That's exactly what I wanted to know thank you very much

Newbie question - I have 4 drives in my array currently all 5400 2tb WD greens. (3 data and 1 parity). I have a couple of spare 5400 1tb green drives. I was going to add them as data drives, but would I see any benefit of using one of them as a cache drive if it is 5400 and not 7200?

 

I want to install Sickbeard and SabNZB which is why I am considering using one of the drives as a cache. Or will I only see any benefit if I get a 7200 drive?

Newbie question - I have 4 drives in my array currently all 5400 2tb WD greens. (3 data and 1 parity). I have a couple of spare 5400 1tb green drives. I was going to add them as data drives, but would I see any benefit of using one of them as a cache drive if it is 5400 and not 7200?

 

I want to install Sickbeard and SabNZB which is why I am considering using one of the drives as a cache. Or will I only see any benefit if I get a 7200 drive?

writing to the cache drive will be always faster because there will be no parity calculation.  so your data transfer will be quicker. since its outside of the array your data will not be protected untill the script has moved it to the array.

personally I use a cache drive for torrents and am happy with it. don't forget for any folders you don't want to be moved automatically by the mover script to add a "." in front of the folder name e g ".foldername"

Newbie question - I have 4 drives in my array currently all 5400 2tb WD greens. (3 data and 1 parity). I have a couple of spare 5400 1tb green drives. I was going to add them as data drives, but would I see any benefit of using one of them as a cache drive if it is 5400 and not 7200?

 

I want to install Sickbeard and SabNZB which is why I am considering using one of the drives as a cache. Or will I only see any benefit if I get a 7200 drive?

 

I've a Samsung 1,5TB F2 Spinpoint 5400rpm drive as cache drive and i'm getting write speeds up to 100MB/sec when copying large blu-ray files.

Newbie question - I have 4 drives in my array currently all 5400 2tb WD greens. (3 data and 1 parity). I have a couple of spare 5400 1tb green drives. I was going to add them as data drives, but would I see any benefit of using one of them as a cache drive if it is 5400 and not 7200?

 

I want to install Sickbeard and SabNZB which is why I am considering using one of the drives as a cache. Or will I only see any benefit if I get a 7200 drive?

 

I've a Samsung 1,5TB F2 Spinpoint 5400rpm drive as cache drive and i'm getting write speeds up to 100MB/sec when copying large blu-ray files.

 

That's incredible!  Is that peak, or sustained?  That seems way too fast for a 5400 RPM spindle drive, faster than my tests with a budget SSD!

Newbie question - I have 4 drives in my array currently all 5400 2tb WD greens. (3 data and 1 parity). I have a couple of spare 5400 1tb green drives. I was going to add them as data drives, but would I see any benefit of using one of them as a cache drive if it is 5400 and not 7200?

 

I want to install Sickbeard and SabNZB which is why I am considering using one of the drives as a cache. Or will I only see any benefit if I get a 7200 drive?

 

I've a Samsung 1,5TB F2 Spinpoint 5400rpm drive as cache drive and i'm getting write speeds up to 100MB/sec when copying large blu-ray files.

 

That's incredible!  Is that peak, or sustained?  That seems way too fast for a 5400 RPM spindle drive, faster than my tests with a budget SSD!

 

It is sustained speed. I've included some screen shots when copying a large file. The client PC where i'm copying from has 2x640GB WD blacks in RAID0.

 

 

 

I am thinking that feeding the server from 2x640GB WD blacks in RAID0 helps you to achieve those speeds. I can sustain 70 ish from a single disk to Unraid with large files.

 

I might have to try setting up Raid 0 to boost speeds 

One WD Black is fast enough to sustain those speeds.

 

Maybe your GIG-E can't handle it?  Make sure your switch supports Jumbo Frames and that you have it enabled in Windows.

Nice!  I updated the OP to reflect this new record!

I would love to see what teracopy reports as it's file transfer speed since that's all I use to move files between windows and unRAID.

 

I would love to see what teracopy reports as it's file transfer speed since that's all I use to move files between windows and unRAID.

 

 

I will test this ASAP. Never used teracopy before so i'm curious. 

I've tested teracopy but the speed is not stable. Drops sometimes to 60MB and peeks at 220MB. 

I'm getting up to 80MB/sec, with over 50MB/sec sustained to or from a 2.5" 7200rpm drive (Seagate ST9200420ASG) in my Windows laptop to a WD20EARS cache drive in my HP Microserver -- a relatively slow platform.

 

All of those components are relatively slow. I'm guessing the SATA controllers have something to do with it.

