Robert:

I had same thought and bought the CoolerMaster Centurion 5CAC from NewEgg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811119068. It has 5 externally accessible 5.25's plus another 4 internal & 1 External 3.5 for about $45 plus shipping & Power Supply - your choice. Love the Case, quite manageable and if I "pack" it I can get almost as many drives in as the big Coolermaster though with only 1 PowerSupply (see other responses). I picked up some DataExpress Trays for my 5.25's though TCIII and others like the KingWins. Anyrate check this one out, I did a lot of research and made some bids for the big CoolerMaster, in the end, I'm glad to have found this one!

Dave :)


Good choice. I'll look into it. Thanks.
Robert

Does anybody have a "Watts Up" or similar power metering gizmo that they could try with the UnRaid? I'd be really interested to know how much power it's using when the drives are spun down, and how much when one drive is being accessed.

I measured the following with a Kill-A-Watt power meter. The manufacturer claims an accuracy of 0.1%, which I am dubious of (I'd be more inclined to believe 1%). My home built unRaid server consists of the following. A Celeron D335 2.8Ghz in the Intel D865GLCLK MB with 2x512 Kingston ValueRam PC2100. One Promise TX2/133 adapter and six 250GB harddrives, 3 Maxtors, 2 WDs, and a Hitachi. The system is powered by an Antec TruePower 2.0 430W power supply. The case has 3 80mm fans and a 120mm fan for cooling.

At boot-up, I see a peak of 230w (Note that the display is somewhat slow to respond and has no peak hold function, so a spike of greater than 230w may have occurred). It rather quickly settles down to about 121w at idle - all drives spinning.

When the drives started to spin down, the status page showed the 2 WD drives still on and the meter read 88w. When all drives spun down, the meter read 75w.

I started to play a HD transport stream from one of the Maxtors and the meter went to 85w. After stopping the read from the server, but the Maxtor drive still spinning, I get 83W.

I started a background parity check and the reading settles to 140w.

Now Antec specs the efficiency of this power supply to be >= 70% which is usually on the optimistic side, also the peak efficiency of a pc power supply occurs close to the maximum load i.e. efficiency goes down as load goes down. So the actual power demands of the system on the power supply is at least 30% less.

Great background info at www.silentpcreview.com. In fact, at silentpcreview, they dispel the myth that you need to spend a huge amount of money on that 600w power supply. It is more important that the power supply be able to supply the proper amount of current on the specific rails that your system demands. In the case of unRaid, the 12v rails need to be beefy enough to supply the HDs' power demands. Also note that most of those power calculators floating around the 'net do nothing more than add together the manufacturers maxmimum rated power consumption for all components, usually resulting in overexaggerated power requirements. My main system, a pentium4 2.8, 1G DRAM, 2 optical drives, a 6600GT videocard and seven harddrives, and Fusion HDTV card which uses the CPU for decoding the HDTV transport stream, blah, blah, blah, ran happily on an old Enermax 350w power supply, and this is an ATX 1.2 spec which has 32A on the 5v and 3.3v and only 17A (20A peak) on the +12v rail.

I have no access to a precision load to determine the accuracy of the Kill-A-Watt, but its the same meter used by the guys at silentpcreview. They have since upgraded to more accurate and precise equipment.

Regards..
Ed

Does anybody have a "Watts Up" or similar power metering gizmo that they could try with the UnRaid? I'd be really interested to know how much power it's using when the drives are spun down, and how much when one drive is being accessed.

I have a CoolerMaster CM Stacker with 10 drives (mixed WD and Seagate) and Pioneer DVD drive. I am using an Asus A7V266 motherboard with an Athlon XP 2400+, 2 Promise Ultra 100TX cards and NetGear Gigabit network card. The power supply is a Antec NeoPower 480. When all drives are I spun down I am using 86 watts ( measured with a "Kill A Watt"). My operating system is XP Pro and I use CPU Idle Extreme to slow down the processor. Without CPU Idle I run 129 watts.

One more question. Is *everyone* having a problem with multiple reads/writes at the same time with unRAID? Is this only with the recommended Intel motherboard, or do those of you with other hardware have the same problem? How about a PCI Gigabit NIC by Netgear or Intel?

Since I will be starting from scratch, I want to get the best of breed providing these problems can be circumvented. If there is no fix in site for the read/write problem, I could always just go with a ReadyNAS solution.

Robert

The NIC and hardware isn't the problem in this situation - the issue is apparently the unRAID software itself. So far as I know most folks are running the recommended motherboard\chipset anyway. Tom is working the issue but as of yet the problem hasn't been solved.

ReadyNAS or FreeNAS are both alternatives but neither of those have the advantages of individual drive spindown and both of those system will likely be stripping data across multiple drives. That means if you have a multiple failure you lose it all (or hotspare blah blah) and that to access ANY data all drives must be spinning. If power usage is a concern unRAID is better IMO. I am more comfortable not having my data stripped across multiple drives too so I see that as an advantage too.

FreeNAS actually looks good as that sort of solution goes, a friend runs it and I may try it on some spare junk drives. However I'd expect that system to be noiser, hotter, and potentially less reliable. <shrug> YMMV

I need some help, I need to get the install instructions for this..

I lost mine, and I can't seem to find them on the website (perhaps im just tired and missing them)

Does anyone have them?

I am at the linux command screen and have no idea what to type (logged in as root)

DrkWtsn, you don't have to do anything on the server machine. Just boot it up from the USB flash dongle and then connect to the server from another PC using a browser. The default address is \\tower. If that doesn't work, just use the IP address of the server - something like \\192.168.1.101.

You should see a page listing your drives and some information about their status. There's also another page where you can configure various things like spindown time.

Well, you do have to have the bios configured correctly also.

Problem: My Unraid server seems to have lost it's connection to the internet. I can't find \\tower on my network. I've tried rebooting but no luck. Everything was working fine last week. Any thoughts? I'll post on Tom's Forum as well.

Problem: My Unraid server seems to have lost it's connection to the internet. I can't find \\tower on my network. I've tried rebooting but no luck. Everything was working fine last week. Any thoughts? I'll post on Tom's Forum as well.

I figured it out and fixed the problem. For some reason (possibly a power outage yesterday) the bios was reset to defaults. I hooked up a monitor and keyboard, went into the bios, and all is well.

As for Lime Tech support, I got an email from Tom with helpful advice in less then 24 hours. He also offered more help if needed.

Does anyone know where you can buy some of the CM stacker faceplates? I'm using the 4-into-3 adapters, and my CM stacker case did not come with faceplates for the top 2 slots (1 for the button panel, 1 for the floppy).

If anyone who did the full blown drive tray thing has any extras that you are willing to part with/sell, please PM me.

Also, if you remove the top panel (don't really need any of this junk with unraid), and all of it's associated cables, how do you power the system on/off (assuming a switching power sopply)?

Does anyone know where you can buy some of the CM stacker faceplates? I'm using the 4-into-3 adapters, and my CM stacker case did not come with faceplates for the top 2 slots (1 for the button panel, 1 for the floppy).

If anyone who did the full blown drive tray thing has any extras that you are willing to part with/sell, please PM me.

Also, if you remove the top panel (don't really need any of this junk with unraid), and all of it's associated cables, how do you power the system on/off (assuming a switching power sopply)?

I would contact CM and see if they would send you two face plates. As for removing the power button. You need to have it hooked up for the first boot into bios and change the setting there (After Power Failure [Power On]). So by recycling power switch the system turns on.

I’ve spent the last couple of days reading about this product. I’m about halfway through this 60+ page thread. I’m enjoying reading it, but I’m anxious to see if my setup can run this OS.

I’ve been running a RAID server using a 3ware 7506 card and 4X 250 GB drives (3 hitachi, 1 WD). I’ve run out of space. I’d like to implement your product and would like to know about compatibility. I have so many random hard drives that I could use in a system like this.

Below is a list of hardware that I already have. I suppose I could get by without buying the controller cards at first, but I think I will buy them anyway. They’re so cheap. I also think I’ll buy a new large HD for the parity drive.

Do you see any problems with my proposed setup?


ASUS P4P800SE Socket 478 Intel 865PE ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131484

Intel Pentium 4 2.4B Northwood 533MHz FSB Socket 478

KINGWIN KF-21-IPF-B BLACK Mobile 5.25" HDD Rack
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817121109

CHENMING 901AD-SILVER-0 Silver 1.0mm SECC Server Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811125469

1 GB (2 X 512) Corsair Value RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141402

Video Card: very ancient Diamond 64 MB

Antec TRUE CONTROL 550 ATX 550W Power Supply - Retail

PROMISE ULTRA133 TX2 PCI IDE 66M PCI Controller Card - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102007
(haven’t purchased yet)

I.M.

Check out the support forum http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php
There is a hardware thread that deals with compatibility issues.

For the mobo you would need
1. Gigabit Ethernet, either Intel or Marvell
2. Two Parallel-ATA controllers (for PATA version)
3. On-board video (so you don't need a separate video card)
4. Reliable USB2.0 boot

Since this card doesn't have onboard video that could be a problem unless all you need to do is boot into bios to change settings. I usually telnet/webmanage my unraid server. It does have the marvel gigabit so thats a plus. You just need to find out if it will boot from usb

I have the kingwin racks and they work great. As for the mem and cpu you should have any problem with those and as long as the controller cards have the correct bios on them you'll be all set.

This is a great product and it's working great for me. I did the same thing with my parity drive and bought a 400gb one so I wouldn't have to worry about it for a while.

I've been reading the support forums as well. The Asus P4P800 Deluxe was tested by Tom and works fine. I have the SE version and I'm not really sure what the difference is. I guess I will need to look that up. I'll post this info over there as well.

So having non integrated video is a problem? There isn't a generic video driver in UnRaid? That old Diamond card ran fine on the generic Windows XP VGA drivers.

So having non integrated video is a problem? There isn't a generic video driver in UnRaid? That old Diamond card ran fine on the generic Windows XP VGA drivers.My understanding is that you would just need to install an old VGA graphic card if it was not built into the motherboard. Slackware (unRaid uses it for its Linux kernel) has a generic VGA driver as you have guessed.

Joe L.

Got to say, this thing really is a pleasure once I got past my hardware-related issues. It's just been ticking along in the corner. I've completely migrated off my old file server, and am now at around 2TB in my Unraid.

Well this is good news. Luckily I almost have all of the compatible hardware already. I would need to do is order the USB, a couple promise controllers, a large parity drive and I'm ready to go. And really I could get by without the promise controllers and the parity drive to begin with. Sweet.

I pulled the trigger last night. Ordered the USB from Tom and a couple Promise cards from Newegg. Hopefully I can find a good deal on a large parity drive. I think there will be some sales, it being Memorial Day. I can't wait to get this thing up and running next week!!! In the meantime, I'll be modding my xbox to run XBMC. My network is finally coming together the way I want it!!

I.M.Fletcher,

May I recommend the X3 mod-chip for your XBOX mod unless you plan to do a soft mod.

If you are interested, PM me about the necessary freeware to get your XBMC going. If you do so, please include the 12 digit serial number on the bottom of your XBOX.

Regards,
TCIII

i have been reading some of the earlier posts in this thread and admittedly i have not gotten all the way through it yet (thats a LOT of reading), but so far i am very impressed with the unRAID solution but the biggest question in my mind at this point is if there is a way I can mix SATA and IDE(PATA).

The problem is that i recently purchased 2 SATA 500GB drives and all my other smaller drives i would use are IDE.

is there some kind of simple SATA to IDE adapter out there that might work???

or could i build a system with one IDE and one SATA controller card? woudl i just be asking for trouble with that since i am not particularly familiar with linux?

I ended up ordering the software last week and it arrived Friday. I spent all Saturday and Sunday experimenting trying to get it to work on any of the AMD Motherboards I have here. I thought I'd post the results I've gotten so far here. These are the ones I tried...

ASUS A7N266-VM
-- Closest I got was that it booted from USB Flash Drive and got continuous printing of GRUB on the screen

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
-- Couldn't get it to boot from USB

ASUS A8N-VM CSM
-- Couldn't get it to boot from USB

ASUS K8V Deluxe Bios 1005 (Couldn't flash with 1011 or 1012 Beta)
--Boots from USB Flash and gets the following before locking up;

Attempt to access beyond end of drive
01:00:rw=0, want 1277180502, limit=120000
EXT2-fs error (device ramdisk(1,0)):
EXT2_check_page: bad entry in directory #37:
rec_len is smaller than minimal - offset = 1024, inode=0. rec_len=0, name_len=0
Kernel Panic: no init found. Try passing init=option to kernel

K8T Neo MS-6702 Ver 1 (FIS2R 6702-010) - updated bios to 2.20
--Can't remember the exact error but something to the effect of;
Not a bootable drive

I'm kinda stuck on ASUS Mbs and AMD processors as you can more than likely guess. I'm placing an order for the CM Stacker and some NetGear GS108s today. Wish I could have gotten further with the experiments this weekend. Don't know if I should scrap AMD for this project and just go with an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe or not. I've got a P4P800 which is running my BeyondTV server but didn't try it over the weekend. I had enough trouble getting Windows 2003 Enterprise Server up after using the box with the A8N-VM CSM to test unRaid.

Anyone been trying AMD processors?

I've run the server on a Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M with a 2800 A64 and a BIOSTAR K8NHA. I was just testing them but they both came up booted and was able to initialize an array/accept file transfers. YMMV

Although I'm not giving up on using an AMD solution, I went ahead and placed another order at Newegg today... just incase I can't get anywhere with the ASUS / AMD or MSI / AMD soluton.

P4P800-E Deluxe
Intel Celeron D 345 Prescott 533MHz FSB 256KB L2 Cache Socket 478 Processor
and
Patriot Signature Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory


Yesterday I ordered
(3) NETGEAR GS108 10/100/1000Mbps Copper Gigabit Switch
COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power 713001180 ATX12V 600W Power Supply
COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UW Black/ Silver Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Full Tower Computer Case
AMD Athlon 64 3400+ Newcastle 1600MHz HT Socket 754 Processor Model ADA3400AXBOX
Patriot Signature Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model PSD1G400KH
(20) Various length Cat6 cables

It's all due to arrive here on 6/8.. Can't wait

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
-- Couldn't get it to boot from USB
Finally got my UnRaid key and I also can't get my A7N8X to boot from USB.

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe Bios 1011 (apparantly, having "googled", at least Bios 1008 needed to USB boot).

I've dropped USB support to 1.1 Only

Tried :- Boot from USB-HDD & USB Zip as recommended for the Mobo on various Linux forums.

I've tried just about every combination but just get "This is not a Bootable Disk, Please Insert a Bootable Floppy and press any key to try again.

Has anyone succesfully booted UnRaid on A7N8X? I know Limetech have, and I've also asked the question on their Forums. I have everything here ready to go but just can't get it to recognise the USB key as a valid boot device.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Mark.

I haven't jumped back to testing the usb key with my AMD motherboards yet, but I finally got it working on the P4P800-E Deluxe board. It was so much fun....

The board came with the latest bios so I didn't have to flash it, however nothing I tried all night Friday and all day Saturday would get me anywhere. Tom was fantastic, we exchanged numerous emails during the process, it was great just being able to bounce things off him. At one point, I pulled the MB out of the stacker case thinking I had a intermittent short, that wasn't the case.

