So i read on another forum that unRAID has no data integrity.

Is this true, or was this the case on version 5?

Just seems crazy to build huge storage systems with no data integrity checks?

There is a Data Integrity Plugin.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=44989.0

So i read on another forum that unRAID has no data integrity.

Is this true, or was this the case on version 5?

Just seems crazy to build huge storage systems with no data integrity checks?

Depends what you mean by that statement!

 

Traditionally most hard disk systems have not had data integrity built in if by that you mean that they check that no data has silently degraded.  They do have checks at the hardware disk level.  The normal way integrity is handled is to have offline backups of any important files, but this does not handle basically detecting files that have silently been changed.  Traditionally such bit-rot corruption has been seen as a much lower risk than data loss through more traditional issues (disk crashes, accidental deletes etc).  However as the amount of data has been steadily increasing the problem of bit-rot has been increasing in both prominence and the likelihood of it occurring (although the chances are still very small).

 

There is a "File Integrity" plugin available for unRAID that allows all files to have an accompanying checksum and use this to determine whether any file has been silently corrupted (bit-rot).  This can be used in conjunction with any of the file systems supported by unRAID (Reiserfs, XFS, BTRFS).  The assumption is that if any file is detect as being corrupt you can restore it from your backup.  The BTRFS file system which is one of those supported by unRAID has built-in support for such check summing, but many users do not regard BTRFS as being as stable as some of the older file systems so may be reluctant to use BTRFS. 

Thanks for this guys.

So a new unraid build will automatically be XFS, so i can just install the plugin.

Thanks for this guys.

So a new unraid build will automatically be XFS, so i can just install the plugin.

XFS is the default for data disks, although you can change it to be any of the supported file systems.  You can install the plugin at any point although you obviously cannot use it until you have some data on the disks to create checksums and/or check existing ones.