UnRaid Build Comments...

[G Speed]

Hello everyone,

 

so as of right now I have a dns-323.. 2x2tb in jbod...I have 140gb left of space.. so far the dns-323 has been working great.. but I'm running out of room

 

I thought about upgrading and getting a dns-343 and doing raid 5,at the moment I have around 600gb+ of movies,shows, etc and such built up on my home computer for the past 6 or so months that I need to transfer over so that would be filled up in no time.. looked into larger devices 5bays+ but they are expensive! and the cheap ones have horrible review and are slow...

 

So here's what I have pieced together, looking for opinions, comments.. am I missing anything etc..

 

Case: Antec Three Hundred

PSU: Corsair Builder Series CMPSU-500CX 500W ATX Power

CPU: AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz

Mobo: ASUS M4A785-M

Ram: I was about to order ram for this, when I realized.. this mobo needs ddr2.. so I thought this would be a good time to upgrade, my home computer which has 4 X 512mb of DDR2 800... so I bought  2 X 2gb of DDR2 800 for my home computer

Flash Card: Lacie Moskeyto.. super small and I bought one for my car

Harddrives: 4 X 2tb WD EARS

 

I think I have some sata cables laying around, if not I need to order some, mobo has 6 sata, psu has I think 5 or 6 sata power slots

Also have to see if I have any jumpers for the EARS drives.. If i'm not mistaken I can just put them in jumper 7 & 8 and format?

 

So my plan is as follows... putting everything together of course...

 

1 WD EARS - Parity

3 WD EARS - Data

 

That would give me around 6tb of space, turn off parity transfer my 4tb of data... then take out my 2 2TB WD EADS from the DNS-323, and for a grand total of 10tb .... then I would turn parity back on

 

Am I missing anything?

 

Thanks

 

[ohlwiler]

I would purchase one more disk so that you have parity protection before you delete the files on your 323.

 

If I understand, you are using WD EARS drives in your 323. You will need to jump through a few hoops if the drives have previously been used without jumpers.

 

I highly recommend that you use the preclear script to exercise your drives, especially if the drives are new.

[Joe L.]

If i'm not mistaken I can just put them in jumper 7 & 8 and format?

Almost...

 

Yes, jumper them before doing anything with them.  

 

No, do NOT format them yourself. unRAID will take care of that for you after you assign a data drive to the array.  Parity drive never is formatted, it does not contain a file system.

 

If you have time, use the preclear_disk.sh script on ALL the drives before you assign them to your array.  It will weed out the early mechanical and electrical failures.  (best to know a drive is not working properly BEFORE you put your only copy of precious data on it)

 

Upon advice of others..regarding the preclear process.  If you do not have time, make time.   600Gig of movies will not take that long to transfer...    PReclear two drives... migrate all your movies to one of them, assign the other as parity,

once parit calculation is complete, "Check" parity by pressing the "Check" button to be sure you can read it back, then

 

preclear-disk,

assign-disk

format-dirk

rinse-lather-repeat.

 

Joe L.

[G Speed]

I would purchase one more disk so that you have parity protection before you delete the files on your 323.

 

If I understand, you are using WD EARS drives in your 323. You will need to jump through a few hoops if the drives have previously been used without jumpers.

 

I highly recommend that you use the preclear script to exercise your drives, especially if the drives are new.

 

The drives in the 323 are EADS

 

If i'm not mistaken I can just put them in jumper 7 & 8 and format?

Almost...

 

Yes, jumper them before doing anything with them. 

 

No, do NOT format them yourself. unRAID will take care of that for you after you assign a data drive to the array.  Parity drive never is formatted, it does not contain a file system.