At the end, I got it to work but there were 2 variables in the equation...
1) I cleared the cmos and then went into setup and reset everything to the correct settings
2) I copied the backup I made of the usb key back on the usb key
Turned the power on and.... it worked!! Shut it down, put everything back in and it worked!!
Installed 2 WD 160g drives as a test
Formatted disk1 and then did the parity-sync

Been playing with it all day today with test files. It is FANTASTIC! Don't give up, you'll love it. My next step is replacing the parity drive with a 500g SATAII which should have been here yesterday but DHL screwed up... Won't be here till tomorrow (Monday). Once that's in the box, I have to start moving all my 300g drives form the TIVOs and other workstations into the server. Then I'll just replace the 300s with 500s or larger as I see them on sale.

I haven't ordered racks yet. I was impressed with the 3 To 4 Bracket Module that came with the Stacker, so I ordered 2 more. They look like they are an aid to reducing the heat, at least from the drives. Not as easy to replace drives, but that shouldn't happen more than a few times a year.. if that. If I stick with that solution, I may build an led panel to monitor the power and activity of the drives.

To be completely honest, I am so impressed with the unRaid, I may order another one just to test the other boards with and also to experiment with being able to join my current ad domain. I will need to figure out some way of controlling access to the unRaid with my DVD backups. I don't want my son to be tempted copy them.

Anyway, keep plugging away. I'll let you know if I make any headway with the AMD boards.

The 3-4 brackets are very nice (and if you look earlier in this thread we had a discussion about whethert you could use 4 of them for 16 drives!). They are something of a pain to slide in correctly but I like them.

Is there a linux command that can be issued from a telnet session which will gracefully shutdown and poweroff the the server? I can't seem to hit on the right command. Reason is that I have 4 Windows 2x servers without keyboards and monitors that I administer using remote desktop and would like to administer the unRaid the same way.
Thanks
Dennis

Sure, shutdown -r now

Thanks for the reply, tried that several times, does a reboot.

Tried
shutdown now -a
shutdown now
shutdown
shutdown now -r
shutdown -r

Just can't seem to get it to powerdown.

try:

shutdown -h now

Version 2.060706 of the UnRaid software is now available. The only change in this release vs. the previous release (2.060324) is a critical bug fix related to upgrading a disk or replacing a failed disk.

If you are using a version of unRaid software earlier than 2.060706 you will be unable to successfully upgrade a drive with a larger one, or replace a failed drive. This release corrects a major bug that caused the new replacement drive to be marked as disabled when writes to it failed.

The release may be found at the following link in the post announcing the 2.060706 release on the unRaid forum:

http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=138.0

Joe L.

I already worked on this one over at the UnRaid forum. The Kernel wasn't compiled with the module to interface with ACPI. You'll see in the thread that there was some type of bug that the ACPI module caused. The ability to power down is apparently on the feature list.

http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=121.0

Thanks for the reply, tried that several times, does a reboot.

Tried
shutdown now -a
shutdown now
shutdown
shutdown now -r
shutdown -r

Just can't seem to get it to powerdown.

I'm a little confused about the status of the UnRaid product.

I've been subscribed to this thread for a while trying to learn more about the UnRaid system while I save up to purchase everything I need for a media server in the future.

I was disappointed to learn that for the 2nd time, Tom of Lime Technology seemed to disappear and everyone started to talk about self supporting the product. The assumption, because of a lack of any response from Tom, was that he was no longer going to support the product.

What happened? It looks like he's back and there is no mention of what happened, etc. Did he just go on vacation and stopped responding to emails and participate in his forums...?

I still don't feel comfortable investing in the UnRaid product, until I hear that support for the product is going to be there in the future.

Tom is back again. He was (apparently) having trouble porting to the latest Linux kernel. Your best bet to learn the details is to check out the forum at Lime-Technology.

FWIW, I don't regret my unRaid purchase at all. I waited a while myself and actually bought the USB stick from Tom during his second hiatus. He always responded to my questions during that time, he just didn't post at all on his forum for about a month.

-PGPfan

I'm wondering if anybody has had any success building one of these systems to run quietly. For example, if it were a system of multiple trays, perhaps the fans in the tray would only run when the drive is spun up. Or, better still, it would be thermostatically controlled.

I'd like to put one of these (ideally in a 3U rackmount enclosure) into my home theater racks, but if it sounds like a jet engine, I become less interested. I would expect that most of the time the drives would all be spun down, and then some of the time one would be active for reading. On rare occasion, I would be writing new content to them.

Given my usage pattern, a system with the best energy-efficiency characteristics would also be welcome.

Although I don't have the removeable 'trays' yet, my unRaid is VERY quiet. That's one of the big reasons I opted for the unRaid.

In your case (no pun intended ;) ) I'm not sure how quiet you can make a system without modification. All the rackmount cases I've seen are made for an 'enterprise' type of environment where noise (or lack thereof) is generally not a priority. In a perfect world some entreprenuerial case manufacturer will design and build a true "home" rackmount case with 12 to 16 bays and a slow turning 'axial' fan or something like that. Heck, it would be the perfect product to bundle with the unRaid software. Alas, we don't yet live in that perfect world.... :(

-PGPfan

I too have been nervous about Tom disappearing and coming back and in fact some folks began looking to see if his front-end could be reproduced on our own. Tom is now back and has solved some bugs which is good - I am still on some older firmware however until others have tested the waters. I am MOST unhappy that Tom summarily closed the thread where folks were discussing their concerns.

Those concerns aside... I have an unRAID at about 3tb right now and 3 slots left to fill. I can stream DVDs to my HTPC or to my XBMC XBOX. So long as there aren't multiple writes or reads going on playback will be smooth. I REALLY want to see better performance from the array doing multiple things since more expensive aftermarket RAID devices can supposedly handle this activity fine.

Would I do it again? Well, nothing out there I've seen can do what this does. Yeah, I can do FreeNAS or one of the others but they require drives be the same for data safety and they stripe data. Sorry, I've seen WAY too many RAID get scrambled where the data is lost not due to drive failure but software error to want that. In an enterprise RAID isn't considered the backup (or shouldn't be) for a reason and here at home I cannot backup 3tb worth of data like I might at work....

So, while I might not be 100% perfectly happy about things I see NO reasonable alternative and certainly nothing in this price range for the capacity I could realize just by swapping in bigger drives as prices come down. I have already had a drive failure - and lost NO data. I was also supported well by Tom when I had issues with my USB fob and questions about procedures while swapping in a new drive. I'd do it again but I would temper my expectations as to performance. This is terrific LARGE safe storage for something like streaming video from my experience. I store my 400+Gig of MP3 and 60+ DVD (I've got 440 more to rip!) on it and am not worried so much about losing the data. You'll note that this is pretty much what Tom advertised it for rather than some speedy spiffy datacenter replacement scheme!

BTW - don't rip DVD to the array, rip local and copy it over or you'll be there forever - especially if you're doing it from multiple machines at once!

I could be happier but it DOES work, I've lost no data, and it's been up 24X7 for months now.

Hope that helps some.

Oh yeah, silence. I have no trays in mine just 120mm fans on the 4into3 adapters plus the single (!) power supply. Drives shut down when not in use. It doesn't seem to produce much heat or noise actually. I have other computers in the room so I don't even hear it. Put it off someplace rather than right there in the living room. Run cables from a closet and be happy ;)

Thanks PGPFan and BLKMGK.

Do either of you know how much power your unRAIDs use when they're just sitting around idle? PGPFan, do you have two power supplies, or one?

I'd be interested in this with the serial ATA, however...I move my HTPC around to diffrent locations every once in a while, and I don't feel like having to haul a separate NAS around with it. I'm just gonna build my 12 drive RAID-5 in my HTPC case...

Power draw has been discussed before. I'm not sure exactly how much mine takes but IMO it's alot less than folks think when drives have spun down. Someone may have measured power draw previously actually but I cannot recall for sure.

Crawdaddy, to each his own. SATA is working with this already but no spindown and no real speed (or even cost) advantage either. With a striped array be prepared to have constant noise and power from all 12 drives too since to write or read from it *ALL* will HAVE to be spinning. 12 drives take up space and creates heat no matter what. My setup is on wheels and cooled well so I don't much care. Good luck with your setup, this works for many of us just fine. <shrug>

Is there any advantage (other than number of drives) to the unRAID in comparison to the Infrant NV? Infrant NV seems to be a great product, is good looking, and has many add ons. And has great support! (look at their forums)

Not familiar with the Infrant specifically but chances are the unRAID still has all of the advantages mentioned in the last 40 pages.... NOT striped (which can mean alot), cheap, runs Linux, spins down drives not in use, blah blah. Did you read the other pages?

Not familiar with the Infrant specifically but chances are the unRAID still has all of the advantages mentioned in the last 40 pages.... NOT striped (which can mean alot), cheap, runs Linux, spins down drives not in use, blah blah. Did you read the other pages?Don't forget the ability to use different sized drives and individually upgrade them as sales occur and prices drop.

On most standard RAID arrays all the drives must be the same size and upgrading requires replacing ALL the drives with ones with ones of bigger and identical size. Not the case with unRaid. Yes, you can grow a standard RAID array if you have a physical slot available, but the new drive must be the same size as those currently existing in the array. To take advantage of a sale on a new higher capacity drive would require replacement of ALL the drives.

In doing my tests on my unRaid server I've had drives as small as 1.2Gig in my array alongside of two 500Gig drives and two 250Gig drives. (The small 1.2Gig drive was an old one I had laying around, it is a bit small for any serious network storage, but it was protected the same as the 500Gig drive from failure.)

The only requirement is that the unRaid parity drive be as big or bigger than the others in the array,and even it can be upgraded to be bigger than all the others. (If I see a great deal on a 750Gig drive, but limited to one per houeshold, I can put it to use initially as my parity drive, and later add 750Gig data drives as other sales occur. Try that with a standard RAID array.

Joe L.

I'll chime in also and say that while I hate it when Tom disapears, he has always provided me with AMAZING service. Things like sending me a new flash when I lost mine for free, or helping me experiment with my drive tray issues. And as for the product itself... it just runs. I wish it was a bit quicker on writes, but otherwise I'm loving it.

Yup, we could spend ALOT of time going over the reasons why some of us like this system over some of the others out there but I think we've beat that horse a few times in this thread already :D

Oh and I looked at the Infrant stuff. Looks to be more expensive and not hold as much but it also looks to have some pretty good management options as well as security. Plusses and minuses but being able to only hold 4 drives and not power down individual drives are issues IMO. <shrug>

I'm really torn on unRaid. I believe unRaid is the best software/hardware solution available for my situation. I have a lot of the parts already on my current(willing to make it my unRaid computer). But I'm not big on dropping the money for a USB key only to have Tom go inactive 3,6,9 months down the road. The posts both on here and at his forums often seem like he skirts the issue. Out of curiosity has anyone ever thought about stopping by his place of business to ask him face-to-face what is going on? (I would, but I don't live in CA, and it's not worth a plane flight to me). I can fully understand not posting as quick as Andrew from TheaterTek or Dean from CQC, but going away for as long as Tom does just seems wrong to me.

Nelson

I've never chimed in on this, but I have to give my $.02. I've been using my unRaid server for a couple of months now. Everything works exactly as advertised and has met all of my expectations. Of course new/additional features would be nice to have and I hope that Tom and his team are around making the product cooler (mixed SATA & ATA) and easier to use over the next 10 years... but as it stands -the server functions exactly as advertised and additional functionality is just that... nice to have.

Just because (heaven forbid) Tom ceases support the product doesn't mean that the servers will cease to function as they were designed.

Out of curiosity has anyone ever thought about stopping by his place of business to ask him face-to-face what is going on? (I would, but I don't live in CA, and it's not worth a plane flight to me). I can fully understand not posting as quick as Andrew from TheaterTek or Dean from CQC, but going away for as long as Tom does just seems wrong to me.
NelsonNobody says it seems right, and is not how Tom was originally supporting unRaid. In any case, my guess is that Tom has a day-job, a family, and works out of his house to develop and ship unRaid. I'm also pretty certain he gets help when faced with massive orders (when he first announced the product) but usually works alone.

In other words, we, the users and purchasers of unRaid servers, are "his extended team" and, as he recently discovered, are fairly capable of self-support if we were forced into that situation.

After all, we have the GPL source of the unRaid driver, and Linux is freely available (he used Slackware as his start) Now, we don't have the management web-page source, nor his tools to initially configure a USB drive, but I'll bet we could work something out if forced to in a no-support situation.

Fortunately, Tom has been somewhat active the past few days on his forum, making a few posts, and the forum activity has dropped a bit with the major bug he just fixed in his release last week. Perhaps he can spend more time on porting his driver to the newer release of Linux and adding features we are looking for. He did mention the possibility of one more release using this version of the Linux kernel.

With any luck (optimistic) he'll continue participation, development and support. If not, as already said, we will band together in self-support.

Joe L.

Thanks PGPFan and BLKMGK.

Do either of you know how much power your unRAIDs use when they're just sitting around idle? PGPFan, do you have two power supplies, or one?

I have no idea how much power is consumed, but it isn't much - that's for sure.

As for power supplies, I only have one at 550 watts.

-PGPfan

Cool. And how many drives does that power?

I found out awhile back to my dismay that my HTPC used something like 90W (and was on 24/7). I replaced the PC with an iMac Core Duo. 30W, and faster. I would hope to find a solution that was in the same ballpark (at worst) as the Mini when the drives aren't spun up...

Size of power supply won't necessarily regulate how much power is drawn. My system also has a P/S about that size - the one Tom recommended. I have all but three slots filled, think that's 9 drives. Large P/S aren't as effecient at lower power draws so I saw no reason to get something huge. I'll admit to being a little nervous about power when everything is undergoing parity check but so far so good. <shrug>

Not familiar with the Infrant specifically but chances are the unRAID still has all of the advantages mentioned in the last 40 pages.... NOT striped (which can mean alot), cheap, runs Linux, spins down drives not in use, blah blah. Did you read the other pages?

Yeah i read all 1300 of the other posts. Actually, seriously i have. i already own an unRAID. It has worked great for several months though recently have had some issues with it crashing for some reason. I never get any errors either. It just crashes and i need to reboot and it will resync everything.

I'm seriously considering getting an Infrant NV for a second backup. their new beta supports HD spin down. there's support for itunes streaming and a bunch of other cool stuff. 500 gb HDs are much cheaper now.. and their verision of RAID allows parity back up on one drive too..

Maybe when Infrant comers out with their 8 drive setup i'll be in.. i can wait for now and deal with the unraid

mine has been up for 7 months without a reboot until last week when I updated to the latest software!! Check your RAM....

:cool:

I looked over their firmware features etc. and yup it looked good, didn't see anything about parity on a single drive though. I saw they were working on spindown but will drives still stay spundown when you read one piece of data? Streaming is nice but I've yet to see a decent streaming server and I've got a Linkstation that works at least as good as anything else so far. WizD can be run on the unRAID but I wasn't happy with it in the end. I like that they have a plug-in strategy though, some extensibility like that would be nice with the unRAID. They do have the power of a full blown company behind them but given time I think the unRAID could be as polished.

Cannot help much with the issues you're seeing. There's apparently a way to log things but I've not ever had to use it. Mine doesn't lockup on me, if I were you I'd be looking closely at the hardware. I think mine has been up for a few weeks now and was only down then due to my losing power for 24hours. Months prior to that although I have cycled it a couple of times when it has somehow taken over Master Broswer status on my network and prevented me from addressing some machines by name. Think that's a Samba issue. Multiple writes\reads is the thing that bugs me most!

