Limetech un-Raid Media Storage Server support thread [Text View] - Page 8

captain_video

01-17-09, 03:11 PM

I'd also vote for the power supply. It sounds like the added load of the extra drive is preventing the system from booting up. Power supplies that come with any case tend to be very poorly designed and cheap quality. I've dumped every power supply that ever came with any case I've purchased and replaced them all with quality power supplies. I haven't had a power supply fail me that was of good quality whereas the el cheapo supplies almost always died at some point. Do yourself a favor and get a Corsair, Antec, or Seasonic PS and you'll never regret it.

You might also look into getting an SATA backplane for your case. They allow hot swapping of drives and are designed to stagger bootup of each drive so it puts less of a load on the power supply. They make removing or installing drives much easier and will probably prolong the life of your power supply as well.

rockytt

01-17-09, 03:27 PM

Thanks for all the replies - certainly some things to consider.

One other thing-I unplugged the new drives and went back to my old configuration and got the same thing.

I'll pick up a new PS later today and report back with what I find

rockytt

01-18-09, 12:08 AM

Bingo!
POC PowerSupply did me in - we're now cooking with gas and at least one part of my life is under control again :)

rebkell

01-18-09, 12:17 AM

How do you determine the firmware of the drives in the Unraid system, I've been reading the Seagate thread and I have two of the 7200.11 750GB drives in my Unraid box. The model and Serial # are on the web interface, but I can't figure out how to see the firmware version??

kemac

01-18-09, 01:07 AM

Look at the label on the drive and/or run seatools.

J. L.

01-18-09, 11:37 AM

Look at the label on the drive and/or run seatools.
Or, run smartctl on the drive. It shows the serial number, the model number, and the firmware version.

On recent versions a library needed by smartctl is missing, see this post for how to download and install the c++ library file http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.msg23548#msg23548

Once the library is in place you can run:
smartctl -d ata -i /dev/hda

output looks like this:
smartctl version 5.38 [i486-slackware-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 family
Device Model: ST3750640A
Serial Number: 5QD2AX3G
Firmware Version: 3.AAE
User Capacity: 750,156,374,016 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 7
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Sun Jan 18 11:21:03 2009 EST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

rockytt

01-18-09, 12:24 PM

Tried this over on the support forum yesterday and didn't get a response so I thought I'd try it here:

I apologize for what must be a simple matter-I've searched a bit and haven't found anything here to directly addresses my issue though-
I've been running 4 drives (3 data) for a few weeks with very little drama, but when I went to use my Adaptec 1205SA expansion card to add a 5th drive I ran into problems. While running through the initial motherboard boot I hit the Adaptec screen which identifies my new drive correctly, but then hangs there and won't let me proceed.
If I try and go into the bios setup before this, it still tries to cycle through the Adaptec screen and hangs in the same place (right after the drive description). I'm given the option to hit F3 to enter setup for the expansion card, but nothing happens-
Please tell this is something simple and I'm just being an idiot

rockytt

01-19-09, 10:22 PM

shameless bump

captain_video

01-20-09, 07:51 AM

Have you tried to get the card set up without the 5th drive attached? Disconnect the drive and see if the system still hangs. If it does, try the card in a different slot. If it still hangs, try removing the card altogether. If it boots without the card I'd suspect the card as being bad. If you have access to another PC I'd try the card in it to see if there's still a bootup problem. If it fails to boot while installed in the other PC then the card is probably defective.

rockytt

01-20-09, 08:26 AM

Thanks for the reply
Card has been in the system since day 1 with no issues - it's only when I hook up a drive that it hangs-

kemac

01-20-09, 09:15 AM

Try replacing one of your existing good drives with the new drive and see what happens. What drive is it? Have been a bad batch of Seagate drives reported recently.

rockytt

01-20-09, 09:46 AM

rebkell

01-20-09, 09:47 AM

Or, run smartctl on the drive. It shows the serial number, the model number, and the firmware version.

On recent versions a library needed by smartctl is missing, see this post for how to download and install the c++ library file http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.msg23548#msg23548

Once the library is in place you can run:
smartctl -d ata -i /dev/hda

output looks like this:
smartctl version 5.38 [i486-slackware-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 family
Device Model: ST3750640A
Serial Number: 5QD2AX3G
Firmware Version: 3.AAE
User Capacity: 750,156,374,016 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 7
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Sun Jan 18 11:21:03 2009 EST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

I have the 4.2.x Unraid software and smartctl doesn't appear to be on the drive, I did figure out how to get the Hardware Rev.
hdparm -i /dev/sda
and
hdparm -i /dev/sdb

gave me all the info I needed as far as the Model/Serial#/HWRev were concerned. Looks like one of my 750GB drives has one of the suspect Revisions.

kemac

01-20-09, 11:28 AM

Same thing - once any drive is connected to the card the boot process begins, the card and drive are (correctly recognized) and then as soon as the drive ID is shown she hangs right there. I've tried a new drives, existing drives, doesn't matter

If you cant even get into the bios of the card it does sound like a bad card. Captian_Video suggesstion of trying in another PC is also worth a shot.

jimwhite

01-20-09, 01:24 PM

I have the 4.2.x Unraid software and smartctl doesn't appear to be on the drive, I did figure out how to get the Hardware Rev.
hdparm -i /dev/sda
and
hdparm -i /dev/sdb

gave me all the info I needed as far as the Model/Serial#/HWRev were concerned. Looks like one of my 750GB drives has one of the suspect Revisions.
You REALLY need to head over to the unRaid forum... answers are already there, including the info about the missing library for Smartctl...

:cool:

rockytt

01-20-09, 01:59 PM

If you cant even get into the bios of the card it does sound like a bad card. Captian_Video suggesstion of trying in another PC is also worth a shot.

Googling suggested a firmware update might be in order for this card-but unfortunately for me the posts I found were a tad too technical for me to follow. Possible? Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?
I just hate to get a new card if it's not necessary (and I end up right back where I started)

rebkell

01-20-09, 02:01 PM

You REALLY need to head over to the unRaid forum... answers are already there, including the info about the missing library for Smartctl...

:cool:

Actually I've been over there, I searched on smartctl, there was a link to the needed libraries, which I assumed were library files needed to run smartctl, which I didn't find on my unraid server, other than that a search turned up basically nothing.

jimwhite

01-20-09, 03:21 PM

try again... there's an installable package that adds the cxx libs... as well as unMenu, which adds a nifty package manager... well worth the price of admission.... $0.00

:cool:

kemac

01-20-09, 03:31 PM

Googling suggested a firmware update might be in order for this card-but unfortunately for me the posts I found were a tad too technical for me to follow. Possible? Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?
I just hate to get a new card if it's not necessary (and I end up right back where I started)

Worth a shot, if the card doesn't take a firware upgrade then you know for sure its toast.

rebkell

01-20-09, 04:02 PM

try again... there's an installable package that adds the cxx libs... as well as unMenu, which adds a nifty package manager... well worth the price of admission.... $0.00

:cool:

I saw that, I guess I need to upgrade the version of Unraid, I'm still on 4.2.x something, I'm still using the free version, I only have one 750GB data drive, so I still have one more drive I can add.

What's the latest on the Seagate problem, they took down the FW Revision download. I do have one drive with I think it's the something 15 Revision, I"m not at home, so I can't remember the exact one, but it was on the list of problem revisions with my Hard Drive.

Cooch

01-23-09, 11:31 AM

Deleted

garycase2001

02-11-09, 02:06 PM

... What's the latest on the Seagate problem, they took down the FW Revision download. I do have one drive with I think it's the something 15 Revision ...

If your drive has SD15 firmware, it should definitely be updated. The firmware update links have been removed, so you'll probably have to call Seagate and get them to e-mail you the updated firmware.

Note: I have an ISO that I used to update a drive with SD17 firmware to SD1A -- it worked fine (You make a bootable CD from the ISO). If you want a copy, PM me => but understand this ONLY works with drives with SD15 - SD19 firmware (Part numbers 9JU138 -300 and -336 only) => and you use it at your own risk !!

Most of my 1.5TB drives have firmware CC1H or CC1J, and they're all working fine (I have 12 of them).

jimwhite

02-12-09, 12:48 AM

disable the onboard NIC... unRaid ONLY works with ETH0...

:cool:

mike1061

03-31-09, 11:00 PM

I just wanted to say thanks to you guys. It took over 24 hours but I read every page, and learned alot. This is exactly the thing I've been searching for. I'm going to read the forums and wiki page next.
Thanks Mike

Robert Simandl

04-12-09, 11:18 PM

Anyone else have this problem yet? Write transfers from my XP box and my Vista box to the unraid server are suddenly hellishly slow, as in over an hour and a half for a 4.37 gig file. Sometimes the file transfer bombs out entirely and the "copying file" status box just disappears without any error message... and without the file being copied.

Read file copies FROM the unraid server to both Windows boxes are fine.

Copies from either Windows box to the other are fine, too.

The problem is strictly when copying TO the unraid server.

Also, my user shares (and disk13) have suddenly disappeared from my XP box's My Network Places (though oddly, they're still there in the Vista box's network). I can still access those shares by typing the location into XP Windows Explorer's address bar. But no matter how many times I refresh the My Network Places screen, the shares don't come back. I'm having to use XP's "Add a network place" to get them back.

Let me add that the unraid "Tower - Main" web page is showing no problems and no errors.

I recently replaced a 400gig sata drive with a 1tb sata drive (left the 1.5 jumper on because my mobo's sata connectors only do 1.5 anyway). But these slow write speeds are occurring on ALL unraid drives, sata or ide.

I'm only copying to disk shares, not to user shares.

Unraid's NIC is a Netgear GA311 gigabit card, has never been an issue before.

Was still using unraid 4.0 when this issue suddenly appeared. Upgrading to 4.4.2 did not help.

I don't have a cache drive (didn't know there was such a thing til I upgraded to 4.4.2).

Anything else I need to add?

Thanks!

garycase2001

04-13-09, 01:39 AM

sneals2000

04-13-09, 04:46 AM

That read speed is reading a file within that box, right? In other words, if from computer 1, you copy a file from the Unraid box to a directory on computer 1, you are not getting that speed, as a transfer rate, right?

How are you measuring that speed?

No - that is a typical read speed (as indicated by Windows file copy) I get from my GigE connected Vista PC from my unRAID server. It is surprisingly speedy - MUCH faster than USB2 connected external hard drives - which seem to give me 20-25MB/s.

captain_video

04-13-09, 07:38 AM

Do you have any Seagate 1.5TB drives in the UnRAID array? I had several major write issues with these drives in an UnRAID array (although they have updated firmware and work just fine independently).

Finally gave up on UnRAID with those drives. But before I did that, I tested the array with no parity drive, and it worked fine like that (although clearly that wasn't how I wanted to use UnRAID). If you've got any of these drives, you may want to try disabling parity and see what happens to your performance.

I've got several of the Seagate 1.5TB drives in my unRAID array with one of them being used as the parity drive. I updated the frimware to the latest version before I installed them. I had a couple of write errors with one drive within a day or two after installing them that caused it to be taken off-line. I had to uninstall the drive and reinstall it, letting the data rebuild from the parity drive. This was about 4 or 5 months ago. I haven't had a single problem with the drives since then.

garycase2001

04-13-09, 03:11 PM

Good to know the 1.5TB drives CAN work. I had basically the same issue - UnRAID would take the drives offline due to write issues. I totally rebuilt the array several times; but kept getting the same issue [Mostly CC1H firmware drives ... I tried several mixes of SD1A and CC1H with the same results.].

Limetech's had a LOT of negative feedback on the drives; and had so many problems when they briefly sold them that they have this posted on their website: "... Note: we can not recommend this drive at the present time. Issues with past drive firmware such as time-outs are still present in their latest firmware. If/when this drive proves to be reliable we will once again include it in our product offerings."

I simply switched to a Windows RAID-5 with the drives, and they've worked perfectly ever since. I'll probably try UnRAID again in the future ... but not until they indicate they've got the compatibility issues resolved or I have migrated to different drives [I've been buying the WD 1.5TB drives lately; and will switch to 2TB drives when the cost comes down a bit].

genro

04-13-09, 03:25 PM

garycase2001

04-13-09, 03:35 PM

The drives are fine -- been running 24/7 for months now with no problem. I ran numerous diagnostics when I was trying them with UnRAID -- the Seagate diags; a full Level 4 scan with Spinrite; etc.

But UnRAID didn't "like" them. I had a LOT of correspondence with Tom @ Limetech ... and he confirmed that these drives are very problematic with UnRAID. The only firmware that seems to be consistently reliable with UnRAID is CC1J, which isn't shipping anymore.

The issue is apparently a timeout on the drives, which causes them to reset (and then work just fine). UnRAID doesn't wait long enough to tolerate this -- so it fails the drive. Windows RAID works just fine with this ... it doesn't fail the drive unless the drive reports an actual failure. Note that many hardware RAID controllers also have problems with these drives (especially those based on the new 1680 IOP chip).

What firmware revisions are on your drives?

kinktao

04-20-09, 12:13 AM

Mod's edit: User agreement infringement is not supported here.

JoshDorhyke

04-20-09, 10:22 AM

FYI, I see random hard link resets with my Seagate 1T drives so Seagate does not just have a problem with their 1.5T drives. From what I have read though, the smaller drives <1.5T do not hang as long as the 1.5T drives so they reset before timing out.

I upgraded them to the newest firmware and it still happens, just doesn't seem to happen as often.

Peter

garycase2001

04-20-09, 02:29 PM

Yes, the Seagate issue is actually with the entire 7200.11 series of drives; although the issue is much more apparent on the 1.5TB drives.

mikelaevlaev

05-01-09, 08:23 PM

Hello
I am trying to setup an unRaid server and am having difficulties. I am using a Mac. Please read this thread and weigh in if you have had experience with this. Thanks
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1139330&page=2

JustinAiken

06-13-09, 09:49 AM

Just checking out this unRaid thing....

If this works as good as I think it works, it could be a dream for my setup...

I have a main computer, a Mac, in one room (where the internet and router are), and in my living room I have a XBMC HTPC running Win XP. I'd like to get this unRaid and stick it in the closet of the front room.

I'd like to move my music collection (nearly a TB) HD out of my Mac, and my movie drives (about 3 TB right now, but I have many more on disc) out of my HTPC and put them in the unRaid...

-Would I be able to mount that all as a single large hard drive on both my Mac and my HTPC? Would I be able to build my iTunes library on the Mac from the music stored on the unraid, and also build my XBMC music library from that same music?

-Half my HD's are formatted NTFS, half are HFS+ formatted... will that matter to unRaid?

-Would my cheap router be fast enough to stream movies from the unraid to the HTPC, or would I need to directly connect them/buy a fast router?

-Would my cheap router be fast enough to stream Apple Loseless form the unraid to my main computer? Not possible to wire them together...

-Could I download torrents on my Mac to the unRaid? If could download them to my media folder on the unraid, and my XBMC media library was set to watch that folder... it would be great! I could start a movie downloading on the Mac (free legal movies of course!), and when it was done it would show up in my front room! Cheesy

-What kind of PC would I need to run it? I have a E5200/mobo/2 GB RAM laying around, but I'd like to give them to my Dad if I could use his old Athalon XP/1 GB ram computer as the unraid computer...

duff99

06-13-09, 12:56 PM

captain_video

06-14-09, 10:50 AM

You don't actually mount the unRAID server as a single large hard drive. Instead, you set up a shared directory on each drive. You can link to the shared directory and it will display the contents of the same directory on each drive you set it up on such that it appears as a single large directory. I have two such directories on my unRAID server (currently at 14 drives and 11.5TB of storage).

UnRAID formats the drives using a Linux file system. I have no idea what kind of "cheap" router you have so it's impossible to answer that question without more details. If you have a 100mbps network then you should be fine, especially if you're only streaming standard DVDs. Check the Lime Technology website and the unRAID wiki and support forum for a complete list of compatible hardware.

pdawg17

07-08-09, 11:52 AM

I am new to unRaid and have a "problem"...I have a wired Gigabit network and can pull data from the server at around 60MB/sec but when sending data TO the server it sits at around 12MB/sec...is this normal for write speeds to be that much slower than read speeds? SATA ports on motherboard are SATA I and I have 2 HDDs (1 is parity) connected to those...

I am using beta 6 (newest)...and if there isn't a clear answer is there a way to troubleshoot network speed to/from the server?

jkleslie

07-08-09, 12:06 PM

tlmaclennan

07-08-09, 12:11 PM

I don't have unRaid yet, but I think write speeds to the server are supposed to be slow. I just don't know how slow. When you write to the server it is transferring the data as well as building the parity. I think because it is doing both at the same time you get much slower write speeds than your read speeds. I know I've heard of ways to increase write speeds but since I don't have unRaid I can't really do much than point you to their forums or wait for a more experienced member to help you.

I know that with the PRO version you have the capability of a cache drive, basically a drive that is not part of the server. You will get very good write speeds to the cache drive though you will not be protected with parity until the data is moved to the server. This can be setup on a schedule so that you don't have to bother with the slow write speeds.

pdawg17

07-08-09, 12:45 PM

Thanks guys...I just found this:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_fast_is_unRAID.3F

So it is normal...

Btw, what are you guys using for media streaming? I have Twonky working but would prefer something free :)

lifespeed

07-08-09, 01:02 PM

That is normal. The slow writes are a result of real-time parity calculation. The fastest I've even seen only top out at around 15MB/s.

I think a reasonable question is why this is so slow? Software RAID under Linux can perform these real-time parity calculations, using the horsepower of modern processors, at rates that are the equal of dedicated hardware RAID cards.

So why is unRAID inferior to Linux RAID? Without knowing all the underlying details, I can only assume it is a poor implementation.

While it is obvious that unRAID will not benefit from striping like hardware or Linux RAID, I see no reason why a properly-implemented parity calculation could not achieve the 80 - 100 MB/sec speeds of a single drive.

Oh yeah, I see references to 4 I/Os for a write. Why must the data and parity disk be read before writing? Could this be implemented in a better (faster) way?

