tolerance. Your parity drive is already protected from failure by the other drives. Yep makes sense, but if the 4TB goes I don't have a replacement immediately, whcih is no huge problem as I can afford it to be down for a few days. OK so what's the recommendation I should lean towards to get the best performance and basic protection from what I have at my disposal to build my storage array. 3 x 3TB WD RED (precleared - I assume passed?) 2 x 4TB WD RED (precleared - I assume passed?) 2 X 600G Intel SSD (one used for VM/esxi DataStore) (one unused) 1 x 1TB Samsung (well be spare once I move off DATA) (has not been precleared) 1 x 3TB WD Green (well be spare once I move off DATA) (has not been precleared) 1 x 4TB WD Mybook (well be spare once I move off DATA) (has not been precleared) 1 x 500G WD Blue (precleared - I assume passed?) Once thing that concerns me is the write performance of some of the older drives as when the 500G drive finished preclear the read/write results were pretty average, but ok for an older drive 500GB HDD Preclear Successful ... Total time 7:50:38 ... Pre-Read time 2:00:39 (69 MB/s) ... Zeroing time 1:56:12 (71 MB/s) ... Post-Read time 3:52:47 (35 MB/s) Cheers Kosti Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 Write performance for any older drive with lower areal density than the new 1TB/platter (or more) drives will be significantly below what's possible with new drives. This isn't a significant problem in most applications; but if you want the absolute best write performance, then I'd stay with drives that are 1TB/platter and use your older drives as backups (that's what I do). Quote Link to comment
Kosti Posted January 3, 2015 Author Share Posted January 3, 2015 Appreciate the feedback Garycase! I will use a 1TB drive instead and find use the 500G somewhere else - as for the drives showing up as sd1 was explained as I posted it in another thread, which i should just keep them in here Once I finish the preclear of the 1TB I will start the array - Hooray! Thanks again! Kosti Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 My plan was to use the 3 x 3TB as storage, the 4TB as the parity the other 4TB as a backup for the Parity (is that a waste)? It's not necessary to do that. But if you are, set parity up as a RAID-1 array of the two 4TB drives. But there's really no particular advantage to that -- it would give you an extra layer of protection for ONE drive, but all your others would still have the same single-failure level of fault tolerance. Your parity drive is already protected from failure by the other drives. Don't raid-1 your parity drive. That's a waste of resources and it's going to slow down all writes to the array. If you want speed, use RAID 0 with a hardware controller. If you want redundancy or a warm spare, then prepare it with preclear and spin it down manually with hdparm -y /dev/disk/by-id/(drivemodelserial) in the /boot/config/go script. When you have an issue, the drive will already be in the machine, precleared and ready to go. Stop the array, re-assign the drive and let it rebuild. RAID1 on parity is going to hold back everything in the array unless you use a caching raid controller. The parity drive is no more important than any other data drive. The parity drive is (sorta) protected by all the data drives, i.e. you can rebuild parity at any time from all the data drives. A single failed data drive is protected by the other data drives and parity. The key would be, how fast you are able to acquire a replacement drive and rebuild it. using modern 1Tb platter based drives provides the speed to do a parity sync or recreate a drive at a reasonable speed and with in a reasonable amount of time. I wouldn't waste the electricity or sata slot on old/slow drives. FWIW, I would suggest acquiring and using the HGST 4TB 7200 RPM drives for a parity drive. They are NAS rated drive and have good speed. For one or two write streams it will be a small boost in writes, but once you write a few things simultaneously the extra speed of the drive helps. The HGST 4TB 7200 RPM drives get about 160-180MB/s on the outer tracks. If money is no object, the HGST 6TB 7200 RPM drives get about 225MB/s on the outer tracks. I'm really pleased with these two model of drives. The other speedy drives are the Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM drives. When I get a chance I plan to RAID0 a pair and use them for Parity and relegate all 6TB drives for data. With all that horsepower in the machine, I would use one of the SSD's as the cache and get a fast parity drive set up. With the right configuration you can burst at almost 115MB/s. With today's SSD's, as long as the drive is not at 80% full, there are plenty of cells for re-writes, You can write over 20GB a day and it will still last over 5 years. In past years, we used to recommend that people purchase a cache drive equivalent of the parity drive. In a failure condition you could move the data off the cache drive and re-use it for parity or any other replacement. With dockers and apps folders, that changes things a bit, so I might just use the SSD and have a regular backup schedule to the array. In any case, that's a real sweetheart of a setup. Even I'm sweating it... Although these days, I've come to the conclusion of a fewer smaller machines so I can maintain things easier. Quote Link to comment