I thought that Infrant X-Raid thingy was equivalent to having a parity drive. .

i.e. 4 500 gb drives = 1.5 tb usable storage (actually a little less) with one drive acting as a parity.

What is most appealing of the Infrant compared to unRAID: a TEAM is actually working hard on this and are extremely responsive. They keep adding functionality to their software and hardware. Their user base is probably much higher than unRAID allowing for a much quicker testing phase for new firmware (the more people involved, the quicker problems are found and fixed before you encounter them).

I'm most interested in a problem-free solution. I could probably fix it if i have the time, but i don't. I feel that the unRAID is for those that like to and enjoy troubleshooting their own hardware.. more of the enthusiast crowd. I just don't have the time now.

I will continue to use the Un-Raid setup as I have purchased it and like the product BUT it is obvious that Tom has no regard for customer service or caring about supporting his product.

I created a very honest, open thread to Tom wondering what is going on with the disappearing act.

What did we get? We get a thread that was closed for NO reason without ANY explanation at all.

If that is the business he wants to run, it is a free country and he can do what he wants. I think it is obvious that he has no desire to be held accountable for any action or in-actions that he does.

Once he came back with a post or two, nobody seemed to care that he disappeared again! It seems that he has found a good formula:

Create a decent product
Promote, Promote, Promote
Sell, Sell, Sell
Disappear, Disappear, Disappear
Don't Respond, Don't Respond, Don't Respond

Release a small update and be loved again.....

It seems to work well for him....I on the other hand am just as impressed with honesty, ethics, and REAL support in a product.

He offered to discuss the issues in private with me via email. I send emails....no responses....

But lets be honest...as long as we get a bug fix every 6-9 months it is alright.....who cares really....

Actually if I just got multiple R/W performance that didn't stall and pause when multiple machines or large files were pushed I'd be happy with it. I don't need lots of bells and whistles but I would like to be able to move a file and have a steady stream of data going rather than a stuttering start and stop. I'd also like to be able to have multiple clients doing the same thing. As it stands now I CAN stream DVDs etc. but it sure is frustrating copying the files over to watch when try to move them from multipel machines at once after ripping!

Yes, additional functionality would be nice but it's not required by me from a storage device. shrug>

As for XRAID, where can I find a good explanation as to how it works? Does it still stripe? Losing 500Gigs from 4 500Gig drives doesn't mean (to me) that all of the parity is on one drive rather than to me sounds like standard RAID with parity stored across the set.... that means all drives spin for parity updates and if it's striped all drives spin for data access too.

Actually if I just got multiple R/W performance that didn't stall and pause when multiple machines or large files were pushed I'd be happy with it. I don't need lots of bells and whistles but I would like to be able to move a file and have a steady stream of data going rather than a stuttering start and stop. I'd also like to be able to have multiple clients doing the same thing. As it stands now I CAN stream DVDs etc. but it sure is frustrating copying the files over to watch when try to move them from multipel machines at once after ripping!

Yes, additional functionality would be nice but it's not required by me from a storage device. shrug>

As for XRAID, where can I find a good explanation as to how it works? Does it still stripe? Losing 500Gigs from 4 500Gig drives doesn't mean (to me) that all of the parity is on one drive rather than to me sounds like standard RAID with parity stored across the set.... that means all drives spin for parity updates and if it's striped all drives spin for data access too.

ah you are right i misunderstood their XRAID. So this is an advantage for unRAID in that it has a parity drive.

ah you are right i misunderstood their XRAID. So this is an advantage for unRAID in that it has a parity drive.

Careful - the XRAID is storing the equivelant of parity too. If you lose a drive with their system it CAN be recovered because each drive stores enough about the others to do so. Now, ask them how much data you lose if TWO drives go bad :) With an unRAID you DO lose data - you lose the two drives worth of data. With normal striped RAID you lose *drumroll* ALL of your data :eek: You solve this by having a "hot spare" that comes online if a single drive fails so that you don't ever have two drives dead. Note that this scheme consumes TWO drives worth of storage :mad: That's as I understand it BTW so don't take that as gospel. Do some research but I think you'll find that I'm at least in the ballpark ;) There are certainly advantages to that kind of RAID but there are downsides too.

Call me paranoid but between issues with RAID potentially losing it's mind and becoming invalid (yes this occurs) and dual failures I'm NOT comfortable using RAID that stripes at home unless I have no choice. If I had a backup scheme capable of 3tb+ worth of backup for "cheap" I'd be less concerned but I think finding a unicorn is more likely. an argument can be made that backing up DVD and CDs for which I have physical medium is somehow stupid but as someone who has ripped their CD collection abut 3 times now and spent HOURS getting tags "right" I can assure you it's not fun. Ripping my DVD collection is also a trip through hell I'd prefer to avoid doing multiple times - I'm less than 1/3rd through the job now and we've not exactly stopped buying :o

Hope that helps!

Yes, I can say from personal experience that even recovering a large music collection from backup is no fun. Losing the collection entirely would be unbearable. I think I'd send the discs out to one of those ripping services before I'd do it again.

This is one reason unRAID really appeals to me.

Somebody on Tom's forums posted a link to a very cool-looking 4U rackmount case that will hold the mobo and 12 drives. If I can convince myself that the power draw from that system is within reason, then that's the route I want to go.

I'd be happier, though, if I could run the Firefly (formerly mt-daapd) server right on the unRAID and if the unRAID supported AFP (Apple's filesharing protocol).

I created a very honest, open thread to Tom wondering what is going on with the disappearing act.

What did we get? We get a thread that was closed for NO reason without ANY explanation at all.


I agree with Toasters.

The thing that really broke my back was him closing the thread. Hell, even if you're not going to give an explanation, don't try to use some type of pseudo-power to quell the "mutiny." Honestly, on strike number two, there probably wasn't an excuse good enough that would have given me any security in continued future support. The only thing that would have made me feel better would have been a discussion of structural changes within the Lime-Tech organization that would prevent future support lapses from occurring.

At this point, I really wish he hadn't come back. The amount of progress made in his absence was pretty phenomenal. Was I glad that he resurfaced? Yes. He is the inventor of the product and is (currently) the most efficient innovator of it. His ability to resolve the drive-rebuild/data-restore bug (once the probable source was determined) was, of course, going to be quicker than anyone else fixing it. However, as a group of customers dependent on him, I think we are now in a more precarious position than we were two weeks ago.

I was pretty disappointed in the drop off in traffic on the Self Support thread and on the RPH site. However, I'm not surprised. Unfortunately, the majority of us are consumers not developers. Joe L. is probably the only one in the community capable of any real development (apologies if there are others out there), but he too paid Lime Tech for a product not for CompSci tuition.

To me, I think we need to get the driver and system development into the open source. But maybe that's just me...

I agree. Tom's customer serve is unacceptable. Disappearing for weeks with no explanation. Returning and not apologizing. I can't recommend this product to anyone anymore. It's disappointing and sad, because there is amazing potential there if the business was conducted professionally.

I'm going to stick with the UnRaid for now since I spent the money to build the thing, but I also am not too worried about absolute data backup. I have all of my mp3s and other media backed up on DVD. Sure its a PITA to restore all the data but no solution is perfect.

I'm a little mystified by the complaints. The product works as claimed - that's already a big plus.

I suspect that some of the unhappiness was around the fact that Tom was extremely responsive initially, and now he's less visible. That certainly doesn't make the product perform any worse. From what I can tell there has been only one significant bug (the hard drive upgrade one?), and that has now been fixed.

While I agree that it would be nice to have more nice new shiny software, that's not the same as saying there's no support. What exactly are the problems (not new features) that have not been addressed?

Another of my concerns is this. One of the features when unRaid was released was that it was supposed to allow you to upgrade a harddrive. Now farther down the line, when someone actually tried this the software failed. I'm a programmer, so I know some bugs can get through testing, but this seems like a pretty major one. Especially if it's touted as a feature of the software.

If someone runs across another bug and Tom's not around to (at least) guide someone on how to fix it, what do we do?

I would hope that if Tom does drop out completely though he would at least be kind enough to inform someone how we can go around the locking of unRaid to a USB key, so the whole program could go Open Source.

Nelson

Another of my concerns is this. One of the features when unRaid was released was that it was supposed to allow you to upgrade a harddrive. Now farther down the line, when someone actually tried this the software failed. I'm a programmer, so I know some bugs can get through testing, but this seems like a pretty major one. Especially if it's touted as a feature of the software.

If someone runs across another bug and Tom's not around to (at least) guide someone on how to fix it, what do we do?

I would hope that if Tom does drop out completely though he would at least be kind enough to inform someone how we can go around the locking of unRaid to a USB key, so the whole program could go Open Source.

Nelson


The upgrade was a problem and Tom looked into fixing it...the problem was Tom has drives that were already formated so he could not duplicate the issue. As far as I know Tom has been very responsive...(maybe not on the forum). He has overnighted new flash drives to people who have lost them or if they broke and he didn't ask for a dime. We all want more out of Tom but lets face it. The product works as stated and has been upgraded. We now have SATA support and with a 2.6 release should have spindown with sata. Look at it this way Tom could charge an upgrade fee but doesn't. So he doesn't use the forums regularly, I don't mind. Right now I know my server works and serves it purpose to be a media server.

In the future I beleive Tom will come out with updates as he sees fit and will continue to gives these to all who have purchased the software. I hope he takes our inputs but at the same time let him take his time and make sure what he releases is stable and works 100%. The product works and I'm happy with it...

Just my .02

Another of my concerns is this. One of the features when unRaid was released was that it was supposed to allow you to upgrade a harddrive. Now farther down the line, when someone actually tried this the software failed. I'm a programmer, so I know some bugs can get through testing, but this seems like a pretty major one. Especially if it's touted as a feature of the software.
As a fellow programmer I can see how Tom was able to test and not find the recently fixed bug... it never showed itself in his tests. Trust me, I've been there. You probably have too. Specific conditions are needed to trip some bugs, with enough users they will surface. (In Tom's case he certainly did not have an endless supply of hard-disks, he re-used the same ones over and over in his development and tests and thus failed to see the error when a new previously unpartitioned/unformatted drive was used as a "replacement." Remember, adding a new drive worked properly and usinng one previously partitioned also worked properly)

As far as I know, everything now is working as expected, but with performance less than desired when reading and writing at the same time. This I expect will be solved when Tom finishes his port to the newer Linux kernel. Yes, improved security would be great, but this comes with a drastic increase in the support calls to configure Samba. I'm happy Tom is not distracted with this during his initial releases.

If a bug surfaces, and Tom drops support completely, trust me, it will get attention, as Tom recently learned during his recent disappearance. We can self-help, and will self-help if forced to, we have the unRaid driver source. The web-based management utility functionality can be replaced with an alternative if we are forced into that position, even if it is not as pretty and initally is just a well-documented set of commands at the telnet prompt. (I'd just as soon watch a few movies than re-invent Tom's work, so let's hope he keeps at it)

Joe L.

I'm a little mystified by the complaints. The product works as claimed - that's already a big plus.

I suspect that some of the unhappiness was around the fact that Tom was extremely responsive initially, and now he's less visible. That certainly doesn't make the product perform any worse. From what I can tell there has been only one significant bug (the hard drive upgrade one?), and that has now been fixed.

While I agree that it would be nice to have more nice new shiny software, that's not the same as saying there's no support. What exactly are the problems (not new features) that have not been addressed?

Tom disappeared twice for several weeks. This was not just a disappearance from the forums but he was not returning email or phone calls. However, he was taking people's money and shipping out new products. During this disappearance the MAJOR bug was discovered where we couldn't replace failed drives. We were forced to assume that Tom wasn't going to ever return and we began to form a community to self-support the product. When Tom finally did return, he offered no explanation and no apology. In fact he made what were, in my mind, derisive comments towards people who were suggesting that his customer service might need some improvement. He locked threads on his forum where people asked about what was going on. He still is not very prompt in responding to his forum or to emails.

So...that in a nutshell is why people are ticked off about UnRaid. Still mystified?

Let's temper the non-responsive comments with the understanding that Tom WAS responding to folks who were asking for hardware and did apparently respond to some support requests. Yes, he was away from the forum and we all got jittery but he didn't just walk away and he did fix a serious bug - that can be all consuming trust me.

Yes, the product DOES work. However the performance needs to be tweaked and Tom knows that. Solve that issue and I will be VERY happy! Do I currently reccomend the product? While I don't regret building mine I'm hesitant to ask others to jump into the same boat simply because yeah occasionally Tom just disappears and when he reappeared he simply shut down the thread questioning what was going on. Life happens but when it does at least say so when you can get back to things - allow us a little empathy.

Honestly there for awhile i simply stopped following things. My setup works except when stressed so I work around it. However I'd like it to work better and I *do* get asked for NAS recommendations pretty regularly at work. When I checked back in I found that the "beta" was quite old and Tom gone again - not a warm fuzzy. Had he not come back when he did I'd have gladly donated to get things moving Open source. As for the USB key - that's been broken for awhile, if we had to get around his copy protection it could be done but that isn't being released because Tom hasn't abandoned us and no one wants to ruin his business. Fingers crossed all around that things get fixed and business booms - I honestly think we'd ALL like to see Tom succeed and do well...

Tom disappeared twice for several weeks. Actually, he disappeared twice for several months. If it was only a few weeks we would have figured he took a well deserved vacation and did not want to advertise his absence, since he probably works out of his house.

Joe L.

I'm a little mystified by the complaints. The product works as claimed - that's already a big plus.


I'm actually pretty happy with the product itself. It currently works well enough for my needs. And yes, as of the 706 release, I think it does work as claimed. However, given the weeks and weeks of public research regarding the the disk-rebuild bug, I'd have to say that a lot of customers were sitting on a product that DID NOT work as claimed, and there was no (public) sign of the vendor. I really don't think it is asking too much to ask him to pop in and say, "I'm working on it. I'll get back to you later."

For me, the complaint comes from two sources. First, I think the product should work as advertised. It did not (even though I fortunately didn't experience it myself). The second source comes from expectations. I did expect the forum to a place frequented by LimeTech. I honestly thought that was the point of it. However, I decided to go and re-read the Welcome post, and I see I did have the wrong expectation. Tom clearly states that he isn't committing to specific response times and that the forum should be a self-support forum:

we also encourage you to interact with each other for support.

I did expect the forum to a place frequented by LimeTech. I honestly thought that was the point of it. However, I decided to go and re-read the Welcome post, and I see I did have the wrong expectation. Tom clearly states that he isn't committing to specific response times and that the forum should be a self-support forum:


Yes, but numerous people sent him emails and left him phone messages that were never returned during these disappearing acts. If he just wasn't visiting the forum, that wouldn't be disappointing but maybe understandable. But not responding to communications from your customers is not just bad business, it's rude and inconsiderate.

Personally, I think he's a flake. I can generally forgive flakey behavior if it's followed by some apologies and consideration for the people that have been inconvenienced. What really gets me is his apparent disregard for what his customers perceive are some aggregious errors on his part. I've seen no apology, no explanation, no promises that it won't happen again in the future. Nothing. I'd like to see some effort on his part that he's working toward running a tighter ship, but I unfortunately see the opposite.

Since Tom's been hammered before for making promises he wasn't able to deliver on (and there's no excuse for that), it's perhaps no wonder he isn't promising anything else these days.

I suppose my perspective is a little more charitable because I've come across many worse vendors out there. You'll find forums set up by the vendor where the vendor never responds (and of course there are lots with no forums). Or email support where the answer is either canned or shows that no one bothered to read the email in the first place. And there aren't too many products where we get any chance at all to communicate with the guy who's actually doing the work.