Also, my laptop SATA transfer speeds rocketed with a recent Windows (7 x64) update -- TeraCopy speeds remained the same or got slower (about half the speed of the Win copy), so I've found that the standard Windows copy to be very fast using a current Win7 system with all updates installed.

Raj -

 

After, "unsuccessfully" trying the whole cache drive experience and having to restart a new array build some few times because of it I am super hesitant to go down the cache drive path but I'm pretty interested in using it for adding NZB, couchpotato and sickbeard. Is there a way to try a HD in the cache position and then if I don't like it I can put the settings back to just as if I had restarted?

 

I am getting mid 40's to the cache drive, I am going to try switching to from ide mode to AHCI mode to see if it improves speeds.

I'm using a Samsung HD322GJ as cache drive for a couple of days now. This drive is pretty fast due to its high disk density (single platter of 320GB). My array is not yet protected so I'm having pretty good speed from the beginning (around 60MB/s) but it improves since the cache drive installation. I was able to nearly saturate my network with speeds approaching 110MB/s.

 

Now this is not always the case. Sometimes it just fluctuates between 60 and 90MB/s and I can't understand why. The network is fully available, nothing's changed. I must precise I'm not using Jumbo Frame because my network media player doesn't support it. I may try to activate this option.

 

A question comes to my mind : if you activate Jumbo Frame in Win7, don't do anything special on the unRAID side and on the player side, will my player be able to access the shares on my unRAID server? And will the transfer between Win7 and unRAID occur with Jumbo Frame activated? It comes to ask if unRAID is able to activate/deactivate Jumbo Frame whether it communicates with a Jumbo Frame compatible or incompatible device?

 

EDIT: Just answering to myself > it works! You can actually activate Jumbo Frame on your computer and benefit from the improved speed even though your player doesn't support JF. unRAID somewhat manages the switch. Great Linux!

I am considering a cache drive for my server. My question is with regard to files being read and written to the cache disk and the mover script.

 

I currently plan to save files via bittorrent to the server and seed them for some time. If I install a cache drive what will happen with regard to partially completed and completed torrent transfers?

 

I would assume the incomplete transfers (files still being written to) would be skipped by the mover script and remain on the cache drive. Would complete torrent transfers (not seeding, but still open in the bittorrent client) be transferred to the array the same way as other complete files? I am not worried about the array being accessed when the files are complete for seeding but prefer to avoid writing directly to the array, especially with a bittorrent client.

Stomp: Jumbo Frames can certainly help, but there are other factors at play as well.  If you are transferring large media files such as HD movies, then you'll enjoy faster transfer speeds as a sequential read from the source computer and sequential write to the unRAID server require far less head movement on both platters.  However, if you are transferring a lot of small files (such as a folder full of photos and documents), then there's a good chance that you'll see much slower transfer speeds as the source disk's head has to jump all around the platter to locate all the files.  If you are familiar with disk fragmentation in Windows, then this should stand to reason.

 

I am considering a cache drive for my server. My question is with regard to files being read and written to the cache disk and the mover script.

 

I currently plan to save files via bittorrent to the server and seed them for some time. If I install a cache drive what will happen with regard to partially completed and completed torrent transfers?

 

I would assume the incomplete transfers (files still being written to) would be skipped by the mover script and remain on the cache drive. Would complete torrent transfers (not seeding, but still open in the bittorrent client) be transferred to the array the same way as other complete files? I am not worried about the array being accessed when the files are complete for seeding but prefer to avoid writing directly to the array, especially with a bittorrent client.

 

1080p: The mover script simply skips any 'open' file.  Both an incomplete and actively downloading file and complete and seeding file would be considered 'open'.  A complete but not seeding file would be 'closed' and would therefore be moved by the mover script.  I ran into the same concern when first setting up my server and torrent client.  My somewhat inelegant solution was to dedicate a 500 GB disk in my Win7 desktop just to torrent downloading and seeding (as well as some Crashplan backups).  I have four torrent directories defined in uTorrent: Downloads, Seeds, Torrents, and Autoload.  All torrent files are saved in the 'torrents' directory, and I use 'autoload' for adding torrents over the network (one of uTorrent's built-in features).  All incomplete files go in the 'downloads' directory, and upon completion uTorrent moves them into the 'seeds' directory (another of uTorrent's built-in features).  Later, at my leisure, I manually move complete files from the 'seeds' directory onto my server via user shares (which uses my cache drive) and use uTorrent's 'set download location' feature to point the torrent to the file's new location on the server.

