# N/A



## Murlocke

Sorry guys. Thread should be deleted shortly.


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## Doomtomb

This is amazing. How much dollar value would you say is one of these servers, hard drives included?


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## swat565

So UnRAID can only do 1 disk for parity?? Seems like that's cutting it close for 24 drives or am I missing something...?
Also, why not use SSD's for cache drives?
Man I thought my clients 48TB (38TB with parity and formatted) was big....


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## Zeus

Sweet setup


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## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Doomtomb*
> 
> This is amazing. How much dollar value would you say is one of these servers, hard drives included?


The hardware without the drives is about $1000-$1200 per server, case being the most expensive part of each. I probably paid about $35 per TB ($105/3TB) because of bulk purchases, so probably around $2905 on hard drives. I would say ~$2500 per server would be in the ballpark. I didn't build these over night, I've been adding hard drives to them for around 4 years now.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *swat565*
> 
> So UnRAID can only do 1 disk for parity?? Seems like that's cutting it close for 24 drives or am I missing something...?
> Also, why not use SSD's for cache drives?
> Man I thought my clients 48TB (38TB with parity and formatted) was big....


It's up to the user if he wants to add that many data disks. You don't lose all data in the rare case you have 2 drive failures at the same time, like you do with other RAID solutions. It will support dual parity in the future for people that want 2 drive failures. unRAID is not designed for businesses, it's designed for home users. I agree that 1 parity for 23 data disks is very risky for a business that could lose millions if they lost critical data, but for a home user, it's usually more than enough. If I had 2 drives fail I would need to replace at most, 6TB of data (Which is around 200 blu-rays) and in the ~4 years of using unRAID I have not had it happen yet. I like these odds much better than having over 20TB of space used for parity, most home users do not need that excessive protection in my opinion. Replacing 200 movies would be a headache, but it wouldn't be the end of the world, and it would cost nearly twice as much to get this much usable space on something like ZFS because you'd never add this many drives to a striped array.

Cache drives act as a middle man, when transferring 30-50GB files to the server, they need to fit on the cache drive until it moves them over (You set how often you want to do this, I have mine set weekly). I constantly transfer 500+ GB to the server so it wouldn't work well. An SSD would also be limited by my gigabit network anyway, and a 1TB black is much more affordable.


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## 3930K

Can you configure it to use more parities?


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## Ellis

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *3930K*
> 
> Can you configure it to use more parities?


Murlocke just answered that question in his post above.


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## 69BBNova

Thats impressive...

I'm actually going in the other direction...

It seems every 6-8 months I screw up something so bad I lose all my RIPS and Recorded TV...LOL

Pretty soon I'll Folding, Streaming, and Browsing the Internet and nothing else.


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## Chokladkakan

I was an admirer from afar in your past thread as well and it is a true joy to see those machines of yours. They are magnificent!

For the sake of satisfying my curiosity, may I ask how you organise your data? I assume you have two separate servers for the sake of enabling extreme future expandability, but you presumably keep different sort of content on each server.


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## absoluteloki89

Do you think you will incorporate the new wd red drives? What would you say your failure rate has been with greens.


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## swat565

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> The hardware without the drives is about $1000-$1200 per server, case being the most expensive part of each. I probably paid about $35 per TB ($105/3TB) because of bulk purchases, so probably around $2905 on hard drives. I would say ~$2500 per server would be in the ballpark. I didn't build these over night, I've been adding hard drives to them for around 4 years now.
> It's up to the user if he wants to add that many data disks. You don't lose all data in the rare case you have 2 drive failures at the same time, like you do with other RAID solutions. It will support dual parity in the future for people that want 2 drive failures. unRAID is not designed for businesses, it's designed for home users. I agree that 1 parity for 23 data disks is very risky for a business that could lose millions if they lost critical data, but for a home user, it's usually more than enough. If I had 2 drives fail I would need to replace at most, 6TB of data (Which is around 200 blu-rays) and in the ~4 years of using unRAID I have not had it happen yet. I like these odds much better than having over 20TB of space used for parity, most home users do not need that excessive protection in my opinion. Replacing 200 movies would be a headache, but it wouldn't be the end of the world, and it would cost nearly twice as much to get this much usable space on something like ZFS because you'd never add this many drives to a striped array.
> Cache drives act as a middle man, when transferring 30-50GB files to the server, they need to fit on the cache drive until it moves them over (You set how often you want to do this, I have mine set weekly). I constantly transfer 500+ GB to the server so it wouldn't work well. An SSD would also be limited by my gigabit network anyway, and a 1TB black is much more affordable.


