I am a bit confused as to what speeds I should expect from using unraid.

 

I have a gigabyte ud3p motherboard and running Gig-E therenet to a D-link dgs2208 Gig-E switch. The drives are the 1.5TB f2g Eco Greens and I have 4 of them 1 Parity and 3 data. And I am running the Pro version whcih I just got the licenese for.

 

I have searched and read some of the posts about speeds but IMHO they are confusing some if not all of the time. To me it looks like a lot of the posters are switching between using MB and Mb readings in the same sentence etc.

 

What speepds should/could I expect when using Unraid to copy files to the server and reading from it with not cache drive in place ? (I planning on adding one down the road if it is warrented).

 

Today I copied 23.1 Gigabytes of data from my desktop to the unraid server. This data contained many files 5041 files and 79 Folders. I copied to a drive share on unraid and was geting someting like 18.1 MBytes for a transfer speed. Is this an acceptable speed or should I be doing better?

 

 

From the FAQ, "How fast is unRAID?"

 

Hopefully that will help, or at least clarify why it is hard to get a good answer.  If you are getting 18MB/s while writing to a parity-protected share with no Cache drive, that is VERY good!

Yeah, you are quite lucky, 18 MB/s is fast!  Adding a cache drive should bring you up to around 40 MB/s (for writes to user shares only, everything else will be the same).

Yeah, you are quite lucky, 18 MB/s is fast!  Adding a cache drive should bring you up to around 40 MB/s (for writes to user shares only, everything else will be the same).

 

wow a cache drive will get me 40MB speed? I will take out the Seagate 1.5tb 7200 drive in my htpc case. I didn't really want it in there. kind of a waste to have 1.5tb as a cache I guess but I dont want to buy another 7200 rpm drive..

 

Does the system come in a and move the cached files to the parity protected drives or do you need to set up a script on your own?

unRAID will move the files for you once a day. In the wee hours of the morning.

 

I don't use the cache drive myself, but I think it moves the files at 4:30 AM. I'm pretty sure someone will correct me if that time isn't right.. 

I am rethinking using the 1.5tb seagate drive I have firmware cg1g. I am transferring a file from it and am only getting 7-8MB. I had a 500gb maxtor dIamond max 7200 rpm sata 2 I also pulled from my HTPC and in the same blacx adapter I was transferring at 21+ MB. I wonder if my seagate needs a firmware update?

 

Either way I think I like the samller drive better for this purpose. I will check on the firmware upgrade for the seagate and put it back in the HTPC for now.

 

Thaks for the info...

 

Wow...

 

I was getting around 39-40 MB with writes to the cache drive, but I am wondering if I should replace the 500gb maxtor 7200 rpm with a 5400 500gb drive. The temp on the Maxtor is 29c where the other drives are hovering about 17-19c. I like the though of a cooler running drive. I wonder how much speed I would trade off for that. LOL... now I need to try just to see..

 

Thanks again

 

Glad its working out for you.  Yes, I think the 500 GB drive is a much better fit for the cache drive, 1.5 TB is far too wasteful (unless you actually transfer that much on a regular basis).  I don't see any reason for you to swap it for a 5400 rpm drive, unless you want to save a bit of power.  The 7200 rpm drive is faster (duh), and 29 C is nothing to scoff at.  Besides, unless you do a lot of transferring to the server, your cache drive won't be used all that often, and will usually be spun down.

 

My coolest drives are all around 29 C, whereas my hottest are around 45 C (in around 37 C ambient).  So...29 C is nothing to worry about.  When you get close to 50 C (like some of mine), that's when you can start to worry.

There is some evidence that too cool is as bad as too hot in terms of drive reliability. Drive temps in the mid to upper 20s is optimal in large sample studies. Conventional wisdom here is that temps < 43 or so are pretty safe. During the winter my drives (while sleeping) can drop into the mid-teens, but when accessed quickly warm to the low 20s

My temps are low, but so far they have not really been put through anything to difficult and the PC is in a very cool spot in my basement. But My ultimate plan is to get 3 of the 5-in-3 backplanes (once I read up and can figure out which ones are best) and have 15 drives in the antec 900 case. I am sure the temps will rise some then even with these fast cool drives so I am planning for the future.

 

But I pulled the trigger and decided to go lower power and ordered a samsung f2 ecogreen 500gb drive. 1 platter and it is very quick since it has such a high density. I was highly rated and only 49.00.