I do understand the frustration for someone like Joe L, who has done incredible work on this and who can with justification wonder why he seems to be more active than Tom in helping users.

I was very close to purchasing an un-Raid (just the USB key version) right before Tom disappeared. Him disappearing made me decide to wait until I notice him around quite a bit more, until it's developed as open source (all of it... not just the driver), or until a good alternative comes out.

As a developer, I understand that working on certain bugs can take quite a bit of time, but taking 2 minutes every couple of days to give a simple progress report would have worked wonders, and he would have gained at least 1 more customer (probably more, I'd assume).

I just hope he reads a few of these and understands that we're not attacking him, we're hopeful that things change in the future since this is a pretty cool product he came up with.

Personally, I'm waiting for SATA spindown and the ability to read & write at the same time with high performance. When those features appear, I'll be an enthusiastic customer. I will say that I fervently hope that there will be a bit more consistent sign of involvement from Tom by the time that those features are available. It will give me greater confidence in the product I'll be buying.

To me, I think we need to get the driver and system development into the open source. But maybe that's just me...

Nope, it's not just you. It's just a matter of time before you'll see a completely open source alternative to UnRaid...

SATA spindown may be difficult although moving to the new kernel may help on all counts. Tom has explained at least once that SATA spindown is tough due to issues in software he's leveraging. I think one of the other NAs mentioned recently supports spindown of SATA drives but itmay also be a beta feature.

Honestly for me SATA isn't such a big deal - there are 700+gig IDE drives already available :D I just want to see performance brought way up so that copying large amounts of data isn't a start it and goto bed sort of affair! The rest will be icing on the cake for me...

Yeah, it's true, I could happily go with IDE drives as well, except that I just worry that everything is moving to SATA and in time it will be harder to get the IDE drives (or at least more expensive). Since, if I want to get trays and such, I have a fairly decent equipment expense to swallow, it'd be better if it were usable for as long as possible.

Honestly, why get trays? In theory you won't be swapping drives often and the little fans add greatly to the noise. I ended up using the 4into3 drive holders after suffering sticker shock looking at drive trays. Get the ones with cutesy LCD displays and other nice features and you're well on the way to the poorhouse! The drive adapters each have a 12CM fan on the front that cools well, has low noise, and the adapters are CHEAP. Tom's recommended case came with one of them and I bought two more - cooling and mounting problems solved CHEAP. We discussed this awhile back, I think some others went this path too for the same reasons - those trays cost BUX!

So far IDe is hanging in there and will for awhile. Yes, eventually they will go away but by then I will have terabyte SATA drives cheap and those little dinky 4drive NAS others sell might not be too small :rolleyes:

P.S. Read it and weep -> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=2203986&sku=THD-750A&CMP=EMC-TIGEREMAIL&SRCCODE=WEM1152C

Well, I was actually looking at a 4U case that a user on Tom's forums posted, with this 3-into-2:

http://www.plinkusa.net/webBP-SATA2131B.htm

The case and the 3-into-2 adapters are all very reasonable, and these trays don't have individual fans (just an 80mm for each 3 drive group), so that's why they appeal. Using these trays, you can put 12 drives into the 4U case, which is nice, and should be much quieter than the ones with individual fans. BUT, they're SATA... Evidently no IDE version, although there's something similar.

As for that drive.... dang. 12 of those would be fun, wouldn't they? :D

Ah okay, that's a little clearer then! Unfortunatly there's no SATA version availale that will handle many drives yet. He's got a version that can handle some SATA drives but I don't think the current boards have enough interfaces to fill a big box and I don't know what other add-on interfaces are being considered. Stay tuned I guess, in th emeantime the current software works - just not as quickly as I might like :P

Ah. Given that he had said that he had been testing with a 12-bay SATA rack-mount case, I thought that it was already working. Hmmmm.

I dunno' what hardware he was using and don't recall reading about him having tested that config. If so terrific, spindown may be awhile in coming though since it sounds like native Linux has this issue too. Spindown is pretty important to me since it can be such a powersavings using so many drives....

It was mentioned in a thread on his forums -- somebody asked about a particular rack-mount case, and he pointed out that he had been using a similar 12U SATA case in developing the SATA prototype. So, I don't know whether that prototype had more than a handful of drives in it at the time or what.

Anyway. Thanks for the info. Maybe I'll buy the case and the SATA 3-into-2's, but also some inexpensive IDE 3-into-2's and just build the thing with IDE for now.

I dunno' what hardware he was using and don't recall reading about him having tested that config. If so terrific, spindown may be awhile in coming though since it sounds like native Linux has this issue too. Spindown is pretty important to me since it can be such a powersavings using so many drives....I did a quick google search for "SATA Linux powerdown" :

The results were:

Prior to kernel 2.6.15, the Linux SATA system did not support power management commands. It was not Tom, it was any version of Linux. (apparently, there are some patches available for 2.6.12 onward) We are currently running version 2.4.31 of Linux on our unRaid servers.

So... Tom has said he has been working towards migration to the 2.6 kernel, I can only hope he chooses a fairly current release as his base. (I think the most recent stable release was 2.6.17 as of June 2006)

No clue from Tom when unRaid will be available using Linux kernel 2.6 to support powerdown in SATA drives, the port to 2.6 having been promised for a very long time now. He did say it is a much bigger task than he anticipated and nobody has any idea how far along he has gotten since he has not been open in his progress reports.

Joe L.

Thanks for that very detailed info!

Yup, that is apparently one of the reasons why Tom is moving to 2.6. That and I think he is seeking some performance improvements - seems some of us have been whining about that ;) I recall him saying it was a big job, I'm hoping this is part of what has been keeping him away although I think he also has a pretty complex day job too. We'll see, in any case SATA isn't going to be here tomorrow with spindown and big IDE drives are popping up almost within striking range of my pocketbook <pant pant> The bummer is I'll need TWO so that I can increase Parity too - doh!

The bummer is I'll need TWO so that I can increase Parity too - doh!Could be worse... normal RAID would require you to change ALL your drives to 750G at the same time.

Let's see, to upgrade 12 drives at a single time ...

roughly $400 each * 12 = $4,800.00...

I'll wait a bit longer... prices still dropping, catch one 750G on sale some holiday, use it for parity, then wait and catch another sale.... gain some actual data storage space...

Joe L.

Ouch, good point! Yeah, I'm willing to wait a bit while prices drop a bit more. They hit the $300 range and I'll be linig up to take them home :)

After a successful un-Raid PC build back in February, my USB boot flash got corrupted, and I wasn't able to obtain an RMA to get a replacement card (Tom had disappeared). Before my USB flash died, I was experiencing the same lackluster throughput as other users were reporting (for example, only one stream could be recorded or played at a time).

I decided to re-task the hardware into a WinXP box running 12 disks in JBOD. I'm happy to report that six months in, all is well. I have 4.8TB of data on-line, WinXP spins down the unused drives, and SwissCenter works very well with my Snazio and IOData networked DVD players.

All data on the server is sourced from DVDs or other hard drives, so an offline backup exists in case one of the server's drives fails. I can genuinely say I'm happy I switched to WinXP. :)

Well... my flash also died and I only discovered it because I had to power cycle my machine - the system refused to boot. :eek: I flipped out in a panic and shot an e-mail to Tom, I had a response from him within a couple of hours and a FedEx package on my doorstep within a business day or so. I have also had to ask Tom for assistance once or twice while swapping drives around, he's been responsive via e-mail.

I'm sorry you weren't able to get hold of Tom and get a replacement flash, somehow that request had to have slipped through the cracks. Even when he's not been actively posting I've never heard of him not getting back to a customer on something like this until now and I'll bet he will be surprised if he reads your posting. I'm not sure what occured there but I'd have to say that's likely the exception rather than the rule based on my experience and that of others who have posted. I dunno' what happened..... :(

Hrm, and I have no doubt XP is faster at serving files but as you noted no backup other than optical media exists for you. That's ALOT of work if something goes bad but if you've not got it striped you'll probably only lose a single drive worth of data unless it's a REAL bad accident. I wonder if a similiar driver to the unRAID setup couldn't be written for Windows :D

For the last couple of days my unRAID has not been available on my network and today I hooked up a monitor to see what was going on, this is what I am seeing

I have hooked up a monitor to it and this is the final message I am getting after it has timed out (??) waiting for me to log on at the

"Mediaserver" (the name of mine)

prompt

mediaserver login: remount: /dev/md5
remount: /dev/md3
remount: /dev/md1
remount: /dev/md2
remount: /dev/md4
shell_cmd: killall -w smbd nmbd

It looks like it is waiting for me to log on but I have never had to do that "locally" before so I don't know what gives.

Also, I am no Linux guru, so I am unsure what is going on there either.

I also tried to hook up a keyboard and mouse with no luck, through USB and with PS2 adapters, is this right?

I have fired off an email to Tom, hopefully he will get back to me

Any Linux guru's that can help me out here?

Thanks.

Brit.

Can you get to the WEB page? Can yo ping the server? Do you have a Link light on the NIC? The console usually has funky messages on it that don't tell me much at all. I've not ever used USB peripherals on mine and wouldn't expect them to work <shrug> I'd start by investigating this from a network perspective first...

No, I have tried numerous times to get to the "WEB" page

//mediaserver

No luck there.

You could be right, it might be a network issue, I will try another cable

Can you get to the WEB page? Can yo ping the server? Do you have a Link light on the NIC? The console usually has funky messages on it that don't tell me much at all. I've not ever used USB peripherals on mine and wouldn't expect them to work <shrug> I'd start by investigating this from a network perspective first...The console messages you described look pretty normal.
I once tried USB peripherials on mine, they did NOT work. Had to use a standard PS2 keyboard and mouse.

Joe L.

Acchhhhhh

Loose cable

Ar$e

I still can't get to the browser "status" page however, I don't know why it does that.

I wonder if it is because I am using the same router for my internet (Belkin Pre-N)

Out of curiosity, which cable?

The cable from the server to the router/hub, it wasn't all the way in to the port.

Ah. Yeah, that'd definitely be a problem! Glad you found it. :)

I occasionally have issues with name resolution on my network and reboting the array clears it - for some reason the SAMBA server takes over as Master Browser <shrug> Try getting to it using the IP address instead of a name - that gets around any sort of name resolution issue. Try a Ping too and make sure the IP address hasn't changed for any reason..

any news on an open source alternative to this? or something better?

I'm looking at setting up a small (1-1.5TB) server for now, and I want redundancy.

Thanks

Tom is about to release V3 of his software with some improvements. It looks like he is moving to a slightly different business model and will allow for a free download that will work with only two data disks and a parity disk. Given large enough drives his software would allow for 1.5TB worth of storage. He also has a midrange version that allow for six disks total (one parity), and his usual twelve disk large array - at a reduced pricing.

He hasn't announced this other than on his support forum yet but if you go there you can learn the details. An issue that seems to be cropping up, for me at least, is hardware. The recommended motherboard is near impossible to find and I'm wanting to build a second array. I suspect that will be figured out quickly :)

Tom has some new features going into the software including some R/O share options that are best explained on his support forum. I'm not sure it's in there yet but the Master Browser issues I've had with SAMBA will be fixed with a toggle to turn on or off this feature. I've asked for the trashcan feature in SAMBA and Tom said that wouldn't be too hard so we may get that in the future too.

There's changes\fixes in this release and as more of us get experience with it we'll be able to talk about them more. All in all it seems that development is progressing slowly but surely - SATA is supported for instance. Security and speed are still to be addressed but on the list pretty high I'd imagine - SATA support was a biggie.

Oh and no I've seen nothing open source, free, or cheaper that does what this system does but I'm all ears if such a thing exists...

Areduced price on the software and multiple levels sounds great to me, I just don;t want to pay $150 for it. Also is there returns or resale allowed, just wondering if you knew off hand.

Areduced price on the software and multiple levels sounds great to me, I just don;t want to pay $150 for it. Also is there returns or resale allowed, just wondering if you knew off hand.

Those are questions probably best left to Tom. Short of something like FreeNAS or rolling your own I'm not sure how much cheaper you're going to get elsewhere but I'm always on the lookout. Honestly I'm pretty pleased right now, Tom has made us early adopters a pretty good deal just when I was about to start building a second NAS. I need someplace to put the smaller drives I replace as I move to larger ones! :eek:

so i just went to the lime technology site and found that they released v3 of the software and at LONG last, the SATA version. so i am wonderign if anyone has used the SATA version and how well it works compared to the IDE. also i am wonderign if they have the spindown feature on the SATA version.

The Unraid support forums are here: http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php, there are lots of people who can answer your questions there.

More than one person is runing SATA and mixed systems.Plenty of answers at the above linked forum but do realize that V3 is still beta. The nice thing is though you can try before you buy now - very nice feature!

so i just went to the lime technology site and found that they released v3 of the software and at LONG last, the SATA version. so i am wonderign if anyone has used the SATA version and how well it works compared to the IDE. also i am wonderign if they have the spindown feature on the SATA version.

I am running three sata Seagate 500GB drives in the free version of Unraid.
Spin down works beautifully, my hard disks have a temp or 22 C when spun down.
Also supports hiddens shares, so if you have 12 drives and want to create a dvd folder in each drive, you can map a drive to \\tower\dvd and create a single combined virtual drive mapping all of the dvds that you copied on your unraid server.

Has anyone had any luck going outside the recommended hardware? There's two motherboards (I'm an AMD guy!) and two choices of SATA controllers, neither of which I'm interested in.

Yes, multiple people have tried different boards with varying levels of success and Tom has been responsive in trying to support various boards. Best to check at the Lime-Tech support forum. So far as I know mostly XXX INTEL hardware has been used and in this case that's not so bad - at this level it's dirt cheap and pretty cool running...

Edit: Intel hardware has been mostly used, how the heck did I confuse the two companies? <sigh>

Has anyone had any luck going outside the recommended hardware? There's two motherboards (I'm an AMD guy!) and two choices of SATA controllers, neither of which I'm interested in.

Which SATA controllers are you interested in?

Take your pick of the SiL3114-based controllers. Don't spend time on it Tom, I've decided to go with a hardware RAID-based solution instead, I'm just not comfortable with the linux/software approach, and I also wanted the flexibility of RAID levels and migration between them.

Not to change the tread or anything but has anybody tried FreeNAS? It's not as fancy in the raid department but it works great as a NAS and has software raid 0,1, and 5. And it runs on older hardware. And it's Free.

Last I read, recovery from a failure with raid 5 was problematic. Pretty much ruled out raid5 on FreeNas for me.

Not to change the tread or anything but has anybody tried FreeNAS? It's not as fancy in the raid department but it works great as a NAS and has software raid 0,1, and 5. And it runs on older hardware. And it's Free.

Not to put this thread back on topic or anything but FreeNAS sux feature wise compared to unRaid. unRaid TOTALLY eliminates all the drawbacks of the raid levels you mention, and in it's basic format (up to 3 hard drives) it is FREE!

You really should check out the facts prior to thread hijacking.

-PGPfan

Take your pick of the SiL3114-based controllers. Don't spend time on it Tom, I've decided to go with a hardware RAID-based solution instead, I'm just not comfortable with the linux/software approach, and I also wanted the flexibility of RAID levels and migration between them.