 

If you have time, use the preclear_disk.sh script on ALL the drives before you assign them to your array.  It will weed out the early mechanical and electrical failures.  (best to know a drive is not working properly BEFORE you put your only copy of precious data on it)

 

Upon advice of others..regarding the preclear process.  If you do not have time, make time.  600Gig of movies will not take that long to transfer...    PReclear two drives... migrate all your movies to one of them, assign the other as parity,

once parit calculation is complete, "Check" parity by pressing the "Check" button to be sure you can read it back, then

 

preclear-disk,

assign-disk

format-dirk

rinse-lather-repeat.

 

Joe L.

 

Okay.. so what your saying..

 

1st EARS - preclear-disk,assign then format

2nd EARS - preclear-disk, assign then format

3rd EARS - preclear-disk,assign then format

4th EARS - preclear-disk, assign as "parity".. then turn off

 

Transfer all movies from DNS-323

 

once done, turn on parity "check"

 

Remove EADS drives from dns-323

 

preclear, assign and format both

 

Done?

 

[Rajahal]

Okay.. so what your saying..

 

1st EARS - preclear-disk,assign then format

2nd EARS - preclear-disk, assign then format

3rd EARS - preclear-disk,assign then format

4th EARS - preclear-disk, assign as "parity".. then turn off

 

Transfer all movies from DNS-323

 

once done, turn on parity "check"

 

Remove EADS drives from dns-323

 

preclear, assign and format both

 

Done?

 

 

Again, close.  Here's how I would do it:

 

1) First install the jumper on all EARS drives (pins 7/8).

 

2) Preclear all EARS drives (you can do up to 6 simultaneously).  Double check with the community if you are unsure about any preclear results.

 

3) Boot into unRAID, assign all disks (parity and data), click the button to format all the new disks.

 

4) Start the array, let a parity sync finish.

 

5) Run a parity check (the initial parity sync writes the parity data, the parity check reads it back).

 

6) Transfer data from DNS.  Use TeraCopy's verify feature or similar to make sure the transfer completes without corruption.

 

7) Power down unRAID, install EADS drives from DNS.

 

Power up unRAID and preclear EADS drives.

 

9) Stop array, assign EADS drives as data disks.

 

10) Start array, click the button to format the EADS disks (make sure that only these disks are showing up as unformatted).

 

11) Done!

[G Speed]

Should I turn off parity, before I transfer all the movies? I'm assuming that would speed it up at least 25%?

 

I have to pre-clear drives before booting into unraid, does unraid not have an option to preclear drives?

[Rajahal]

You are right, you can wait to enable the parity drive until after all the movies are transferred.  Just make sure that you run both a parity sync AND a parity check before you delete anything off the DNS.

 

No, unRAID does not have an option to preclear drives.  Preclear is run from the system console or from telnet.

[G Speed]

You are right, you can wait to enable the parity drive until after all the movies are transferred.  Just make sure that you run both a parity sync AND a parity check before you delete anything off the DNS.

 

No, unRAID does not have an option to preclear drives.  Preclear is run from the system console or from telnet.

 

ahh perfect and thanks for the prototype builds helped alot

[Joe L.]

does unraid not have an option to preclear drives?

unRAID will "clear" a drive before adding it to a parity protected array.  Basically, it will write zeros to the entire drive.

 

While it is doing that clearing, the array will be off-line.  That will take 8 to 10 hours or more for a 2TB drive.  If you can do without your movies, fine.  Unfortunately, it just writes zeros.  It makes no attempt to see if the sectors are readable.

 

The SMART firmware on the disks can re-allocate bad sectors if it find one to be un-readable, but it can only do that if it is subsequently written to.  If you let unRAID clear your drive, the first time you go to read it is when you attempt to read back a file you have written to it.  By then it is too late if the contents were not written correctly, or could not be read back correctly.

 

The pre-clear script was developed to exercise a disk by reading it in its entirety, then writing zeros to it, then reading it once more to verify it is all zeros.  It also writes a special pre-clear signature to the disk that unRAID will recognize and skip it own internal clearing process.  This reduces the down-time of the server to minutes instead of many many hours when adding a drive to a parity protected array.  The pre-clear process takes about 3 times the time of the internal process but the array is on-line and usable by you and your family while it is occurring.  (A huge benefit when you had planned to watch a movie)

 

Joe L.

