New to unRAID...a few questions...


stevep94

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OK, on with the show!

 

Now I've got the basics on the go (I even managed to figure out how to extract rar files! :D) I'm wanting to get a torrent client up and running.

 

I've installed the Transmission VPN app and (I think) managed to get it working with my account for PIA - download was a bit spotty initially (going from 7+MB/sec down to minimal kb/sec) but once I opened a couple of ports on my router and changed the PIA region it seems to be getting the full-whack speed wise for uploads - although I can't seem to get my head around what settings I need to change to get uploads working??

 

I've done some reading but most (all) of it is over my head - can anyone point me towards an "idiots guide" to setting the Transmission client up??

 

Thanks...

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Thanks for the tip - I've binned off Transmission and have installed DelugeVPN per the instructional video and it's working a treat! :D

 

Now however is the moment of truth - I've got a separate backup of family photos and videos and so am about to disconnect the 2 x 2TB WD Red's from my Synology box and slot them into the unRAID array! (1 for extra storage and one as the parity drive)

 

Before I do however, does anyone know whether I should:

  1. Do some sort of factory reset on the Synology? (I plan to try and sell it and obviously don't want anything left on it - although my understanding has always been that the only data, config etc was stored on the drives themselves!)
  2. Should I run Preclear on the 2 drives going into the array?
  3. Is there any detriment to the existing 2TB drive being circa 85% full when adding the extra 2TB drive for storage? (or should I somehow try and "level out" the data on each disk?)

Hopefully these questions make sense - thanks for the continued help!

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5 hours ago, stevep94 said:

Thanks for the tip - I've binned off Transmission and have installed DelugeVPN per the instructional video and it's working a treat! :D

 

Now however is the moment of truth - I've got a separate backup of family photos and videos and so am about to disconnect the 2 x 2TB WD Red's from my Synology box and slot them into the unRAID array! (1 for extra storage and one as the parity drive)

 

Before I do however, does anyone know whether I should:

  1. Do some sort of factory reset on the Synology? (I plan to try and sell it and obviously don't want anything left on it - although my understanding has always been that the only data, config etc was stored on the drives themselves!)

 

No harm. Why not just do the factory reset when you decide you will sell. Never know if any of your registration info might survive without a reset.

 

5 hours ago, stevep94 said:
  1. Should I run Preclear on the 2 drives going into the array?

 

Take a close look at the SMART attributes to make sure the drives are healthy before putting into the unRAID server. If you are going to build or rebuild parity, there is no need for the disks to be precleared.  You can format them after starting the array in unRAID and any residual data won't matter. It is only if you are adding the drives to an existing parity protected array, that the clear must occur.

 

unRAID will clear them for you if they do not contain a "preclear signature". You can use preclear, but it does a preread, writes zeroes, and then does a postread, so would take longer (but these steps can be tweaked with command line switches - I'm just not sure it will let you clear without a post-read verity). UnRAID does the write step only. With Preclear you get to see the results before deciding to add to the array. With unRAID, it i blindly clears and then the disk is in the array.

 

5 hours ago, stevep94 said:
  1. Is there any detriment to the existing 2TB drive being circa 85% full when adding the extra 2TB drive for storage? (or should I somehow try and "level out" the data on each disk?)

 

There is no problem with having some nearly full disks and some nearly empty ones. Some people like to level out the usage, but I'm really not sure why. unRAID will work just fine.

 

I think you understand this, but anything on your old Synology disks will be gone when you put them into unRAID.

 

5 hours ago, stevep94 said:

Hopefully these questions make sense - thanks for the continued help!

 

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OK, things have moved on a little in that I've decided that the Dell T410 is a bit big and a bit loud for my needs and so I'm in the process of picking up a Gen8 HP Microserver with 16GB of ECC RAM and a Xeon 1260L CPU.

 

Now I never got around to putting my 2 x 2TB WD Red's into the array and so I'm wondering whether I'm going to be able simply transplant the cache drive, 2TB HDD and, most importantly, the USB stick with the unRAID OS on it straight into the Microserver and away we go?

 

I'm assuming not (mainly because that would surely be too easy!) and so what is the best way to migrate across to the new chassis of the HP machine??

 

FYI, I've also invested in a couple of 4TB drives and am looking to use one as the parity drive and the other as storage and then slot in one or two of my surplus 2TB drives to give me 6 or 8TB of space to play with! (assuming the HP can take 4 HDD's and an SSD??)

 

As always, thanks...

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Well you can call me Captain Amazed!!!!! O.o

 

I took delivery of my shiny new (well, 2nd hand) Gen8 Microserver today and thought I'd give it a go simply transplanting my USB, SSD (cache) and 2TB HHD into the cute little chassis to see what multitude of problems I'd run into.

