Just got the array up and running for the first time. I purchased a pro license and plan to use 8 drives total. Now I am using three since I have not plugged in my other drives (nor the unlock key for the pro upgrade) until I copy the data off the four drives I was using before. Now, I have two SATA 500GB and one PATA 500GB. One of the SATAs set for parity. First off, it is running parity sync at about 2290KB/s and took DAYS to run the first attempt, so I just retried (says something 3500 minutes), so that seems way too slow. I read bad (round, etc..) PATA cables can cause this, but my parity drive is SATA. I have the suggested Gigabyte GA-945GZM-S2 945G 775 mobo and Celeron D 2.8, 1 gig RAM. Anyway, that is issue #1. Issue #2 is copying files from my four 250GB hard drives now. They are connected via firewire 400 in a four-drive enclosure to my main PC. I use that now to play back my movie rips. All four hard drives are network shares at the root level. I can see then and read and write to them fine from other PCs or my Mac. Speed over the firewire has never been an issue, even with HDTV files. Anyway, I tried using Windows Explorer to copy my files over to the unraid. However, it is not working. It copies a file or two, then returns an error "specified network name no longer available" Even when it is copying, it seems slow. A 900MB file was expected to take 24 minutes before it crapped out. Any ideas what am I doing wrong? So far I'm thinking I made a mistake here somewhere- I hope it wasn't in buying my license before I tried out the three drive and demo software array for a while.

 

Also, when I do finally copy the contents off of the four PATA 250GB drives I have now, I want to add them to the array. I'll search here for instructions, but I assume growing the array is pretty straightforward. However, I guess I need to re-run parity sync then. Given that, should I just disable parity for now until I get the files copied, and once clear, get four drives reformatted and added? Would that speed up the initial 900 or so gig of stuff I need to copy?

Just got the array up and running for the first time. I purchased a pro license and plan to use 8 drives total. Now I am using three since I have not plugged in my other drives (nor the unlock key for the pro upgrade) until I copy the data off the four drives I was using before. Now, I have two SATA 500GB and one PATA 500GB. One of the SATAs set for parity. First off, it is running parity sync at about 2290KB/s and took DAYS to run the first attempt, so I just retried (says something 3500 minutes), so that seems way too slow. I read bad (round, etc..) PATA cables can cause this, but my parity drive is SATA.

This slow SATA speed has usually been a bios setting on the motherboard.  The bios has your SATA drive emulating an IDE drive, and a slow one at that.

Look for a setting in the bios for "enhanced SATA" and take it out of "legacy/emulation mode" (your motherboard may label these differently, but look for similar settings)

 

Check out this post/thread for somebody else who had the same issue because of their bios settings and an SATA drive. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=222.msg1505#msg1505

 

Joe L.

 

 

Also, when I do finally copy the contents off of the four PATA 250GB drives I have now, I want to add them to the array. I'll search here for instructions, but I assume growing the array is pretty straightforward. However, I guess I need to re-run parity sync then. Given that, should I just disable parity for now until I get the files copied, and once clear, get four drives reformatted and added? Would that speed up the initial 900 or so gig of stuff I need to copy?

 

You should not need to re-run the parity sync.  Install the 4 drives, then when you Start the array, they will be cleared (an hour or two), then formatted (a few minutes), then the expanded array will be ready.  Clearing the new drives does not affect the parity drive, formatting does, briefly.  Please correct me, Joe, if I'm wrong.

 

Also, when I do finally copy the contents off of the four PATA 250GB drives I have now, I want to add them to the array. I'll search here for instructions, but I assume growing the array is pretty straightforward. However, I guess I need to re-run parity sync then. Given that, should I just disable parity for now until I get the files copied, and once clear, get four drives reformatted and added? Would that speed up the initial 900 or so gig of stuff I need to copy?

 

You should not need to re-run the parity sync.  Install the 4 drives, then when you Start the array, they will be cleared (an hour or two), then formatted (a few minutes), then the expanded array will be ready.  Clearing the new drives does not affect the parity drive, formatting does, briefly.  Please correct me, Joe, if I'm wrong.

 

Sounds right to me.  The time it takes to clear your new drives is proportional to their size (and speed).  From what I have read, you can clear them all at the same time and they will be cleared in parallel. (I've never added more than one at a time to my  array, so I don't know first hand)  I've had it take nearly three hours with my slower IDE based system and a large 500Gig drive.