I think unRAID is a great idea, but the write speed makes it undesirable even for home media server applications, IMHO.

somail

07-08-09, 01:31 PM

Just as an FYI, write speeds to "user shares" under the current beta 6 have been noticeably slow for a number of people. The developers feel it has something to do with the latest samba version they put in beta 6.

pdawg17

07-08-09, 01:44 PM

I think unRAID is a great idea, but the write speed makes it undesirable even for home media server applications, IMHO.

What would you use instead for a "homemade" NAS box?

Goggy

07-08-09, 02:17 PM

Have you looked into the cache drive feature ?

Depending on what you need, it might be a good alternative.

Gog

Joseph Clark

07-08-09, 02:25 PM

Yes, the cache drive speeds up apparent write speeds dramatically. Information is written to the cache drive at the fastest speed, then the data is transferred to the array when speed is less important, such as the middle of the night. Of course, for critical data you can write directly to the array (any individual drive), so the data is protected immediately. I write most things to the cache drive.

lifespeed

07-08-09, 04:06 PM

What would you use instead for a "homemade" NAS box?

I use hardware (IOP341) RAID5 local to my HTPC, and get write speeds of 300 MB/sec. Obviously, if this were accessed over GigE (NAS) the speeds would be only 100 MB/sec.

lifespeed

07-08-09, 04:11 PM

Have you looked into the cache drive feature ?

Depending on what you need, it might be a good alternative.

Gog

I am aware of what it does. But I would rather put that HDD (and $$) into expanding the array.

Some see it as a 'solution' for unRAID slowness, to me it is just a workaround that costs money and power. I am sure some see it as a good solution, but I don't. Also, I don't leave my HTPC/server running 24/7 as I also see this as an unnecessary waste of power. I think this useage model is less-compatible with the cache drive workaround.

Really, I'm not interested in reviving the HW RAID vs unRAID argument, I am just trying to understand why unRAID can't operate at single disc speeds, given the abundant processor power for parity calculations at it's disposal.

Goggy

07-08-09, 04:22 PM

I am aware of what it does. But I would rather put that HDD (and $$) into expanding the array.
(...)
Really, I'm not interested in reviving the HW RAID vs unRAID argument, I am just trying to understand why unRAID can't operate at single disc speeds, given the abundant processor power for parity calculations at it's disposal.

I can't really blame you there, I don't use the cache drive either. Then again, I don't need a big throughput when writing.

But as for the speed, it's not simply processor speed though. A write to a data disk needs to read the parity, write the data then write the parity. that's on top of calculating the parity.

I guess you could perform some of these operations simultaneously since they happen on two different drives but I think that performance gain would depend on the disk controller architecture.

I never checked the CPU load on a disk write. I'll have to check that tonight.

lifespeed

07-08-09, 05:00 PM

But as for the speed, it's not simply processor speed though. A write to a data disk needs to read the parity, write the data then write the parity. that's on top of calculating the parity.

I guess you could perform some of these operations simultaneously since they happen on two different drives but I think that performance gain would depend on the disk controller architecture.

Absolutely writes to the data and parity drives can happen simultaneously. It is not at all clear to me why a significant read of the parity drive prior to a write is required.

It may well be that I don't understand some fundamental piece of the (RAID3?) architecture, but I am left with the distinct impression there is low-hanging fruit WRT improving unRAID write performance. How is unRAID so fundamentally different from software RAID in Linux? I can assure you a parity read is not required prior to writing new data to a RAID array in Linux. Why is this a requirement for unRAID?

Goggy

07-08-09, 05:11 PM

I can assure you a parity read is not required prior to writing new data to a RAID array in Linux. Why is this a requirement for unRAID?

Then I don't understand how Linux does it's soft RAID...

To my understanding, there are only two ways to calculate the new parity.
One: you read that data block on all the drives in the array, including the new data and calculate the new parity then write that down.
two: read that sector's parity from the parity drive, XOR it with the the new data and write the result on the parity drive.

Best case scenario seems to be option two with one read and two writes.

lifespeed

07-08-09, 05:21 PM

Then I don't understand how Linux does it's soft RAID...

To my understanding, there are only two ways to calculate the new parity.
One: you read that data block on all the drives in the array, including the new data and calculate the new parity then write that down.
two: read that sector's parity from the parity drive, XOR it with the the new data and write the result on the parity drive.

Best case scenario seems to be option two with one read and two writes.

Well, with RAID5, the file is striped across (let's assume) 4 drives. For every three blocks of data, a fourth block is added to allow for the increased size from parity data. The parity is coded as an integral part of the data and four blocks are written simultaneously. Any three blocks, with integral parity data, could reconstruct into three original data blocks with the help of parity decoding. Having four blocks provides the redundancy. This data/parity amalgam is self-contained, and has nothing to do with any other data already on the disk. It is calculated solely from the data currently being written.

J. L.

07-08-09, 08:52 PM

Originally Posted by Goggy View Post
Then I don't understand how Linux does it's soft RAID...

To my understanding, there are only two ways to calculate the new parity.
One: you read that data block on all the drives in the array, including the new data and calculate the new parity then write that down.
two: read that sector's parity from the parity drive, XOR it with the the new data and write the result on the parity drive.

Best case scenario seems to be option two with one read and two writes.
Actually, in scenario two, you must read the existing data block, and the existing parity block, and then write both based on the xor differences. it is not enough to just read the existing parity, since you do not know if a new data bit is the same value as it was, in which case the existing parity bit for it does not change, or if the new data bit is different than the existing, in which case the parity bit must be flipped from its current value. To do all that, you must read bit the parity block and the data block being written, do all the bit calculations, then write the new data block and the new parity block.

That is exactly how unRAID does it. Each "write" to a data drive results in 4 I/O operations. Two reads, and two writes. The "write" speed is limited a bit by the fact that each disk must spin its platter a full revolution after reading before it can write to the same block just read. The two "reads" are done in parallel, the same with the two "writes."

The advantage is it only needs to spin up the two drives involved and all the others can stay spun down. (nice in a home media server) In addition, when reading a drive, only 1 drive needs to be read, the others can all stay idle. (and spun down if not otherwise being accessed)

Basically unRAID is RAID4, but without striping of data. Instead, each data disk has its own file-system. Parity is a separate disk, exactly as in RAID4. Striping helps with raw read and write speeds, since each disk in the array only reads/write a portions of the data, and all the reads/writes can be done in parallel. For enterprise database speeds, unRAID is not the solution, you want hardware RAID5.

On the other hand, for home media servers, unRAID is easily able to keep up. Over the LAN, most people report from 8MB/s to 15MB/s writing to the array and from 22MB/s to 35MB/s reading from the array. (There is also a unRAID feature on the "pro" version where writes are initialy written to a cache drive at full speed, and then later written to the protected array at the normal slower rate, but in the middle of the night when you don't care how long it takes. This is all transparent to the user.)

Joe L.

tlmaclennan

07-09-09, 03:23 AM

Good enough for me. I understand that hardware RAID is much faster but I don't need faster. I think I'm set in stone to use unRAID...now I just need the money to start building!

Joseph Clark

07-09-09, 05:34 AM

Fast isn't a priority for me, either. I can live with UnRAID's speed limitations. I appreciate most being able to add a lot of storage easily. I even replaced a complete UnRAID system with all new (and completely different) components. I transferred all my data drives from the old box to the new one and didn't lose a single file. Upgrading to a bigger drive is as simple as unplugging the old drive and replacing it with the new one. The array rebuilds itself automatically. Not a fast process since I have the max number of drives in the system, but it's painless.

JoshDorhyke

07-11-09, 09:57 PM

So why is unRAID inferior to Linux RAID? Without knowing all the underlying details, I can only assume it is a poor implementation.

I think unRAID is a great idea, but the write speed makes it undesirable even for home media server applications, IMHO.

Look at it in the basic sense. Each drive is individual yet the parity is calculated based on all the drives. You write the data to a single drive, not to all the drives. So, the parity has to be adjusted for the single drive. To do that, it requires unRAID to read the old data and the old parity, calculate the new parity and then write the new data and new parity.

RAID5 stripes the data so a write puts data on all the drives at once.

Well, unRAID is one way of making a home server. I like it, it's simple and works well for media. There are other considerations besides speed which made me chose it.

Peter

lifespeed

07-13-09, 12:50 AM

Look at it in the basic sense. Each drive is individual yet the parity is calculated based on all the drives. You write the data to a single drive, not to all the drives. So, the parity has to be adjusted for the single drive. To do that, it requires unRAID to read the old data and the old parity, calculate the new parity and then write the new data and new parity.

Thanks for the explanation.

shunx

08-04-09, 03:36 AM

Can anyone tell me what happens if your UnRaid USB key breaks? It seems like the license you buy is tied to one physical USB key, but USB keys have a natural lifespan and will most likely fail eventually. Even it happens several years later, the key would still fail.

jimwhite

08-04-09, 06:04 AM

You contact Tom and he will work wih you... :p

shunx

08-04-09, 08:02 AM

As far as I'm concerned buying this product means that if you pay for the license and your own USB key breaks the next day, you can buy a new one at regular price. Why not state in writing that broken USB keys containing the software will be eligible for a replacement serial number?

By the way, has anyone tried FlexRAID which is supposed to be a free alternative?

J. L.

08-04-09, 09:09 AM

Why not state in writing that broken USB keys containing the software will be eligible for a replacement serial number?
actually, it is in writing...

See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1898

Flash drives have been replaced, and new "license keys" issued for just about any "failure" thinkable. (Everything from the key snapping in half as the owner's bookshelf crashed down on it, to a drive being removed and lost by the owner's child, the flash drive being eaten by the family dog, to real failures, where the drive became un-readable)

Joe L.

shunx

08-06-09, 05:40 AM

actually, it is in writing...

See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1898

Flash drives have been replaced, and new "license keys" issued for just about any "failure" thinkable.

That forum post is not a part of the legal license though. Others have pointed out that the author could go away at anytime and you would be left with no replacement. This has evidently been unacceptable to a number of business users as well.

garycase2001

08-06-09, 12:57 PM

That forum post is not a part of the legal license though. Others have pointed out that the author could go away at anytime and you would be left with no replacement. This has evidently been unacceptable to a number of business users as well.

Agree with both points -- Tom is very responsive, and understanding about providing keys for replacement flash drives; but he's also just one guy, and if he went away for any reason you'd be out of luck.

If you're using this for anything important it's worthwhile to buy the 2nd key -- that eliminates any delays in the event of a key failure; but it's still not a good solution.

Short of simply trusting folks to not pirate the software (historically this doesn't work well) I'm not sure what he could do that would be "better."

As long as he's around, purchasing two keys, and simply getting a replacement anytime one failed, will easily keep users running with no downtime.

If he wasn't around for any reason ?? ... I have no idea if there's a "succession plan" for Limetech :)

Note: I do not use UnRAID, but did try it a year or so ago, and in fact had a flash drive fail. Tom provided a new key for a replacement drive very quickly. I'd love to use it ... but it's not compatible with my Seagate 1.5TB drives -- when I migrate to newer drives "one of these days" I'll likely try it again ==> but I'll buy two keys :D

captain_video

08-06-09, 01:56 PM

Note: I do not use UnRAID, but did try it a year or so ago, and in fact had a flash drive fail. Tom provided a new key for a replacement drive very quickly. I'd love to use it ... but it's not compatible with my Seagate 1.5TB drives -- when I migrate to newer drives "one of these days" I'll likely try it again ==> but I'll buy two keys :D
I've got several Seagate 1.5TB drives in my unRAID server and they work just fine. I upgraded the firmware as soon as I received them. I did have an issue with one drive initially where I had a few write errors that resulted in the drive being taken off-line. I removed the drive from the array and reinstalled it as a new drive. It rebuilt the data from parity and has been running with no problems for about 5 months now. FWIW, the parity drive is also a Seagate 1.5TB drive.

The whole issue with Lime Technology not being around to provide replacement keys is moot. Lots of software companies are here today, gone tomorrow, and it never stops anyone from buying their software. As long as enough unRAID licenses are purchased on a regular basis to keep LT in business, there's no reason why they wouldn't be around for quite a while. If anyone feels it's too much of a risk then I would suggest buying several licenses so you'll always have a spare on hand.

J. L.

08-06-09, 01:58 PM

I'd love to use it ... but it's not compatible with my Seagate 1.5TB drives -- when I migrate to newer drives "one of these days" I'll likely try it again ==> but I'll buy two keys :D
What about the Seagate drives is not compatible?
(Asking because I have two of the Seagate 1.5TB drives in my unRAID server. They do have the newer seagate CC1J firmware. They're on an older PCI bus based 1.5Gbps controller, and they're doing just fine. )

Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: ata2.00: ATA-8: ST31500341AS, CC1J, max UDMA/133
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: ata2.00: 2930277168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST31500341AS CC1J PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 2930277168 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.50 TB/1.36 TiB)
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 2930277168 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.50 TB/1.36 TiB)
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sda: sda1
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: ata3.00: ATA-8: ST31500341AS, CC1J, max UDMA/133
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: ata3.00: 2930277168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: ata3.00: configured for UDMA/100
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST31500341AS CC1J PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] 2930277168 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.50 TB/1.36 TiB)
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] 2930277168 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.50 TB/1.36 TiB)
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Jul 1 14:21:54 Tower kernel: sdb: sdb1

Joe L.

garycase2001

08-06-09, 02:17 PM

It's been about 7 months since I was using them, but UnRAID kept marking one of the drives bad -- although it worked perfectly in a standalone mode (and is still working perfectly under Windows). I exchanged several notes with Tom, and he agreed that he had seen far too many issues with these drives, and did not recommend them (there's a note on his site that notes that now). My drives had CC1J and CC1H firmware.

In any event, I got tired of messing with it, so I simply switched to Windows and set up multiple shares (one/drive) for my videos. Works fine with DVD Profiler -- I've got a batch file with the PlayFromDisk plugin that finds a video no matter which share it's on and then plays it -- so it's still just a single click to play any of our movies.

Clearly a single "DVDs" share would be preferable ... but I'm not inclined to switch back to UnRAID unless/until either Tom makes some change that improves performance with the Seagates or until I acquire enough other drives to make it worth setting up an UnRAID server. I've got 2 of the WD 2TB drives now ... so when I get a couple more I may try it again then.

J. L.

08-06-09, 02:21 PM

garycase2001

08-06-09, 02:48 PM

Who knows... I do know that there are a lot being used, but I also know many have had issues with time-outs. It might have a lot to do with the hardware they are connected to... and as I said, mine are on an older 1.5Gbps controller on a PCI bus.

Joe L.

Agree ... I think it's a timing issue -- but the drives work perfectly as standalones, and UnRAID was continually failing a drive (and not always the same one). Actually, if I disabled parity, it worked fine -- so it has something to do with the timing as it's doing its parity calculations ... but if I wasn't getting the benefit of a parity drive, I didn't see any reason to keep using UnRAID.

That also leads me to believe that it's something that COULD be fixed in software -- if Tom was so inclined. Although it may be something in the underlying kernel that needs changed, which is clearly more difficult.

In any event, I'm happy enough with my current setup -- but WILL try UnRAID again once I have 4 or 5 2TB drives to "play with" :)

Joseph Clark

08-06-09, 03:03 PM

Is anyone aware of a Windows script that will go out, say once a day, and check 2 directories for files, to aggregate the contents into a single list? I'd like to be able to automate the process so I can look at common folders I have on my 2 UnRAID servers. I've looked at the Libraries function on Win 7, but it looks as though it won't be able to do it with my UnRAID shares.

The ideal way to do this would be to look at each common folder on each drive (and on both servers) and create a pointer to each file directly on that drive. That way, it wouldn't need to wake up the entire array when you wanted a specific file. That is, it would create a list that would be smart enough to point to "file0001" on disk 2 of UnRAID Tower1, rather than wake up all drives on both servers when you selected something.

mackworth

08-09-09, 03:39 PM

AMD Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Processor Model SDX140HBGQBOX - Retail

Rosewill R222-P-BK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

PC Power & Cooling Silencer PPCS370X 370W ATX12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail

SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD103SI 1TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM

ECS GF8100VM-M3 AM2+/AM3 NVIDIA GeForce 8100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model CT2KIT12864AA800 - Retail

SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) Model SDCZ6-4096-A11 - Retail

Total: $274.05 including shipping

Would this work? Is it worth getting some dual core? already have 2 other 1 TB drives?

brianley

08-09-09, 06:31 PM

J. L.

08-09-09, 09:05 PM

Will it work? Sure. Personally I don't think dual core is necessary for a pure unraid server. The lower the power the better, particularly if it will be running 24/7You will not need dual core, nor will it really be used unless you intend to run other add-on applications such as VMWare.

You will need more than one disk drive, as a single drive does not allow you to have any parity protection from a disk failure. Based on your cost, I'm guessing your $274. estimate can't be talking about multiple disk drives. (It will run with a single disk drive, but it will not be a RAID array, just a single NAS disk. You can add the parity disk at any time, so if you need to start with 1 disk, go for it, then add the parity disk.)

mackworth

08-10-09, 08:12 AM

You will not need dual core, nor will it really be used unless you intend to run other add-on applications such as VMWare.

You will need more than one disk drive, as a single drive does not allow you to have any parity protection from a disk failure. Based on your cost, I'm guessing your $274. estimate can't be talking about multiple disk drives. (It will run with a single disk drive, but it will not be a RAID array, just a single NAS disk. You can add the parity disk at any time, so if you need to start with 1 disk, go for it, then add the parity disk.)

Yeah, for some reason my last statement in my post was a question...

I meant to say that I already had 2 1 TB drives already. So I will have a total of 3 drives after that.

