New NAS Build - Recommendations & Suggestions please!

Hi All-

Just had a few questions on a new NAS build that I'm planning, if you would be kind enough to answer I would appreciate it greatly. This is my first time building a NAS (I have built a few gaming/HTPC/Work systems before), so please excuse if there are any stupid/naive assumptions made.

Here is the config so far:

CPU: AMD A4-3400 2.7Ghz - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103955

MoBo: ECS A75-FM2 (6 SATA 3 ports, USB 3.0) - http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=743866

RAM: PNY XLR8 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178265

PSU: Corsair AX 430W ATX - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026&Tpk=cx%20430 - is that enough juice?

Case: NZXT Source 210 Black (8 x 3.5" Internal HDD drive bays) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146075

USB: Transcend 2 GB USB stick - for unRAID - http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-JetFlash-V30-Flash-TS8GJFV30E/dp/B00284AOSY/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1337112892&sr=8-5

Totally planning to use 6 HDD's (or more later with a SATA port multiplier) - my question was regarding the array and the capacity, I have downloaded the most current RC3 version 5.0 of unRAID on to my Transcend 2GB flash drive (that USB stick would work wouldn't it)?

My understanding is that this version would support 3TB drives, is that correct?

All my hard drives are 3 TB each (1 Hitachi Deskstar and 5 Seagate Barracuda's) - all 7200 RPM SATA 6gb/s  HDD's - would these work fine with the latest release candidate version?

Should I wait for the stable version to be released (if it is in the near future) before installing?

Lastly, this is one of the main reasons why I chose unRAID over the other RAID software, it is my understanding that I can add new HDD's anytime I need to the array without rebuilding the whole array again, for example I can start the build with 3 HDD, use the free version, read and write data into it, check everything out and then upgrade to the Plus or Pro (later if I want more than 6 drives) and add more HDD's at that time without loosing/rebuilding anything on this array is that right? ?

If I want to connect a USB external hard drive to the headless tower and copy data into the array - how do I accomplish that? Would like to take advantage of the USB 3.0 rather than Gigabit transfer speeds, hence the question.

Thank You - Abhi

Edit: Missed to mention that I am planning on expanding to at least a 8 drive capacity in the near future, hoping the HDD prices would fall even further. Max limit is 11 drives (limit possible on my case with a drive cage). Would need a few SATA port expansion cards for these needs, but will tackle that when we come to that point.

Also I am planning to run unmenu and I'm planning to preclear all the drives before building the array - have downloaded and copied them over the USB drive as suggested here and elsewhere (root and unmenu folder)!

If you need any more info from me to answer, please do let me know.

Bump...!

I am not an unraind expert.  I built my own, and so far I am happy with it.  From my experience, and from what I've read, I don't think the mobo you want to use is the best choice for unraid.  I say this because that mobo is probably base towards gaming since it is a dual video card mobo.

You can buy a cheaper mobo, and a achieve what you want.  If you have the money, I would suggest a supermicor mobo since they are more stable.  However, these two mobo are used by GreenLeaf Technologies

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138283

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135272

Or you can read their recommended builds:

http://greenleaf-technology.com/blogs/prototypes/index.php

Thank you for the reply, appreciate your response.

I got that MoBo for $40 after MIR and coupons, and I already have that, so wanted to use what I had rather than spend more. I have been collecting parts for quite sometime now, and have some which I plan to recycle from older builds and what is lying around.

I am new to unRAID myself and from what I have read so far, I like what I see, just wanted to clarify a lot of the software/OS related questions before I went ahead and built the system.

Also I need a FM1 socket MoBo, as I am planning a Llano build. Got the CPU from Micorcenter for $49.99

Well, if you've own those parts, I would suggest to use the free version of unraid and test it out first.  You can use 3 data drives, or use 1 parity drive and 2 data drives.  I started with the free version, then with the Plus, and I ended up buying the Pro license.

Great - that is what I plan to do.