 

While the drives are being  cleared the other disks in the array will be off-line, so plan that for a time  when you do not need access to the other drives.  Clearing the drives does not  write to parity.  As indicated, formatting does write to parity, but that step only  takes a few minutes per drive.  Once the drives are cleared, your array will be brought back on-line  so your other content is available once more.

 

Joe L.

Thanks guys- I'll check the bios. I know I messed around with various settings trying to get the initial USB stick boot, so maybe I messed w/ the SATA settings.

Any ideas why Windows Explorer is crapping out my attempts to copy my movies over to disk one or disk two of the array with the "specified network name no longer available" error? Also, once one file copy fails, the whole copy attempt stops, so I can't even leave it alone and check on it later with any verifiable progress. Do the drives on the unraid need to be erased/formatted when starting the array? What I'm getting at is, could I take my 500GB new drives I was attempting to copy to over the network, and instead remove them from the unraid tower, connect them to my main PC, use a Windows drive or file copy program (something more robust and w/ more options/ permissions error overrides or skip those files options, etc...), and then use these drives w/ to build a new array (keeping the files that are on them?) If not, suggestions for how to get these files moved over are very much appreciated.

The new drives in the unRaid array are erased and reformatted with a reiserFs file-system.  You will not be able to format them on your windlws box, load data, and then move them.

 

First, make sure you have any  bios updates loaded from your motherboard/network card manufacturer.  Could be the network interface bios entry has been updated.

 

Next, the slow speed of your current config might just be causing the write from windows explorer to time out. If it still times out after you get the speed issue resolved..., suspect a bad network cable, or a bad router/switch.  Marginal ones might have a high error rate and would cause issues as you describe.

 

Last, when the failure does occur, and network connectivity fails, what, if anything was writen to the syslog on the unRaid server?

 

Log into the system using telnet as "root" 

once logged on, type

cat /var/log/syslog

 

The system log will be sent to the screen.  Type "control-A" to select all the text, then "control-C" to copy it to the clipboard, then paste it here for analysis.

 

Joe L.

 

 

 

 

 

 

...Last, when the failure does occur, and network connectivity fails, what, if anything was writen to the syslog on the unRaid server?

 

Log into the system using telnet as "root" 

once logged on, type

cat /var/log/syslog

 

The system log will be sent to the screen.  Type "control-A" to select all the text, then "control-C" to copy it to the clipboard, then paste it here for analysis.

 

Joe L.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Joe and everyone. Glad to report putting the BIOS in SATA "enhanced" mode solved the slow drive issue, and parity check now takes around 100 minutes (52,000KB/s or so.) So that issue is solved. So last night I used my two PCs to try to copy over my movies and tivo extractions. All seemed to be running fine, except the permissions must be messed up on some of the files. I was trying to move them from the new Vista machine, from four network share drives (connected visa firewire to my older PC)- and I had mounted these network drives with the "log in as a different user" option.  I used my main login that was used when I created these files. So I thought hat would solve the permissions issues, but it didn't. So, for that drive, I simply used the old PC to transfer the files, and that seemed to work. Left it to run overnight, but this morning, the unraid was not accessible over the network. No telnet, no web interface, no shares. So I checked the tower and it still looked to be up and running- LAN jack in the back had orange light, was powered up, etc.. I could not get to it from the network however, and so of course my copying was paused w/ errors. So I don't have a monitor or keyboard connected anymore (it's down in the basement now), so all I could think to do was power cycle. It seems to be up again and it's doing a parity check, and I can mount the disks and copy w/ Explorer again. However, I'd like to know what happend, but it seems the log is wiped on a power cycle? I pull up the log as described above and it starts with this morning's boot? Any ideas?

Are you copying to a disk share or a user share?  If the latter, it may not work, but instead eats up all the memory and eventually shuts down critical packages, such as those needed to telnet into.

 

If that is what happened ... to avoid this in the future, set your permissions for user shares to "read only".  That way, it will crap out immediately.

 

 

Bill

Update- while rebooting the host PC did not seem to help (?!), power-cycling the four-drive firewire enclosure holding the files I was trying to copy, then rebooting, seems to have done the trick. Copying 163GB remaining now @ 5MB/sec, fingers crossed.