So would a dual core help anything? All I would be doing is streaming content off it. Does the speed of the CPU affect write/read speed? The reason I ask is because I have a 4850e in my HTPC that is also 45W that I could use and then get something more powerful in my HTPC

J. L.

08-10-09, 09:04 AM

So would a dual core help anything? All I would be doing is streaming content off it. Does the speed of the CPU affect write/read speed? The reason I ask is because I have a 4850e in my HTPC that is also 45W that I could use and then get something more powerful in my HTPC
The CPU is very lightly used. A dual core will not help you if all you will be doing is streaming content. (Dual-core will not help 99% of the users of unRAID) The bottlenecks in performance will be the network speed, the PCI buss speed (if not PCIe), and, when writing to the array, the rotational speed of the disks (7200 RPM disks will perform better than 5400 RPM disks)

My old PCI based, IDE based array, with a "2.26GHz Intel Celeron CPU " shows the cpu statistics as follows when serving 4 simultaneous DVD ISO images to clients on my LAN. The CPU is nearly 80% idle.

top - 08:57:02 up 39 days, 18:35, 2 users, load average: 0.40, 0.39, 0.26
Tasks: 98 total, 2 running, 96 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 5.6%us, 11.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 79.8%id, 0.7%wa, 1.0%hi, 1.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 498384k total, 484532k used, 13852k free, 15604k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 380500k cached

Joe L.

Yorgo

08-18-09, 10:55 AM

Hello.

Is anyone successfully using a DviCo Tvix M6500a with unRAID and NFS shares? I'm having a devil of a time getting this to work; Samba connection no problem, but I am experiencing the stuttering issues with high-bandwidth files. Google hasn't been very forthcoming with info on successful NFS implementation.

FYI, I'm using the latest unRAID beta, v.4.5beta6. I can provide more details as well.

Thanks in advance,

Y

archer75

08-18-09, 06:25 PM

Over the LAN, most people report from 8MB/s to 15MB/s writing to the array and from 22MB/s to 35MB/s reading from the array.

Wow, that's slow. On my WHS box I get 50MB/s - 70MB/s writes. I couldn't live with 8MB/s

Joseph Clark

09-08-09, 10:21 AM

My main unRAID box has stopped responding and is inaccessible from Windows. I've posted in the unRAID forums and sent an email to Limetech, but so far no response. Can someone here take a look at my syslog and give me a clue as to how to proceed?

The system seems to boot OK and comes up with the "Login Tower" prompt, but Windows doesn't see it.

I have parity, 16 data and a cache drive in the system, and it's been solid since I built it over a year ago. My other unRAID box is behaving normally on the same network. I made no changes to the unresponsive unRAID system. It simply stopped responding one day. Reboot didn't help.

jimwhite

09-08-09, 10:46 AM

sounds like a network/NIC problem... there are discussions on the limetech forum about troubleshooting linux network issues...

:cool:

Jermmd

09-08-09, 12:03 PM

J. L.

09-08-09, 12:39 PM

I agree with Jim White.
If you get to the Login screen then it seems like the server has booted correctly. Try refreshing your network connections and see if it shows up. Let us know what happens.

Joe M.
First step is for you to put your flash drive in a windows box and run scandisk or chkdisk on it.

The file system on it is corrupted as evidenced by this in the syslog:
Jul 26 00:52:58 Tower kernel: FAT: Filesystem panic (dev sdh1)
Jul 26 00:52:58 Tower kernel: fat_free_clusters: deleting FAT entry beyond EOF
Jul 26 00:52:58 Tower kernel: File system has been set read-only

A read-only flash drive will prevent the superblock in config/super.dat from being updated... as shown by these lines:
Jul 26 08:05:22 Tower kernel: write_file: error 30 opening /boot/config/super.dat
Jul 26 08:05:22 Tower kernel: md: could not write superblock from /boot/config/super.dat

Disk3 seems to have a corrupted reiser file system as described by these lines:
Jul 26 00:52:59 Tower kernel: ReiserFS: md3: warning: sh-2021: reiserfs_fill_super: can not find reiserfs on md3

Lastly, /dev/sdg seems to be timing out when a command is sent to it... it is the least of your worries right now though, as it is being reset by the kernel when this occurs.
ul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata6.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata6.00: cmd e3/00:f2:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata6.00: status: { DRDY }
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata7.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata7.00: cmd e3/00:f2:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata7.00: status: { DRDY }
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata7: soft resetting link
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata7: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata7.00: configured for UDMA/133
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: ata7: EH complete
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdg] 488397168 512-byte hardware sectors (250059 MB)
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdg] Write Protect is off
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdg] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
Jul 26 08:40:05 Tower kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdg] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

So... first fix the corruption on the flash drive.
Then, post a new syslog. Apparently your disk3 has crashed and corrupted the superblock. We do not know if the physical disk is bad or not... You'll need to run a smartctl command on it to provide the clues needed.

Whatever you do, do NOT press the button labeled "restore" as it will set a new configuration based on the currently assigned AND WORKING drives and start an entirely new parity calc without any defective drives... Pressing it now would erase any knowledge of what used to be on disk3 and leave you without any parity protection for some hours until a new parity calc can be finished. Until you fix the flash drive, even that can't be accomplished and recorded.

Joe L.

Joseph Clark

09-08-09, 07:55 PM

J. L.

09-08-09, 08:07 PM

Thanks much, Joe. Tom has responded from Limetech and he's got me checking some things, but as of right now all the .cfg files are missing from the "config" directory on the flash. Except for the "shares" directory, the only files in "config" are Pro1.key, super.dat and super.old. Should I still run chkdisk on it?

As to hitting "Restore," no danger. I've yet to get Windows to recognize the server.You might need to set window's explorer to see the hidden and system files on the flash.

As far as I can tell, you'll need to fix the FAT filesystem on the flash at some point before you can replace the missing files... Perhaps fixing it will restore the missing files. (even if named as XXXXXXX.XXX as a recovered file fragment)

If Tom is helping, make sure to point out the lines I saw in the syslog. They'll all be important for him to see too.

Joe L.

mike1061

09-08-09, 09:55 PM

J. L.

09-08-09, 10:07 PM

Can I ask a question.
In this situation, would having a back up copy of the flash drive have been a good chose? Would that get him past the first part so he could see if the hard drive was damaged?
Thanks MikeIt would have...

Since there is also apparently a "failed" disk drive (or one where the reiser file-system is so corrupted it is not recognized), he does not want to do anything to write to any drive without the unRAID software involved. (Trying to fix the disk3 file-system outside of the array would only break the ability to recover from parity.)

So... first step must be to get his flash drive working properly.

Joseph Clark

09-08-09, 10:40 PM

I did an error check on the flash in Windows and no errors were found.

PGPFan

09-09-09, 12:31 AM

I did an error check on the flash in Windows and no errors were found.

I had a similar failure with one of my unRaid flashes. Even though it performed perfectly in Windows, copying files to and from it, formatting it, error checks, you name it - it would no longer work in my unRaid. I replaced it, and had Tom generate a new key and all was good again.

-PGPfan

J. L.

09-09-09, 10:11 AM

I did an error check on the flash in Windows and no errors were found.That is great news...

I would now backtrack a step and perform a memory test on your unRAID server. It is one of the choices when you boot up on the unRAID boot menu.

Let it run a few cycles... unless something shows itself immediately. It is possible a bad memory strip is responsible for everything. It might not be a bad idea to check the memory strip settings for Voltage, Timing, and Clock-speed. If they are not properly set in your BIOS for your specific memory, all kinds of errors can occur. Most motherboards set them automatically, some get them right... many do not and assume slow memory and normal (low) voltages.

Joe L.

Joseph Clark

09-10-09, 07:56 PM

Thanks for the advice, guys. I followed Tom's directions and the server is booting OK. I upgraded to the latest 4.5-beta6 version of unRAID. I had been using v.4.3. As of right now, the system thinks my disk configuration is completely different than it should be. It thinks all my drives are 500GB, whereas I've slowly replaced 7 of the drives with newer 1.5TB drives over the last few months. That's confusing. I first replaced the parity drive, then 6 data drives one at a time on that system. Each time, the system rebuilt itself with the new drive and I didn't have any problems after the parity check.

The current system is recognizing all the drives and I've placed each into its proper place in "Devices." Of course, since the system also thinks I've replaced/changed numerous drives at the same time, it's telling me that my configuration is invalid and doesn't allow me to restart the array.

I'm waiting for Tom to get back to me, but as of right now I'm not getting errors reporting that any of the drives is defective. I'm not going to "Restore" anything until I know what's what. I'll be checking out the new syslog on the next reboot.

Joseph Clark

09-10-09, 08:07 PM

J. L.

09-10-09, 09:29 PM

I powered down and removed the flash, but when I put it in Windows, there's no syslog this time around. Is this because I couldn't start the array? Will I have to do a "Restore" for a syslog to be generated?

I really need to understand better how unRAID works. The thing is, both my unRAID boxes have been so easy to manage, I've become complacent. I had to build a new unRAID system after a mobo failure last year, but it went pretty smoothly. I didn't lose anything, even though almost every component of my system changed. The data and parity drives made it through the change completely intact. And each time I upgraded a drive, the process was easy.
You would need to copy the syslog to the flash drive for it to be there...

Since you are now running 4.5beta6, you can get a copy of the syslog at any time from your web-browser simply by going to
//tower/log/syslog

what did Tom have you do to get rid of all the errors you were experiencing? (other than load the newer release on the flash drive?)

Joe L.

Joseph Clark

09-10-09, 09:59 PM

Here's what he said:

"Yes things look a bit dodgy. With three different types of corruptions, Flash drive, possibly one of your hard drives, and a controller reporting problems, this generally would be bad memory or bad power supply. But first step is to get back running."

I've discovered where I've made some other mistakes with my server. I'll have to wade through this and try to get things back to normal, before I can even start to address what may have gone wrong with the flash, hard drive or controller.

Joseph Clark

10-07-09, 06:59 PM

Quick update:

I got my UnRaid server running. The problem was a bad USB drive. Tom provided me with a new Pro key. It's running a parity check right now.

As usual, Tom and Limetech came through. It's such a solid company and it's been a pleasure using their software the past few years.

Thanks for the suggestions.

inayat

10-31-09, 04:35 PM

Anyone want to split the cost of an unRAID Server Pro Registration Key 2-Pack?

The website has them listed as $149 for a set of two or $119 for a single key.

I only need one but would prefer to pay $74.50 instead of $119. If anyone would like to split the $149 cost, send me a PM.

If you feel uncomfortable, we can set up an eBay transaction or something. I have 120+ feedback, 100% positive.

Cheers.

garycase2001

11-01-09, 09:24 PM

fitbrit

11-01-09, 09:54 PM

Several months ago I had some issues with the Seagate 7200rpm 1.5TB 7200.11 drives and UnRAID ... the drives would cause frequent "failures" whereby UnRAID would initiate rebuilds, etc. and the array was simply not stable. At the time I simply abandoned UnRAID and have been using the drives as individual shares (works fine).

I'm now considering building a new UnRAID system, but want to use well-tested, stable drives. I thought about just using Caviar Black 1TB drives, but would really like to use higher capacity units, and preferably the lower power "green" units (not so much for power as how cool they run). Has anyone been using the WD "green" drives (1.5 or 2TB) or the Seagate 5900rpm units (again either 1.5 or 2TB)? I've got a few of each, and they run remarkably cool -- but am curious just how reliable they are with UnRAID.

I'm using WD 1TB and 1.5 TB green drives. They either run beautifully with UnRAID, or they crap out DOA style. Of about 10, I've had to RMA 4 - actually 2, and 2 more pending.

tawill

11-02-09, 01:50 PM

Several months ago I had some issues with the Seagate 7200rpm 1.5TB 7200.11 drives and UnRAID ... the drives would cause frequent "failures" whereby UnRAID would initiate rebuilds, etc. and the array was simply not stable. At the time I simply abandoned UnRAID and have been using the drives as individual shares (works fine).

I'm now considering building a new UnRAID system, but want to use well-tested, stable drives. I thought about just using Caviar Black 1TB drives, but would really like to use higher capacity units, and preferably the lower power "green" units (not so much for power as how cool they run). Has anyone been using the WD "green" drives (1.5 or 2TB) or the Seagate 5900rpm units (again either 1.5 or 2TB)? I've got a few of each, and they run remarkably cool -- but am curious just how reliable they are with UnRAID.
I have 3 of the WD 2 TB Green drives. I upgraded my parity drive in July. Then upgraded 2 500 GB drives with the 2 TB drives in the first and last week of September. So I have had 3 in service for from 1 to 4 months with no issues at all. I have wondered if write performance would be improved with a faster parity drive such as the WD Caviar Black or the 7200 rpm Hitachi.

Tom

J. L.

11-02-09, 08:21 PM

I have 3 of the WD 2 TB Green drives. I upgraded my parity drive in July. Then upgraded 2 500 GB drives with the 2 TB drives in the first and last week of September. So I have had 3 in service for from 1 to 4 months with no issues at all. I have wondered if write performance would be improved with a faster parity drive such as the WD Caviar Black or the 7200 rpm Hitachi.

TomNo matter what you do, basic physics restricts the best/fastest "write" speed with parity enabled. See this post for an explanation: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4390.msg40684#msg40684 Your WD drives are all 5400 RPM drives, with a purposely slower speed to use less energy. They will always be slower than the 7200 RPM drives, regardless of any marketing claims, when you have to read and then write the identical sector with the disk spinning in between.

A faster parity drive will only help if multiple data disks are being written to at the same time, but otherwise it is going to be waiting on the data disks to rotate between their alternate read and writes of sectors.

The "write" speed of the array is dictated by the rotational speed of the slowest disk involved. Your WD 5400 RPM disks will still be the same, therefore a faster parity disk is not likely to make much of a difference at all. (unless you have multiple data disks being written to at the same time, because it has to deal with all the data disks combined "write" I/O)

brianley

11-24-09, 03:25 PM

Just an FYI for anyone out there using UnRAID but hasn't updated their version in a while - Since moving to 4.5 Beta10 (now 11) I've noticed an increase in write speed of over 50% vs prior versions. Running the free version with 3 - 1 TB WD Green drives.

garycase2001

12-23-09, 03:11 AM

J. L.

12-23-09, 07:12 AM

I decided to try UnRAID (again) ... this time with the 2TB WD Green drives (based on the discussion r.e. these drives a few weeks ago) => but the download site for UnRAID hasn't worked the last few days ["... bandwidth exceeded ..."].

Does anyone know if Limetech is closed for the holidays ? Just curious how long it may be before I can download a current copy.See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4844.msg45253#msg45253

Joe L.

VampyreGTX

12-23-09, 10:12 AM

For those with unRaid, looking for a large drive with good speed, I've just got my server up and running and have a Hitachi 2TB 7200 RPM drive (only 7200 2 TB drive available currently) and the speed is much faster than the Seagate 5900RPM 2TB drive. preclearing the drive took onlly about 16-18 hours versus about 25 hours for the Seagate. I have the hitachi as my parity drive and the Seagate LP drives (2TB and 1.5TB) as my data drives, but will most likely expand the array with the hitachi 2TB's. The seagates ran at about 28* during the preclear and the hitachi ran at a max of 31*... The 3* savings in the LP drives just doesn't seem worth it in terms of decreased performance. I don't think I'll have a problem running a full 20-disk array with my 650w PSU with the Hitachi's either to justify the energy savings either...

VampyreGTX

12-23-09, 12:10 PM

Hmm.... maybe not on maxing out the server with 2TB hitachi's :

Power
Requirement +5 VDC (+/-5%) +12 VDC (+/-10%)
Startup current (A, max.) 1.2 (+5V), 2.0 (+12V)
Idle (W) 7.5

They idle at 1.5W more than the WDC Green drives read at (6.0W read/write) and 3.8W more than the WDC idle at. So if I max out at 20 drives, that's 76 extra watts at idle alone. My 650W PSU has a 5V rail of 30A and 12V of 58, so that will leave only 6A on the 5V during startup and 18 on the 12V, doubt that would be enough for a stable system at startup... once running, I think it'd be fine since unRaid spins down the unnecessary drives, but 20 drives may be pushing it. Still, I have well over a year before I'd need that much storage anyway. I'll probably stick with the either the Seagate LP's or the WDC Greens now that I've seen the power levels.

J. L.

12-23-09, 04:40 PM

VampyreGTX

12-23-09, 04:59 PM

Surprisingly, the Corsair 750TX actually has a slightly lower 5V rail and equal 12v rail.... guess I'd look elsewhere. I have the Norco 4220 so I'd be maxed out with 20 drives in the regular slots, but there is a way to mod it to allow two 3.5" drives be mounted in the top two 2.5" HDD spots.... Then I would just need to find a way to fit another 2 drives into the 4220 to make it 24 drives..... LOL at the rate of media acquisition for me though (@3TB per year), and if I go with all 2tb drives, that will be about 16 years before I would max out 24 drives.....anyone want to donate to my BD disc acquisition fund to speed that timeframe up a bit?

J. L.

12-23-09, 06:09 PM

Surprisingly, the Corsair 750TX actually has a slightly lower 5V rail and equal 12v rail.... guess I'd look elsewhere.
Interesting... Keep your existing power supply until you outgrow it then...:D
I have the Norco 4220 so I'd be maxed out with 20 drives in the regular slots, but there is a way to mod it to allow two 3.5" drives be mounted in the top two 2.5" HDD spots.... Then I would just need to find a way to fit another 2 drives into the 4220 to make it 24 drives.....
I'm modifying a very old tower case to hold 25 drives... I'll be set, unless the drive limit increases again in the next few years. (The case was SO old it originally had a "turbo" switch to up the speed to 33Mhz, or slow it down for the games and programs that could not run at the higher speed.)
LOL at the rate of media acquisition for me though (@3TB per year), and if I go with all 2tb drives, that will be about 16 years before I would max out 24 drives.....anyone want to donate to my BD disc acquisition fund to speed that timeframe up a bit?In 16 years there will be 4 or 8 TB disks and you'll be able to start sending me your old small(cast-off) 2TB drives to fit in the spare slots in my case. ;) I have a bit more time than you though, as I'm still collecting DVD's, although odds are high some time in the next 16 years I'll start purchasing blue-ray disks (or their successors)

Joe L.

