12tb new unraid server only showing total size of 3tb

[thearttist]

Sorry for the noob question but I just finished setting my new UNRaid server up and thought I would have more then just 3tb available when I purchased 12tb worth of Hdds

 

am I missing something or do I need to reset this up in a different manner 

 

thanks in advance for the help 

 

Darron 

 

 

 

 

[thearttist]

NVM guys 

 

this looks to be normal from what i gather how long should the array build take?

[trurl]

I believe the number you have circled is referring to the size of parity, 3TB with 87.9GB already synced

 

If you look in the Array Devices section, it is showing you the total size of the data disks in your array, 9TB.

 

[1812]

You have set it up correctly if you want parity protection. You are currently doing a parity sync, 3TB size of drives. You currently have 9TB available since one of your drives is being used as parity.

 

If you remove the parity drive, you will have 12 tb of usable but non-protected space.

 

Parity sync times vary based on systems/controllers/disks. But plan on 12 hours and if you are faster, then take it as a win.

[trurl]

Depends to some extent on your specific hardware. I would guess about 8 hours. If you look at it again later after it has had a little time it will give you an estimate.

5 minutes ago, 1812 said:

If you remove the parity drive, you will have 12 tb of usable but non-protected space.

If you were to instead use the parity drive as a data disk then of course you would get its space for data as well, but having parity protection is sort of the point, isn't it?

[thearttist]

 Thanks, No I want the protection. that's why i have an extra 1tb I was wanting to also protect the cache but couldn't  figure that out.

 

I was also worried that it was saying that Parity was invalid also, but after further investigation this looks to be normal. I just freaked out because everything was moving so quick and smoothly. Didn't realize that it was going to take 6 hours (Dashboard estimate) to build the array

 

[Hoopster]

28 minutes ago, thearttist said:

 Thanks, No I want the protection. that's why i have an extra 1tb I was wanting to also protect the cache but couldn't  figure that out.

 

I was also worried that it was saying that Parity was invalid also, but after further investigation this looks to be normal. I just freaked out because everything was moving so quick and smoothly. Didn't realize that it was going to take 6 hours (Dashboard estimate) to build the array

 

 

Your initial parity sync (and any subsequent regular parity checks) will take several hours to complete.  You can use the system normally while a parity check is in progress (mine takes 15-16 hours with an 8TB parity drive and I start it a 1am once a month), but its best to avoid heavy writes to the array while parity operations are in progress. 

 

As it is not part of the array in terms of data storage space, parity doesn't protect the cache drive but there are ways of making regular backups of the docker appdata and other critical contents of the cache drive (such as file downloads and VM files) you may be storing there, and the unRAID flash drive.  See CA Appdata Backup/Restore in the Apps tab.

 

If you are using the cache drive for actual write caching, any array data temporarily written to the cache drive will appear to be part of the array, but, it is not parity protected until the mover moves the data to array data disks according to a schedule you determine.

[John_M]

To protect your cache drive you need to add another of similar capacity to create a cache pool. BTRFS will automatically configure them as a RAID 1 mirror.

 

Building an array always takes several hours, whether it's unRAID or something else. Every bit of every data disk has to be read and every bit of the parity disk has to be written. I recently replaced a disk in an old Drobo and it took a day and a half to rebuild.

 

[1812]

3 hours ago, trurl said:

Depends to some extent on your specific hardware. I would guess about 8 hours. If you look at it again later after it has had a little time it will give you an estimate.

If you were to instead use the parity drive as a data disk then of course you would get its space for data as well, but having parity protection is sort of the point, isn't it?

I was merely letting them know how to make all 12tb of their space show up.

 

but, I have 2 unraid licenses that currently run w/out parity drives, so.... it is a thing that people do under circumstances.