Tom,

May the rest of us then ask then.... we need to alleviate the PCI bottleneck! Allow us to throw some hardware at the problem. We need PCI-E, 2 ports min, 4-8 ports preferable, like the Promise EX8350, the RocketRAID 2320 ,Highpoint RR2322, Tempo SATA E4i or perhaps the Intel SRCSAS144E; not all of them are XOR cards I'd imagine. Maybe we can start with a SIIG 2 port SATA II PCI Express Controller Card w/ a supported MB that has 4 PCI-e slots and 4 on-MB SATA ports, we should be running full steam I'd imagine. :) Other needy speedups:

1. speeding up simultaneous read/write (which I know you will issue a patch for shortly).
2. speeding up the formatting/clearing, etc., process.
3. giving us alternative transfer schemes (e.g., TCP-NFS, RSYNC and (my true love : iSCSI)), since some clients are just abysmal with SMB (do you hear me PixelMagic :confused: ). NFS will do for a while I guess.


-----
I would like to add to the spectators out there, that some of us have built 12 drive rigs out of Unraid and they work very well, esp once you have the media all loaded. The Unraid totally dwarfs the capabilities of traditional hardware based raid 5, both in recovery flexibility and online expansion.

I have a media server running Windows XP with each drive as a separate share (no RAID). Hardware is an Intel D865PERLK mother board, and this (http://www.syba.com/us/en/product/43/02/05/index.html) SATA card which uses Sil3114.

Any thoughts on whether this will work with un-Raid?

Would it be possible to - download the free version, boot from the flash, and see if it recognizes my drives? Without wiping out my existing data in case I decide against using un-RAID?

Thanks,

DE

Would it be possible to - download the free version, boot from the flash, and see if it recognizes my drives? Without wiping out my existing data in case I decide against using un-RAID?

Thanks,

DEYes, just don't start the array and don't assign your existing drives to slots in the unRaid array. You should be able to see the drives in the unRaid management page if the hardware is compatible. At least you will prove the USB drive will boot and your network interface and hardware are compaitible.

how will unRAID handle his NTFS drives. I think it will be better if you boot with no drive connected to be on the safe side.

I do have a question. How easy is it to migrate to another setup? I am thinking about change out the motherboard and CPU.

www.lime-technology.com isn't resolving with my DNS, anyone else seeing this? Fingers crossed it's a temporary glitch or an issue with my provider :-(

Not for me either. :(

same here....

same here....It is working for me... prorbably a network blip...

It is working for me... prorbably a network blip...

cleared my dns cache- still no go for either the site or the forum, ditto nslookup.

it won't load from my home or office.

same results here....again....and again....and again

I've had problems with the site only once before, when Tom upgraded to the new release/storefront a few months back.

Well, since I'm here-

Has anyone used Spinrite to boot/fix drives? I think I have data corruption on one drive, and reiserfsck is not fixing things, plus Tom really didn't recommend any other course. Another, possibly connected issue, is I cant shutdown the array! it doesnt register any shutdown commands, and the webserver becomes sluggish/ stops working after a while. I pulled the syslog and this is the error, trying to shutdown:

"...unraid kernel: vs-3050: wait_buffer_until_released: nobody releases buffer <dev 09:02, size 4096, blocknr 94502912, count 3, list 0, state 0x10019, page c174c80c, UPTODATE, CLEAN, UNLOCKED>>. still waiting <-1500000000>JDirty !JWAIT"

Yup still not working....! Still have the "Self" site set up if we need it.

Domain still valid - held by Tucows for some reason. Expires 17 Dec 2007 so it's not like the domain was dropped. I don't have the IP address cached anywhere but this could simply be a problem with a domain transfer or something - not too worried yet.

Outpost.com has 300Gig SATA drives on sale for $99 which is why I was looking for his site to begin with this morning (lol)

The support forum is still up... I just got to it at http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php

Joe L.

The support forum is still up... I just got to it at http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php

Joe L.
It does not load for me so that could be a sign that they are in the middle of some DNS changes. Sadly unless they visit here they may not even be aware of the problem as things might be loading on their end just fine.

This morning lime-technology.com does not resolve for me either... Perhaps a DNS error, or perhaps some other network routing issue.

Um, it's not network related at all. The domain is in "ClientHold" status. That means that the sponsoring registrar (Tucows) has placed the domain on hold on purpose. The expiration is indeed 17-Dec-2006. That means it expired 2 days ago. Likely Tucows is holding pending possible renewal. A grace period before releasing it.

I am surprised that Tom would let it lapse like that. But it is the holidays. :-/

It's back up now.

Well, I guess this is my last recourse seeing as nobody will answer my emails, shame really.

My system seems to have gone completely down. I can neither read nor write to it, can not open a telnet session and my led's are static on the ethernet port.

This is despite completely disconnecting it from the rest of the system, attaching a new router to one of my spare computers and attaching a monitor to see what is going on.

I get the initial text string when it initially boots but that about it. It does not seem to get any further.

I have written several email to the support department asking what is wrong but have not had any answers, can any of you guys help?

I have posted the same message on their forums in the hope of getting an answer from them soon, I need my work files.

Brit

maybe your USB stick is bad/corrupted ?

It is unfortunate Brit that the customer support for this product has been so inconsistent. Sorry I can't help. I wish I could.

hi all,

i'm posting here as well as the unraid support forum as i have some time critical project data on my server (i'm a cg sfx artist and use the unraid to serve current client projects as well as media files), so the sooner i can determine a potential fix for my problem the better.

on power up yesterday, my unraid server could not be found on the network. i attached a monitor and keyboard and found that after POST the system would hang. i entered the BIOS and saw that the flash drive was not specified as the boot device. after enabling the flash drive, the system will now boot but does not seem to be able to successfully mount the drives (i have all 12 bays filled). after a series of "mount" commands, the system issues a series of "remount" commands, one for each installed drive, then a call to "nmb -d" and "smbd -d", at which point all of the amber drive lights come on.


any help would be greatly appreciated.


thanks,


john

I hear your pain, need my work files tomorrow or I am sunk.

Brit

If you just need access to your files and your system is bootable you should be able to boot from another linux distro (might have to get another flash drive) and copy the data. If you need to find another distro perhaps this list will help http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

Where in the unraid forum did you post? The most recent post I see there (under unraid 3.0) is on the 20th.

Have any of you looked into Microsoft's Windows Home Server?

It sounds similar to Unraid, in that you can dynamically grow the size of the storage and use multiple sized hard drives, etc. It can also run on a headless system, etc. However, I don't think it uses storage space as efficiently. It has fairly robust data security by doubling your data, so a 1 TB server yields 500 GB of storage. It sounds like the management software is pretty nice and supports a lot of cool features for backing up systems on your network, etc.

Here's a thread on Windows Home Server (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9393760&&#post9393760) .

WHS would fit the bill perfectly if I wanted to do nothing for the next 6 months.

It also doesn't work with Media Center.

For now, I'll stick to unRAID.

WHS would fit the bill perfectly if I wanted to do nothing for the next 6 months.

It also doesn't work with Media Center.

For now, I'll stick to unRAID.

I didn't ask if you would consider switching. I was just curious what people who have been following this thread (those who own Unraid or may purchase Unraid) think of Home Server.

Just curious, I haven't heard it won't work with Media Center. Where did you read that? I've watched a few videos that claim otherwise. Maybe they are just referring to Vista MC and not MCE2005.

Well it ain't for me.

And there's no Samba support, uPnP only, hence no go for MCE

Can anyone shed some life on whether you can buy un-raid still?

it seems from their website everything is okay and still selling the product, however from the last few responses I've begun to worry if un-raid is still around...?

any help would be great

thanks

Can anyone shed some life on whether you can buy un-raid still?

it seems from their website everything is okay and still selling the product, however from the last few responses I've begun to worry if un-raid is still around...?

any help would be great

thanks

Yes, it's very much still alive and available. They are going to release a new version on the Linux 2.6.xxx kernel any day now which should greatly enhance compatibility with more systems (AMD especially).

-PGPfan

The support of un-raid has been up and down since the beginning. I've been using it for a year and half now I think. Honestly, I'd say the support is better than it has ever been, which is to say, not an A+, but more like a solid B. Which isn't bad at all. This of course, is just my subjective opinion. There were times when I wouldn't recommend it to friends, but now I would. This of course is the support that I'm talking about.

The product itself is AWESOME. There is nothing else out there that does what it does. For a large media server, I really think it is the best solution. Hopefully the support will continue to be as good or better in the future.

The support of un-raid has been up and down since the beginning. I've been using it for a year and half now I think. Honestly, I'd say the support is better than it has ever been, which is to say, not an A+, but more like a solid B. Which isn't bad at all. This of course, is just my subjective opinion. There were times when I wouldn't recommend it to friends, but now I would. This of course is the support that I'm talking about.

The product itself is AWESOME. There is nothing else out there that does what it does. For a large media server, I really think it is the best solution. Hopefully the support will continue to be as good or better in the future.

I totally agree. I love Unraid and , thankfully, have not really needed much support. They're definitely still in business and were recently very responsive to an email I sent.

super noob questions.
Is there an OS installed on any of the drives prior to the unraid install?
Is the server plugged into my router?
If so, how do i access my files(movies) if there is no OS installed.
Yeah, super noob.

The OS is on a USB key and it boots directly from the USB key. That's one of the nice things about a linux kernel, it has a very small footprint.

The server would be plugged into your router or switch. The directories across the array of disks are compiled into what are called "shares". So for example, even though I have movies across 8 different hard drives, a network share shows up called "Movies" that has all of the movies in one folder. Pretty neat.

It is a very new technology so there are the usual headaches in learning how to get it going. Although, it really isn't that hard. Once it is up and running, it is pretty stable and really easy to use.

Be warned, once you get going, you can fill up TBs pretty quick. I've already filled up my 3 TB server and am looking to build another. :)

Go to http://www.lime-technology.com/ for more info.

thanks for the quick reply.
Do you have a keyboard, mouse and display hooked to the server?

I had a keyboard and display hooked up the first time I got my server going as I had some initial issues. However, since then I've never needed to hook any peripherals to it as all maintenance is done through telnet or the web interface.

I totally agree. I love Unraid and , thankfully, have not really needed much support. They're definitely still in business and were recently very responsive to an email I sent.


I have to second that...I have the "recommended" hardware and not a problem since a little over a year and half ago.

I actually just added 3 drives and now have over 3TB of storage space and the upgrade went nice and smooth.

I am looking into expanding my 700GB RAID 5 array into an Unraid solution and have a few questions about the system while I'm considering hardware/design. I hope to buy 3 or 4 new drives, setup the Unraid, transfer my existing data over, then tear down and format the old drives and plug into the new array.

My first question is regarding the architecture. I don't understand how one drive can provide parity for 2-8 other drives. I could see for 2 but for 8, how is this possible without striping? Is there some aggressive compression taking place here that gets slower and slower (presumably) as more drives and data are added? And at what point are multiple parity drives required?

Also it says the parity drive must be at least as large as the largest storage drive. As I understand, storage drives can be upgraded just by swapping out, but what about the parity drive? Once the array is setup can this drive be just as easily upgraded or is the array lost?

Finally, are you finding Unraid performance to be adequate for very high data rate streams such as HD-DVD, or is this pushing the envelope?

Thanks in advance,

Jeff

My first question is regarding the architecture. I don't understand how one drive can provide parity for 2-8 other drives. I could see for 2 but for 8, how is this possible without striping?

Jeff

Regarding parity...this is how I understand that it works.

Let's say that you have 5 data disks, and one parity disk.

Let's look at the first "bit" on each of the disks which will be 0 or 1 depending on the data that occupies the location:

Disk 1: 0
Disk 2: 1
Disk 3: 1
Disk 4: 0
Disk 5: 1

Now, the parity drive bit would be set to the parity of the 5 bits of data from each of the other disks: 0 + 1 + 1 + 0 + 1 mod 2 = 1 (I have no idea what the exact calculation looks like, but likely some combination of XORs).

If any disk fails, including the parity disk, it can be rebuilt by looking at the data from the remaining 5 disks.

So, you can see that a parity drive will work for any number of data drives, and the amount of data that can be used will be based on the smallest drive in the array.

Ozy

and the amount of data that can be used will be based on the smallest drive in the array
put another way, make the parity drive the largest or equal to the largest drive and you can use any size drive as long as it's =< the size of the parity drive.

fantastic product.....

:cool:

I am looking into expanding my 700GB RAID 5 array into an Unraid solution and have a few questions about the system while I'm considering hardware/design. I hope to buy 3 or 4 new drives, setup the Unraid, transfer my existing data over, then tear down and format the old drives and plug into the new array.

My first question is regarding the architecture. I don't understand how one drive can provide parity for 2-8 other drives. I could see for 2 but for 8, how is this possible without striping? Is there some aggressive compression taking place here that gets slower and slower (presumably) as more drives and data are added? And at what point are multiple parity drives required?

Also it says the parity drive must be at least as large as the largest storage drive. As I understand, storage drives can be upgraded just by swapping out, but what about the parity drive? Once the array is setup can this drive be just as easily upgraded or is the array lost?

Finally, are you finding Unraid performance to be adequate for very high data rate streams such as HD-DVD, or is this pushing the envelope?

Thanks in advance,

Jeffmuch earlier in this thread I described how parity worked. It can handle any number of drives. No compression is involved. only limit to number of drives is when reconstructing a missing (failed) drive, as the server has to read all the drives in the array to reconstruct the failed one, so performance drops as the number of drive in the array increases. Also, the odds of two drives failing at the same time is lower with 10 or 12 drives than it would be with 100,000 drives in a single array. (you could calculate parity on any number of drives, but other physical and performance factors limit array size, so you usually see smaller arrays and never see 100,000 drives in a single array)

PCI bus performance limits kick in much past 12-14 drives with most hardware so you will not get the same speed as when all disks are working properly. That is a small price to pay for keeping the data safe until you can replace the failed drive. Parity does its math (basically it keeps an "even" number of "1"s across a given bit position on all the drives in an array) It makes the bit on the parity drive whatever it needs to have an even number of bits set to "1" for a given set of bits in that same position across all your drives.

All normal RAID4/5/6 systems do that exact same thing for parity. It is calculated across all the drives in the array. They also stripe the data across all your drives, so a larger movie file will be interleaved with parts of it across all the drives in the array. This allows some hardware to issue multiple read commands to multiple drives concurrently to read X number of chunks of your file at the same time. This "striping of data" was needed with older/slower hard-disks to boost performance. It is not as much of an issue with modern hardware. The limit now is the PCI bus.

When all drives are working unRaid does not get slower with more drives in the array. The parity drive is NOT read when reading a data drive (unless that data drive has a hardware failure and parity is being used to reconstruct its contents) On reads, only 1 drive is active.

When writing a data drive unRaid only involves the one drive being written and the parity drive. It first reads the existing bits on the drive being written. For each bit position being written, if the existing bit and the new are both zeros... or both ones, the parity bit does not need to change. If the new and old bits are different, then the parity bit needs to be changed to keep an even number of bits in that position across the drives. (if parity bit is a 1, make it 0, if it is 0, make it a 1)

On your RAID5 all drives are involved on both reads and writes, so performance drops as array size increases.

there is a special "Parity Swap" mode in unRaid to upgrade the Parity drive size.
basically you put the new larger swap drive in the existing swap drive's slot and unraid will re-build parity on it. I've not did this yet, as I originally installed a 500Gig drive for parity, but will someday when 750g and 1000g drives go on sale.