Does the latest release candidate version of unRAID support 3 TB drives? Is the 5.0 expected to be released soon - does anyone know?

So if I start with three then when I'm ready to expand after purchasing the license, I would just plug in the drives and "enable" them in the already existing array, and unRAID would do the rest - correct?

Also how do I copy data from my USB 3.0 external HDD to the array on a headless tower? Meaning if I plug in the drive to the USB 3.0 port does it show up somewhere in the GUI from where I can copy paste or drag/drop the files or would I have to use the command line to do that? Never worked on a linux build before but I'm willing to learn.

Thank you for the help so far.

Great - that is what I plan to do.

 

Does the latest release candidate version of unRAID support 3 TB drives?

Yes.

Is the 5.0 expected to be released soon - does anyone know?

When any bugs are sorted out and considered stable. a date is impossible to give.

 

So if I start with three then when I'm ready to expand after purchasing the license, I would just plug in the drives and "enable" them in the already existing array, and unRAID would do the rest - correct?

Yes. Pretty much just update the license file. reboot and the new features will be enabled.

 

Also how do I copy data from my USB 3.0 external HDD to the array on a headless tower? Meaning if I plug in the drive to the USB 3.0 port does it show up somewhere in the GUI from where I can copy paste or drag/drop the files or would I have to use the command line to do that? Never worked on a linux build before but I'm willing to learn.

This is not that easy unfortunately.

If unraid even recognized usb3. ther is no "GUI" process to to do this.

one way is to add the "SNAP" add-on to unraid that allows you to mount USB drives outside the array. You then would use the command line to copy the data.

 

The esiest and best way is to just plug the USB drive into your desktop and copy the files to your array. the speed over gigabit would be about the same.

 

Thank you for the help so far.

Great - that is what I plan to do.

 

Does the latest release candidate version of unRAID support 3 TB drives? Is the 5.0 expected to be released soon - does anyone know?

Yes..and usage of 5.0 will likely be required to support your MB

So if I start with three then when I'm ready to expand after purchasing the license, I would just plug in the drives and "enable" them in the already existing array, and unRAID would do the rest - correct?

Also how do I copy data from my USB 3.0 external HDD to the array on a headless tower? Meaning if I plug in the drive to the USB 3.0 port does it show up somewhere in the GUI from where I can copy paste or drag/drop the files or would I have to use the command line to do that? Never worked on a linux build before but I'm willing to learn.

Midnight commander, Terracopy, across the LAN through Windows, or use the SNAP plugin to mount the drive outside of the array.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_Plugins

Thank you all! That clears a lot of what I do not know (unfortunately, there is still a lot more)!

Yes..and usage of 5.0 will likely be required to support your MB

@mbryanr - what exactly do you mean by that? Does that mean the ECS board I'm planning on using is not supported by the rc3 version? Will this build work to use unRAID before the 5.0 release?

I use terracopy now for transferring files within my home network and I love it, though the speeds are not that great, that is why I was thinking of USB 3.0.

I don't know why I am not getting gigabit transfer rates - all my hardware ports are gigabit, Cat 6/5e cables, ASUS RT N56U router and a gigabit switch - the only piece I have that is not gigabit is the modem (which is the default from my ISP - AT&T Uverse).

Also for the build I have a Intel NIC lying around which I can use - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033 - would that be better than the on-board NIC?

@Johnm -

If unraid even recognized usb3

Is command line syntax and usage  "newbie friendly" - easy for a first time user like me to explore and do stuff on?

Thank you again!

Hello Abhi,

Not much testing has been conducted with the socket FM1 motherboards, so it is difficult to say if your motherboard will work or not.  As others have said, there's no harm in testing it out since you have it already.  In order to thoroughly test it, I would recommend transferring hundreds of GBs of data to and from the server using TeraCopy on Windows (even if it is slow).  TeraCopy should catch any errors.  You'll also want to run a parity check and make sure it completes without errors.