Kosti Posted January 4, 2015 Author Share Posted January 4, 2015 Thanks WeeboTech, Really appreciate you taking the time to provide some idea's. The original plan was for Toshiba drives, but the WD RED's came up, so I am stuck with them for now. Sadly we don't get the good deals for HDD here in OZ so we either pay a premium for shipping or look for alternatives like used drives, in fact I maybe grabbing 2 more 3TB REDS so that will fill one caddy up nicely If I was to sell the current drives and maybe grab some 8TB without having to add in too much then I may go down that path in a few months. But too early for these Helli drives and may not be suitable for something like this? Also the heat of my drives is also causing some concerns as our hot summer temps are making then hit the 40DegC and the wife is not happy with the room heating up, so the quicker I can move it to the man cave the better for all at home For now the plan is this 3 x 3TB reds for all storage 1 x 4TB red for parity 1 x 1TB Samsung F3 for Cache Leave the 4TB as a hot spare and spin down as you suggested, as for the SSD since this in on the motherboard controller I cannot passthrough this without the whole controller so for now I am going to use it for cache in ESXI or may use this as a unRAID cache if I find i need that 1TB for other storage Now I've not touch Docker, as my next learning curve will be SHAREs since I am not sure how I am going to set that up I want to fill each 3TB HDD before it moves to the next and also keep each HDD specific category something like the below [slot1] 3TB HDD - Movies, TV Shows, Documentaries, Downloads [slot2] 3TB HDD - Music Videos, Music Albums, iTunes [slo3] 3TB HDD - Photo, Home Movies, ISO images I have so many questions about unmenu as well like now that I have preclear the drives do i just add them in any order? I also noticed the 500GB has come uo as HPA - if the drive went through the preclear why did it come back as HPA, did my motherboard add a BIOS too it? As this is the 500GB drive I will be taking this out of the equation anyways Cheers Kosti Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 You don't have to pass through the SSD in order to use it as a cache, You can make the drive an RDM drive by ssh'ing into ESX, login as root, and creating a RDM for the SSD. I do this with my drives since I cannot pass through controllers in the HP AMD version of the micro servers. ssh in as root to esx (you will have to enable it via vsphere) my data store is VMDS1 so cd /vmfs/volumes/VMDS1/ mkdir _RDMS find the disk you want to RDM with /vmfs/volumes/51d5b2e5-7bbdb7fb-4391-28924a2f176c/_RDMS # ls -1 /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA* |grep -v : /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____HGST_HDN726060ALE610____________________NAG1D7TP____________ /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____HGST_HDN726060ALE610____________________NAG1DEKP____________ /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST4000DM0002D1F2168__________________________________W300B0G2 /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST4000DM0002D1F2168__________________________________Z300JE0D /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST6000DX0002D1H217Z__________________________________Z4D0EE7M /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____Samsung_SSD_840_PRO_Series______________S12RNEAD350663M_____ Here's an example shell I use #!/bin/sh DISK=/vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST6000DX0002D1H217Z__________________________________Z4D0EE7M RDMP=`echo ${DISK} | sed -e 's#/vmfs/devices/disks/##g' -e 's#_\{1,\}#_#g' -e 's#t10.ATA_##g'`.vmdk # set -v -x ls -l ${DISK} vmkfstools -a pvscsi -z ${DISK} ${RDMP} ls -ltr ${RDMP} exit which created the following files. -rw------- 1 root root 6001175126016 Dec 22 15:56 ST6000DX0002D1H217Z_Z4D0EE7M-rdmp.vmdk -rw------- 1 root root 520 Dec 23 03:07 ST6000DX0002D1H217Z_Z4D0EE7M.vmdk then in vsphere I added a hard disk. use existing virtual disk browse to the datastore choose the _RDMS folder and select the .rdmp disk node I just created. I make the .rdm nodes in a separate folder for maintenance rather then directly in the virtual machine folder. This allows me to rsync the virtual machine without the rdmp files (Which expand to full size when rsyncing). There are plenty of guides on how to do this on the forum, With pictures too! Preclearing drives is easy, it just takes time. Be careful about the drive you are writing to. You don't want to make a mistake and clear a data drive. There are some protections, still be mindful. If you have an HPA on the 500GB drive, I would double check and make sure this motherboards bios did not put it there. Also if heat is a concern, then consider a different drive to replace/consolidate the 1TB and 500GB. That's 1 drive to replace 2. Thus less heat/electricity. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 I will use a 1TB drive instead and find use the 500G somewhere else It's not the size of the drive that's important vis-à-vis the speed .... it's the areal density. What you want to use are drives that have at least 1TB/platter density ... the WD Reds, the Seagate and HGST NAS drives, etc. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 I want to fill each 3TB HDD before it moves to the next and also keep each HDD specific category something like the below [slot1] 3TB HDD - Movies, TV Shows, Documentaries, Downloads [slot2] 3TB HDD - Music Videos, Music Albums, iTunes [slo3] 3TB HDD - Photo, Home Movies, ISO images To have drives fill up before moving on to the next drive in a share, just set the allocation method to "fill up". To keep the shares on specific drives (as you've indicated), just use an "Include" so the desired drive is the only drive allowed for the specified share. But if you do this, and a drive gets full, you won't be able to copy to that share unless you've got another drive assigned to the share for it to use. So think carefully about just how you assign the shares. ... now that I have preclear the drives do i just add them in any order ... Yes. Quote Link to comment
chickensoup Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 [slot1] 3TB HDD - Movies, TV Shows, Documentaries, Downloads [slot2] 3TB HDD - Music Videos, Music Albums, iTunes [slot3] 3TB HDD - Photo, Home Movies, ISO images Each to their own but personally I would use the following setup: [slot1] 3TB HDD - TV Shows [slot2] 3TB HDD - Movies, Documentaries, Downloads [slot3] 3TB HDD - Music Videos, Music Albums, iTunes, Photo, Home Movies, ISO images However this is just due to knowing my personal usage over time. TV for me is by far the biggest space eater and music is barely even the same size as some TV shows. Take a look at your current setup and usage habits and base it off that rather than spreading the categories between the drives. You may have already planned this out though, just offering some advice :-) Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Note that there's NO real reason to keep specific categories limited to a single disk. That effectively eliminates one of the key advantages of the user shares -- the ability to reference a share without worrying about which physical drive it's on. By setting the appropriate split levels for your shares, you can ensure there are no individual movies or episodes that are split among drives (thus not requiring multiple spin-ups to stream, potentially resulting in pauses during playback) ... but that you also won't run out of space when writing to a share because one drive is full but the others have TB's of free space. If you simply create a share for each category you want to segregate [e.g. Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, Photos, etc.] the UnRAID user shares will keep those nicely separate for you, regardless of which physical disk they're stored on. Quote Link to comment
Kosti Posted January 6, 2015 Author Share Posted January 6, 2015 Note that there's NO real reason to keep specific categories limited to a single disk. That effectively eliminates one of the key advantages of the user shares -- the ability to reference a share without worrying about which physical drive it's on. By setting the appropriate split levels for your shares, you can ensure there are no individual movies or episodes that are split among drives (thus not requiring multiple spin-ups to stream, potentially resulting in pauses during playback) ... but that you also won't run out of space when writing to a share because one drive is full but the others have TB's of free space. If you simply create a share for each category you want to segregate [e.g. Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, Photos, etc.] the UnRAID user shares will keep those nicely separate for you, regardless of which physical disk they're stored on. Thanks mate, really appreciate u giving me some pointers, I am trying to ready about the SHARES so I don't bugger it up and prevent unnecessary spin up of other drives. I am reading a lot of threads with great information and stuff but most have stalled, so I'm concern either people are moving on to other adventures or have become somewhat too busy Still the wiki is getting a thrashing Quote Link to comment
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