J. L.

12-23-09, 06:12 PM

I decided to try UnRAID (again) ... this time with the 2TB WD Green drives (based on the discussion r.e. these drives a few weeks ago) => but the download site for UnRAID hasn't worked the last few days ["... bandwidth exceeded ..."].

Does anyone know if Limetech is closed for the holidays ? Just curious how long it may be before I can download a current copy.

He was away... without a computer for a few days... but is back, and just posted a new link for the downloads... Also, apparently, he is migrating the whole site. So for now, see here for the new link: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4937.msg45502#new

VampyreGTX

12-23-09, 10:33 PM

(The case was SO old it originally had a "turbo" switch to up the speed to 33Mhz, or slow it down for the games and programs that could not run at the higher speed.)

Joe L.

LOL.... I completely forgot about those turbo switches! Though mentioning that brings back some memories. I still remember having to manually modify autoexec.bat and config.sys everytime we added new hardware and such....

garycase2001

01-05-10, 09:14 PM

VampyreGTX

01-06-10, 12:11 AM

Over at the unRaid forums, it seems like idle is sub 40 watts for a setup similar to mine. I run a Gigabyte GB-MA785G-UD3H mobo, using onboard video, 2 stick 1Gig ram and a sempron 140 CPU.

I'm currently still tinkering with the sleep batch file to get the server into s3. It will go to sleep with I enter the commands manually, just can't get the automated script to do it automatically.

MarkV

01-06-10, 01:57 PM

I'd be very interested in knowing the idle power consumption (all drives spun down) of the SuperMicro C2SEE motherboard that Limetech uses in their 1510 server product -- anyone happen to be using that and have a Kill-a-Watt to measure it?

If not, if you have a Kill-a-Watt and an UnRAID server what is your idle consumption? With what motherboard, CPU, and how much memory?

Consumption with all drives spun up would also be interesting, but I'm much more interested in the idle numbers.

Well, it's not the LimeTech 1510, but it is a C2SEE. 4GB of RAM. CPU is quad core (Q9550 @ 2.83GHz). It's in the Norco 4220 case. 600 or 650W power supply (would have to go look which one). Yea, I know I'm overspec'd on CPU/memory...

It's running at 59.8W with the disks spun down.

garycase2001

01-07-10, 01:09 AM

Excellent -- just what I wanted to know. Thanks guys.

Even with a Q9550 that's not a bad number ... I was planning to use an E8400 (also overkill for UnRAID), but may go ahead and stick in a quad :)

I'll almost certainly use a C2SEE, since it's a very reliable board and has been thoroughly tested with UnRAID.

What add-in controllers are you using? I've been debating between the Adaptec 1430's that Limetech uses and a Supermicro 8-port card (the PCIe version).

VampyreGTX

01-08-10, 05:07 PM

For those curious about watts and how little it truly takes to power unRaid.... check out this post at the unRaid forums:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5001.msg46053#msg46053

he's got his unRaid server running on a 5W mobile processor.....

SCSI

01-10-10, 05:29 PM

I am currently testing unRaid with the free version but I am planning to get the plus or pro if I can buy a two-pack with someone. How is the license applied on an upgrade with the upcoming unRaid 5 version?

Edit:
Found the answer at http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#How_is_unRAID_licensed.3F It looks like the license is a lifetime upgrade. Nice!

Ewingr

01-11-10, 01:09 PM

Not sure I understand you question, but I think I do. I just upgraded from free version about 2 months ago, and all it took was copying some files to a specific directory on the usb drive. I don't remember the specifics off the top of my head, but it was quite easy.

I think I have a post about it on the unraid forum. So you can search for my posts there to get the specifics. Same user name there as here: ewingr.

JoshDorhyke

01-11-10, 02:58 PM

What add-in controllers are you using? I've been debating between the Adaptec 1430's that Limetech uses and a Supermicro 8-port card (the PCIe version).

There is no 8-port PCIe card supported right now. I think the one you're meaning is close but not quite there yet.

Peter

CDLehner

01-11-10, 03:16 PM

J. L.

01-11-10, 05:13 PM

Just found this thread guys. I already posted for some noobie advice on a good, starter case for my 1st unRAID build. Not getting much attention, probably because I should have posted here. :o

Now that I've found it, let me elicit more info. I currently have ~6T in an 8-drive array (mix-n-match drives), split between an HP MSS and a Sans Digital eSATA port multiplier. So of course I'm running the MSSs WHS...but the RAID crowd has convinced me I'm wasting space with WHSs duplication method.

I've always heard people talk about unRAID as an alternative to RAID, and after reading up on it some (mostly from Lime Tech's marketing, so I take that FWIW) have decided it might be a good way for me to wade-in and test the waters.

I guess for me, the pros are I can start off with my existing mix of drives, and the builds don't need to be expensive, heavy-duty scream machines. Because of that, I've heard many have put together boxes from parts "just laying around"...but this is my first build of any kind, so I imagine I'll mostly be starting from scratch.

I guess I need to start with a case, and even though I don't really know what distinguishes one from another...based on what I want to spend, and what I've gleaned from the NewEgg reviews...I think I've narrowed it down to either an ARK 4U-500, or Norco RPC-450.

Again, I was hoping I could use a mobo, processor, and memory out of an old PC...but I'm not sure that any of what I have might fit those cases, etc. Can anyone offer up some starting advice for a noobie, or point to inexpensive builds that have been well documented? I'll try my best to peruse the 63 pages of this thread, but my wife says I spend too much time on here as it is. :D

CDThis might anger your wife...(because there is a lot to read) but there is a user-community-forum and user-community-wiki on the lime-technology site.

Find them here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php
and here http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Unofficial_Documentation

Between those two, just about all your questions will be answered. The FAQ will have a lot of the answers to common questions. Take a look there first, when your wife isn't keeping you busy otherwise. http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ

The biggest issue with using an older MB is it is not likely to have support for SATA disks, and it is difficult (actually, impossible, and expensive) to get larger sized IDE disks. You can use IDE to SATA converters, but a newer MB is a better use of your money. You need at least 512 Meg of ram, but you can use more. You need a power supply with a 12 volt rail of sufficient capacity for as many hard-disks as you plan on adding. Just about anything will do for 2 or 3 disks. You will need a MB that can boot from a USB port. Most modern ones can, lots of older ones cannot. Some have used boot floppies, or boot CDs, or "kicker" disks to use really old hardware, so it is possible if you want to try... and there are some posts by those who figured it out...

Easiest is to download unRAID and format and install it on a USB drive as per the instructions in the lime-technology site, and see if your old MB will boot it.

Joe L.

CDLehner

01-11-10, 06:58 PM

This might anger your wife...(because there is a lot to read) but there is a user-community-forum and user-community-wiki on the lime-technology site.

Find them here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php
and here http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Unofficial_Documentation

Between those two, just about all your questions will be answered. The FAQ will have a lot of the answers to common questions. Take a look there first, when your wife isn't keeping you busy otherwise. http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ

The biggest issue with using an older MB is it is not likely to have support for SATA disks, and it is difficult (actually, impossible, and expensive) to get larger sized IDE disks. You can use IDE to SATA converters, but a newer MB is a better use of your money. You need at least 512 Meg of ram, but you can use more. You need a power supply with a 12 volt rail of sufficient capacity for as many hard-disks as you plan on adding. Just about anything will do for 2 or 3 disks. You will need a MB that can boot from a USB port. Most modern ones can, lots of older ones cannot. Some have used boot floppies, or boot CDs, or "kicker" disks to use really old hardware, so it is possible if you want to try... and there are some posts by those who figured it out...

Easiest is to download unRAID and format and install it on a USB drive as per the instructions in the lime-technology site, and see if your old MB will boot it.

Joe L.

Can't someone just tell me what to do? J/K :D Thanks Joe; already found the Wiki, of course...the forum discussions and recommendations for hardware will also be a great help.

The MoBos I'm talking about aren't that old; in my job I have occasion to come across outdated PCs from time to time, and as I said, I was hoping to grab something so I could do this on the cheap. For example, I have one such box that has a P4 (single-core of course) 2.6Ghz chip, and a Gig of RAM...but I have no idea what the board itself is...and I haven't pulled it out yet, but I suspect it only supports 1 sata drive, and who knows how many PCI slots, etc. So I guess I'm researching buying something new.

Thanks again...and my wife thanks you for all the recommended reading.

CD

mike1061

01-11-10, 08:42 PM

You can also just buy a pre-made unit. Then you can use your own drives and upgrade as money allows.
Thanks Mike

J. L.

01-11-10, 08:43 PM

For example, I have one such box that has a P4 (single-core of course) 2.6Ghz chip, and a Gig of RAM...but I have no idea what the board itself is...and I haven't pulled it out yet, but I suspect it only supports 1 sata drive, and who knows how many PCI slots, etc. So I guess I'm researching buying something new.
That almost exactly describes my unRAID hardware. I have a 2.6Ghz celeron cpu, 512 meg of ram, two promise IDE disk controllers (total of 12 IDE drive slots, 4 drives on the MB, 4 on each PCI bus card) I also have 2 SATA connectors on the MB, and 4 more on a PCI card. You can mix and match, but at the time I built my server SATA drives and SATA support in unRAID did not exist (it was about 4 years ago) It sounds as if your "Old" computer is in a similar class. SATA drives are easily the way to go today... If you catch a good sale you can get a 2TB drive for about $130. My original pair of 500Gig drives I started with were over $300 each ( 4 years ago).

Thanks again...and my wife thanks you for all the recommended reading.

CDJust use "smaller fonts" when you read the forum... Then it won't seem like as much to read.:D

Joe L.

CDLehner

01-11-10, 09:28 PM

Ah...unRAID noobie gold http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Getting_Started_with_unRAID

CD

Rasterize

01-13-10, 03:56 PM

Okay, so I've scoured the UnRaid wikki and am keeping watch over the forum, but I need some help on choosing hardware.

For the case, I've decided on the Norco (4020 or the newer 4121(?)).

The rest of the hardware, I have no clue about - last time I built myself a PC was some 8 years ago or so, so your guidance is greatly appreciated. What I do know is that I'd like to be able to have my storage grow as required with as few hardware limitations as possible.

For the motherboard, I'd like one that has on-board video, with the most expandability for storage space without using any additional cards as possible. It should also have a good on-board NIC, maybe two if possible.

I'm not really too fussed over the CPU, RAM or hard drives.

Any advice on the mobo?

brianley

01-13-10, 04:29 PM

rockytt

01-15-10, 12:02 PM

JoshDorhyke

01-15-10, 12:10 PM

The motherboard discussed here

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2697.0

Can take 2 x $100 PCI-X to 8-SATA expansion cards and support 22 drives.

Otherwise, you can use that same expansion card in a PCI slot but it will be slow with 8 drives attached.

As a third option, look for a motherboard that will take enough PCIe x4 to 4-SATA and/or PCIe x1 to 2-SATA cards to get to the drives you want.

As for onboard, you can always use a cheap PCI video card for set-up. A monitor is not needed at all once the system is operating.

Peter

JoshDorhyke

01-15-10, 12:34 PM

I should have posted that motherboard will support 22 drives using the PCI-X buss without any real data buss bottlenecks. You could put more PCI-X cards or PCIe cards in and support even more drives.

Peter

lifespeed

01-15-10, 01:15 PM

Potentially (really) stupid question:
Just picked up a new Samsung plasma that has DLNA capability to read media files directly from a computer - any chance of making that work with this? Absolutely love my unRaid setup - just trying to figure out if there's a way to have my plasma see the server...

Of course not. If you wanted to run *any* services on your storage server you should have picked another platform. unRAID does storage only. Yeah, I know there are some hacks, but the reality remains.

ejhuzy

01-15-10, 01:48 PM

Of course not. If you wanted to run *any* services on your storage server you should have picked another platform. unRAID does storage only. Yeah, I know there are some hacks, but the reality remains.

Not that this has anything to do with the original question, but can an unRAID server have apache running? I've seen people use http to stream files when SMB isn't fast enough.

brianley

01-15-10, 02:09 PM

Not that this has anything to do with the original question, but can an unRAID server have apache running? I've seen people use http to stream files when SMB isn't fast enough.

Unraid is a scaled down version of slackware - if you're comfortable with compiling your own kernel and what not, you can add all sorts of components into it - torrent clients, email server, DNS server, etc. Check their forums and Wiki for more info.

ejhuzy

01-15-10, 02:13 PM

Unraid is a scaled down version of slackware - if you're comfortable with compiling your own kernel and what not, you can add all sorts of components into it - torrent clients, email server, DNS server, etc. Check their forums and Wiki for more info.

I don't need all of that. I just want a way to have apache or some other http server running. I was hoping my unRaid box could double as that. If not, I may have to rethink my ideas for the machine I'm going to use for ripping. I may want to beef that up to handle being a http server as well.

garycase2001

01-30-10, 01:23 AM

J. L.

01-30-10, 11:31 AM

Anyone using UnRAID have any add-ins that provide UPS support?

If an UnRAID server loses power, it will then initiate a full parity check on the next startup. I understand the rationale for this (since the array wasn't properly closed down) ... but in a mostly read-only media server this is an unnecessary hours-long process.

With UPS support, the array could shut itself down after a power failure, so this would never occur :)

Tom has indicated UPS support is on his list ... but it's been there for quite a while. Just curious if someone has already implemented this for a particular UPS unit.You can easily use almost any APC brand UPS.

This is described in this post http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3688.0

The download and installation of the apcupsd (APC UPS daemon) is aided if you first install the unMENU add-on. (described here (http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Add_Ons#UnMENU)) It has a package-manager page that will allow you to download, install/configure, and "re-install on reboot" the APC UPS package with three button clicks.

I've had an APC ups on my unRAID server for a very long time. The apcupsd program monitors the battery state during a power outage and initiates a shutdown when only 3 minutes of run-time remain.

Joe L.

garycase2001

01-31-10, 04:26 AM

You can easily use almost any APC brand UPS.

This is described in this post http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3688.0

The download and installation of the apcupsd (APC UPS daemon) is aided if you first install the unMENU add-on. (described here (http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Add_Ons#UnMENU)) It has a package-manager page that will allow you to download, install/configure, and "re-install on reboot" the APC UPS package with three button clicks.

I've had an APC ups on my unRAID server for a very long time. The apcupsd program monitors the battery state during a power outage and initiates a shutdown when only 3 minutes of run-time remain.

Joe L.

I've read the thread on the UnRAID forums, but have also noted several folks indicated the 3 minutes setting didn't result in a quick-enough shutdown (the "3 minutes" doesn't really last 3 minutes). I'll give it a try -- hopefully the package allows changing the setting from 3 minutes to a more conservative setting.

J. L.

01-31-10, 11:14 AM

I've read the thread on the UnRAID forums, but have also noted several folks indicated the 3 minutes setting didn't result in a quick-enough shutdown (the "3 minutes" doesn't really last 3 minutes). I'll give it a try -- hopefully the package allows changing the setting from 3 minutes to a more conservative setting.

If using the unMENU package manager, modify the supplied apcupsd-unmenu-package.conf configuration file for apcupsd to add three new lines (in green below) to set the timing parameters from the default ones.

The FIRST parameter reached will initiate a power down sequence.
MINUTES = remaining run time in minutes (default = 3, line below changes that to 5 minutes remaining)
BATTERYLEVEL = percentage charge left in battery (default = 5, the line below changes that to 10% remaining charge)
TIMEOUT = absolute timer (in seconds). If outage exceeds this time, a power down sequence is initiated regardless of remaining charge. (default = 0 = not used as smart UPS can rely on battery-level and minutes. The TIMER variable must be set for a dumb UPS) The line in the configure file example shown below sets TIMEOUT to 5 minutes because at my house, if the power goes off for 5 minutes, the odds of it coming back on soon thereafter is slim.

Contents of apcupsd-unmenu-package.conf file:
PACKAGE_NAME apcupsd - A daemon for controlling APC UPS devices
PACKAGE_DESCR Apcupsd can be used for power management and controlling most
PACKAGE_DESCR of APC's UPS models on Unix and Windows machines. <br>Apcupsd works with most of APC's
PACKAGE_DESCR Smart-UPS models as well as most simple signalling models such as Back-UPS and BackUPS-Office.
PACKAGE_URL http://linuxpackages.cs.utah.edu//Slackware-12.0/ken/apcupsd-3.14.3-i486-1kjz.tgz
PACKAGE_FILE apcupsd-3.14.3-i486-1kjz.tgz
PACKAGE_INSTALLED /sbin/apcaccess
PACKAGE_DEPENDENCIES /usr/bin/mail, /sbin/powerdown
PACKAGE_MD5 98ef68509ed27848f3a8782784d42c42
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION installpkg apcupsd-3.14.3-i486-1kjz.tgz
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION sed -i -e "s/^DEVICE \/dev\/ttyS0/#DEVICE \/dev\/ttyS0/" /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION sed -i -e "s/^MINUTES 3/MINUTES 5/" /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION sed -i -e "s/^BATTERYLEVEL 5/BATTERYLEVEL 10/" /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION sed -i -e "s/^TIMEOUT 0/TIMEOUT 300/" /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION sed -i -e "s/WALL=wall/WALL=\"mail -s 'unRAID_Server_UPS_Alert' root\"/" /etc/apcupsd/apccontrol
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION /sbin/apcupsd
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION #Now, put into place the shutdown script replacement
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION echo "/sbin/powerdown" >/etc/apcupsd/doshutdown
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION echo "exit 99" >>/etc/apcupsd/doshutdown
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION chmod 755 /etc/apcupsd/doshutdown
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION sed -i -e "s/\/sbin\/poweroff/\/etc\/apcupsd\/apccontrol killpower; \/sbin\/poweroff/" /etc/rc.d/rc.6
PACKAGE_VERSION_TEST strings /sbin/apcupsd 2>&1 | grep VERSION | awk '{print $3}'
PACKAGE_VERSION_STRING 3.14.3
PACKAGE_MEMORY_USAGE Light (10K to 500K)

This configure file must be used with the unMENU package manager. If not, the commands shown as PACKAGE_INSTALLATION lines must be executed every time you reboot.