Your motherboard should be supported by unRAID 5.0-RC3, but again, not much testing has been done so it is hard to tell.  Your USB 3.0 ports are another unknown.  Chances are good that they will work as normal USB 2.0 ports, but if they require special drivers to work as USB 3.0 in Windows, then those drivers may or may not be available for Linux (and therefore unRAID).  As others have said, I think the simplest (albeit slower) method will be to hook up your external drive to a Windows computer and copy the data with TeraCopy.  This will also give you the knowledge that the data was not corrupted during the copy (assuming you use TeraCopy's built-in CRC verification feature, which you should).

The RAM you've chosen is overkill for unRAID.  DDR3-1066 is plenty fast enough.  However, if you have it already, go ahead and use it as it won't hurt anything.

If you find that the onboard NIC fails the data transfer test, then you will likely have better luck with the Intel NIC you have.  Intel NICs are typically the best supported by unRAID.

Unfortunately the command line stuff isn't terribly user friendly.  If you do prefer to mount your external directly to the server with SNAP or unMenu, then you will have to use Midnight Commander (type 'mc' in the system console) to transfer the files.  Midnight Commander approximates a GUI and is about as easy as command line stuff gets, but it is nowhere near the 'drag and drop' simplicity you are probably used to with Windows, MacOS, or Ubuntu.  Search the wiki for 'midnight commander' and you'll find a tutorial.

Midnight Commander approximates a GUI and is about as easy as command line stuff gets, but it is nowhere near the 'drag and drop' simplicity you are probably used to with Windows, MacOS, or Ubuntu.

I remember, back in the early 1980s, how magical it was to have the early equivalent of Midnight Commander available as a transient program on CP/M-80.  It was so much better than the built in dir, ren, era commands, plus the transient pip program - even if I was familiar with that style of command, since I was working professionally on PDP-11 RSX-11M and RT-11 systems at the time.  I'm racking my brain trying to remember its name - sweep/newsweep(nsweep) comes to mind.

Thank you Rajahal & Peter and everyone else who chimed in to help.

Okay so I went ahead and built it the day before yesterday and added all but one drive onto the system. Booted up and did the preclear on 2 3TB drives simultaneously already (it took around 26 hrs)! I got the other 3 drives yesterday, started the pre-clear on the other 3 (on 3 terminals simultaneously) today morning at around 7, hopefully those should all be done by tomorrow morning.

I haven't yet built the array or accessed the tower remotely, I am currently using the DVI input of my desktop monitor and an extra USB keyboard I had lying around, to do stuff on the UNRAID tower. I have to add 2 more 140mm fans on the top of the case (arriving today) and the last hard drive which is in use right now and lives inside my HTPC, and then all the hardware would be cared for, then it is off to building the array and transferring data.

@ Rajahal - does this tell us anything yet about the ECS motherboard or is it too early for us to comment on, I can post the preclear results text file if you need to see it. I knew the memory was overkill (I did want to go for a 1066 and 2 GB), but with RAM prices at where they are, it was not much of a difference so decided to go ahead and get this one for $20.

All my HDD's by the way are these - Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 3TB  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844&Tpk=ST3000DM001 .

P.S: Just a helpful tip for anyone who wants to save some money on these HDD's listed above - buy the Seagate Expansion 3TB external drives - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148865 - and open them up and get the disks from inside - they come with these disks and is much cheaper ($40 less on each, I had a newegg promo code which saved me another $10).and if you manage to sell the USB 3.0 cables and chargers on the second hand market, you can further save around $10-$15 on each drive. That is $50 - $60 savings on each drive compared to the bare drive at $180.

The one thing I do not like about the ST3000DM001 drives is that they are only rated at 2400 power on hours.

That is 8 hours per day for a year. I cant recall any modern drive rated that low.

and yes, i do own about 6 of these.

They are all in my back up server.A  server that spends most of it's time turned off.

