June 30, 201016 yr Seems likely that an update is 6 months away then if we are waiting to see what the other manufacturers do. Can you perhaps create a time expiring beta so I can at least try it? if I get some good results that may help to decide if its worthwhile or not... With all due respect, I think that would be a mistake, and lime-technology has never issued a time-expiring release. There is currently a solution for the EARS drives. They will work with or without a jumper. They'll just work slower when writing to them than if the jumper is installed. Who knows what the next manufacturer will do. It takes all of 30 seconds to install the jumper and you can forget about it from then onward. I know it is a slight inconvenience, but it is WAY more of an inconvenience to have to help somebody who loses their data because of a drive they mis-handle, or mistakenly format, or partition differently than their version of unRAID expects. As Tom has said, there is no going back to a prior version if it fails to work on your hardware... and there is no way Tom @ lime-tech can simulate everyone's hardware. Unfortunately, that opens up a very real possibility of data loss. Joe L.
June 30, 201016 yr I am not fully clear where I mentioned that I had an issue with the work involved in adding a jumper? :-/ I merely offered to test a limited version, that could not be used in full, to test if the changes gave significant improvements to EARS users. I personally don't buy £100 drives for them to run at a substandard rate; so am trying to establish the best route to utilise my 4 EARS drives. If these drives will not be utilised as they were designed by Unraid, then i guess I will use them elsewhere and wait to purchase new drives that Unraid can utilise as designed. Regards
June 30, 201016 yr I am not fully clear where I mentioned that I had an issue with the work involved in adding a jumper? :-/ then why not install it. I'm certain lime-tech will take you up on your offer at some point, if you still have the drives un-allocated. I merely offered to test a limited version, that could not be used in full, to test if the changes gave significant improvements to EARS users. I understand. I personally don't buy £100 drives for them to run at a substandard rate; so am trying to establish the best route to utilise my 4 EARS drives. If these drives will not be utilised as they were designed by Unraid, then i guess I will use them elsewhere and wait to purchase new drives that Unraid can utilise as designed. They ARE designed to be used by ANY OS, just install the jumper. some OS need it, some do not. You are being slightly stubborn.
June 30, 201016 yr I am not fully clear where I mentioned that I had an issue with the work involved in adding a jumper? :-/ then why not install it. I'm certain lime-tech will take you up on your offer at some point, if you still have the drives un-allocated. I merely offered to test a limited version, that could not be used in full, to test if the changes gave significant improvements to EARS users. I understand. I personally don't buy £100 drives for them to run at a substandard rate; so am trying to establish the best route to utilise my 4 EARS drives. If these drives will not be utilised as they were designed by Unraid, then i guess I will use them elsewhere and wait to purchase new drives that Unraid can utilise as designed. They ARE designed to be used by ANY OS, just install the jumper. some OS need it, some do not. You are being slightly stubborn. OK you are right, if that helps, the jumper is not meant to be a bypass to the new format for OS's that cannot use the drive natively, it is there purely so a user can choose which they prefer. I'm not trying to make this personal; so who knows if I am being stubborn or merely wanting, as a user, to maximise the disks as they were designed. Currently unraid is very slow with these disks and the jumpers do not appear to change that for me, after applying them and then removing and then applying again, RMAing one drive to WD etc etc; I was hoping to try a revised version that may have resolved my issue...
June 30, 201016 yr Currently unraid is very slow with these disks and the jumpers do not appear to change that for me, after applying them and then removing and then applying again, RMAing one drive to WD etc etc; I was hoping to try a revised version that may have resolved my issue... Now that is an entirely different situation. I agree, if the drive does not perform in your server, both with and without a jumper, it is reason for concern. I'll be curious if the replacement drive works properly once the RMA is processed. Joe L.
June 30, 201016 yr Mhh, ok so its booted with all 4 disks now with jumpers :-/ Not really sure if it has worked....parity is at 21,357 KB/sec You have not, to my knowledge described your motherboard/disk controller hardware. You have not posted a syslog either, so I can't help examine for clues either. I will be happy to look at one if you post it. I agree, the performance should improve with the jumper installed, BUT only if you are doing something that is affected by the "reads" not being aligned on 4k boundaries. Sequential reads, as performed in a parity calc/check, may not be affected much since the disk likely will read-ahead and buffer a track at a time. Your parity check speed is consistent with speeds if you were using a PCI bus, and, it is about 50% faster than my own PCI bus based server. ( I average a parity check speed of between 12,000 and 13,000Kb/s with 10 drives on a PCI bus) Please post a syslog for analysis, and describe your motherboard/disk controller make/model, and we'll try to determine why your speeds are what they are. There may be errors, the BIOS may be emulating an IDE drive for backwards compatibility with some MS-windows OS (Win XP, 95, does not have SATA drivers when first installed), etc. It will help if you qualify if you are talking about the initial calculation of parity, or a subsequent "check" of parity. The initial calculation is writing the parity drive and reading the data drives, the subsequent "check" is reading parity and the data drives. A linear read of the entire disk might not be affected by the jumpers at all, especially if the disk is buffering an entire cylinder at a time in its own memory. I'll need to read more about this to see if it is, or not. Neither initial-parity-speed or parity-check-speed is an indication of the eventual "write" speed of the array, since that involves interleaved reads and writes of both the parity and data drives involved. There, there rotational speed of the drives is the bigger factor in determining the overall speed, and if you need to rotate 4 times per sector written instead of 2 because of the sector/read alignment, that will impact greatly the overall speed of the array. Joe L.