You must install the powerdown add-on to effect a clean shutdown by the UPS.

Joe L.

garycase2001

01-31-10, 07:02 PM

J. L.

01-31-10, 08:30 PM

Thanks,

I just ordered a Back-UPS RS 800VA and will give it a try with the config file modifications above. I also feel that if an outage lasts more than a few minutes I may as well just have everything shut down, so I'm glad it's so easy to simply set a 5 or 10 minute timeout rather than waiting for the battery to fully discharge.

By the way, what do you mean by this: "You must install the powerdown add-on to effect a clean shutdown by the UPS"

Is that part of the APCUPSD package ... or yet-another package that must be added? It is a separate package... also installable from the unMENU package manager. It installs itself in /sbin/powerdown
Find it described here if you want to install it on your own without unMENU's help: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Powerdown_script

It is needed to cleanly stop the array so you will not need to perform a full parity calculation when you boot back up when power is restored.

You should set your bios to automatically power on when power is restored. if you do, when power is restored, you server will come back on automatically.

One other question: With the Windows UPS management package, you can set a "shutdown time" that "tells" the UPS how long to wait after a shutdown command before turning off the UPS. Is there a way to set this with the UnRAID package? If not, what is the "behavior" of the UPS after the shutdown?

Yes, you can set it, but it is not necessary.

The linux version of apcupsd is actually smarter than the windows version. One of the last things the script, as installed above does, just before powering down the unRAID server, is send a command to the UPS for it to shut down too. Windows has no equivalent, once they start a shut-down the APC progran cannot regain control to tell the UPS to power itself off, so they must guess how long it will take to shut down and set a timer based on that guess.

The install package script I wrote as shown in the previous post has a "sed" stream-editor line that adds a command (to shut down the UPS) to the Linux script that actually shuts down the server power. We have the ability to know exactly when the UPS can be shut down.

The line in the config file
PACKAGE_INSTALLATION sed -i -e "s/\/sbin\/poweroff/\/etc\/apcupsd\/apccontrol killpower; \/sbin\/poweroff/" /etc/rc.d/rc.6
edits the /etc/rc.d/rc.6 script of commands to change the line that does the "poweroff" of the unRAID server from
/sbin/poweroff
to
/etc/apcupsd/apccontrol killpower; /sbin/poweroff

So, first a killpower command is set to the UPS, and then a poweroff is sent to the MB BIOS. (The UPS knows to delay a short bit before shutting itself off. By default the time is set to 20 seconds, you can enable and set a variable SLEEP in the apcupsd.conf file if you have a need. As I said, on windows there is a need, on Linux, there is no need. We have full control.)

It is actually pretty slick.

Joe L.

garycase2001

01-31-10, 08:59 PM

Thanks again.

Definitely sounds slick -> when I get the UPS next week I'll give it all a try.

garycase2001

02-01-10, 02:43 AM

Okay, I installed UnMenu and had a look.

This almost seems too easy :)

I looked at the Package Manager in UnMenu and it's already got a button to install the Powerdown addin and to install the UPS control module.

I modified the apcupsd-unmenu-package.conf file with the 3 lines you indicated ... but I have a question about that ==> when I click on the "Download and Install" button is that going to overwrite the modified file I already have in the UnMenu folder?

Also, once I've installed the Powerdown and UPS modules, will they automatically be included everytime UnMenu is loaded (i.e. anytime the system is rebooted)?

Lastly, once I get this working perfectly with the free 3-disc version of UnRAID, do I have to redo anything when I buy the Pro key ... or do I simply add the Pro.key file and all will still be well??

I tried UnRAID a year or so ago, but had issues with my 1.5TB Seagate drives; but the WD 2TB drives I'm trying now are working beautifully. But I consider UPS shutdown support mandatory for this before I'm willing to buy it -- I'm amazed that Tom hasn't added UPS support to the main interface (and also that it requires an add-in to always shut down correctly).

Sounds, however, like UnMenu with the Powerdown and UPS packages installed will do the trick -- I just want to see it in action :)

An unrelated (to UPS issues) question: Does the use of UnMenu in any way impact the options available on the "normal" UnRAID screen (//Tower)? I'm basically building this system for two purposes: Media streaming and backups. Except for an occasional look to confirm the temps are okay, to look at the SMART data (a REALLY nice feature of UnMenu), or to check on available space, I'll probably rarely look at the admin screens -- but am just curious about whether or not there are interactions I should be aware of between the two different interfaces.

J. L.

02-01-10, 03:16 AM

Okay, I installed UnMenu and had a look.

This almost seems too easy :)

I looked at the Package Manager in UnMenu and it's already got a button to install the Powerdown addin and to install the UPS control module.
Correct.
I modified the apcupsd-unmenu-package.conf file with the 3 lines you indicated ... but I have a question about that ==> when I click on the "Download and Install" button is that going to overwrite the modified file I already have in the UnMenu folder?
No, it downloads the "apcupsd-3.14.3-i486-1kjz.tgz" file. It does not overwrite the .conf file you edited.

Also, once I've installed the Powerdown and UPS modules, will they automatically be included everytime UnMenu is loaded (i.e. anytime the system is rebooted)?Once you download the package file, the button will change to a "Manual Install" button. When you press it the package will be installed. Once installed, the button will change to a "Re-Install on Re-Boot" button. Pressing it will configure the package to be installed when you reboot.

Lastly, once I get this working perfectly with the free 3-disc version of UnRAID, do I have to redo anything when I buy the Pro key ... or do I simply add the Pro.key file and all will still be well??
Just add the .key file, stop the array, and reboot. Everything else will stay as it was.

Sounds, however, like UnMenu with the Powerdown and UPS packages installed will do the trick -- I just want to see it in action :)

An unrelated (to UPS issues) question: Does the use of UnMenu in any way impact the options available on the "normal" UnRAID screen (//Tower)? I'm basically building this system for two purposes: Media streaming and backups. Except for an occasional look to confirm the temps are okay, to look at the SMART data (a REALLY nice feature of UnMenu), or to check on available space, I'll probably rarely look at the admin screens -- but am just curious about whether or not there are interactions I should be aware of between the two different interfaces.

the unMENU interface started as a visual way to explore improvements to the supplied management interface. It was written in GNU "awk" a language present on the unRAID distribution. It has no effect on the supplied management interface at all. It is just an alternate way of looking at the server and supplies a web-interface to features that are usually command line.

Joe L.

gorman42

02-01-10, 09:58 AM

Has there ever been talk about porting this as a Windows application?

Alternative: any luck in using it on a virtual machine?

garycase2001

02-02-10, 03:11 AM

VampyreGTX

02-02-10, 12:54 PM

Joe L.,

By the way, I was experimenting with different drives and noted something interesting: "Main" shows the drive temps for all my drives; "MyMain" only shows the temps for my WD drives, but not for my Seagate 1.5T drives (just displays an asterisk).

The asterisk means the reading isn't being provided as the drive is spun down. I believe the WD's still report SMART data, including temp, even when the drive is spun down. The seagate's won't display temp until they spin up.

garycase2001

02-02-10, 01:08 PM

The asterisk means the reading isn't being provided as the drive is spun down. I believe the WD's still report SMART data, including temp, even when the drive is spun down. The seagate's won't display temp until they spin up.

Except that they're all spun up -- the temps are shown just fine on the "Main" page or on the standard UnRAID interface page. The WDs also don't report temps if they're spun down. Both the "Main" page in UnMenu and the standard UnRAID interface show everything correctly -- *'s when the drives are spun down; temps when they're spun up. But the "MyMain" page always shows *'s for the Seagates.

J. L.

02-02-10, 04:14 PM

Joe L.,

Thanks !!

What a great add-in Unmenu is. I've known about it ever since I initially tried UnRAID over a year ago, but avoided it as I wanted a "pure" UnRAID system ... on the premise that would be the most solid, reliable setup.

But clearly UnMenu is very solid -- and it's support for UPS is the only reason I'm now considering UnRAID again.

A couple of question after some playing around with UnMenu ...

(a) If a package shows "Currently installed, but not downloaded" does that simply mean it's already part of UnRAID? Any reason to download it?No reason to download it, at one time it was not part of the base unRAID.

(b) rsync showed that was installed but the version wasn't "as expected" (3.02 instead of 3.04). I went ahead and downloaded, installed, and set for auto-install => I presume that was the right thing to do.
Unless you needed some feature/fix that occurred between 3.02 and 3.04, it really did not need to be installed. Does not really matter it you did. I checked and rsync is now up to 3.0.7, but that is not in Slackware as of yet as a downloadable package.
(c) I haven't downloaded and installed the UPS package yet, since I won't have the UPS until Thursday. Just for grins, after I connect the UPS, download and install the package and set for auto-install, what would happen if I booted the system without the UPS connected? I assume it would simply not load the UPS code => but would it also require a reinstall if I later re-connected the UPS? [Clearly I can answer these myself with a bit of experimentation .. I'm just curious how it works.]
It will install, but not start since it will not detect a UPS. If it is already installed, just type:
/sbin/apcupsd
on the command line and it will start.
By the way, I was experimenting with different drives and noted something interesting: "Main" shows the drive temps for all my drives; "MyMain" only shows the temps for my WD drives, but not for my Seagate 1.5T drives (just displays an asterisk).You looked at different times. The temps on unMENU's Main are only shown when the drive is spinning, otherwise, it too shows a "*". The MyMain page is a little smarter for WD drives. They can report a temperature without being spun up. Most drives will spin up if you attempt to read their temperature, so when spun down, a "*" is shown.

Glad you are having fun with unMENU. As I said, it is an exercise in exploring how the unRAID interface could be improved. Since unRAID did not come with a web-server we could add to, I wrote the unMENU web-server/plug-in add-on using what was available. It has its limitations, but does pretty well for a few "awk" and "shell" scripts.

Version 5.0 of unRAID is changing to use a more standard web-server. We've not yet seen it, but it will support add-ons written in Ruby/Sinatra. I expect a lot of the useful features we've explored in unMENU will be migrated.

In any case, unMENU will still work as a stand-alone.

As far as MyMain not showing temperatures when the unRAID Main does, and unMENU Main does, that is the first I've heard of that. I do know the disk spin-up features of MyMain do not work as expected in unRAID 4.5. It does not use the new "spinup" commands recently added. (The drive will spin up, but unRAID will spin them down since it dis not know of the spin-up)

Joe L.

garycase2001

02-05-10, 05:40 PM

J. L.

02-05-10, 06:17 PM

Joe,

Thanks yet again. Nothing really new, but I did promise an update, so here 'tis.

I installed the UPS [an APC BR800BLK] and it works perfectly. Did the following tests:

(1) With all drives spun down I unplugged the UPS. After 5 minutes it started the shutdown sequence -- took a while, as it spun each drive up first, but then shut itself down and the UPS turned off. When power was restored the UPS turned back on, as I'd expect (so clearly the system would restart if I had the BIOS set to turn on when power restored -- I prefer to manually turn it on).

(2) With a movie being streamed to another PC, I unplugged the UPS. System turned off as expected [Clearly generated an error on the streaming PC ... but the server turned off as it was supposed to -- just what I'd want to happen (and if it had been a "real" outage the other system would be turning itself off also)].

(3) Booted the system without the UPS connected (just unplugged the data cable). Then shut it down; reconnected the UPS; and rebooted -- the UPS software was still active and working fine. While it's unlikely I'll ever boot without the UPS cable connected, I just wanted to confirm this would work okay.

While I can't think of any reason NOT to run UnMenu, I'm just curious ... my current "Go" file looks like this:

--------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash
# Start the Management Utility
/usr/local/sbin/emhttp &
/boot/unmenu/uu
cd /boot/packages && find . -name '*.auto_install' -type f -print | sort | xargs -n1 sh -c
--------------------------------------------------------------

Now that it's all set up, if I simply removed the "/boot/unmenu/uu" line would the installed packages all still work? [In particular the UPS controls]
Yes, the "cd /boot/packages.... " line that follows is the one that runs the auto_install scripts it finds in the /boot/packages directory that re-install everything upon reboot. You do not have to be actively running unMENU. You can delete the line
/boot/unmenu/uu
at this time with no effect (other than unMENU will not start itself when you reboot) You can still start it on the command line.
On my system I'll certainly leave UnMenu working just fine; but a friend wants me to build him a similar setup, and on his I'd want it to be fully headless and it's very unlikely he'd ever even access the web interface, so there's no reason to have UnMenu running unless it's needed.

It's amazing how simple UnMenu made it to install UPS support !!! :)
That was the whole idea of the package manager. It was a collaborative effort.. when we wrote it, the "wget" command was not part of unRAID, so we had to write our own process to download files using "awk" The amazing fact is that it works at all.

The "package.conf" files were just my way of including some install commands to make it easy for people. I left them as editable files because I wanted to make it easy for people to create them for packages they were interested in. Quite a few have been created by others for various packages since they are so easy.

I will say, the APC UPS package and "powerdown" package are both very popular, and it makes it very easy to get apcupsd running, and shut the server down cleanly in a power outage.

Good luck with your server. I am assuming you also installed the powerdown package and also set it to re-install on reboot. (It is needed for a clean shutdown)

I have my entire theater on a pair of UPS's (No, not the small one powering the unRAID server. I have both a 2000 watt UPS and a 1000 watt UPS for the theater itself. About the only thing not powered by them is the subwoofer amplifier. ) For a short power blip, I wouldn't even know power was interrupted.

As far as running headless, you DO need to look at the web-interface to learn of failed drives, or to perform other maintenance. If you are not actively looking at it, you'll never know if a drive fails as unRAID will simulate the failed drive's contents using its RAID ability. You are then subject to a data loss if a second concurrent drive fails. Your goal is to detect the first failure and replace the drive before a second drive fails. Most of us have e-mail notifications in place when failures occur. (a different add-on) You can find one version of it here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2470.0

Most all maintenance can be done from the web, or over the LAN, so you can run headless.

Joe L.

TheMerk

02-05-10, 11:06 PM

Joseph Clark

02-05-10, 11:41 PM

J. L.

02-05-10, 11:57 PM

I'm ready to ditch Windows Home Server and run unRaid on my current homebuilt WHS. The reason I'd like to go to unRaid is that WHS isn't very efficient with disk space. I have 8TB of disk space in my WHS, but it's effectively halved by WHS's file duplication. With unRaid I would actually have 6.5TB or usable storage to start. I'll lose the nightly WHS backups and drive imaging, but I'm not worried, since I imaged my drives manually for years before building my WHS box.

My question is, assuming my current hardware works with unRaid, what about adding an additional SATA card down the road, after my unRaid build has been running? Would unRaid detect the new card and attached drives upon the first boot (assuming I buy a supported card of course!)unRAID will detect the hardware, as long as it has the drivers for it. It is really very hardware independent. frequently you read of people who swap out disk controllers, motherboards, etc. unRAID does not assign disks to the array, you do. You can leave disks connected but not assigned to the array.

To assign a newly added disk you would need to stop the array, assign a new disk to the array and then start the array. It is as easy as that. If the disk was pre-cleared, you will then be presented with a button to format the new drive. The existing drives in the array are not affected.

If the newly added drive was not pre-cleared, it will first be cleared by unRAID and then the array will start and you will be presented with a button to format the new drive. Formatting takes less than a minute. The clearing of a large drive can take many hours. (Every byte on it is set to zero) The pre-clearing process can keep the off-line-time of your array to a minimum, since if unRAID clears the disk, the array is not started until the clearing is complete. If a pre-cleared drive is added to an array, the array starts with no delay.

The only issue you can run into when adding a new disk controller is that Linux will possibly scan the new hardware in a different order and assign the disk devices differently. This is not a huge issue, but if unRAID sees old disks on a new a new disk controller it might not start the array until you confirm the disks are assigned to the correct slots in the array. If not, you just go to the "device" assignment page, assign the disks to the correct slots in the array, and then press "Start"

Joe L.

Joseph Clark

02-06-10, 12:10 AM

I had an UnRAID system mobo die and I replaced EVERYTHING except the drives. I assigned the drives to the appropriate slots on the new drive controllers and started the array. It did a parity check and I was back up and running. :)

garycase2001

02-06-10, 08:05 AM

... I am assuming you also installed the powerdown package and also set it to re-install on reboot. (It is needed for a clean shutdown)
...
As far as running headless, you DO need to look at the web-interface to learn of failed drives, or to perform other maintenance.
...
Most of us have e-mail notifications in place when failures occur. (a different add-on) You can find one version of it here ...
Joe L.

Okay, you've tweaked my interest even more :)
A few random thoughts ...

Yes, I installed the Powerdown package and have it re-install on reboot. That triggers a thought -- does the shutdown that's invoked by just pushing the power button on the server use this package? Just curious if that's as "safe" as using the web management page [which I presume uses the Powerdown package].

I will look at the web management page (and UnMenu) frequently -- but the spouse will NEVER do so; and my friend who wants a similar system will not likely do it often either [although I'll try to "train" him :) ].

E-Mail notification !! Wonderful idea => but this apparently requires setting it up via logging in at the server console. I presume the login (at "Tower Login") is simply "root" with no password, as shown on the management page. You often refer in your posts to just Telnet'ing to the console -- if I try to do that in XP I get a "can't connect to Tower" message. Is there a trick to doing this? ... and which Telnet client do you use? [I'm actually running '7, but tried an XP system for Telnet since '7 doesn't have a Telnet client.] I've temporarily got a monitor and keyboard on the server, but plan to run it entirely headless once I finish building it [I need to add another 5-in-3 cage and controller card once I buy the Pro key.]

Another question r.e. one of your other great projects => the version of UnMenu I downloaded and installed doesn't have a package for your PreClear script. Does this also have to be installed via a direct login to the server?