I've swapped Parity at least 2 times including after one drive failed early - no trauma. You just have to know that during that time the drives have no protection is all.

OK, that took a few reads but I think I've got it. What still confuses me a bit is the specs on the site and maybe I'm wrong here but I could have sworn I read somewhere that a 1TB array could be made out of 3 500 gig drives. But if parity data is stored on all three drives, then it would by my rough calculations only be a 750GB array of actual data. Is this correct?

There isn't actual "parity data" stored on any of the data discs. The algorithem counts up the 0s and 1s of all the discs and then stores the solutions on the parity drive. If the parity drive fails, then the solutions (parity drive information) can be reconstructed using the other discs.

3 500 gb drives = 1 TB of storage. Only one drive is used for parity. You only need one parity drive no matter what you're doing.

To be honest, I've never bothered trying to figure out how the parity drive REALLY works. Unless you're a computer science or math guy then that stuff is way too complicated. The thing just plain works.

Ooof... my unRaid went kaboom today. Not sure it it's the MB or something else, but my graphics are all blurry and it hangs on boot checking the ram.

might be bad ram. change out the dimm if you have a spare just to make sure before you go replacing the MB.

some "budget" dimm's are thinner than they should be and occasionally need a "wiggle" in the socket....

:cool:

OK, that took a few reads but I think I've got it. What still confuses me a bit is the specs on the site and maybe I'm wrong here but I could have sworn I read somewhere that a 1TB array could be made out of 3 500 gig drives. But if parity data is stored on all three drives, then it would by my rough calculations only be a 750GB array of actual data. Is this correct?

Now here's where things get cool. For three drives you're losing 1/3rd to parity which isn't much better than standard RAID (same actually i think). Now add a 4th drive - you still use the single parity drive so the entire 4th drive is used for data. Add a 5th - same thing. Keep going until there are 12 drives in the system and you find that just one drive is used for parity :D That's 11 drives worth of data protected by a single parity drive - kewl.

Now in a standard RAID with striped data what happens when two drives fail? :eek: You lose it ALL! With an unRAID you lose two drives worth of data - still sucks but it beats losing an entire striped set. also, the drives are written with a standard Linux F/S so if something goes BOOM you can always pull the drive out and mount it elsewhere to gain access to the data. Try that with striped RAID sometime and see how it goes :rolleyes: Standard RAID, especially that done with software, also seems to suffer from issues with corruption. I've had multiple friends call me up upset because something "burped" and their array went bad using standard RAID. No thanks! unRAID ain't perfect but it does have some significant advantages against those kinds of problems.

You do lose a speed boost gotten from pulling data from multiple drives at once with standard RAID, for streaming video it's fine so I don't care. You also end up with a mount point for each drive so it's not a single large storage space which can be painful and wasteful of space. So far while that's a PITA I'm living with it jsut fine and have been for well over a year, as soon as I get time a second machine will be built so that the smaller drives Im rolling out of my primary NAS can be put to good use in something other than a TIVO or XBOX :p

You also end up with a mount point for each drive so it's not a single large storage space which can be painful and wasteful of space.
Gee, I've never considered that "wasteful"--more like "potential." Anyway, it's not a problem I've ever had for long. :)

Has anyone here installed the Java app DVArchive (dvarchive.org) under un-RAID? I haven't managed to install the Slackware version of Java.

I posted on the un-RAID forum with no results. I'll also ask over on the ReplayTV and DVArchive forums.

Thanks

the version 4 beta is up....

:cool:

I'm interested in building one of these some day and I'm wondering what how critical it is to build a fast system from scratch or can you take any 3-4 year old desktop and maybe slap in a couple SATA cards, gigabit ethernet and drives as you can fit them in and just go?

I ask because I live in India and have to import all my tech toys and there's a lot of competition for suitcase space. If I could just re-commission some old crappy P4 desktop here, buy a few parts when I'm back in the US and turn it into an unRAID I'd be pretty pumped about it.

Also, can someone tell me roughly how much you've spent on non-drive hardware costs? Maybe the info is most useful if you mention both drive capacity (number of drives) and rough cost. Brag about throughput if compelled :D :D :D

It isn't critical to hava a very fast computer, but you can't just use anything, because everything needs to be compatible. This is really dictated by the linux kernel, but now that a newer kernel is being used it shouldn't be as much of a problem. Look on the forums at www.lime-technology.com for lists of compatible parts. I built mine for very cheap. Here's what I have:

Celeron D 3.06 Mhz $55
Asus P5PE-VM $55
Kingwin KF-21 Mobile Rack $18 X 8 = $144
Promise Ultra 133 controllers $32 X 2 = $64
Chenming Server Case $66
Various Fans and cables $50
512 MB old DDR Ram $NA

Total $434

Obviously you have to figure in the cost of the RAM, but I have tons of old RAM laying around. The server case was a piece of junk, but I wanted the cheapest case possible. I wanted to mod something. I took it all apart, dremeled it, cut huge holes in it, installed 6 120mm fans, painted it, attached huge casters, and generally had a great time doing it. If I had it to do all over again, I would have just bought a coolermaster stacker, because nothing I can do would match the build quality on that case. But, I had fun. Also, it isn't neccessary to have the hard drive racks. They are expensive, but they make upgrading drives a whole lot easier.

Edit: Calculating my total cost including drives would be more difficult, because they have been bought over the period of a few years. I have 11 drives. 2 X 500 GB drives, 6 X 400 GB drives, 1 X 300 GB, and 2 X 250 GB. Just for arguments sake, I'll assume that on average I spent $.33 per GB. That would be an estimated cost of $1386.00 Add that to the $434, plus the $99 licensing fee for UnRaid (bought way back when, it might be more now) and you have a GRAND TOTAL of $1920.00. It is one of the most expensive pieces of equipment I own, but it is so worth every penny. I have 900 movies and they are all now stored in plastic bins in a closet. I'm almost at 4 TB and I am out of space. Time to build another server. :)

I'm also considering running unRaid, so what do you guys think of these opinions?

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=508026

I'm also considering running unRaid, so what do you guys think of these opinions?

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=508026it is quite clear that the people on that board have no idea how parity works and are very confused between the differences between mirroring of data, parity, and striping of data across drives.

A single parity drive can be used for as many drives as you can physically connect to a computer. It does NOT contain a copy of every file. It is not a checksum to verify the contents of a file.

A description of how a parity drive works to recreate missing data on a failed drive is here
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6278295&#post6278295

J.L. is correct. In my mind, Unraid is way safer to run than Raid5. Even if you have multiple drive failures, you can still recover your data. Try that with a Raid array. I don't think so. As an example, I took apart my first server because I wanted to completely rebuild it. I had all of the files on those disks backed up to other disks, so I didn't worry about it. I just assumed I would reformat. A few months later, when I finally got around to rebuilding the server, to my suprise, I was able to restore the array. All of my files were still there and up and running in the array. No need to transfer over that data again. That was cool to me and a big suprise. Now that I understand how it works better, it isn't suprising.

I'm also considering running unRaid, so what do you guys think of these opinions?

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=508026

They obviously did not take the time to read how unRAID works. They don't understand that with unRAID the parity bits are all on the parity drive and that data is not striped across the drives.

I have been using the free version for months now without a problem, and most likely I will upgrade to the Pro version after 4.0 is stable.

The only down side I see is that the write speed is slow, since it is software based.

The slow write speed is an aggravation, but you live with it. I usually wait until I have a lot of gigs to transfer over. Then I move them right before I go to bed. It's done in the morning.

I'm also considering running unRaid, so what do you guys think of these opinions?

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=508026
Wow, those guys are completely clueless about RAID in general even though they claim to "know how it works".

I can understand how someone who is unfamiliar with the RAID concept could be a little confused about how un-Raid works, but for people who claim to "know how Raid5 works" it should be very simple to understand.

Where the heck did that Como guy who called un-Raid an "outright lie" get the notion that "This [un-raid] claims it can replace entire files, Large chunks of them, with something a little more involved than an MD5 hash." Un-Raid uses parity - simple as that.

That thread would be useful, however, in identifying the members of that board that post with authority but have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

Agreed. I hope none of those guys are IT guys for a company. They really have no clue as to how Raid works. This is basically Raid4 without striping. I could have done raid 5 but preferred not to have all the drives running at all times and the ability to lose 2 drives and not lose the entire array. This is the type of setup that is perfect for media storage.

After a lot of reading I decided to go with unRaid for my media server. I'm buying all new components and would like opinions on my hardware.

Pentium D 915?
Asus P5B-E or P5LD2-VM? Any differences besides number of SATA plugs?
CM Stacker 810
Icy dock MB454SPF 4-3 rack
Promise TX4 sata adapter

I'll be using 4 drives in the beggining but would like to have room for future drives.

Has anyone had any luck using a AMD based MB yet? My P4P800E went south on me and I'm looking to replace the board.

It isn't critical to hava a very fast computer, but you can't just use anything, because everything needs to be compatible...

Hey thanks for the detailed response. I don't know how I missed it for the last week. I skimmed past it somehow. Very encouraging. I think an advantage of getting into this game later is that I'll be able to go larger because large HDDs are cheaper now. $0.26/GB for 500s, but I'm probably a little over a year from building an UnRAID so I guess I'll be getting 750s for that price/GB. I do have some smaller IDE drives (a 120 and 400) that I'll toss in initially... I can't believe I just referred to 400GB as small :P I suppose with 11 750s, minus 1 for parity that's 7.5TB. If I understand this correctly, one wouldn't need an inordinate level of cooling despite the high number of drives because they're seldom all spinning at the same time - I am right?

How many of you use server-type cases (presumably the type that have trays?)? Also can anyone link me to those 4 into 3 cages I've read about but don't understand?

Last question for now, what if you've got existing drives that you want to add to the array - do you have to move the data elsewhere and then copy it into the UnRAID? You can't just plug in your current FAT32 drive and have it copy the parity information and just work, right?

Ok I lied last paragraph, I do have another question. From a networking side, this shows up as a normal Windows Share? I'm a Mac user, and I haven't actually read much at all about how NAS shares data. It'll play nicely with Macs, yes?

Hey guys. I have a first generation unraid server. For some reason, the server will not boot today. I checked the bios and the flash drive is the selected primary boot device. Coming out of post, I get the following error message: "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device." Sounds like my Flash drive is hosed. Any ideas?
Thanks.

Hey guys. I have a first generation unraid server. For some reason, the server will not boot today. I checked the bios and the flash drive is the selected primary boot device. Coming out of post, I get the following error message: "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device." Sounds like my Flash drive is hosed. Any ideas?
Thanks.
If the flash drive is the boot device but has gone belly up (you can't read its contents in a PC either) you should contact Tom at lime-technology and take advantage of his offer to original purchasers of a free upgrade to the current "pro" version of unraid. (4.0 beta10 is out as of today and is very stable) You can download 4.0 unRaid from his support site and install it on a flash you purchase locally. He'll supply you the key files you need to enable it.

Thanks for the heads up. I contant Tom.

Hey guys. I have a first generation unraid server. For some reason, the server will not boot today. I checked the bios and the flash drive is the selected primary boot device. Coming out of post, I get the following error message: "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device." Sounds like my Flash drive is hosed. Any ideas?
Thanks.

Before you contact Tom, Go into the Bios and make sure it's set up the way it should be. See here for sample! (http://www.lime-technology.com/wordpress/?page_id=14) Some times a computer will reset bios to defaults. I'll bet this is the problem. Your boot order must be screwed up.

Joe

Mine does this all the time. It's crazy. The settings are right. What I have to do is power off again. Remove the flash. Put it back in then power on. Works every time. Not sure why it does this.

I've checked the bios settings and they're correct. I also shut off the machine, removed the USB, danced around a chicken bone for 60 seconds, reinserted the usb, turned on the power and....same problem. I emailed Tom yesterday. Haven't heard back yet. Anyone know how to pull the GUID from a flash drive using xp or vista?

I am seriously considering unRAID, but I have a few concerns:

1. Has the read/write performance been improved?
2. How does read/write performance compare to a regular PC with the average hard drive?
3. Would it be able to stream HD-DVD rips without any problem?
4. What cheap mobo that uses DDR memory is a good fit (preferably AMD)?

So, I'm still trying to get this server back running. The USB key was definitely hosed because the new one works. I installed version 4 beta 10 on the new key. I booted the tower, and after a period of time it came to a Login: prompt. Now what? I know nothing about linux. How do I get the "web page" interface running at this point? Thanks much.

To get to the web page...On another machine attached to your network, open a browser (IE, Firefox, etc.) or, windows explorer and type "//tower" (w/o quotes) in the search bar. If your server is running and can connect to the network, you should see the page load.

I think he's asking how to get it up and running so you can then access it froma remote computer. What do you type at the login prompt?

You shouldn't need to do anything at the login prompt. As cheezdog said, type //tower into a browser and you should see the web interface. After setting up the drives you should be able to type \\tower into a Windows explorer window to see the shared drives.

Typing \\Tower does not work (although it previously worked obviously). So, at the login prompt on the Tower, I typed "Root". I received a "Root@Tower" prompt. If I type "ifconfig" here, nothing happens...I just get a carriage return and a new "Root@Tower" prompt. If I type "ifconfig eth0", I get some information returned that shows, among other things, no packets transmitted or received.

Typing \\Tower does not work (although it previously worked obviously). So, at the login prompt on the Tower, I typed "Root". I received a "Root@Tower" prompt. If I type "ifconfig" here, nothing happens...I just get a carriage return and a new "Root@Tower" prompt. If I type "ifconfig eth0", I get some information returned that shows, among other things, no packets transmitted or received.when you type ifconfig eth0 the second line will give you an IP address assigned to the server.

my output looks like this:
root@Tower:~# ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 0d:1A:E1:72:AB:12
inet addr:192.168.2.3 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1919836 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2688710 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:938926635 (895.4 MiB) TX bytes:3406259807 (3.1 GiB)
Base address:0x9c00 Memory:ff800000-ff820000

The IP addresss (I highlighted it in red) can also be used to connect to your server from your PC'ss browser.

Type http://192.168.2.3/main.htm to get to the main page for server administration. (USE YOUR IP ADDRESS returned in your ifconfig command, not mine!)...you will type http://YOUR.IP.ADDR.ESS/main.htm

Once you see the admin page very likely your server will be offline as you have not yet assigned the disks to their slots in the array. go to the "devices" page and assign the disks to their slots, then mack to the main page and you will be able to start the array.

Since you had an array up and running do
NOT format anything... If you get that as a choice do not continue, or you will wipe out your data.

Lastly, did you get a new replacement flash drive from Tom, or a "drive key" from Tom and you loaded it onto your own flash drive?

Or you are using your own flash drive and do not yet have a key file from Tom?

if using your own flash drive, did you set the VOLUME ID to be "UNRAID" (without the quotes)

Joe L.

If I type "ifconfig eth0" at the root@tower, I get the following:

Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:11:83:40:7E
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Base address: 0x8c00 Memory: ff800000-ff820000

I don't get the IP address for the tower. I've confirmed that DHCP Server is enabled on my router. On the Nic card, I have a green and orange light, but they do not blink.

I did not receive a new Flash drive from Tom or a key yet. I was hoping to use a new Flash drive I already had and just send the GUID to Tom. However, I was under the impression that I need to get to the Devices page to see the GUID on my new Flash. The volume ID of the Flash is UNRAID. I made it bootable originally using the HP tool.