June 30, 201016 yr Previously posted that I have dual Opteron rig (940) but nothing more, as I wasn't doing a full blown fault finding session, but rather as a newcomer to Unraid, trying to establish opinions whether as an order of magnitude my initial parity drive build speed was reasonable, before I spent more time trying to debug the issue (if there was actually an issue). Following that, we had the possibility of running a new version that didn't need the jumpers, so I decided to wait a little more. If I come back for support, I'll certainly post the full syslog and specs etc. Thanks
June 30, 201016 yr Previously posted that I have dual Opteron rig (940) but nothing more, as I wasn't doing a full blown fault finding session, but rather as a newcomer to Unraid, trying to establish opinions whether as an order of magnitude my initial parity drive build speed was reasonable, before I spent more time trying to debug the issue (if there was actually an issue). If not on a PCIe or PCI-X bus, or, if they are slowing down to accommodate a controller card that runs at 33MB/s, then the speeds you are seeing are appropriate. The PCI bus is rated for 133 Mb/s (133,000 Kbs). If you split that to 5 drives, then each drive has a theoretical max of 26,600Kb/s. Not too far from your results. Following that, we had the possibility of running a new version that didn't need the jumpers, so I decided to wait a little more. If I come back for support, I'll certainly post the full syslog and specs etc. Fair enough Thanks You are welcome.
June 30, 201016 yr Ok, so I just got my replacement for the first WD20EARS I RMA'd (formatted it without the jumper first, then added the jumper after finding this thread and got a bunch of errors), so I want to make sure I understand what I need to do, so I dont have to do this again. I'm currently running UnRaid 4.2.1, with 4 drives + Parity (all 1TB). The WD20EARS is going to replace my current parity drive. Since I'm using it as a parity drive, i dont have to worry about using the preclear script on it, and should only have to put the jumper on before replacing my current parity drive. In the future when UnRaid has better support for the new formatting, I can can safely remove the jumper with no problem (other than having to recalculate the parity again). Is this correct? Again, my apologies for asking a question that I'm sure has been answered before, just want to be extra cautious.
June 30, 201016 yr Ok, so I just got my replacement for the first WD20EARS I RMA'd (formatted it without the jumper first, then added the jumper after finding this thread and got a bunch of errors), so I want to make sure I understand what I need to do, so I dont have to do this again. I'm currently running UnRaid 4.2.1, with 4 drives + Parity (all 1TB). The WD20EARS is going to replace my current parity drive. Since I'm using it as a parity drive, i dont have to worry about using the preclear script on it, and should only have to put the jumper on before replacing my current parity drive. In the future when UnRaid has better support for the new formatting, I can can safely remove the jumper with no problem (other than having to recalculate the parity again). Is this correct? Again, my apologies for asking a question that I'm sure has been answered before, just want to be extra cautious. 1. I would suggest running the preclear because it exercises every sector. You do not have to do it, I recommend it before you put the drive into use. 2. In the future when UnRaid has better support for the new formatting, I can can safely remove the jumper with no problem If you "remove" the jumper on a drive that has been in use, your data will be skewed by one sector. This in effect will make the current data hidden or lost.
June 30, 201016 yr Ok, so I just got my replacement for the first WD20EARS I RMA'd (formatted it without the jumper first, then added the jumper after finding this thread and got a bunch of errors), so I want to make sure I understand what I need to do, so I dont have to do this again. I'm currently running UnRaid 4.2.1, with 4 drives + Parity (all 1TB). The WD20EARS is going to replace my current parity drive. Since I'm using it as a parity drive, i dont have to worry about using the preclear script on it, and should only have to put the jumper on before replacing my current parity drive. In the future when UnRaid has better support for the new formatting, I can can safely remove the jumper with no problem (other than having to recalculate the parity again). Is this correct? Again, my apologies for asking a question that I'm sure has been answered before, just want to be extra cautious. 1. I would suggest running the preclear because it exercises every sector. You do not have to do it, I recommend it before you put the drive into use. 2. In the future when UnRaid has better support for the new formatting, I can can safely remove the jumper with no problem If you "remove" the jumper on a drive that has been in use, your data will be skewed by one sector. This in effect will make the current data hidden or lost. 2. So it will still cause a problem even when using the drive as a parity drive(minding I dont mind having to let it recalculate the parity)?. If that is the case, what is the down side to leaving the jumper on, rather than having it off?