Finally, a question r.e. editing the .conf files => in reading about the other packages (e-mail & pre-clear) I saw a few notes about using editors that added CR/LF to the .conf files causing issues. I think I did that when I added the 3 lines you provided earlier r.e. changing the UPS shutdown parameters ... that file now "looks" fine in Notepad, whereas the original didn't due to the single NewLine character. It seems to be working fine -- but should I replace it with a version that doesn't have CR/LF's?? [I edited it with Windows 7's "Windows Write", which apparently changed the formatting.

thejones

02-06-10, 10:32 AM

J. L.

02-06-10, 01:55 PM

I've been considering switching to Unraid for a while, but a few things make me uneasy. I come from the corporate IT world where I'm used to running production linux servers. Unraid makes me a bit uneasy with things like its use of telnet, its unsecured web interface, no root password, etc.

Admittedly, this box will be used for home use and media storage, but I feel like you should be as secure as you can without too much hassle. I guess my question is, how hard is it to secure Unraid? I'm looking for https auth on the web interface, ssh for management, disabling telnet, per user permissions for SMB, etc.

One of my requirements for a storage server is also remote access, how hard is it to setup scp or rsync?It is basically a stripped down Slackware 12.2 linux underneath it all. It is very easy to add a "root" password through the supplied web-interface. The same with adding specific users and SMB access to specific shared folders.

You can secure it as much as your Linux abilities allow. Obviously, the more you secure it, the less friendly it becomes to your users and user-applications.

Per-user permission configuration through the web-interface is only available in the "pro" version, but they are based on SAMBA config files. If you want to do it by hand, you can, even without the pro-version.

I don't envision an https interface any time soon in the 4.5 release of unRAID. But we do know lime-tech is migrating from a proprietary web-server, to a more standard one in the 5.0 series of unRAID (we are guessing lighttpd) At that time it can have a security cert added.

Joe L.

ejhuzy

02-06-10, 09:07 PM

Can an unRaid box run apache to allow http streaming from it?

J. L.

02-06-10, 11:56 PM

Can an unRaid box run apache to allow http streaming from it?
As I said earlier, unRAID is based on Slackware... so the answer is yes, but you'll need to install apache, php, and the libraries they depend on.

See this post where one user described exactly what you are looking for
and described http streaming of media on his LAN from an unRAID server: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=887.0

Joe L.

ejhuzy

02-07-10, 12:07 AM

As I said earlier, unRAID is based on Slackware... so the answer is yes, but you'll need to install apache, php, and the libraries they depend on.

See this post where one user described exactly what you are looking for
and described http streaming of media on his LAN from an unRAID server: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=887.0

Joe L.

Thanks for the link Joe. I figured it could, just wanted someone to tell me so.

kciaccio

02-12-10, 08:23 PM

Don't know about the compatibility - that'll depend on whether the mobo is compatible. If it is, there's a good chance UnRAID will find the card and configure it for you. That's what happened in my build.

Yeah, the thing nobody talks about much is how inefficient WHS is. The "magic" of the parity drive is that one drive effectively gives you security for all the other drives in the UnRAID system. You lose a fraction of the hard drive space, not half of it. For people who typically back up vast amounts of media, WHS is a huge waste of space.
I so agree. WHS does not even compare> I looked at that for an option at first but crossed it off in about thirty seconds of looking at it's features. It is so not geared towards most peoples needs here at AVS forum. But if I was a noob at networking AND I had no iterest in saving a huge music and video library but instead wanted to save a couple home movies, important documents and about 30 cd's WHS is perfect!!lol

ScoHo

02-12-10, 10:09 PM

garycase2001

02-12-10, 11:43 PM

I recently installed unMenu (great add-on), and tried to install the UPS add-on. I downloaded it via the Package Manager, but then when I go to install it, I get the message:

Installed, but version is different.
Current version='' expected '3.14.3'

I haven't really had the chance to investigate the problem yet. Is there something I need to do to the UPS first to make it work?

I'm on unRAID v4.5, unMENU v1.2.

I get the same message => just click on the Install button; then on the "install on reboot" button; and it works perfectly (at least with my APC UPS unit -- a BR800BLK).

ScoHo

02-13-10, 07:39 PM

I get the same message => just click on the Install button; then on the "install on reboot" button; and it works perfectly (at least with my APC UPS unit -- a BR800BLK).
Apparently it was installed all along. So do you know of any good guide for getting this thing running/configured for unRAID? I couldn't find anything on the LimeTech site/forums. My Linux knowledge is minimal.

garycase2001

02-14-10, 03:56 AM

Apparently it was installed all along. So do you know of any good guide for getting this thing running/configured for unRAID? I couldn't find anything on the LimeTech site/forums. My Linux knowledge is minimal.

I'm also barely literate in Linux. The only modifications I made were three lines I added to the .conf file, thanks to Joe L.'s guidance in this post:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18040173#post18040173

Works like a charm -- if I unplug the UPS the UnRAID box will shut down in 5 minutes, and the UPS turns off a few seconds later. When power's restored (plug the UPS back in) the UPS turns itself on ... and if I set the BIOS power settings to do so, so would the UnRAID server [I don't have it do that -- I prefer to turn it back on myself.]

J. L.

02-14-10, 11:24 AM

I recently installed unMenu (great add-on), and tried to install the UPS add-on. I downloaded it via the Package Manager, but then when I go to install it, I get the message:

Installed, but version is different.
Current version='' expected '3.14.3'

I haven't really had the chance to investigate the problem yet. Is there something I need to do to the UPS first to make it work?

I'm on unRAID v4.5, unMENU v1.2.Because the UPS is not attached the old .conf file is unable to see the version number. Just plug in the UPS via its USB cable, and with luck, the version number should match.

Joe L.

garycase2001

02-14-10, 06:45 PM

Because the UPS is not attached the old .conf file is unable to see the version number. Just plug in the UPS via its USB cable, and with luck, the version number should match.

Joe L.

Joe,

I had the exact same issue when I initially clicked the "Install" button for this package -- and my USB data cable WAS connected. But as I noted above, I simply clicked the "Install" button anyway (and then the "reinstall on boot") and it works perfectly ... shuts down as expected; shows UPS status on the System Info page; etc.

garycase2001

02-15-10, 06:58 AM

brianley

02-15-10, 09:49 AM

Okay, I've experimented enough with the basic version I'm ready to build a nice new UnRAID box and ramp up my drive count with a Pro license.

I know Tom uses Celerons in the servers Limetech sells ... and even the upgraded CPU he offers is only an E7400.

For my new UnRAID box I don't want to use more CPU than I need, but I DO want to use plenty to get max performance. Clearly I don't need an i7 -- and I suppose not even a Core 2 Quad; but I'd be very interested in performance differences anyone's noticed who's using a higher-end CPU ... especially if you've used the same board with a low end Celeron or Pentium Dual Core before upgrading the CPU.

i.e. is there any reason at all to use a CPU better than perhaps an E5300 Pentium Dual Core? [Can't quite bring myself to consider the lower-end Celerons.] I'm basically debating between an E5300, E8400, and Q9650 -- but don't want to buy the latter two if they don't actually provide some performance benefits to an UnRAID box.

IMO, no. UnRaid is not a CPU intensive process. The parity calculation is minimal so what you really want is a low power CPU if you're going to leave it running all the time. I'm using a 4+ yr old AMD 4800 dual core because I had it available, otherwise I'd probably have gone with a lower power chip. A quad is a complete waste in my opinion. You may want to check their forums, probably has more info on what difference a higher power CPU would make.

TheMerk

02-15-10, 03:32 PM

J. L.

02-15-10, 06:05 PM

I'm running my unRaid server on an AMD Sempron 3200. I'm in the same boat, only reason I used it is because I had it running around. One of these days I'll switch mobo and CPU to something more efficient. Until then, I've had no issues whatsoever with the low power CPU.It will quite happily run on an old pentium 3. I have one of the old celeron CPUs in my unRAID server.

When serving a movie to one of my media players I see this:
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 77.5%id, 19.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.7%si, 0.0%

So... 77.5% it is idle. 19.2% it is waiting on I/O. The cpu is less than 3% busy.

Playing a second movie on a second media player at the same time results in this:
Cpu(s): 3.0%us, 11.3%sy, 2.6%ni, 55.6%id, 26.2%wa, 0.7%hi, 0.7%si, 0.0%st

Now, with both movies playing, starting a full parity check results in this:
Cpu(s): 3.3%us, 23.2%sy, 7.0%ni, 47.7%id, 14.9%wa, 2.6%hi, 1.3%si, 0.0%st

Ok, now start a third movie on yet another media player:
Cpu(s): 6.6%us, 26.5%sy, 2.3%ni, 12.9%id, 46.7%wa, 2.3%hi, 2.6%si, 0.0%st

And a fourth movie on yet another media player.
Cpu(s): 6.0%us, 25.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 64.6%wa, 1.3%hi, 3.0%si, 0.0%st

And, last but not least, a fifth movie playing on yet another media player
Cpu(s): 7.0%us, 21.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 66.9%wa, 1.7%hi, 3.0%si, 0.0%st

Most of the time is either idle, or waiting on I/O.
Playing 5 full bitrate DVD ISO images and doing a parity check at the same time on an array with 10 data drives and a parity drive, and an old celeron cpu results in the CPU being 28.5% busy.

You do not need much cpu unless you plan on running user add-ons like vmware sessions emulating other CPUs. For basic file-sharing, I'd suspect any old cpu would probably suffice.

Lastly, canceling the parity check, leaving the 5 movies all playing, I get:
Cpu(s): 5.6%us, 6.3%sy, 2.0%ni, 74.2%id, 9.3%wa, 1.0%hi, 1.7%si, 0.0%st

Unless you have a large family (8 - 10 or more people), and nobody can agree on what to watch, and you have a different movie playing in every single room in your house, I suspect you'll be fine with just about any CPU.

Joe L.

garycase2001

02-15-10, 10:21 PM

Joe - Thanks for the detail; that's exactly what I was looking for.

No wonder Tom just uses a Celeron. My "playing around with it" system is a P-IV 3.4, and it also doesn't show any real CPU use; but it only has 3 drives, so I wanted to be sure the CPU needs (primarily for parity check and writes) didn't ramp up with drives, as I expect to have 8-10 drives initially and will probably ramp up to 15 eventually.

I could just use that old board, but I've decided to build a whole new setup with the SuperMicro C2SEA and a new case. Your stats make it clear I don't need much CPU, so I'll just use an E5300. This will be a dedicated box running only UnRAID, UnMenu, and the UPS control add-on.

J. L.

02-16-10, 12:04 AM

Joe - Thanks for the detail; that's exactly what I was looking for.

No wonder Tom just uses a Celeron.
Needless to say, the unRAID server handles our needs very well. (There is just my wife and myself, and 95% of the time we are watching the same movie.)

Good thing you learned enough from my test, as I only had 2 other PCs on my LAN that did not have a movie playing , and one of them is an old 500MHz Pentium-1. (I'm not sure it can handle playing a DVD... It does not even have a DVD drive on it, just a pair of CD drives.) I'll have to load VideoLAN on it and try sometime.

Joe L.

garycase2001

02-16-10, 03:03 AM

Needless to say, the unRAID server handles our needs very well. (There is just my wife and myself, and 95% of the time we are watching the same movie.)

Good thing you learned enough from my test, as I only had 2 other PCs on my LAN that did not have a movie playing , and one of them is an old 500MHz Pentium-1. (I'm not sure it can handle playing a DVD... It does not even have a DVD drive on it, just a pair of CD drives.) I'll have to load VideoLAN on it and try sometime.

Joe L.

I was reasonably certain before I even asked the question -- I just like to see actual data, and you provided plenty of that :)

It's also just me and my wife -- and we also are generally watching the same thing. I have 3 TV's with PC's attached plus 5 other computers and two laptops ... so I can give my server a real test when I get it set up :D

By the way, if you ever need a computer just for a media extender for a TV, I recently tried a little Acer Revo 1600 Atom-based system with the ION graphics ... and it's amazing. Plays DVDs perfectly (streamed from my Windows 2003 server - soon to be UnRAID server); streams Netflix perfectly; and works great as a Beyond TV Link machine. It's only $200, and draws a whopping 18 watts !! (per my Kill-a-Watt) It's a great box to pair with your HDTVs for playing the media from an UnRAID server.

J. L.

02-16-10, 05:37 AM

I
By the way, if you ever need a computer just for a media extender for a TV, I recently tried a little Acer Revo 1600 Atom-based system with the ION graphics ... and it's amazing. Plays DVDs perfectly (streamed from my Windows 2003 server - soon to be UnRAID server); streams Netflix perfectly; and works great as a Beyond TV Link machine. It's only $200, and draws a whopping 18 watts !! (per my Kill-a-Watt) It's a great box to pair with your HDTVs for playing the media from an UnRAID server.I picked one up a week ago. I'm running XBMC live on it on the HDTV in the den. I have it booting Linux-Live XBMC 9.11 from a USB flash drive. I've not yet overwritten the Win-XP OS it came with, so if I un-plug the flash drive I can get it to boot to the original OS.

The 1600 replaced the AlTech Mediagate MG-35 I had previously in the Den.

Joe L.

garycase2001

02-22-10, 04:03 AM

Anyone know a supplier that has the Adaptec 1430SA's in stock? I bought one last month from Newegg to "play with" (and am now using it in a non-UnRAID box), but they're now "not currently available" ... and everyone else I've looked at lists them as out-of-stock.

Since the 8-port Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards don't work in UnRAID (at least not according to anything I can find), I need a couple of the 1430's for my new UnRAID server build.

CDLehner

02-27-10, 07:23 PM

OK, to this point I've been building my first box and posting the basic, starting questions in my noobie build thread; but I felt like this one might be best left for my first post here.

I originally started with 3 drives; a 1.5 I assigned to parity, and a 1T and 250G that I pulled from my old WHS array for data...and I started moving data over from the WHS array a little at a time. As I was able to move data off the WHS array, I was able to write-out another 1T drive that I now wanted to add to the unRAID one.

I put the drive in my case. Now...even though I've written about 750G worth of data to the unRAID array, it doesn't look like it touched the 250G drive yet. So what I did was simply stop the array, unassign the 250G drive as disk 2, and reassign the new 1T drive there.

The disk status is "blue", and the array is still stopped while the Web UI tells me it is "upgrading disk". That seems normal, but it's been that way for several hours now...which again, may be normal, considering I went from a 250G to a 1T; I just wanted to check and make sure I didn't go about this switch in the wrong way.

BTW, I have a Plus license...and if you're wondering why I didn't just add the new 1T...rather than exchange it for the 250G...it's because I'm hoping to put the 250G in the cache drive, to speed up the rest of my transfers.

CD

TheMerk

02-27-10, 08:09 PM

The disk status is "blue", and the array is still stopped while the Web UI tells me it is "upgrading disk". That seems normal, but it's been that way for several hours now...which again, may be normal, considering I went from a 250G to a 1T; I just wanted to check and make sure I didn't go about this switch in the wrong way.

Sounds normal to me. Adding drives to the array is super quick, it's upgrading and moving drives that takes a while for unRaid to complete.

CDLehner

02-27-10, 08:12 PM

Sounds normal to me. Adding drives to the array is super quick, it's upgrading and moving drives that takes a while for unRaid to complete.

Thanks TM. It's been about 5 hours at this point; stay patient?

6.5...

CD

garycase2001

02-27-10, 11:52 PM

Thanks TM. It's been about 5 hours at this point; stay patient?

6.5...

CD

Yes, stay patient. It can take a LONG time to add a 1TB drive. By the way, if you had added it instead of replacing the 250GB, it would NOT have been "super quick". UnRAID would have to clear the drive before it could add it -- and that takes a very long time (many hours) ... and the array is not available during that clearing process. If you want to add drives quickly, read about the PreClear script on the UnRAID forums -- it lets you clear a new drive before you assign it to the array. The preclear operation takes a long time (could easily be 20 hrs for a 1TB drive) ... but your array is still available while it's running, and when you add a precleared drive to the array it is indeed "super quick."

CDLehner

02-28-10, 12:15 AM

Yes, stay patient. It can take a LONG time to add a 1TB drive. By the way, if you had added it instead of replacing the 250GB, it would NOT have been "super quick". UnRAID would have to clear the drive before it could add it -- and that takes a very long time (many hours) ... and the array is not available during that clearing process. If you want to add drives quickly, read about the PreClear script on the UnRAID forums -- it lets you clear a new drive before you assign it to the array. The preclear operation takes a long time (could easily be 20 hrs for a 1TB drive) ... but your array is still available while it's running, and when you add a precleared drive to the array it is indeed "super quick."

OK...glad someone commented, because it's been over 9 hours now, and I would have been concerned. Hopefully by morning it'll be clear.

Thanks,
CD

TheMerk

02-28-10, 12:23 AM

Yes, stay patient. It can take a LONG time to add a 1TB drive. By the way, if you had added it instead of replacing the 250GB, it would NOT have been "super quick". UnRAID would have to clear the drive before it could add it -- and that takes a very long time (many hours) ... and the array is not available during that clearing process. If you want to add drives quickly, read about the PreClear script on the UnRAID forums -- it lets you clear a new drive before you assign it to the array. The preclear operation takes a long time (could easily be 20 hrs for a 1TB drive) ... but your array is still available while it's running, and when you add a precleared drive to the array it is indeed "super quick."

I'd like to mention that I have yet to run the PreClear script, and have yet to wait a long time for UnRaid to add a new drive to the pool.

This includes 1.5TB drives that already had an existing NTFS files system on them, as well as brand new drives. UnRaid took a few minutes to format them, and that was it.

I'm running unRAID Server Plus 4.5.1.

Every parity check I've ever done has been error free.

What am I missing?

garycase2001

02-28-10, 03:01 AM

I'd like to mention that I have yet to run the PreClear script, and have yet to wait a long time for UnRaid to add a new drive to the pool.

This includes 1.5TB drives that already had an existing NTFS files system on them, as well as brand new drives. UnRaid took a few minutes to format them, and that was it.

I'm running unRAID Server Plus 4.5.1.

Every parity check I've ever done has been error free.

What am I missing?