If I type "ifconfig eth0" at the root@tower, I get the following:

Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:11:83:40:7E
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Base address: 0x8c00 Memory: ff800000-ff820000

I don't get the IP address for the tower. I've confirmed that DHCP Server is enabled on my router. On the Nic card, I have a green and orange light, but they do not blink.

I did not receive a new Flash drive from Tom or a key yet. I was hoping to use a new Flash drive I already had and just send the GUID to Tom. However, I was under the impression that I need to get to the Devices page to see the GUID on my new Flash. The volume ID of the Flash is UNRAID. I made it bootable originally using the HP tool.OK... it appears as if your network card was not assigned an IP address. First, double check the cabling (just in case it got dislodged)

what version of unraid did you load on the flash drive? you should have used 4.0-beta10. Available from the http://lime-technology.com/dnlds/ web-page. It supports the most hardware, disk controllers, and network cards.

Joe L.

Sorry for the delays in my responses. I have someone doing some yard work at my house today.

I am using 4.0 beta 10. I did not one odd message:

"mount special device /dev/disk/by-lable/UNRAID does not exist"

Hmm, I reformatted the Flash several times and maybe I got lazy the last time and didn't type in the Volume ID, even though I said I did.

....Yep, that was the problem. I have an IP address now and access to the Tower via the web brower. I have a 24 digit number for the GUID. I guess I send this number to Tom and get some "magic" files back. Then I'll have to figure out how to initialize the array. But I'm much closer. Thanks for the help Joe.

Ok, I have the new key from Tom and I'm fully registered and can access the Tower via a browser. Now what? Should I just try to start the array? Should I go to the Devices screen first and assign the drives? If so, which drives do I assign where because I have no idea of the original configuration.

Ok, I have the new key from Tom and I'm fully registered and can access the Tower via a browser. Now what? Should I just try to start the array? Should I go to the Devices screen first and assign the drives? If so, which drives do I assign where because I have no idea of the original configuration.The only drive that really matters is the parity drive. The others can be in any slot and you can move them around later if you want specific data to be on disk2 vs. disk7.

Easiest way if you know which physical drive in your array was parity is to go by the serial numbers on the drives themselves. These are visible on the outside of the drive cases. The parity drive is the biggest drive in your array so you can automatically eliminate any smaller size drive from being the parity drive.

Hopefully you will know which drive is the parity drive in your array and be able to determine its serial and model number.

If not, one possibility is is to not assign any parity drive but assign ALL your drives to data slots. (since 4.0 can handle 14 drives you can do this) when you go to the main page to start the array it is very likely one of the drives will be identified as requiring formatting. the others will already have been formatted from before. the one it thinks needs to be formatted is likely to have been your parity drive.

Do not start the array, or format the drive, but as I said, the drive needing "formatting" would have been your parity drive. Instead, go back to the drive assignment page and re-assign it as parity.
Now go back to the main page and it should not ask you to reformat any drive upon start up. When you start the array it will recalculate parity for you. Just let it finish. Whatever you do, do not "re-initialize the array" or format any drives or you will risk the loss of data until you have all the disks back the way you had them. (you won't lose data unless you accidentally assign a prior data drive to the parity slot, but still be careful)

Joe L.

Thanks again Joe for the detailed instructions. I found the parity drive, made the assignments are started the array. As you noted, the server started a parity-sync. Everthing looks OK and I can access data on the drives (although the response is very sluggish...probably due to the parity sync process). I'll leave it alone until the parity sync finishes.

Anyone heard from unRaid support lately? I've sent a couple emails without response :( I'm still on 1.5, trying to get the key needed to migrate up to a newer version.

Anyone heard from unRaid support lately? I've sent a couple emails without response :( I'm still on 1.5, trying to get the key needed to migrate up to a newer version.

Tom responded to my post on the forum last night. Could your email be filtering out the replies?

Anyone heard from unRaid support lately? I've sent a couple emails without response :( I'm still on 1.5, trying to get the key needed to migrate up to a newer version.He has been active on his support forum. He responded to 4 threads on April 30th and a dozen or so on the 29th.

His email is tomm@lime-technology.com

The newest unRaid version is 4.0-beta10. (it will probably be named as 4.0-final any day now, as it is very stable, and the most recent beta-versions were mostly just to add drivers for additional network cards and disk controllers.)

You can find the newest 4.0-beta10 version description here:
http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=651.0 The link to download it is at the top of that page.

Have you sent Tom your flash drive serial numbers yet? As an initial adopter of unRaid, Tom has said you will be entitled to two free "Pro" keys. You should be able to load two of your own flash drives with the 4.0 version, boot each in turn and copy their serial numbers from their display on the "Devices" page on the web-interface to send to Tom so he can generate the key files to return to you.

Joe L.

Is the estimated time for a parity sync usually correct? I hope not! I just put unraid 4.0 beta 10 on a spare system with one 500gb SATA drive as the patrity drive, along with one 160gb and one 80gb IDE drive as data disks. The estimated speed is shown at 3712 KB/s and the estimated finish is shown as 2190 minutes. That's 36.5 hours! Am I correct in assuming something must be wrong here?

The system is a Sempron 3000+ with 512mb ram (only one stick). Can anyone help me out here?

Long parity sync times are probably the most common problems with unRaid. It can be caused by a number of things. The most common is bad cables, too long, or 40 pin instead of 80 pin. Also certain chipsets and bios settings can cause problems. Go over to the lime-tech forums and do a search. Also, email Tom.

Is the estimated time for a parity sync usually correct? I hope not! I just put unraid 4.0 beta 10 on a spare system with one 500gb SATA drive as the patrity drive, along with one 160gb and one 80gb IDE drive as data disks. The estimated speed is shown at 3712 KB/s and the estimated finish is shown as 2190 minutes. That's 36.5 hours! Am I correct in assuming something must be wrong here?

The system is a Sempron 3000+ with 512mb ram (only one stick). Can anyone help me out here?One or more of your drives has resorted to PIO mode rather than DMA mode. Odds are high it is one of the IDE drives. Odds are also high the underlying cause is the ribbon cable you used for the IDE drives.

If you used an older 40 conductor IDE cable rather than a correct 80 conductor IDE cable your symptoms are exactly what would be expected. The same symptoms have often been reported when some users try "round" IDE cables; they too cause errors and cause the drive to fall back to the slower PIO mode. Use 80 conductor flat cables and connect the "blue" connector to the motherboard.

My 9 disk , 2.8 Terabyte, IDE based array calculates parity at about 18kb/second in about 500 minutes with a similar 500 gig parity drive. A pure SATA based array would be two or three times faster. I've read of parity calc speeds of up to 45kb/second from pure SATA configurations.

If you did use an 80 conductor cable you might want to try a different one in case the first is defective. If still not fast, let Tom know more about the specific motherboard. on some occasions he has been able to find an improved driver for the disk controller chipset used.

Joe L

Long parity sync times are probably the most common problems with unRaid. It can be caused by a number of things. The most common is bad cables, too long, or 40 pin instead of 80 pin. Also certain chipsets and bios settings can cause problems. Go over to the lime-tech forums and do a search. Also, email Tom.I think you intended to type 80 conductor rather than 80 pin... the number of pins on the old and new style cables are the same, it is the extra conductors in the ribbon thhat allow it to be used at higher rates without errors. the extra conductors are used as shields to keep signals on adjacent conductors from interfeering with each other.

You are correct though in thhat the cables are the most likely cause of the slow parity calc speed.

Joe L.

I am seriously considering unRAID, but I have a few concerns:

1. Has the read/write performance been improved?
2. How does read/write performance compare to a regular PC with the average hard drive?
3. Would it be able to stream HD-DVD rips without any problem?
4. What cheap mobo that uses DDR memory is a good fit (preferably AMD)?
Yeah, what he said! I have the same questions. Also, I'm considering this for a master storage solution for a MythTV system I'm contemplating. Is anyone using it with Myth, and if so, do you still record live TV to a local backend hard drive and then archive over to the unRAID NAS, or is this fast enough to use the NAS for live recording storage (high def), BR/HD-DVD .evo playback, background applications (like commercial flagging, etc..)?

Yeah, what he said! I have the same questions. Also, I'm considering this for a master storage solution for a MythTV system I'm contemplating. Is anyone using it with Myth, and if so, do you still record live TV to a local backend hard drive and then archive over to the unRAID NAS, or is this fast enough to use the NAS for live recording storage (high def), BR/HD-DVD .evo playback, background applications (like commercial flagging, etc..)?


Reading is never an issue for most people. Having a gigabit at both ends and a good gigabit switch helps a lot, but even without it, you can still stream any sort of file just fine. Writing will always be slower than other solutions like hardware raid. That might be important for some uses (like wanting to use it as the backend for a PVR), but for most home media servers, it isn't an issue. It just takes a little longer to move your files onto the server. I wouldn't use unRAID for any type of PVR function. That isn't what it was designed to do. unRAID really does well at storage for large libraries.

Maybe someone else can answer the question about AMD motherboards. I use Intel because in the beginning it was the only processor that was compatible with unRAID. I know people are using AMD successfully now, but I'm not sure what boards they are using. Also, don't forget to check the forums at www.lime-technology.com

Reading is never an issue for most people.
In this thread http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=633.msg4045#msg4045
I described how I simulated a disk failure and while rebuilding the failed disk I also had the unraid array serve up 4 different DVD ISO images to 4 different players on my LAN. to make it even more difficult, these 4 ISO imagess were on the disk being rebuilt so the server had to read all 8 of my disks to reconstruct the data from parity and the remaining good disks. I consider this performance to be far more than I expected with a broken array.
Having a gigabit at both ends and a good gigabit switch helps a lot, but even without it, you can still stream any sort of file just fine. Writing will always be slower than other solutions like hardware raid. That might be important for some uses (like wanting to use it as the backend for a PVR), but for most home media servers, it isn't an issue. It just takes a little longer to move your files onto the server. I wouldn't use unRAID for any type of PVR function. That isn't what it was designed to do. unRAID really does well at storage for large libraries.

The folowing thread describes one user's experience building the ultimate unRaid array. In it are many benchmarks. From it you can see network performance is the biggest bottleneck, followed by PCI bus bottlenecks (when calculating parity) a gigabyte switch and interface cards make a huge difference.
http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=378.0

From his tests it seems the unraid NAS holds its own against most others.

Joe L.

I love it when Joe agrees with me. It makes me feel smarter than I actually am.

Back to the AMD question. Here is a post in the limetech forums about the state of AMD motherboards. Not very specific but hopeful.

http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=656.0

I love it when Joe agrees with me. It makes me feel smarter than I actually am.We are ALL smart... in different and varied stuff. It is a VERY smart man who admits they don't know it all. :D
It is hard to keep up with everything, there are a lot of web pages out there... and they keep adding more every day. :eek:

unRaid's ability to support AMD based hardware is directly tied to Linux 2.6's ability to support the same hardware.

I am currently running AMD hardware in my unRAID server, and I haven't had a single problem with it. Well, I first had a hard time booting unRAID, but after formatting the USB drive in FAT using the HP utility on the lime technologies website it has been rock solid.

I am currently running AMD hardware in my unRAID server, and I haven't had a single problem with it. Well, I first had a hard time booting unRAID, but after formatting the USB drive in FAT using the HP utility on the lime technologies website it has been rock solid.

Good to hear, would you mind elaborating which specific gear you've got working? If you have it handy, some prices on line items would be helpful for the many of us still planning our builds.

It isn't critical to hava a very fast computer, but you can't just use anything, because everything needs to be compatible. This is really dictated by the linux kernel, but now that a newer kernel is being used it shouldn't be as much of a problem. Look on the forums at www.lime-technology.com for lists of compatible parts. I built mine for very cheap. Here's what I have:

Celeron D 3.06 Mhz $55
Asus P5PE-VM $55
Kingwin KF-21 Mobile Rack $18 X 8 = $144
Promise Ultra 133 controllers $32 X 2 = $64
Chenming Server Case $66
Various Fans and cables $50
512 MB old DDR Ram $NA

Total $434

Obviously you have to figure in the cost of the RAM, but I have tons of old RAM laying around. The server case was a piece of junk, but I wanted the cheapest case possible. I wanted to mod something. I took it all apart, dremeled it, cut huge holes in it, installed 6 120mm fans, painted it, attached huge casters, and generally had a great time doing it. If I had it to do all over again, I would have just bought a coolermaster stacker, because nothing I can do would match the build quality on that case. But, I had fun. Also, it isn't neccessary to have the hard drive racks. They are expensive, but they make upgrading drives a whole lot easier.

Edit: Calculating my total cost including drives would be more difficult, because they have been bought over the period of a few years. I have 11 drives. 2 X 500 GB drives, 6 X 400 GB drives, 1 X 300 GB, and 2 X 250 GB. Just for arguments sake, I'll assume that on average I spent $.33 per GB. That would be an estimated cost of $1386.00 Add that to the $434, plus the $99 licensing fee for UnRaid (bought way back when, it might be more now) and you have a GRAND TOTAL of $1920.00. It is one of the most expensive pieces of equipment I own, but it is so worth every penny. I have 900 movies and they are all now stored in plastic bins in a closet. I'm almost at 4 TB and I am out of space. Time to build another server. :)

I realise this is an old post, but I wanted to ask you how you stored your movies. Movie only? FUll backup? IFO or ISO format? I'm also currently in the process of setting up a RAID and the enthusiam here has excited me. I found UnRAID quite some time ago, but it wasn't mature and there where contact issues with the site and the people behind it. Seems like this has changed.

I'd also like to ask about the gigabit connection. I'm currently in the process of setting up an XBMC (here) (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=841388) and I don't believe it's ethernet connection is that fast. I will connect it through a router to the UNRaid server. Will it make any difference upgrading to a gigabit router and having a gigabit connection between it and the server?

Like many on this forum, I'm waiting for the perfect mix of hardware and software in a media extender so I don't have the complexity of a HTPC - still hasn't happened (thought it would several years ago, but still not there) Not sure if it will have gigabit though?

Long term I want the server to be HD capable (not available in NZ currently :( )

Always a pleasure - thx

I realise this is an old post, but I wanted to ask you how you stored your movies. Movie only? FUll backup? IFO or ISO format?


I store full DVDs in IFO with menus and extras. I love extras and it matters to me. I don't think it really matters whether you do IFO or ISO. Most front ends will play either. I know XBMC certainly will.

I'd also like to ask about the gigabit connection. I'm currently in the process of setting up an XBMC (here) (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=841388) and I don't believe it's ethernet connection is that fast. I will connect it through a router to the UNRaid server. Will it make any difference upgrading to a gigabit router and having a gigabit connection between it and the server?




I have two modded xbox's running XMBC in my home. I love them. XBMC is truely incredible software. I wish there was a solution this robust for the PC that included the ability to do HD. I've noticed a few times where squirrely things will happen with watching movies on XBMC. Once in a while I'll get a strange artifact in the picture or rewing/fast forward function will misbehave. It's all very minor and to be honest I've never tried to troubleshoot it. It isn't worth it to me. BUT....my suspicion has always been that it was lack of network bandwith. I could be totally wrong though and it could just be an issue with XBMC. Let me reiterate that they are very MINOR issues to me. Not worth really caring about.

What I do care about is the lack of HD support for XBMC. There will never be HD support for XBMC sadly, so I will probably build a new HTPC sometime soon. I've had a couple HTPCs over the years, but I abandoned them once I found XBMC. It did everything I wanted a frontend to do and more until now.

I have a gigabit switch. I had one before i ever built an unRAID server. The gigabit helps a lot with transfering files to the server from my main desktop PC. It obviously won't help at all with the xbox.