June 30, 201016 yr Pre-clear it anyways... It is not so much to zero out the drive as it is to identify a defective drive BEFORE you put it to use to protect your data. Think of it as a torture test for the drive. It basically keeps if far busier than you would otherwise for between 25 and 35 hours reading and writing and reading all the sectors. As far as the jumper goes, put it on, and then forget it. Taking it off at a later time will do nothing but cause you grief, especially if during the 8 or 10 hours it takes to rebuild parity you lose another drive.
June 30, 201016 yr Ok, thanks for the help and quick responses guys! I've never had to run a script from the server before, but I will try and figure it out. Is there a different thread I should look at for instructions on how to do it, or where I can post incase I have any problems/questions? And will the preclear script work on the current version of unraid i'm runnings? (4.2.1)
June 30, 201016 yr http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.0 Its all pretty much discribed in this thread. I personally would run it directly from console that way you can use your other PC without worrying about shutting it down and you can use the server monitor anytime to monitor its progress.
June 30, 201016 yr Your welcome, just remember if you are running this on the drive mentioned in the topic it took me around 36hours to do one 2TB drive. Thats why I mentioned running it in console. Also if you need to access your console you can switch to another terminal by using the <ALT+F2> and of course <ALT+F1> to get back again, which of course would allow you to run it on more than one drive at a time or do other things locally on that machine.
June 30, 201016 yr You have 6 virtual consoles, and you can switch between them with Alt-F1 through Alt-F6.
July 1, 201016 yr You have 6 virtual consoles, and you can switch between them with Alt-F1 through Alt-F6. Alt-F1 through Alt-F6 - Using what application?
July 1, 201016 yr You have 6 virtual consoles, and you can switch between them with Alt-F1 through Alt-F6. Alt-F1 through Alt-F6 - Using what application? No application at all. They exist on the system console... the keyboard and monitor connected directly to the unRAID server. Joe L.
July 1, 201016 yr No application at all. They exist on the system console... the keyboard and monitor connected directly to the unRAID server. Joe L. Do you know if this works using SuperMicro x7spa boards remote KVM console. I tried it and didn't see any response. Thank you
July 1, 201016 yr No application at all. They exist on the system console... the keyboard and monitor connected directly to the unRAID server. Joe L. Do you know if this works using SuperMicro x7spa boards remote KVM console. I tried it and didn't see any response. Thank you I don't know either. I've never tried/used a remote KVM console. It may be trapping the keystrokes itself. You may need to install and use "screen" is you want multiple virtual sessions over your KVM. (Or read the KVM manual as it might tell you how to send the Alt-F2 sequence to the linux box)
July 1, 201016 yr No application at all. They exist on the system console... the keyboard and monitor connected directly to the unRAID server. Joe L. Do you know if this works using SuperMicro x7spa boards remote KVM console. I tried it and didn't see any response. Thank you I'm sure there is a way to do it, but you may have to click a button to send the keystroke. it's easier if you install the screen & umtemper packages. With screen you can do CTRL-A C to open a new window. CTRL-A CTRL-A to switch between them. CTRL-A d to disconnect temporarily. then come back and do a screen -r to reconnect.
July 1, 201016 yr I'm sure there is a way to do it, but you may have to click a button to send the keystroke. it's easier if you install the screen & umtemper packages. With screen you can do CTRL-A C to open a new window. CTRL-A CTRL-A to switch between them. CTRL-A d to disconnect temporarily. then come back and do a screen -r to reconnect. Where can I find information regarding the screen and umtemper packages? couldn't find anything on the forum and only a short description of screen on the wiki pages. EDIT: Ok if found out that screen is part of unRAID 4.5.4 so got it working. What is umtemper?
July 1, 201016 yr I'm sure there is a way to do it, but you may have to click a button to send the keystroke. it's easier if you install the screen & umtemper packages. With screen you can do CTRL-A C to open a new window. CTRL-A CTRL-A to switch between them. CTRL-A d to disconnect temporarily. then come back and do a screen -r to reconnect. Where can I find information regarding the screen and umtemper packages? couldn't find anything on the forum and only a short description of screen on the wiki pages. Google "man screen linux"
July 1, 201016 yr EDIT: Ok if found out that screen is part of unRAID 4.5.4 so got it working. What is utmpter if you have screen working, you don't need the other package.
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