Hello there! I'm quite new to unRAID, trying out a few storage OS's on my server to see which one is the most stable, easiest to use, feature rich, and troubleshootable.

 

I installed the most recent version of unRAID as of 11/24/20, which was 6.8.3 (at least what I received). The initial installation went fine, I was given the web interface on the machine to do initial set up. I set up 13 2TB SATA HDD's in an array for my data with 2 2TB SATA HDD's for my parity drives. Initially, it all seemed to come up fine, no errors. I did have a problem creating shares - I would go ahead and give it a name, go and look at the different options, the defaults seem fine. Click 'Add Share' (or whatever the continue button is), I see the little orange loading wave fluctuating, and eventually it goes away, yet there is no share when I'm done. Still says 'no exportable shares available' or something to that effect.

 

Due to this, I selected 'Restart system', did a clean reboot, the system took a little while to reboot, probably about 5 minutes, but after it came up, I came back into the dashboard. This is what I saw: (see screenshots).

 

I tried to redo the parity check, starting the array in maintenance mode per the instructions in the documentation, but it didn't make a difference, too bad it took ~10 hours to do that, haha. Started the array back up in non-maintenance mode, still seeing the same information per the dashboard.

 

I'd love to use unRAID going forward, it's got a nice interface and I'm feeling good about it in general, but a couple basic things aren't working for me.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Chris

Edited November 26, 20205 yr by Snarkfish
Correcting Spelling

Just to check the obvious - had you used the option in Unraid to format the array drives?   If not it would also explain why you could not create shares.

 

if you did it might be worth posting your system’s diagnostics zip file (obtained via Tools -> Diagnostics) to see if we can spot anything wrong.

Hye there, thank you for the swift reply! It's nice, and refreshing to get a quick response on a product like this.

 

I believe I did go ahead and do the initial format, however I'll admit my ignorance and admit it's hard to be certain! I'll post the diagnostic information here..

tower-diagnostics-20201126-1326.zip

 

As far as I can tell, unRAID did format and mount all of the disks the first time, but as it stands I'm not sure how to determine if that's been completed. The documentation suggested that reformatting the disks that had mounted previously should be unnecessary, but then again, what do I know.

Edited November 26, 20205 yr by Snarkfish
Add'l Info

Diagnostics definitely show all drives are not mounting.    If you do not yet have any data on the array I would suggest you use the format option and see what the results are.    It will erase any existing data so do not do this if there should already be data there.    It should only take minutes to carry out a format.   

That was apparently all it needed! I even rebooted the system to confirm it wouldn't give me any unfortunate issues going forward but it seems to be good! I was able to create a share and I'm sure I'll be able to figure it out from here!

 

Thank you VERY MUCH for your help with this - it was a pretty easy fix but I'd apparently confused myself through the install somehow. Awesome.

 

Quick question - I'm sure this is in the documentation somewhere but it would be much easier to get a straight answer from someone who knows well here:

 

Does unRAID use Striping for faster performance like typical RAID's outside of RAID 1?

 

Thanks

13 minutes ago, Snarkfish said:

Does unRAID use Striping for faster performance like typical RAID's outside of RAID 1?

No.   Under Unraid each drive is a discrete file system that (if necessary) can be removed from the array and read on any Linux system.

And no striping is how Unraid allows you to mix different sized disks. 

I figured no striping was probably an integral part of the system, but wanted to ask. Thanks!

Edited November 26, 20205 yr by Snarkfish
Clarity