The one thing I do not like about the ST3000DM001 drives is that they are only rated at 2400 power on hours.

 

That is 8 hours per day for a year. I cant recall any modern drive rated that low.

 

and yes, i do own about 6 of these.

They are all in my back up server.A  server that spends most of it's time turned off.

Thank you, did not know that till now.

Random question on the definition of power on hours there - doesn't UNRAID spin down drives when they are not being used (read/write)? Would it still be counted as powered on then?

My use for this tower is mainly to store and serve media  to my HTPC and other players. I have accumulated a lot over the years and most of it is digitized (ISO & MKV rips mainly) and stored on various hard drives across the home. Now I am almost out of space and hence decided it is time to build a dedicated server and have enough space for future rips as well.

So even though the unraid server system would be on 24/7 the disks would only be spinning as and when I access it right?

If so, then 2400 hours roughly translates to around 6.5 hours per day, but I would never be able to watch movies for 6.5 hours a day (unfortunately ), if I would estimate the hours of use it would be probably 8 hours a week, which is around 500 hours a year (with a buffer).  So I should probably run without issues for a few around 5 years, hopefully.

Am I understanding this 'power on state' definition correctly?

I have completed the install and setup and even installed a few add-ons (unmenu, SNAP, Serviio Media Server etc). Thank you guys, all the developers and user customization add on creators. This indeed is a great product and a great improvement from my old WHS days (I was not a fan of it then and more so with the 2011 version). unRAID is got all I had ever asked for from a server OS.

So all the drives have been added, pre-cleared (results attached), partity checked and shares have been created and the mappings set up on all my windows systems and I'm copying data to the array (3 disk free license right now). But I had a question regarding the copying - it is working fine over the gigabit network. But I have a drive in my HTPC with lot of data existing on it, which I would want to add to the array eventually?

What is the best (fastest data transfer rates mainly) way to transfer the data from that drive before it is added to the array? Should I connect it to a SATA port on the motherboard and transfer, or should I transfer over the network? If I do connect it internally what interface is best for transferring files - MC/SNAP or something else?

Also on the WEB GUI on the main page if the green light next to one of the disk is blinking - what does that mean, is it because it is currently not spinning?

preclear_results.txt

preclear_results3.txt

A blinking green light means the drive is spun down.

You'll get the fastest speeds connecting it internally and transferring. Here is a write up in the wiki explaining how to do it

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Copy_files_from_a_NTFS_drive

Using cp is probably the easiest/quickest method. MC will let you see more of what your doing, but I've always found it easier to use cp. When I did mine my directories were already set up pretty much how I was going to have them on the server, so I just had to copy the root folders over and everything went where I wanted it.

I'd recommend doing that first if its not already like that.

If you are going to have a user share called media, and inside that have movies and tv shows, I'd go ahead and organize the drive the same way, root folder "Media" and two folders inside that named "Movies" and "TV Shows", that way you can just copy the "Media" folder and everything goes where it needs to with one command instead of having to do it multiple times.

A blinking green light means the drive is spun down.

 

You'll get the fastest speeds connecting it internally and transferring. Here is a write up in the wiki explaining how to do it

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Copy_files_from_a_NTFS_drive

 

Using cp is probably the easiest/quickest method. MC will let you see more of what your doing, but I've always found it easier to use cp. When I did mine my directories were already set up pretty much how I was going to have them on the server, so I just had to copy the root folders over and everything went where I wanted it.

 

I'd recommend doing that first if its not already like that.

 

If you are going to have a user share called media, and inside that have movies and tv shows, I'd go ahead and organize the drive the same way, root folder "Media" and two folders inside that named "Movies" and "TV Shows", that way you can just copy the "Media" folder and everything goes where it needs to with one command instead of having to do it multiple times.

Thank you Influencer - you did influence me to use cp

My worry with using the command line was that I am a complete newbie when it comes to command line commands and syntax, and could easily screw up something. But looks like the wiki article you attached by Joe L. covers pretty much everything I need to know when it comes to copying files from an NTFS folder.

