Transferring data while building parity?


Froberg

Recommended Posts

Hi all

 

I've been on a.. path.. failed motherboard and not one but two of my four 6TB WD Reds gave out on me. Back with a freshly RMA'ed motherboard and two brand-spanking new 10TB Reds. 

I have put one 10TB in as parity, and the other to replace the failed data drive - as I need the storage. I plan on getting another 10TB drive for a second parity next month, they're a bit expensive after all. Not to worry, I got the two drives from different retailers. ;-)

 

Regardless: I am building parity, and it takes ages. I've begun adding a few shares and moving data back from my backup box. (NAS540 with JBOD archive drives - so speed is of the essence, really..) 

It will take days to make parity and days again to transfer the 13 terrabytes of data.. but am I doing this wrong? Should I not worry about parity until I'm done moving over everything? 

I've added a 250GB cache SSD to the server, to help speed things up, but it kept running full, which prompted me to actually set the "mover" to run hourly - and it seems it hasn't stopped "moving" ever since. 

 

To summarize; Should I stop parity until data transfer is complete, or doesn't it really matter one way or the other? Thank you. 

Link to comment

Either load data, or build parity, one or the other, not both together, as you found out.

 

Your call which is more important to get done.

 

If it were me and I was loading things up from my backup, I'd stop the parity build and just get the data loaded. If on the off chance that data drive dies during transfer or while building parity after the transfer was done, I'd just switch to the other new drive and load again.

Link to comment
4 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Either load data, or build parity, one or the other, not both together, as you found out.

I haven't actually experienced anything negative from doing both. Not that I've noticed at any rate. It handles very differently than the RAID5 setup I'm accustomed to, so if there are issues I've likely just chalked them up to that. Are there actual downsides to what I'm doing, or will parity just take longer to achieve this way?

 

I just had a thought that it might not be best practice and wanted to ask either way.

What of setting up dockers and vm's? Also wait for everything else to finish?

 

Cheers.

Link to comment
11 hours ago, Froberg said:

I am building parity, and it takes ages.

I'd call that a negative.

5 hours ago, Froberg said:

I haven't actually experienced anything negative from doing both.

Doing both simultaneously will take a good bit longer than the cumulative time of doing them one at a time. Unless your source material is so slow that loading your backups will take forever anyway.

Link to comment
  • 3 weeks later...

Parity was, indeed, much quicker once I stopped messing around. 

 

All up and running. I'm very happy with everything so far. I've got my shares, my plex, medusa and transmission going. Next step is getting my website back up and running, but that's for a later date, having a hard time finding a good guide for it. 

 

Considering I used a junk-drive I had lying around to set this up, I'd rather get the running configuration on to one of the new flash drives I bought specifically for UnRaid before I buy my license. Might as well. 

What's the best way to go about it - just so I don't screw anything up. Cheers!

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.