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swapping from a windows home server, can i get a hardware check please?


ThEgOg

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hi :)

 

i've had a play around with unraid on an old dell tower, and i think i'm going to swap from a windows home server to an unraid box.

 

i'm collecting together what hardware (i think) i need and would appreciate some advice on whether its right please.

 

so here we go this is what i have atm:-

 

asus a8n sli deluxe 939

 

athlon 3500 cpu

 

x4 sticks of 512 ram (2x pairs)

 

corsair 400w psu

 

2x 1tb, 2x 1.5tb hd's

 

sandisk cruser 2gb & 8gb

 

old server case for now until i get hold of a cm590

 

i think thats all i need for now, is there anything else i'll need??

 

many thanks for your time :)

 

 

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I'm sorry to say that your motherboard most likely won't work with unRAID, or at least it isn't recommended for unRAID.  The issue is with the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI northbridge.  nForce4 chipsets are known to corrupt data and cause all sorts of other problems.  See here for more details.  This is actually the most nefarious type of unRAID incompatibility, since it will appear to work at first, but then later on down the road you'll discover corrupted data.

 

So to keep it simple, I would recommend replacing the motherboard and CPU (since you won't find another 939 motherboard at this point).  Everything else should be fine (though you didn't mention what type of RAM you have).

 

If you really, REALLY want to get that motherboard to work with unRAID, you can put it through a series of rigorous tests to see if it has the same issues as other nForce4 boards.  I recently did the same with a suspicious motherboard, see here.  To do these tests right will take you about a month of on and off testing.  It is a pain, and unless you are really strapped for cash I don't recommend it.  Even though I did determine that my nForce4 board doesn't have any issues with unRAID, I don't have the same high hopes for your motherboard as it is much older.

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Hi Rajahal,

 

>:( i've just purchased the sli deluxe board used, specifically for the unraid server due to it being listed in the wiki as a compatible board. ???

 

i was trying to keep the costs down by using used items, but it looks like i've just wasted my time on that mobo, and i'll have to now resell on.

 

testing isn't really viable for me, and tbh i wanted to get it all going next week, now i'm back to square one.

 

thanks for your time and the reply :)

 

 

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Hmm, I didn't notice that it is on the compatibility list.  That means that there must be someone out there who is using it successfully.  However, notice that it doesn't have a tested level (meaning that it hasn't been verified to successfully compute and check parity).

 

I understand your frustration, as I'm now confused as to whether or not to trust it as well.

 

Maybe someone with more experience in the nForce4 issues can offer further advice.

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It is not so much that the board is not compatible, it is just that it is suspect.

 

If you read down a little further on that same compatibility page you will see that it is recommended to stay away from nForce4 boards.

 

 

 

You can probably test the board in as a little as a week, but you will have to keep on top of it.  You need to get everything set up, move data to the server, do multiple parity checks to make sure nothing changes and probably try pulling a drive.  Make sure that the system can handle a missing drive and it all that passes you should be OK.

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to be honest guys i get the feeling the checks etc will be above my competency levels, not sure i want to start something that i'll be out of my depth in, then to find out ive done it wrong and chance losing some of my data >:(

 

and i thought i'd done well to get that specific board due to the 8 sata ports! ::)

 

thanks again for the help :)

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i've just had a re-read of your posts guys,

 

 

so if i build the unraid box using the bits i have, install say 3 drives, add data onto the server, wait a week then pull one of the drives. if after all that the parity comes back as ok and the server operates as it should, then its deemed as tested?

 

or is there a lot more to it than that?

 

 

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i've just had a re-read of your posts guys,

 

 

so if i build the unraid box using the bits i have, install say 3 drives, add data onto the server, wait a week then pull one of the drives. if after all that the parity comes back as ok and the server operates as it should, then its deemed as tested?

 

or is there a lot more to it than that?

 

 

 

Not a lot more, but you will want to run parity checks also.  This is as simple as pressing a button on the web interface to start a check.  Do that once a day to make sure nothing changes.

 

When you go to transfer your files use something like TeraCopy.  You can turn on the CRC checking (i think thats was it is I don't have a windows PC and don't use TeraCopy) to make sure that the files copiedto the unRAID server are the same.

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Yep, the testing is easy enough, it is just a bit tedious.  Just don't trust the server with any important data until you've confirmed that it is OK.

 

TeraCopy is great, by the way.  I originally started using it when I was testing out that Zotac board, but now I use it all the time on all my machines.

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You also want to make sure the files you transfer to the server have their MD5SUM computed and match before the copy, after the copy, and checked once a day over the course of no less than two weeks. This is to ensure the data remains as it should and some corruption didn't occur over time to both the data drive and parity drive. You will also want to make sure the system is under load/stress conditions, as some indicated their NF4 issues only showed up under load/stress.

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Hmm, tbh I'm not sure I have the time or patience to run these extensive tests l, only find out that I have an unsuitable board.

 

I think ill sell this stuff on and get some other proven hardware, although that what I thought I had done!

 

I've looked at the budget build but a lot of it seems hard to get in the uk.

 

Anyway, I'll have to save up more cash after buying a zbox, ssd and memory yesterday.

 

Thanks for all the advice guys :)

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I'm not sure whether this helps, but I ran unRAID on an A8N-E for a few weeks, writing largish .mkvs, and pulling them back again.  I was never aware of any problems on playback.

 

For what it's worth, this board came from an old W2k server.  That machine had suffered all sorts of intermittent spurious errors when it was running on an Epox nForce4 board (the original board, and an identical replacement).  I was never able to pin down the root of the errors - it's only recently that I've learned of the nForce4 problem.  From the day I replaced the mobo with the Asus, all the problems vanished.  So, if your -SLI uses the same generation of nForce4 as my -E, I suspect that you will be okay.

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