The only way you can add a drive quickly is checking the "Restore" box before you Start the array. This will let you quickly add a new disk by simply using the Format command (just a few seconds) => HOWEVER, the array will then not be parity protected, as it will have to recompute parity ... which will take several hours. Adding a drive like this is the same as adding one to an UnRAID array that does not have a parity disk assigned -- yes, it's quick, but the array is not fault-tolerant.

If you want to add a drive, but keep the array protected from any drive failures (the whole purpose of the parity drive), then you simply Start the array and the system will format the drive in two phases -- first clearing it (writing all zeroes -- so it can be added to the array without changing the parity); and then the normal format operation.

The process is described here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Manual#Add_one_or_more_new_disks

CDLehner

02-28-10, 08:10 AM

OK...glad someone commented, because it's been over 9 hours now, and I would have been concerned. Hopefully by morning it'll be clear.

Thanks,
CD

Damn; still not done. That's 17 hours now; can that be right? Plus, the disc in question is blinking "blue"; doesn't that mean it's spun down? How can it be "upgrading" spun down? :confused:

Ugh...I manually spun the disks back up, in case the unRAID spun down the new disk and wasn't actively "upgrading" it. I hate not knowing if it's actually doing anything; I sit and refresh, and for 19 hours now haven't gotten anything other than stopped...upgrading disk. I'm trying to be patient, but at what point does patience become foolishness, because I'm just sitting here for 24 hours waiting for something to change? Should I try a reboot; will that hurt anything...or if it's really still upgrading, will it just pick back up where it left off before the reboot? :confused:

CD

J. L.

02-28-10, 10:57 AM

Damn; still not done. That's 17 hours now; can that be right? Plus, the disc in question is blinking "blue"; doesn't that mean it's spun down? How can it be "upgrading" spun down? :confused:

Ugh...I manually spun the disks back up, in case the unRAID spun down the new disk and wasn't actively "upgrading" it. I hate not knowing if it's actually doing anything; I sit and refresh, and for 19 hours now haven't gotten anything other than stopped...upgrading disk. I'm trying to be patient, but at what point does patience become foolishness, because I'm just sitting here for 24 hours waiting for something to change? Should I try a reboot; will that hurt anything...or if it's really still upgrading, will it just pick back up where it left off before the reboot? :confused:

CDFirst, you'll find more help at the lime-tech forums... we really don't go looking here as often.

Second. The key to getting any assistance is to provide the clues needed. The biggest clue is a copy of the syslog.

You might be at a point where you simply need to press "Start" and the screen label and wording is confusing.

Re-booting will not re-start the process in the middle. In most cases it would not be harmful, but you will be faced with a full parity check upon reboot.

To help you , we really need to see a copy of the syslog and possibly a screen-shot of the management page as you currently see it.

It is entirely possible that one of your disks is having errors... Or, it might be that you just did not actually check the checkbox under "Start" and press it to begin the upgrading process. (That is my guess)

If I understand you correctly, you replaced a smaller disk with a larger disk. Upon powering up the array status is "Stopped" and it says "Upgrading"
but you did not press the "Start" button yet.

Whatever you do, DO NOT PRESS the button labeled as "restore" as it does not restore data, but instead resets an initial disk configuration and immediately invalidates parity. You do NOT want to do that as you do NOT want to lose the data you are trying to reconstruct onto the new disk.

The unRAID wiki is here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Wiki
the unRAID forum is here:http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php

Instructions for capturing a copy of the syslog are in the wiki under "troubleshooting" You can attach a zipped copy to a post on the unRAID forum for analysis.

Joe L.

J. L.

02-28-10, 11:11 AM

and if you're wondering why I didn't just add the new 1T...rather than exchange it for the 250G...it's because I'm hoping to put the 250G in the cache drive, to speed up the rest of my transfers.
CDAlthough the 250 Gig cache drive will speed up the time to transfer a file from your other PC to the unRAID server it does it by writing the file transferred to the protected array in the middle of the night. This process of writing to the data drives still takes as long as it would otherwise, it is just occurring while you sleep.

This feature is useless if transferring more than the capacity of the cache drive fro your other PC. as the cache drive will fill and then subsequent writes will go to the data drives anyway.

I don't know your exact needs, but in most cases, if transferring a LOT of data from an old server to unRAID, the cache drive will only get in your way. It might even cause files to fail to be moved if insufficient space exists on the cache drive for all the files you are transferring in a given day.

Joe L.

garycase2001

02-28-10, 04:22 PM

CDLehner,

Just read your original question again, and noticed your comment, "... even though I've written about 750G worth of data to the unRAID array, it doesn't look like it touched the 250G drive yet ..."

So at this point you only have data on ONE disk (your 1TB drive). By far the fastest way to both upgrade your system and to copy your data is to simply run the system "at risk" while you load it. Just unassign the parity disk; then add the 2nd 1TB drive (it will add VERY quickly, since without a parity drive it will only need to be formatted -- about a 30 second process); then you can copy the rest of your data ... which will copy very quickly without a parity drive involved (one disk access per write instead of four). Then when the array's loaded stop the array; assign the parity drive; and start the array again -- it will then compute parity and you'll then be fault-tolerant again.

The downside of this approach is that you remove the fault-tolerance from the array while you're loading it, but with only one disk currently containing data that's a VERY small risk.

I agree with Joe L.'s comments r.e. the cache drive -- in general I see no reason to use a cache drive => you can do effectively the same thing by using drive space on any system in your network as the repository for "stuff to copy" and then just initiating a copy from that drive to the array whenver you want (e.g. overnight).

By the way, Joe L. is THE expert on UnRAID -- if he gives you advice, LISTEN to it :)

CDLehner

02-28-10, 05:55 PM

J. L.

02-28-10, 06:26 PM

Thanks for the help guys; it's been a learning experience, and unfortunately some of my learning has been a little painful. Could have been worse; only cost me time, not data.

Here's where I'm at; I finally had Joe point me in the right direction on why I was stalled after adding that drive. It took about 5 hours to clear it and re-build the array...which I know is normal...but I got back up and running.

I'm now moving another 160G package over from WHS, and I don't think I'm utilizing cache right. My understanding of cache is it allows you to copy data, that initially bypasses the protection through parity. I've just been copying from one WHS share to one of my User shares in unRAID.

So...to take advantage of cache, do you have to copy directy to that drive?
No, you don't copy directly to it. The "cache" drive was added as a feature of unRAID when its "write" performance in the 8-10 MB/s range. That was too slow for those who were trying to record directly to the array from live TV.

Over the past two years, performance has improved to where is is now possible to write to the array at > 30 MB/s. In fact, one user today reported that upgrading unRAID from 4.3.3 to 4.5.1 allowed them to write to the array at over 35 MB/s (and this is without a cache drive)

The cache drive is only used in combination with the "user-shares." It is not used at all if you write directory to the disk shares. Its content are transparently merged with the user-share disks. In other words, as long as it has the space, files are written there if it is configured and if it is enabled for the specific user-share. (You enable it on a per-share basis) You write to the normal user-share directory. As far as you are concerned, the "cache" drive is not visible from the PC you are copying from.
How does it get moved; do you just do it manually later, or can unRAID do it automatically at like a set time?
In the middle of the night, the "mover" script is invoked by the scheduler to move the files to the protected array. The "schedule is set on the settings page as a "crontab string" Basically, you can set it up on almost any schedule you like, but by default it is once a day in the middle of the night.

The cache drive feature is useless when initially loading the array if you are loading more than the capacity of the cache drive. I do not recommend you use it at all.

In fact, the whole need for the cache drive has basically been removed for most use. the unRAID server can now keep up with an HD transport stream being recorded, and that was the whole reason it was initially added. I've had my array for about 4 years now and have never assigned a "cache" drive.
So...are you guys suggesting that once I get done with this move (don't think it wise to cancel in the middle), and I'll have ~500G left...that I just take the parity drive out of the array temporarily, and copy that way? And I just stop array, unassign parity, and that's it?
Let the transfer that is in progress complete. Then, press the "Move Now" button on the interface to clear the cache drive of the cached files. Depending on how many files you've transferred, this too will take a while.

Then, stop the array, un-assign the parity drive and the cache drive, and re-start it. Now, when you write you will be writing to the disks as fast as your hardware will allow. Just be aware that the data is not protected from a disk failure until you re-assign the parity drive and calculate parity and then check parity. (Calculating writes to the parity drive, checking it reads from the drive. Until you know you can reliably read fro the drive you are not protected)

Once you've checked it once, you should be good and need only perform a "check" once a month or so... Not because the parity might be bad, but because your hardware might go bad... and you don't want to discover you can't read a disk when trying to use it to rebuild another that failed. Many of us have just added an automatic monthly check of parity on the first of the month.

Don't worry, I'm going to start parusing and posting at the LT forums. And yes, I was wondering if Joe was that Joe L I always see from the LT FAQ posts. :D
CDYes, I'm the same person.

Joe L.

CDLehner

02-28-10, 07:28 PM

No, you don't copy directly to it. The "cache" drive was added as a feature of unRAID when its "write" performance in the 8-10 MB/s range. That was too slow for those who were trying to record directly to the array from live TV.

Over the past two years, performance has improved to where is is now possible to write to the array at > 30 MB/s. In fact, one user today reported that upgrading unRAID from 4.3.3 to 4.5.1 allowed them to write to the array at over 35 MB/s (and this is without a cache drive)

The cache drive is only used in combination with the "user-shares." It is not used at all if you write directory to the disk shares. Its content are transparently merged with the user-share disks. In other words, as long as it has the space, files are written there if it is configured and if it is enabled for the specific user-share. (You enable it on a per-share basis) You write to the normal user-share directory. As far as you are concerned, the "cache" drive is not visible from the PC you are copying from.

In the middle of the night, the "mover" script is invoked by the scheduler to move the files to the protected array. The "schedule is set on the settings page as a "crontab string" Basically, you can set it up on almost any schedule you like, but by default it is once a day in the middle of the night.

The cache drive feature is useless when initially loading the array if you are loading more than the capacity of the cache drive. I do not recommend you use it at all.

In fact, the whole need for the cache drive has basically been removed for most use. the unRAID server can now keep up with an HD transport stream being recorded, and that was the whole reason it was initially added. I've had my array for about 4 years now and have never assigned a "cache" drive.
Let the transfer that is in progress complete. Then, press the "Move Now" button on the interface to clear the cache drive of the cached files. Depending on how many files you've transferred, this too will take a while.

Then, stop the array, un-assign the parity drive and the cache drive, and re-start it. Now, when you write you will be writing to the disks as fast as your hardware will allow. Just be aware that the data is not protected from a disk failure until you re-assign the parity drive and calculate parity and then check parity. (Calculating writes to the parity drive, checking it reads from the drive. Until you know you can reliably read fro the drive you are not protected)

Once you've checked it once, you should be good and need only perform a "check" once a month or so... Not because the parity might be bad, but because your hardware might go bad... and you don't want to discover you can't read a disk when trying to use it to rebuild another that failed. Many of us have just added an automatic monthly check of parity on the first of the month.
Yes, I'm the same person.

Joe L.

OK, thanks Joe...but I still don't think I'm utilizing cache right. I set-up the User shares before I had assigned a cache drive...and I haven't really messed around with the whole include/exclude disks thing yet. Is that my issue?

Like I said before, I'm copying over my network, from my WHS share to my unRAID user share...and I don't see any data posting to the cache, so I'm sure it's not being utilized. No matter I guess, if you say it isn't even necessary anymore, I'm happy to drop it...but how in the world are you topping 30mbps? I'm doing like 5-6 (with parity of course), and most of the newbies on here that I've compared notes with report about the same. Guess we need to get on that LimeTech forum sooner rather than later.

CD

garycase2001

03-01-10, 04:00 AM

OK, thanks Joe...but I still don't think I'm utilizing cache right. I set-up the User shares before I had assigned a cache drive...and I haven't really messed around with the whole include/exclude disks thing yet. Is that my issue?

Like I said before, I'm copying over my network, from my WHS share to my unRAID user share...and I don't see any data posting to the cache, so I'm sure it's not being utilized. No matter I guess, if you say it isn't even necessary anymore, I'm happy to drop it...but how in the world are you topping 30mbps? I'm doing like 5-6 (with parity of course), and most of the newbies on here that I've compared notes with report about the same. Guess we need to get on that LimeTech forum sooner rather than later.

CD

I've done a good bit of experimentation in the past month as I prepare to build an UnRAID box -- basically just "playing" with 2 3-drive systems using 1.5 and 2 TB drives. Without getting into all the wild configurations I've tried (old IDE drives; 7200rpm WD Blacks; 5400rpm WD Green 2TBs; etc.) I'll just note that from what you've described I suspect your speed "issue" is simply older hardware.

I found a HUGE difference in the array speeds using the same drives on an old 3.4GHz P-IV based system using an Intel 875 chipset (Intel D875PBZ motherboard) with an add-in PCI bus SATA card and a new SuperMicro C2SEA motherboard (the same one Limetech uses in their MD1510 servers) with a Pentium Dual Core E5300 ==> over 4 times the performance for writes; parity syncs; etc. Didn't measure read speeds, as they're plenty fast in either case.

Note also that there's a big difference in the speeds if you're using a GB LAN rather than an older 100MB LAN.

I've done enough testing to know I'm going to build a C2SEA based system before I switch over to UnRAID as my main media server => I'm ready to do it, but waiting for availability of the Adaptec 1430SA cards, which are currently out of stock [I've called Adaptec to confirm they're still a current product -- they are; but they've had a delay in getting their latest batch from their supplier]. Since you only plan on using a Plus license, the 6 onboard ports on the C2SEA would be plenty ==> if you do a motherboard upgrade to the C2SEA (may require a new CPU & memory depending on what you have available) I suspect you'd get dramatically better performance.

CDLehner

03-01-10, 08:53 AM

I'll just note that from what you've described I suspect your speed "issue" is simply older hardware.

It's a brand-new build Gary. :(

CD

garycase2001

03-01-10, 04:22 PM

It's a brand-new build Gary. :(

CD

What motherboard?

SATA or IDE disks?

drealit

03-01-10, 04:55 PM

It's a brand-new build Gary. :(

CD

Heh you really need to take this over to the LT forums if you haven't already. You'd have a lot more 'additional' help there not to mention probably having it sorted out by now lol.

Nice to see Joe at work over here too. Extra brownie points... for what... I do not know. Call it Kharma or just an god awful tick to always be helping/troubleshooting :p. Regardless cheers!

J. L.

03-01-10, 05:24 PM

Heh you really need to take this over to the LT forums if you haven't already. You'd have a lot more 'additional' help there not to mention probably having it sorted out by now lol.

Nice to see Joe at work over here too. Extra brownie points... for what... I do not know. Call it Kharma or just an god awful tick to always be helping/troubleshooting :p. Regardless cheers!I was a member of AVS way before I owned an unRAID server. In fact, the original product announcement was made on AVS about 4+ years ago.

I'm still a AVS geek. It is just AVS has plenty of people with far more experience on some of their forums, so I don't post as frequently in some of them. (and I'm pretty sure I'll never get a lot of experience in the $30,000 and up forum, so odds are I'll not post in it too frequently. I'm still running a Barco CRT projector in my theater, and I'm the 4th owner of it. It might have cost near $30K when it was new, but when I purchased it it was far less...)

CDLehner

03-01-10, 06:57 PM

CDLehner

03-01-10, 06:59 PM

What motherboard?

SATA or IDE disks?

This board (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128398&cm_re=gigabyte_motherboard-_-13-128-398-_-Product) and SATA drives. Oh, BTW...I am writing to User shares, if that makes a difference.

CD

Cosmic023

03-01-10, 11:57 PM

J. L.

03-03-10, 04:11 PM

Well i'm only getting 4-6 mb/s when copying, but i guess mine is down to using a P4 / Socket 478 non PCI-E board?

It works well with cache enabled, get copy speeds of up to 45 mb/s. (Which is fine for me.)

Cheers
LeeNew release 4.5.3 is out. Reports of sustained write speeds of 40 MB/s to a parity protected disk over the LAN. (with NO cache drive)

Spikiness gone in transfer. (it was apparently a byproduct of the old pdflush process that has now been removed in the new linux kernel)

Cosmic023

03-03-10, 05:38 PM

Thanks for the tips / update J.L, I'll have a look at the newer version some time this week, when i get 5 mins.

Does the newer version help my 478 P4 setup for speed?, or does it work for both regular PCI & PCI-E boards?

Cheers
Lee

VampyreGTX

03-04-10, 04:16 PM

New release 4.5.3 is out. Reports of sustained write speeds of 40 MB/s to a parity protected disk over the LAN. (with NO cache drive)

Spikiness gone in transfer. (it was apparently a byproduct of the old pdflush process that has now been removed in the new linux kernel)

Nice, time to update my server tonight. (also finally post my syslog to the unraid forums, level 2 testing completed on my MoBo.) :) Won't do level 3 for some time... don't have 13 drives, or the need for them just yet!

shawnwalters

03-04-10, 05:15 PM

What is level 2/3 testing? I'm going with an untested board and am curious how you're putting it to the test.

J. L.

03-04-10, 06:25 PM

What is level 2/3 testing? I'm going with an untested board and am curious how you're putting it to the test.It is a concept entirely invented by the unRAID user community and described here in the wiki: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility

* The first level should require at least 3 drives (limit of free license), should have successfully computed parity, and should have successfully checked parity. A syslog should be posted to make sure there are no nasties that might point to compatibility issues. (The syslog will also document parity check performance).

* The second level should be a user with at least 6 drives (limit of Plus license) that has run for a month without a power down, had a successful parity check at the beginning and end of the month. A syslog should be posted here for that period. During this period at least 10% of the array size should be copied to and from the array.

* The third level would be a user that has had 13+ drives (including a cache disk), that has run for two months without a power down, has successfully parity checked at least 3 times (start, middle, end) and has posted a good syslog for that period. During this period at least 15% of array size should be copied to and from the array.