 

Blow me it all seems to be working a treat!!! *touch wood*

 

All I did was change the setting in the BIOS to boot from the internal USB, connected the SSD via the connections that look like they are for an optical drive, booted up and unRAID seems to have simply stayed exactly as I left it in the Dell T410 box!!

 

So anyway, I thought now is the time to add in the 2 x 4TB WD Red's I've bought and use one to expand the storage to 6TB and the other to act as the parity drive.

 

At first I tried to add both into the array at the same time but got an error and then it made more sense that I needed to add the 4TB to the storage, start the array (thus formatting the drive) and then add in the other 4TB as the parity drive to provide the redundancy of a disk failure.

 

I've done all this and the "Array Operation" section under the "Main" tab is telling me that the estimated speed is 40.5 MB/sec and that the estimated finish time is 1 day, 3 hours and 17 minutes!!! Does this sound about right for a 4TB parity drive??? (there is approximately 1.8TB of data on the original 2TB drive if that makes any difference??)

 

I hope I've not done anything wrong above - does this sound like the process I should have followed??

 

Thanks for any feedback...

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OK, I've got my parity disk up and running with no errors - but I'm wondering how data will be written to the array now I've got an additional disk in there?

 

I've got a "master" user-share set up as "NAS" rather than having individual shares (I'm pretty much the only one in the house that uses the server anyway!) so what happens now if I copy a movie to the array for example?

 

My share is set up like this:

 

Shares.jpg.b0776304619da57cf2c59b21c53357d2.jpg

 

Within Krusader I used to just have 1 disk showing but now there are (obviously 2) - I want to make sure all movies are kept in the same folder so they are picked up by Plex - will unRAID "create" a duplicate movies folder on the 2nd disk and treat it as a single folder??

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53 minutes ago, stevep94 said:

will unRAID "create" a duplicate movies folder on the 2nd disk and treat it as a single folder??

 

Yes, when that happens depends on the allocation method and split level chosen, high-water is the default and the most used, you can turn on the help for an explanation of how allocation and split levels work.

 

Also, minimum free space should be set to twice the size of the largest file you expect to copy to that share.

 

 

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4 hours ago, stevep94 said:

I'm wondering how data will be written to the array now I've got an additional disk in there?

Definitely turn on the help as Johnnie suggested.  High-water is the default and recommended.  It's going to put a lot of data on one disk, then move to another.  The OCD among us (myself included) may balk at that, but it's really easiest to use high-water and let unRAID do its thing.  Other strategies such as loading the disks equally or putting certain data on certain disks are hard to manage over time and can be less efficient for unRAID.

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Thanks guys - I'll have a good read through the high water etc settings to try and get my head around it! (not sure my OCD is gonna be able to cope with tons of data on on drive and virtually nothing on the other!)

 

I've just noticed that some of my folders have a little orange triangle to the side rather than a green circle - when I hover over it tells me "Some or all files unprotected"!?!? Anyone know why this is? I thought once my parity drive was up and running my array was protected??

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6 minutes ago, stevep94 said:

I've just noticed that some of my folders have a little orange triangle to the side rather than a green circle - when I hover over it tells me "Some or all files unprotected"!?!? Anyone know why this is? I thought once my parity drive was up and running my array was protected??

 

That means that some files from that share are on a single cache device, i.e., unprotected if that device fails, if the share is correctly configured running the mover will turn it green.

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How do I check to see if the share is configured correctly?

 

Unprotected.jpg.d3a3ee98187a96d54e60b7ac7e202d6f.jpg

 

Here is a screenshot of the folders - it's not just my "NAS" folder!?!?

 

*update* I ran the mover and the "NAS" folder is now showing as green - but the other 3 are still unprotected??

 

Edited by stevep94
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Great stuff - thanks!

 

Quick question on Deluge if anyone has any experience of it - how can I change the download location of any given torrent? I know in the options there is a "Move completed location" but it appears to be "/data/completed" - how do I get it to download directly to "/nas/isos" for example? (I can't see a path that involves "/data" anywhere within the folder structure!?!?

Edited by stevep94
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5 minutes ago, stevep94 said:

Great stuff - thanks!

 

Quick question on Deluge if anyone has any experience of it - how can I change the download location of any given torrent? I know in the options there is a "Move completed location" but it appears to be "/data/completed" - how do I get it to download directly to "/nas/isos" for example? (I can't see a path that involves "/data" anywhere within the folder structure!?!?

 

Do you know about docker volume mapping? Here is the Docker FAQ. Lots of good stuff there.

 

https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/57181-real-docker-faq/

 

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