 

The biggest problem with this approach is the time it takes me to manually move my downloaded files and point the torrent files to the new location.  Since I like to separate my media into movies, tv, documentaries, etc. user shares, this is the only way I've figured out how to appease my organisational preferences.  I'm sure it is possible (with some fancy scripting) to configure uTorrent or some fancy program to take care of all of these steps for me, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.  5-10 minutes per day of moving completed downloads is all I currently spend, so this hasn't been too much of an inconvenience for me.

 

If you aren't finicky about organization, a very simple solution would be to use uTorrent's built-in features to automatically move all completed downloads to one user share on your server.  The files would then be parity-protected automatically, but would all be jumbled up in one big folder.

Thanks for the reply Rajahal! It is good to know that I'll still be able to move files even if I want to seed them. I was considering using uTorrent's Scheduler to 'turn off' my torrents for +/- one hour each night and run the mover script just afterward if there were going to be major complications.

 

My setup will be a little different to you. I like to keep torrents in certain folders (music in music/FLAC or music/MP3, Movies in film and so on...) and television is especially difficult to arrange. For this I have decided to use uTorrent's built in RSS manager which will allow me to save files in particular folders automatically.

 

I will order a cache drive today and begin testing this next week

Raj -

 

After, "unsuccessfully" trying the whole cache drive experience and having to restart a new array build some few times because of it I am super hesitant to go down the cache drive path but I'm pretty interested in using it for adding NZB, couchpotato and sickbeard. Is there a way to try a HD in the cache position and then if I don't like it I can put the settings back to just as if I had restarted?

 

My situation is similar in that I started with v5b14 unlicensed and I use the drive mount plugin for an "apps" drive (sab/sb/cp/pms).

 

When I upgrade to a Plus or Pro license, should I change from using an "apps" drive to a cache drive?

 

Would there be any benefit?

 

Everything is running smoothly with the current setup, so I am tempted to leave it alone after I upgrade to Plus or Pro.

 

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

 

Raj -

 

After, "unsuccessfully" trying the whole cache drive experience and having to restart a new array build some few times because of it I am super hesitant to go down the cache drive path but I'm pretty interested in using it for adding NZB, couchpotato and sickbeard. Is there a way to try a HD in the cache position and then if I don't like it I can put the settings back to just as if I had restarted?

 

My situation is similar in that I started with v5b14 unlicensed and I use the drive mount plugin for an "apps" drive (sab/sb/cp/pms).

 

When I upgrade to a Plus or Pro license, should I change from using an "apps" drive to a cache drive?

 

Would there be any benefit?

 

Everything is running smoothly with the current setup, so I am tempted to leave it alone after I upgrade to Plus or Pro.

 

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

 

There's no benefit. Leave it alone.

Hi guys

 

I'm ready to add my cache drive but have one simple question. Is the mover script by default ready to go, or is there some configuration required.

 

If some setup is required, where will I find it

 

Thanks

 

Mick

Hi guys

 

I'm ready to add my cache drive but have one simple question. Is the mover script by default ready to go, or is there some configuration required.

 

If some setup is required, where will I find it

 

Thanks

 

Mick

 

The move script is pre-configured to run at 3:40 AM (server time) every night.  You can change that time on the unRAID 'shares' page (you will only see the mover script options if you have a cache disk assigned).  More info on the mover script and how to customize it in the wiki.

Apparently I am stupid.  I cant find information on how to add a cache drive.  Can someone please post a link for me?

 

I am running 4.7 and allready have shares and users setup.  I ran the preclear utility on my spare drive like 4 months ago but never added it to my array.  Is there an easy way I can just add it as my cache drive?

 

Thanks!

 

EDIT!!!!

 

OK, I found where I can add the cache drive.  I stopped my array and I see it now.  Can i Just set my spare drive as cache and unraid will do the rest?  Do I have to do anything special after I do this?  Will the mover work properly since my shares have already been setup?

 

 

Apparently I am stupid.  I cant find information on how to add a cache drive.  Can someone please post a link for me?

 

I am running 4.7 and allready have shares and users setup.  I ran the preclear utility on my spare drive like 4 months ago but never added it to my array.  Is there an easy way I can just add it as my cache drive?

 

Thanks!

 

EDIT!!!!

 

OK, I found where I can add the cache drive.  I stopped my array and I see it now.  Can i Just set my spare drive as cache and unraid will do the rest?  Do I have to do anything special after I do this?  Will the mover work properly since my shares have already been setup?

once in place you also have to enable the use of the cache drive on each of the user-shares where you wish it to be used.