I store full DVDs in IFO with menus and extras. I love extras and it matters to me. I don't think it really matters whether you do IFO or ISO. Most front ends will play either. I know XBMC certainly will.

I used to be strictly and ISO guy, but recently I've been extracting all of my ISO's to IFO's and folders. While any frontend can be made to work with ISO's using something like Daemon tools to automount the file, every program I was using could deal with the folders without any fuss, so I figured I would just skip the necessity of mounting the ISO.

Ozy

I used to be strictly and ISO guy, but recently I've been extracting all of my ISO's to IFO's and folders. While any frontend can be made to work with ISO's using something like Daemon tools to automount the file, every program I was using could deal with the folders without any fuss, so I figured I would just skip the necessity of mounting the ISO.

Ozy

I'm in the same situation, I have full dvd .iso images and would like to extract them to IFO's and folders. What tool are you using to so this?

thanks

--Don

I'm in the same situation, I have full dvd .iso images and would like to extract them to IFO's and folders. What tool are you using to so this?

thanks

--Don

DVDDrecypter will work especially if you've already stripped all the protections. It can deal with most all of them but since it's no longer under development (dev didn't want to be jailed) a few new strategies have come up. I've used DVDFab Platinum or their free version to get around those but I'm imagining that if you have the ISO files already, the protections are gone.

I'm in the same situation, I have full dvd .iso images and would like to extract them to IFO's and folders. What tool are you using to so this?

thanks

--Don

WinRar... :)

right click->extract here (if it's already in the correct folder)

otherwise

right clock->extract to <folder name>

Another option would be to mount it with Daemon tools, and copy the files using the windows explorer...but that seems like a pain if you have a lot of ISOs.

If you have all the ISOs in one folder, using WinRar can select all, right click->extract all files to separate folders. That will create a folder for each movie with the correct name, and extract the IFO, Video_ts, etc...

Just make sure you have enough disk space.

Ozy

Ok, this thread has more than served its purpose. If Limetech would like to maintain a support thread for troubleshooting purposes that would be fine, but no more commercial "introductory" threads are allowed at AVS. Thread closed.

I really don't understand the logic in closing the old one down... could have just been retitled. But whatever...

So I guess we can consider this the new "support only" thread. Old thread can be found here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10454926

Tons and tons of info there.

Agreed. Oh well.

To answer the last post. I recommend DVD Decrypter. It still works really well, especially if you are just converting ISOs to IFOs.

While I too puzzle about the closing of the 18-month long 1400+ post thread, this may be a blessing in disguise for people like me who are new to the UnRAID world and it will be a lot easier to sort through (for a few months, anyway :) )

Can one or two of you experts give a summary of what UnRAID is all about and the general state of development to save newcomers having to read that whole last thread? I mean half of that thread was posts wondering 'where's Tom?' back when he was still selling hardware, I've read 1/4th of that thread and don't have an array up yet, so can someone else do a quick FAQ or whatever?

expert? where are you Joe?

Fletcher you could give it a go :P

I'd love to see a quick head to head comparison of UnRAID vs RAID 5. From my standpoint, other than performance (pretty much a non-issue for streaming over gigE) I don't see any advantages of RAID 5 - but I could be wrong..

Joe (and many others) know far more than me. I have a basic rudimentary understanding of the technical data. I thought about putting a FAQ together, but I'm going to be out of the country for 6 weeks starting really soon so I wouldn't be able to update it. Non-updated FAQs aren't very useful.

I think it should include:

1. Features of the new 4.0 build
2. Known recommended hardware
3. Pros and cons vs. other storage methods
4. Links to the best/most common troubleshooting info
5. Link to the other threads and forums

Thats about it really I guess.

Ok am I crazy or was this thread moved? And why is it now in Home Theater Computers? It seems to fit very well into 'digital media and content streamers' and... that's where all other NAS discussion is. You have to search till page 3 to find any mention of UnRAID in that forum now.... what's going on?

I currently have four 750GB drives in RAID5 setup but I'd be curious to hear about the pros/cons of an unRAID setup.

Could anyone give some sort of summary of the program? Is it just a software program that installs in Windows or is there more to it?

I'm no expert and don't have it setup myself yet (although I'm sold this is will be my long-term solution) but I'll try to answer briefly:

UnRAID isn't a program, it's an OS that you need to install on a specially set up server (basically needs to be compatible with the Linux 2.6 kernel or something like that, would cost around $400-500 to build a good system from scratch, needs a 2.0ghz processor and ideally 1gb memory then up to 14 hard drives) that boots from a USB stick. The stick's GUID (something like a unique serial number, almost like a MAC address - unique to your flash) is associated with your purchased license - so no it doesn't run as an App in Windows.

Some major benefits of UnRAID vs RAID 5 or other systems is that you can mix and match different drives (IDE, SATA, various sides and speeds etc) which allows for both growth as you can add bigger/cheaper drives as needed and to enable you to use whatever drives you have lying around currently. You can have up to 13 data drives that are essentially backed up (given parity and can be rebuilt) by a single drive. The parity drives needs to be the >/= the largest data drive - so in your case you would have 2.25TB available for data (3x 750gb) and 1 drive giving them parity. The big advantage is that you could add 10 more 750gb drives and still only 'waste' the 1 drive as a parity drive. More likely you'd add a couple more 750s then a couple 1tb drives as they become more accessible/affordable and then you'd have to 'sacrifice' 1 of the 1TB drives as a parity drive (since parity drives must be equal or greater than the largest data drive) and then keep on adding storage.

In the case of a single drive failure, if you replace the drive with an equal or greater capacity drive you won't lose anything - whether you lose the parity or a data drive, the system will automatically rebuild itself. I'm a little vague on what happens in the event of a double drive failure - but unlike RAID 5 you would only lose 1 or max those 2 drives, in RAID 5 you'd lose all the data on the array, as far as I know.

So the flexibility of using whatever you have now and also the scalability of this solution are very strong points in its favor.

The cons are probably that the hardware compatibility is a little limited (although now some AMD boards/procs are supported so that opens a lot of doors) and you have to do a fair bit of setup to get started. Non-geeks might have difficulties getting started up. Once running I've understood that it's very stable - runs headless for months at a time serving data over gigE. The other con, I suppose, is that you have to pay for the license ($150 is the most expensive for 2 licenses of the pro version). There is a somewhat active forum on the site, which is www.lime-technology.com

Hope that helps :)

Oh I forgot the other huge benefit. Data isn't striped, so reading any 1 file or folder only spins up that data drive (and maybe the parity drive, also). So you get varied drive usage patterns (resulting in fewer simaltaneously failures) and also less heat/power consumption. Basically drives that aren't being accessed sit there cool, less wear and tear, less heat, greater longevity.

This thread wasn't moved... the major unRaid thread has always been here in the HTPC forum.

This thread wasn't moved... the major unRaid thread has always been here in the HTPC forum.

Ok my bad, guess the conspiracy theorist within got the best of me :)

I do think it makes more sense there, but whatever.

Do any of you guys know how well UnRAID plays with Macs? I'm assuming the widows sharing is workable, but I'd like to hear that confirmed by someone with a Mac environment.

Good summary nightfly. Maybe you should write the FAQ :)

Minor corrections. It is the 2.6 Linux kernel, not the 2.7 kernel. 2.7 isn't even in development as far as I know.

Yes, you are correct about multiple drive failures. You would lose the data on the individual disks that failed, but it wouldn't bring down the whole array. In RAID5 you would lose everything in the case of multiple drive failures.

As far as skill level in setting up UnRaid: If you can build a computer, you can build an UnRaid server. I know very little about Linux and I was able to set it up just fine. There are a few commands that are helpful to know if you need to troubleshoot, but someone on the forum can surely help. If you're not comfortable building a computer from scratch, then this might not be the right solution.

2.6 has helped with hardware compatibility a lot. Also, Tom (limetech) is always willing to write a custom driver if there is a problem. He's done it many times. That being said, you shouldn't push him on it. Try to buy hardware that is known to work.

The other con that wasn't mentioned is write performance. For some applications UnRaid wouldn't be a good choice because write speeds are slow. For a media server it doesn't usually matter.

No idea about the Mac thing. I'm Mac retarded.

These are all good descriptions of the basis of the Unraid. I have had one now for nearly two years and still I feel the system is not as stable nor secure as it needs to be. Today in my environment it holds 600 DVD's and 4000 CD's and I feel mostly secure that I'm safe but even on the most current version I have experienced recovery issues.

The Linux code is not very forgiving with DMA effors that all drives have. This has always been an issue with me as the entire idea of the system is to use old IDE drives that you have. These drives may work just fine in windows machines but the Unraid may not like them and the OS will blow up.

Despite these comments I think Tom has a great produst but needs to mature it soon so that it can become a mainstream solution.

Thanks Fletcher - speaking of poor write performance - just how slow are we talking? My write performance on my MG-35 over NDAS is unusably slow (1mbps or so)...

These are all good descriptions of the basis of the Unraid. I have had one now for nearly two years and still I feel the system is not as stable nor secure as it needs to be. Today in my environment it holds 600 DVD's and 4000 CD's and I feel mostly secure that I'm safe but even on the most current version I have experienced recovery issues.

The Linux code is not very forgiving with DMA effors that all drives have. This has always been an issue with me as the entire idea of the system is to use old IDE drives that you have. These drives may work just fine in windows machines but the Unraid may not like them and the OS will blow up.

Despite these comments I think Tom has a great produst but needs to mature it soon so that it can become a mainstream solution.
Would you say that if one was to use SATA drives only, the stability problems you've encountered wouldn't apply?

I'm considering throwing together some components to try out unraid. Is there any sort of hardware compatibility chart? I have an Asus A7N8X Deluxe Socket A 462 MotherBoard and Athlon XP 3200 which has SATA ports and gigabit ethernet (nvidia and marvell), would it work?

I'm considering throwing together some components to try out unraid. Is there any sort of hardware compatibility chart? I have an Asus A7N8X Deluxe Socket A 462 MotherBoard and Athlon XP 3200 which has SATA ports and gigabit ethernet (nvidia and marvell), would it work?

I'm pretty sure I read over on the unRaid forum that someone was using that motherboard. I think one of the ethernet ports had to be disabled for it to work.

I tested out the Unraid today and have a couple of question:

1. What exactly does the 'Shares' page do? I click on Re-Scan and nothing happens, and the options 'Export read/write', 'Export read only', etc doesn't really describe what they're supposed to do.
2. Is there a way to user-restrict a share? e.g., I would like some certain share folders accessible only to me (using my windows logon/pass). So far, I don't see ways in the Web Management for user management.

I tested out the Unraid today and have a couple of question:

1. What exactly does the 'Shares' page do? I click on Re-Scan and nothing happens, and the options 'Export read/write', 'Export read only', etc doesn't really describe what they're supposed to do.
2. Is there a way to user-restrict a share? e.g., I would like some certain share folders accessible only to me (using my windows logon/pass). So far, I don't see ways in the Web Management for user management.


You can think of shares as "virtual folders" that can be seen over your network. What it does is merge different folders on different disks so that they are all one folder that can be read by clients (such as a modded xbox or an HTPC). So imagine that you have a "Movies" folder on each of 6 different disks. You can then point your HTPC to access that folder and bring up ALL of the movies that are on ALL of the different disks.

"Export read/write" allows clients to read and to modify the files in the share.

"Export read only" allows clients to only read files.

There currently isn't a way to user-restrict a share but it's at the top of the list of features for the next build. In fact it might even be slated for the 4.1 beta. here is the list: http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=266.0

The share features were confusing to me when I first started using UnRaid. But I found all the info I needed in this forum and the limetech forums.

I'm considering throwing together some components to try out unraid. Is there any sort of hardware compatibility chart? I have an Asus A7N8X Deluxe Socket A 462 MotherBoard and Athlon XP 3200 which has SATA ports and gigabit ethernet (nvidia and marvell), would it work?


Don't know about the board, but I just wanted to mention that there is an effort to get a wiki page going for UnRaid. That would be a big help for these kinds of questions. It needs Tom's guidance and input from the community.

Here is the link to the thread about it. http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=595.0

Thanks Fletcher - speaking of poor write performance - just how slow are we talking? My write performance on my MG-35 over NDAS is unusably slow (1mbps or so)...


Here is an old thread about read/write benchmarks. http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=183.0

I don't know if the numbers are current. Tom says he gets 35 Mbps/14 Mbps read/write. I've never seen a poll to see what different people's speeds are. I'm sure a lot of people are getting speeds less than Tom's benchmarks. It would be interesting to know.

I have two UnRaids up and running and can answer the Mac question, they work fine with OS X. If you run a multiple OS environment you might get tired of seeing the hidden files OS X writes (.whatever) along with actual file. Other than that it looks just like any other network share. I'm still running UnRaid 3.x since I'm waiting to move to rev 4 when there is a feature implemented I really have to have. Once I got them pretty well loaded with files I hate messing with them since they just work.

Ah thanks for the explanation. Then I will wait for 4.1 to come along before I do a full build. I will need more customizations on the sharing.

You can think of shares as "virtual folders" that can be seen over your network. What it does is merge different folders on different disks so that they are all one folder that can be read by clients (such as a modded xbox or an HTPC). So imagine that you have a "Movies" folder on each of 6 different disks. You can then point your HTPC to access that folder and bring up ALL of the movies that are on ALL of the different disks.

"Export read/write" allows clients to read and to modify the files in the share.

"Export read only" allows clients to only read files.

There currently isn't a way to user-restrict a share but it's at the top of the list of features for the next build. In fact it might even be slated for the 4.1 beta. here is the list: http://support.lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=266.0

The share features were confusing to me when I first started using UnRaid. But I found all the info I needed in this forum and the limetech forums.

These are all good descriptions of the basis of the Unraid. I have had one now for nearly two years and still I feel the system is not as stable nor secure as it needs to be. Today in my environment it holds 600 DVD's and 4000 CD's and I feel mostly secure that I'm safe but even on the most current version I have experienced recovery issues.

The Linux code is not very forgiving with DMA effors that all drives have. This has always been an issue with me as the entire idea of the system is to use old IDE drives that you have. These drives may work just fine in windows machines but the Unraid may not like them and the OS will blow up.


Can you elaborate on the stability and recovery issues?

Just wanted to say how much I love Unraid. 9 500 GB drives contain 1000 dvds/divx of mine, all linked in Vista MCE using the MyMovies plugin.
Awesome. Using version 4 beta 10. Had to replace a disk, popped in a new one and the data was rebuild on it (all 500 GB of it) within few hours.
All working as advertised really. Sometimes I lose network connection and I have to reboot the server but it happens maybe once a month. Server always on, and using the 4 in 3 slot adaptor for the hard disks also amazingly quiet.

I've got a quick question about unRAID. Is there any notification if there is a problem? That is, how do you know if a drive fails?

I've been using the Beta2 of Windows Home Server, which works great for backups and a central server for sharing files and software between computers. I really like the icon in the toolbar that pops up a warning if there is a problem (on my main computer, not the server, which is headless). However, as you probably know, WHS isn't great for media storage since redundant storage requires 2x the space - much worse than a parity drive.

So I'm considering unRAID in addition to WHS. I'm just wondering if there is an automatic notification of a problem or if I would have to look every so often.

Thanks in advance,
Brett
BTW, unRAID sure has advanced since I last looked! I thought it would only handle PATA or SATA, not both. That's a welcome change.