October 2, 20196 yr I'm going to updrade my array by initially going to a 4TB Parity drive (from 2TB) and then upping some data disks. My server is full, with 4 SATA drives, so I thought I'd PreClear the 4TB disk using a USB-SATA adaptor (USB 2). Connected up, started the PreClear tool, and started it running with no changes to the parameters (Pre- and Post-Read set to happen). That was yesterday... So far it's reading: Pre-Read: 1% @ 0 MB/s (21:41:39) Nearly 22 hours to do 1%! Is this the expected speed using USB 2, or is there something else happening? I need this to finish well before Christmas, but at this rate it won't even have finished the Pre-Read by then... The only other options I have are to use eSATA (don't have the cable for this) or to get a 30-day trial of UnRAID and fire up another machine with it, connect this drive internally, and use that for the preclear, which is quite a bit of hassle (I need to find a suitable machine first). Any thoughts/advice, please? Cheers, Howard Edited October 17, 20196 yr by HDRW
October 2, 20196 yr Community Expert These is definitely something wrong at that speed. USB2 is slow - but not that slow! If you want informed feedback you should post your system diagnostics zip file (obtained via Tools >> Diagnostics or by using 'diagnostics' at the Unraid command line).
October 9, 20196 yr Author Well after 48 hours it crapped out entirely, so I suspect the USB-SATA adaptor is faulty. Tried again using a USB "dock" where the drive plugs into the top, and it went much faster (20MB/Sec) but it only showed the 4TB drive as 2TB - may be a limit of this dock, so I'm now waiting for a USB 3.0 - SATA adaptor to turn up. Incidentally, this server has an eSATA port - would that be expected to work with UnRAID? Cheers, Howard
October 9, 20196 yr Community Expert 19 minutes ago, HDRW said: Incidentally, this server has an eSATA port - would that be expected to work with UnRAID As far as Unraid is concerned eSATA should look just like another SATA device as eSATA is just slightly different cabling compared to SATA. A lot depends on how well the eSATA support at the disk end of the link is implemented.
October 17, 20196 yr Author Well I couldn't get eSATA to work (I suspect a power problem) , so I went with a USB 3.0 PCI-Express card in the machine, and a USB 3.0 Docking station (where the drive plugs in from the top) which has its own power supply. It shows the drive correctly as 4TB and the preclear is now running along nicely at a tad over 200MB/sec, so I think I can confirm that my first USB-SATA adaptor is duff, and my USB 2 dock only handles 2TB! Thanks for all the advice, folks. (I can't see how to add "SOLVED" to the title, or I'd do that)
October 17, 20196 yr 11 minutes ago, HDRW said: (I can't see how to add "SOLVED" to the title, or I'd do that) Edit the first post of the thread.
October 18, 20196 yr Author And finally... it took 21 hours to preclear (including pre- and post-read) a Toshiba N300 ("NAS") 4TB drive in the USB 3.0 Dock. Now to install it as the Parity drive! Cheers, Howard Edited October 18, 20196 yr by HDRW
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.