So thank you again - will update once I'm done. I have a backup of all the data on that drive on to one of my external drives, so if anything goes wrong (hopefully it won't) I will only be loosing time.

The NTFS driver used by unraid(the one you load in that article I linked) is a read-only driver, so you can't delete anything, on purpose or on accident, while you are in unraid.

And the CP command doesn't delete anything, only copys it. So unless you decide to use other commands, your data should be safe. Of course this would still include you loading your own NTFS driver(NTFS3G) which can read/write on NTFS.

I had 4 harddrives to copy over, and I was using the same harddrives in the system as well, so it took me a while. I'd copy over to the one free harddrive I had, then format and preclear the newly emptied drive, rinse & repeat with the other 3. All in all it took me 4 days, but I had to wait for each drive to be emptied and then precleared before moving on to the next drive.

Okay I tried multiple times to copy the data from an NTFS 3 TB drive using the cp command as Influencer suggested below and followed the Wiki from Joe L. linked in a previous post but I couldn't get far. I loaded the NTFS driver and created a directory called HTPC_Data but when I tried to mount the drive I kept getting this error:

root@Tower:/# mount -r -t ntfs /dev/sdf /mnt/HTPC_Data -o umask=111,dmask=000 -v
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdf,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

When I tried to check dmesg|tail I got something that said that the disk size was too large and 2TB is the max supported, is the fact that this is a 3TB disk that I was trying to mount that caused the problem?

I even tried to mount the partition, in this case sdf1, but again got the same error.

root@Tower:/# mount -r -t ntfs /dev/sdf1 /mnt/HTPC_Data -o umask=111,dmask=000 -v
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdf,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

Then I tried to use snap and create a share for the internally connected SATA drive, everything looked good and I did assign the drive (serial number) to a share name as instructed in the  post for SNAP installation and creating shares - http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5904 . But after creating the share I never saw the share on the network - everything else was showing - disks, flash, other shares and even other USB devices I managed to share using SNAP, but not this internally connected SATA drive.

Does SNAP only work with USB devices or can unassigned SATA drives (connected to a SATA port on the MoBo) be shared as well?

So finally since everything else failed I plugged it into my windows workstation and copied over the network, which moved pretty fast and all the data (2.7 TB) was moved within say 15-16 hours. Wonder how much faster the internal move would have been. Can anyone offer any insights on how to accomplish this with a 3TB or larger drive, if I need to in the future?

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Edit: Forgot to mention that this disk (sdf) that I was trying to copy from was in a windows machine my HTPC (locally stored movies) before this and it had a GPT partition table, I think I saw something on the screen when I started pre-clear on this disk yesterday night about the GPT. Would that be causing the issue? Preclear seems to be running fine and pre read was 90% done when I last check it today morning before I left home. Don't know whether this was related but thought I would mention it.

Copy the files over the network to your new array.  Then wipe ur drive and add it to the array?

Copy the files over the network to your new array.  Then wipe ur drive and add it to the array?

Thank you - already did that.

The post was detailing the other copy attempts that did not work well, when they should have - looking to understand why cp or SNAP failed to work - any ideas?

Too late to check now but if the disk was a logical partition and not a basic disk(when created in windows) it wouldn't be mounted in linux. Apparently the ntfs drivers for linux cannot handle a Logical partition on a GPT disk.

@ Rajahal - does this tell us anything yet about the ECS motherboard or is it too early for us to comment on, I can post the preclear results text file if you need to see it. I knew the memory was overkill (I did want to go for a 1066 and 2 GB), but with RAM prices at where they are, it was not much of a difference so decided to go ahead and get this one for $20.

Yes, please start a thread in the 'Motherboards' subforum and post your results. You can post the preclear results file, but what will be more helpful for us is a syslog containing a parity sync and/or parity check. I and others will be happy to take a look.