[ohlwiler]

6) Transfer data from DNS.  Use TeraCopy's verify feature or similar to make sure the transfer completes without corruption.

 

To me, this is a very important step. The verify feature in TeraCopy will give you real-time confirmation that the files are being written (and read) without error.

 

I would also recommend enabling parity from the beginning. You are putting together a new system and until you exercise it, the reliability is suspect. Delaying enabling parity means that you are not fully exercising the system. Caution in the beginning will save possible problems later.

[G Speed]

thanks for all the comments.. I know I know nobody could answer accurately..

 

but as a rough estimate.. what would my transfer speeds be to my unraid box

 

currently from my main computer running ubuntu with a wd black 7200rpm drive, via ftp gigabit connection to the dns-323 jbod wd eads.. I get an average of 18mbps

 

with parity on would my transfers be faster or slower?

 

I mean if i'm going to be getting at least 25mbps, I will leave it on

[joshpond]

thanks for all the comments.. I know I know nobody could answer accurately..

 

but as a rough estimate.. what would my transfer speeds be to my unraid box

 

currently from my main computer running ubuntu with a wd black 7200rpm drive, via ftp gigabit connection to the dns-323 jbod wd eads.. I get an average of 18mbps

 

with parity on would my transfers be faster or slower?

 

I mean if i'm going to be getting at least 25mbps, I will leave it on

 

Just finished copying over GB Lan, NFS share to samsung green drives with parity on at about 33 MB/s according to myMAIN (wonderful thing by the way)

 

Josh

[Rajahal]

Rough estimate would be 15 - 25 mb/s with parity enabled, and 50 - 65 mb/s without parity enabled.  That assumes that your DNS box can keep up with those speeds as well, and that your whole network is gigabit capable.

[G Speed]

no way the dns box is capable of that lol

 

would would my reads be... ?

[Rajahal]

Fast enough

 

I don't really know, to be honest.  As long as your array is healthy, you should see close to the read limits of the disks you are using.  You will of course lose some speed to network traffic, etc.  So maybe 75% of the read limits of your disks.

[G Speed]

sounds good enough to me.. can't wait to put all this stuff together.. and just to clarify..

 

I will pretty much have Movies and Tv Shows and Other stuff on here photos, family videos etc..

 

Movies will take up the biggest portion so.. if I do

 

Disk 1  - Folder Name "Movies" - 2tb worth of movies

Disk 2 - Folder Name "Movies" - 2tb worth of movies

Disk 3 - Folder Name "Movies" -2tb worth of movies

 

Will they merge? So if I make a user account for smb... mainly want to use this for my wdtv live

 

when you turn on the wdtv.. I can go network shares - unraid "will rename it" - Movies

 

Then will all the movies show?

[Chris Pollard]

You would set up a "user" share called movies,  windows would see that as a single 6tb share.  http://lime-technology.com/technology/usershares

[G Speed]

thanks that just what I needed .... Awesome!

[G Speed]

Rough estimate would be 15 - 25 mb/s with parity enabled, and 50 - 65 mb/s without parity enabled.  That assumes that your DNS box can keep up with those speeds as well, and that your whole network is gigabit capable.

 

i'm writing to the server right now and I'm getting...  21.1mb/s with no parity...?

[G Speed]

My mistake... It was late last night and I had just got everything set up lol

 

Linux and Samba Suck...

 

I completely forgot with my dns-323 with samba I used to get 13mb/s... and ftp I used to get 19.1mb/s <-- Which is pretty much the limit

 

I realized I was getting 21.1mb/s with samba lol... I will probably get 21.1mb/s with parity on also....

 

So overall it's way faster than my dns-323...

 

But how can I do ftp transfer? When I log into my server via ftp..

 

All I can see is Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 User..

 

But no files <--- can see in smb though