The syslog(s) will provide some evidence of good functionality, and running the parity checks will establish good habits going forward. Those looking to make purchase decisions will have more to go on than a casual statement of "it works perfect."

Almost any modern motherboard can boot from a USB drive. This was not the case 4 years ago. In the same way, most motherboards use a small number of networking chipsets. If you use one of those chipsets, odd are very high the unRAID software will detect it and be able to communicate on the LAN. The hardware compatibility guide exists to allow you to pick hardware with similar chipsets known to work.

Besides those two criteria, and the motherboard being able to host number of PCI-X, PCI-e, or PCI slots, odds are good a given motherboard will work.
Today you would look for a motherboard with a large number of SATA connectors and PCI-X or PCI-e slots for expansion. Many people are also looking for low power consumption boards (since the server is on 24/7)

Joe L.

garycase2001

04-05-10, 05:39 AM

Okay, I've been writing/reading/re-writing/re-reading a BUNCH of data on a few 1.5 & 2TB drives to really exercise this system, and have run 3 parity checks ... one after each couple days of exercising the system with a few hundred GB of reads/writes. The first two were perfect -- all zeroes in the error column; 0 sync errors.

The one I just ran had all zereos in the error column, but 2 sync errors. Is this something to be concerned about -- or does it simply mean that UnRAID got a bit confused during some of my deletes/re-writes?

One note: In my testing, I copied a BIG set of backup files to the array (250GB) -- and discovered that folders with > 32K files seem to be a "no-no" with Reiser ... at least it didn't work and caused some validation errors with TeraCopy. I deleted those folders; zipped a bunch of the files so the backup had far fewer files; and it worked fine. This may have been what caused the sync issues -- but I have no way of knowing for sure. Is there a good (simple) reference to file system restrictions that apply to the array file structure in UnRAID?? ... Directory depth ... name lengths ... characters in filenames ... etc.

I have to wonder if the stuff I copied that simply didn't work right had something to do with the sync errors.

Basically, I simply had an expectation of ALWAYS all-zeroes ... and am now curious as to what others see. If I understand it correctly, UnRAID always assumes the sync error is on the parity disk and simply corrects it -- which means if I run another parity check I should get all zeroes again .. right ??

jimwhite

04-05-10, 10:53 AM

When you have file system errors such as your >32k file error, you'll sometimes get a sync error or two almost instantly after pressing the check parity button... I've always assumed that these were some kind of "dirty disk" flags or something and seem to never indicate true data corruption. Anything after the first few seconds would cause me some heartburn... :p

J. L.

04-05-10, 05:30 PM

Okay, I've been writing/reading/re-writing
If I understand it correctly, UnRAID always assumes the sync error is on the parity disk and simply corrects it -- which means if I run another parity check I should get all zeroes again .. right ??Correct.

garycase2001

04-07-10, 02:52 AM

I assumed as much.

Not sure what happened -- I suspect it had something to do with copies that had problems (apparently due to ReiserFS file system issues -- I still haven't found a good reference ... any ideas??).

In any event, I've since run two more complete Parity Checks and both were perfect ... so I suspect the system's just fine. I do plan to run a complete set of compares against my backup disks over the next week or so just to be paranoid-sure that nothing got corrupted ... but I doubt I'll find anything wrong.

My assessment after several weeks of "banging" UnRAID is that it's great for a media server (my main purpose) ... but may not be quite so good for backups, as large directories (I have several) can't reliably be backed up, since there may be # of file and/or naming/path issues that result in errors that aren't flagged until you attempt to read the files. Still contemplating the latter -- it's easy to work around for archive backups (just zip folders before archiving), but not so simple for automated daily backups, where I generally just keep folders in sync (including a few folders with tens of thousands of files).

garycase2001

04-07-10, 03:11 AM

Joe,

I recall that when you did some "stress testing" you were streaming several videos at the same time as a parity check.

Do you routinely "use" the system when running a parity check? Any side-effects other than (I presume) slower parity checks and perhaps an occasional "stutter" on the streams ??

J. L.

04-07-10, 04:37 AM

ScoHo

04-07-10, 03:36 PM

So Newegg has the new WD Caviar Green 64MB cache drives (2TB) for $140 shipped. Can anyone confirm if there are any issues with these with unRaid? Apparently the 64MB cache drives use some "advanced formatting" that causes issues for some OS's.

malefactor

04-08-10, 06:08 PM

ScoHo

04-08-10, 08:49 PM

WD EARS drives work fine in unraid. Set the jumper. 64MB cache somewhat stabilizes write transfer rates, but trust me when I say it's not a big deal.

I strongly recommend only buying the Samsung 2tb. Every other 2tb drive on the market has production issues. That said, I have 2 EARS drives in service that seem ok, but I've scattered them so that if/when they die, the impact is not compounded. Those 2 work well, but were shipped to me with correctable surface errors (exposed by "badblocks").
I'm not sure about that. When I was putting my unRaid box together and deciding between the Samsung Ecogreen drives vs the WD Caviar Green drives, it seems I read about more issues with the Samsung than the WD. I have 3 of the WDs (one is over a year old, the other two are just a few months, so it's too early to tell), but so far, so good. I really think it's just luck of the draw though. I know as recently as 5 years ago I wouldn't touch a WD drive, but they seem to have gotten a lot better.

malefactor

04-09-10, 07:59 AM

I'm not sure about that. When I was putting my unRaid box together and deciding between the Samsung Ecogreen drives vs the WD Caviar Green drives, it seems I read about more issues with the Samsung than the WD. I have 3 of the WDs (one is over a year old, the other two are just a few months, so it's too early to tell), but so far, so good. I really think it's just luck of the draw though. I know as recently as 5 years ago I wouldn't touch a WD drive, but they seem to have gotten a lot better.

If I sound exasperated, I am. People like to parrot that line and instantly pigeonhole me into some preaching for a specific brand. Not the case. It's not just "the luck of the draw" when Seagate, Hitachi, and WD all suffer ~25% DOA rates and ~50% dead-within-months rates. I've been watching this for a year, and I probably have a higher standard than most people about it. (Many people just plug it in to windows and start copying files). I was quite surprised and pleased to find that the Samsung 2tb drives became available, and seem to have very high quality.

This is a hard-to-know thing, but not an unknowable thing. I don't have to stick my face in the fire to read newegg reviews and find experienced people building arrays, finding that large numbers of the 2tb drives shipped to them were broken or broke within weeks. Nor that this problem wasn't resolved over the past 6 mos - 1 year...

My own recent experience tells me that WD shipped me drives with block errors AS SHIPPED. It took a few passes of badblocks to expose. I could easily have lost data. WD is obviously not even testing, and they clearly still have production issues. Samsung drives turned up no such defects, and I've got a large pile of them as compared to WD. 100% WD had defects upon shipping; 0% of Samsung did. Maybe that's statistical luck. Doubt it.

As for the vague "samsung drives had problems with unraid", I really think you should substantiate that rather than throwing out vague FUD. What problem? I've got 2 arrays built upon them with no problems. Most people worry about the EARS drives with 4k sectors, as opposed to the drive that's just-like-every-other-drive out there.

ScoHo

04-09-10, 08:33 AM

As for the vague "samsung drives had problems with unraid", I really think you should substantiate that rather than throwing out vague FUD. What problem? I've got 2 arrays built upon them with no problems. Most people worry about the EARS drives with 4k sectors, as opposed to the drive that's just-like-every-other-drive out there.
I didn't say "Samsung drives had problems with unraid". All I said was when I was doing my research I read about more general problems with the Samsung Ecogreen drives vs the WDs (not unraid specific). It seems to me though you might be talking about a different Samsung because at the time I don't think Samsung even had a 2TB version.

What do you use to check your drives when they're new? I run mine through Spinrite, and the 3 WDs I have didn't return any errors.

malefactor

04-09-10, 11:00 AM

I didn't say "Samsung drives had problems with unraid". All I said was when I was doing my research I read about more general problems with the Samsung Ecogreen drives vs the WDs (not unraid specific). It seems to me though you might be talking about a different Samsung because at the time I don't think Samsung even had a 2TB version.

What do you use to check your drives when they're new? I run mine through Spinrite, and the 3 WDs I have didn't return any errors.

No worries. Obviously this is a sore spot with me.

I'm talking about the samsung f3eg (ecogreen). Maybe they have issues that I'm not aware of? WD actually have LCC (load cycle count) issues, if I recall. Another thing to investigate to make sure the WD drives don't prematurely commit suicide.

Testing drives is something that should exist, but doesn't. People get polarized about this and often say stupid, unsubstantiated things like "modern hard drives don't require this". They're wrong, as can be amply demonstrated by anything off the shelf from Seagate, WD, and Hitachi. I use a microknoppix dvd on a spare computer, and run "badblocks" in destructive mode, doing 3 passes. Plan for 48 hours per pass on a 5400 rpm 2tb drive. Not trivial. (I forget the command line switches I use)

If you see any numbers printed on the screen, they are to indicate the LBA printed was detected as bad. It's my understanding that simply finding them will be enough, as the drive firmware will notice this automatically and remap the block. However, I wouldn't put a drive into service until you've run it with badblocks once and had it come out clean.

ScoHo

04-09-10, 02:27 PM

I use a microknoppix dvd on a spare computer, and run "badblocks" in destructive mode, doing 3 passes. Plan for 48 hours per pass on a 5400 rpm 2tb drive. Not trivial. (I forget the command line switches I use)
Wow! That's some serious churning. I'll have to check it out. If you have the CL switches you use handy at some point and can post them here, it would be greatly appreciated!

garycase2001

04-12-10, 12:56 AM

ALL of the drive manufacturers have a few bad apples -- often in specific batches.

I have ~ 80 hard drives on my various systems, including 2 dozen 2TB drives ... mostly WD 20EADS, but a half dozen Samsungs, a couple Caviar Blacks, and about a dozen Seagates.

I test every drive before putting it in service by running
(a) SeaTools long self-test and long generic test;
(b) WD's Data Lifeguard extended test;
(c) WD's write zeros;
(d) WD's extended test (again); and
(e) Spinrite at level 5.

If I find ANY errors I RMA the drive.

I had one bad batch of WD 20EADS drives (3 out of 5 .. all with the same manufacture date), but otherwise they've all been perfect; I've also RMA'd 2 Seagates and 2 Samsungs that didn't make it error-free through that testing regimen.

After a drive is in service, I've had excellent results with all makes. I used to be a huge Samsung fan, but have had a higher failure rate with their drives than the others. They DO, however, tend to run cooler than most other makes ... although with the "green" drives, all of the drive's run much cooler, regardless of make. Seagate also had some "bad" drives last year, but they were fixable with a firmware update -- which I applied to mine and they've been working perfectly ever since ==> although I don't use them in UnRAID -- even though posters on this forum indicate they work just fine with the updated firmware (I had a LOT of issues with UnRAID and those drives, so simply use them for other things).

Note also that the question here was about the WD20EARS drives -- NOT the 20EADS units, which is what most folks using 2TB "Cavair Green" drives are using.

garycase2001

05-23-10, 11:16 PM

J. L.

05-24-10, 03:58 PM

Joe,

I was reading the 4.5.4 thread and the "desired features" threads on the UnRAID site, and together they prompted a couple questions, which I thought I'd ask here to keep from cluttering those already-very-busy threads.

(1) Does UnMenu and (most importantly) the UPS and shutdown modules still work with 4.5.4? If I upgrade to 4.5.4 do I have to do anything to re-activate UnMenu ... or will it still work as it currently does (with 4.5) ?
It will continue to work.
(2) Is there any performance gain with 4.5.4 compared to 4.5? From your comments I presume 4.5.4 is more stable (less likely to have falsely "unformatted" disks) ... but I'm curious if it's also faster.
There were many who reported a 20% performance increase in the 4.5.3 release. 4.5.4 just fixed the problem where disks show un-formatted because of a "race" condition when initially starting the array.
(3) Are you still seeing the random disk spinup whenever you hit Refresh with 4.5.4? Does an additional disk spin up everytime you hit refresh?I never look for it, but I have not seen disks spinning up when the server is idle. Most of the time, most of my disks are spinning unless it is the middle of the night and even then, if my wife puts on a movie to fall asleep to, they're spinning too.

In2Photos

05-28-10, 08:46 AM

jimwhite

05-28-10, 08:50 AM

I have 13 Seagate 1tb drives in my machine and I have a Corsair 750 psu. I think you're ok for now... :D

In2Photos

05-28-10, 09:05 AM

I have 13 Seagate 1tb drives in my machine and I have a Corsair 750 psu. I think you're ok for now... :D

Ecellent! Thanks for the info Jim!

kciaccio

05-28-10, 09:47 AM

I just built my first unRAID server :D and am in the process of moving all my data over to it. I used an older machine that had run its course. Not enough power to perform most tasks today, except for this!

AMD Athlon 3000+, 1.8GHZ
2GB DDR400 RAM
MSI K8NGM@-FID
2x 1.5TB WD green
1x 500GB WD AAKS ( I know its on the naughty list)
256MB Kingston Data Traveler II USB flash

Currently I'm using the free version, but I know for certain that I will need to upgrade to the plus within the year and expand the array. Right now I have this setup in a cheap case and am running a lesser quality PSU. I plan on using a CoolerMaster CM590 with or without Icydock cages, not sure yet. I also need to upgrade the PSU. I'm thinking of using either a Corsair 650TX that I already own (in another PC) or something like the CoolerMaster Silent 600 modular unit. Both can be had for about $70 and both have single rails. Based on what I have read it looks like one of these would be able to handle up to about 10-12 drives. Does that sound right? I don't see a Norco and 20+ drives in my short term future so it should last me quite a while.

So is a 600W or 650W PSU enough for my use? Thanks!

The best thing to do is go to the category5 web site and use the unraid calculator Robbie made for unraid servers. All you do is punch in the size of your drives and it will calculate start up wattage, running wattage and exact storage capacity because a 500 gig hard drive does not have 500 gig of usable storage. It is highly accurate.

Joseph Clark

05-28-10, 10:22 AM

In2Photos

05-28-10, 10:23 AM

The best thing to do is go to the category5 web site and use the unraid calculator Robbie made for unraid servers. All you do is punch in the size of your drives and it will calculate start up wattage, running wattage and exact storage capacity because a 500 gig hard drive does not have 500 gig of usable storage. It is highly accurate.

According to Robbie's calculator I could use a 400W PSU for up to about 12-13 drives! Hmmmmm. Sounds like maybe a Corsair 450 would be a better choice then. It will take me quite a while before I get to 12 drives.

jimwhite

05-28-10, 11:15 AM

Joseph Clark

05-28-10, 11:24 AM

There's a surge when all drives spin up at the same time, which can trip up a marginal power supply. My dual power supplies have never had a problem with it.

In2Photos

05-28-10, 12:09 PM

does his calculator consider what happens when you push the "spinup" button and 13 drives simultaneously start their engines? In my system (13 hdd) a OCZ 600 could not keep up with the draw, the system would reboot! :eek:

Would that be the same as "Load on startup"? His calculator has "Load on startup", "Operating Load", and "Idle (spun down) Load". For 12 drives, the numbers are:

Load on startup: 360W
Operating Load: Up to 153.6W
Idle (Spun Down) Load: 9.6W

JoshDorhyke

05-28-10, 12:57 PM

Is that not just for the drives? What about the rest of the PC parts?

Peter

In2Photos

05-28-10, 01:07 PM

Is that not just for the drives? What about the rest of the PC parts?

Peter

I'm thinking it is just the drives. If I put in 6 drives all of the numbers are halved. So that doesn't seem to take into account anything else.

garycase2001

05-28-10, 02:49 PM

In2Photos

05-28-10, 03:15 PM

Considering how inexpensive the Corsair 650TX is I can't think of any reason to use anything else. It's the same PSU Limetech uses for their MD1500 series servers these days, which support up to 15 drives.

It's an excellent unit -- 80+ rated, active PFC, thermally controlled 120mm fan, etc.

I know, I have one in my i7 rig. ;) I just wanted to make sure I was buying an appropriate size for my server. :) The price difference between the 450 and 650 is less than $10 AR so the 650 makes more sense in that regard as well.

In2Photos

06-02-10, 08:35 AM

I just built my first unRAID server :D and am in the process of moving all my data over to it. I used an older machine that had run its course. Not enough power to perform most tasks today, except for this!

AMD Athlon 3000+, 1.8GHZ
2GB DDR400 RAM
MSI K8NGM@-FID
2x 1.5TB WD green
1x 500GB WD AAKS ( I know its on the naughty list)
256MB Kingston Data Traveler II USB flash

Currently I'm using the free version, but I know for certain that I will need to upgrade to the plus within the year and expand the array. Right now I have this setup in a cheap case and am running a lesser quality PSU. I plan on using a CoolerMaster CM590 with or without Icydock cages, not sure yet. I also need to upgrade the PSU. I'm thinking of using either a Corsair 650TX that I already own (in another PC) or something like the CoolerMaster Silent 600 modular unit. Both can be had for about $70 and both have single rails. Based on what I have read it looks like one of these would be able to handle up to about 10-12 drives. Does that sound right? I don't see a Norco and 20+ drives in my short term future so it should last me quite a while.

So is a 600W or 650W PSU enough for my use? Thanks!

I decided to do some research and see what kind of actual load my server has. I picked up a Kill-A-Watt EZ and hooked it up to just the server and here are my results.

All these are the MAX readings that I saw on the LCD screen on the configuration above.

Power up: 107W
Idle after power up: 66-70W
After Spin Down on the main screen: 56W
Pressing Spin Up on the main screen: 92W
Pressing Power Down after stopping the array: 84W
System Off: 8W

I also ran a similar test on my i7 photo machine and got these results.

Power Up: 163W
Idle after boot: 123W
Rendering 1080 video in Blender (maxes all 8 cores!): 202W
Sleep (S3): Jumps to 179W, then drops to 6W-7W

Has me wondering why I put a 650W PSU in the photo machine! LOL Also has me believing a good 400-450W PSU would run several drives with ease (plus license), while a 650W-750W PSU would allow a large array (Pro license).