Any recommendations for addon USB 3.0 storage controllers that work at solid speeds with unRaid 6.2.4 or 6.3 series? And will they work with preclear? The motherboard is an ASRock EP2C602, so there's plenty of PCI-Express slots and 1 PCI slot available.

 

I'd like to run preclear on a few external drives before I shuck the husk and make them internal drives.

 

Thanks.

For the record, I'm having great success with preclearing 2 external drives at the same time with the following card: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015JXR1UY

 

 

Any idea whether that card is a good candidate for VM passthrough?

8 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Any idea whether that card is a good candidate for VM passthrough?

Isn't that as much dependent on motherboard and PCI assignment as well though?

1 hour ago, CHBMB said:

Isn't that as much dependent on motherboard and PCI assignment as well though?

Yes, inasmuch as you can or can't pass it through. I was really asking more about the general compatibility of the USB chipset after it was successfully passed through. There is an itch in the back of my brain that someone somewhere on the unraid forum was having issues with some USB cards, perhaps in reference to specific types of VM guests. There was a recommendation made at that time for a card roughly double the price, so I was wondering if this card worked as well. Unfortunately I can't remember any more what specifically was being discussed, I just have that more expensive card bookmarked in my amazon account.

No idea if it'll work in a VM or not, yet.

 

I'm still preclearing my 8TB external drives. I might have about another week left to go. I did one pass one 1 8TB Drive A to make sure it worked. Once that was done I then setup a 2nd 8TB Drive B and setup 1 Preclear pass on drive A and 2 Preclear passes on drive B. Drive A completed it's second 1 pass and drive B is on it's pass 2 of 2. When it finishes, I'll then swap in a 3rd 8TB Drive C and do 2 passes on it. I may opt to do a 3rd preclear pass on all drives, depending on what the SMART reports actually look like.

 

Drive A Preclear SOLO:  Total elapsed time: 45:55:40

Drive A Preclear with Drive B running: Total elapsed time: 49:09:46

 

So it lost a little bit of time with 2 drives preclearing, but I'll gladly take 3:15 longer when run side-by-side to cut off 42 hours if run 1 after another.

This controller worked fine throughout the preclear of 3 external Seagate Archive drives. I just installed the 3 drives internally on the PERC H310 controller and ran a Verify MBR preclear signature test. All 3 passed and show as verified precleared.