Gotcha answered my "real world" question about it. I'd move over to this for my personal NAS as it seems its best for home use when you need max storage space, but I also use my NAS for VMware lab I have, and that still needs speed.
Yea different environments defiantly. They needed a wee bit more speed









It was a ZFS based array, set up as a two x8 drive raid 5 arrays stripped.

We were getting 1600MB/s reads internally on the server


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## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Chokladkakan*
> 
> I was an admirer from afar in your past thread as well and it is a true joy to see those machines of yours. They are magnificent!
> For the sake of satisfying my curiosity, may I ask how you organise your data? I assume you have two separate servers for the sake of enabling extreme future expandability, but you presumably keep different sort of content on each server.


Movies on one, TV shows on other. I have YAMJ scan both directories and create a single jukebox, and then my popcorn hour uses that. On the YAMJ skin, everything is merged together so it looks like one big server.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *absoluteloki89*
> 
> Do you think you will incorporate the new wd red drives? What would you say your failure rate has been with greens.


I will probably starting using red drives in the future, they are faster and use the same amount of power.

I've had around 2-3 green drives fail over the last 4 years or so, not complete fails, but there were SMART errors so I replaced them. Given the amount of drives I have on 24/7, that's pretty good IMO.


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## Ollii

I was looking around to post a question about starting my own server with a few TB, with the ability to be accessed outdoors.

I think I'm losing it when looking at your setup... I saw your 52TB unRAID server thread a few months ago and was already amazed back then o: but now you post this. Great job there







. Must've been a big pile of work !


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## 3930K

Would these work well with a HTPC?


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## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Ollii*
> 
> I was looking around to post a question about starting my own server with a few TB, with the ability to be accessed outdoors.
> I think I'm losing it when looking at your setup... I saw your 52TB unRAID server thread a few months ago and was already amazed back then o: but now you post this. Great job there
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> . Must've been a big pile of work !


I posted pictures right after I built them, i'm still in a big pile of work, going to be a good 2-3 weeks of work to get all my data organized. I have about 20TB of transfers to do, and i'm having some SAS driver errors in the syslog that are causing certain things to hang. I'm 99% sure it's software related because other people have reported the same issues with some of the newest unRAID builds. This is what I get for going extreme.








Quote:


> Originally Posted by *3930K*
> 
> Would these work well with a HTPC?


It runs on a modified linux kernel so it's hard to get other programs to work with it internally. There's a community that has some programs working, but overall unRAID is really only designed to share files over the local network to other devices/computers. I don't think unRAID itself could be an HTPC, but you could definitely build an HTPC (minus hard drives) and have it connect to the unRAID servers. That's pretty much how i'm doing it, but i'm using a popcorn hour instead of an HTPC. For most people, it's going to be cheaper/easier to just put a few hard drives into an HTPC.

Since you already have a computer that is plenty capable of being an HTPC, you could just set up XBMC or something on your current computer and have that access the unRAID servers too. If you don't care about poster/fanart/etc, you can just access the files themselves in windows and watch them via something like VLC or MPC-HC (assuming you aren't using ISOs, then you would need something like PowerDVD).


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## Ollii

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I posted pictures right after I built them, i'm still in a big pile of work, going to be a good 2-3 weeks of work to get all my data organized. I have about 20TB of transfers to do, and i'm having some SAS driver errors in the syslog that are causing certain things to hang. I'm 99% sure it's software related because other people have reported the same issues with some of the newest unRAID builds. This is what I get for going extreme.


oh lawd, good luck I guess x) it will pay off in the end







. I just began my server thread







if you've got some free time, welcome to reply. I ask lots of different questions out of pure interest before starting one. Knowledge goes first ;p your experience would probably be most helpful on a thread like mine! Btw, did you get your drives with some benefits/promos/temporary price decreases? You've got a crazy amount of drives...









Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!



the thread


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## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Ollii*
> 
> oh lawd, good luck I guess x) it will pay off in the end
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> . I just began my server thread
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> if you've got some free time, welcome to reply. I ask lots of different questions out of pure interest before starting one. Knowledge goes first ;p your experience would probably be most helpful on a thread like mine! Btw, did you get your drives with some benefits/promos/temporary price decreases? You've got a crazy amount of drives...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!
> 
> 
> 
> the thread


I paid $100/3TB via a business connection for my recent drives. Most of my earlier drives were bought pre-flood so it was more like $125/3TB.


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## DigitalSavior

Love the servers







I can't wait until I build my own. You've inspired me







Great pics!


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## Slayem

How much of that 83tb is used? Nice setup btw!


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## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Slayem*
> 
> How much of that 83tb is used? Nice setup btw!


About 50TB of it.

I am able to expand to about 130TB without replacing drives at the moment, don't think i'll be having any space issues soon. I still need to pay off the servers though, went a tad over budget because I got a good bulk purchase deal on some 3TBs.


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## Slayem

haha, yeah that's some pricey equipment! Do you store your blu-rays as iso rips? If you convert them to mkv can i ask what converter you use?


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## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Slayem*
> 
> haha, yeah that's some pricey equipment! Do you store your blu-rays as iso rips? If you convert them to mkv can i ask what converter you use?


I keep them as ISO, but remove the extras/menus still. Haven't had much luck with MKV, even if I keep the quality at 100% and don't transcode, I seem to have more problems with getting them to work. Seems like half of the programs that "convert" them to MKV mess up A/V sync or something else on ~30% of the content. I'm fairly confident i've tried all the major programs. ISO just works and it's a simple 1 step solution to remove things from it in DVDFab. If you have a device that supports playing ISOs natively, it seems like the way to go. Mounting them for PowerDVD or something would get annoying very fast. I know even XBMC supports natively playing BD ISOs now, no need to mount them. I see more and more people using ISO instead of MKV lately... but MKV is still definitely way more popular at the moment.

I look at it this way. My ISOs, even with the extras removed, is still the original movie/subtitles/audio for the main feature, completely unconverted. After you go to MKV, you can't go back to ISO. However you can go from ISO to virtually *anything*. It seems like a more future proof solution, but I know lots of people that would disagree. I constantly get told "ISO files, really?!".


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## axipher

Well I'm subbed to this thread now.


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## Slayem

Yeah i havent had luck with mkv's eiether, the sound is always slightly off no matter what program i try. ISO's just work!


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## Ollii

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I paid $100/3TB via a business connection for my recent drives. Most of my earlier drives were bought pre-flood so it was more like $125/3TB.


Oh that explains a bit, but it's still a massive amount of drives! what amount of TB's are you aiming at? ;p


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## Ellis

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I keep them as ISO, but remove the extras/menus still. Haven't had much luck with MKV, even if I keep the quality at 100% and don't transcode, I seem to have more problems with getting them to work. Seems like half of the programs that "convert" them to MKV mess up A/V sync or something else on ~30% of the content. I'm fairly confident i've tried all the major programs. ISO just works and it's a simple 1 step solution to remove things from it in DVDFab. If you have a device that supports playing ISOs natively, it seems like the way to go. Mounting them for PowerDVD or something would get annoying very fast. I know even XBMC supports natively playing BD ISOs now, no need to mount them. I see more and more people using ISO instead of MKV lately... but MKV is still definitely way more popular at the moment.
> I look at it this way. My ISOs, even with the extras removed, is still the original movie/subtitles/audio for the main feature, completely unconverted. After you go to MKV, you can't go back to ISO. However you can go from ISO to virtually *anything*. It seems like a more future proof solution, but I know lots of people that would disagree. I constantly get told "ISO files, really?!".


Seems to me like the best process for "converting" to MKV without encoding is to use the command line utilities and so on rather than a program which will attempt to "convert" the ISO in one go. After ripping the Blu-ray, use eac3to to extract the parts you want to keep, then I think I used mkvmerge to pop them all back together again. It's been a while since I did it but I didn't have any issues with it.

There's no point you trying to use MKVs though - if it ain't broke, don't fix it









I don't know what you mean about not being able to go from MKV to anything else though. MKV is just a container like ISO - you can extract the files from one whenever you like.


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## legoman786

I'm eating a want and jelly sandwich.


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## sub0ptimal

What kind of cabling is that between the controller cards and the drives? I've never set up SAS, only SATA via ports on my mothboard.

Currently have a Synology NAS with 10x3TB (9 + 1 parity). Works great, but expensive.


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## legoman786

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *sub0ptimal*
> 
> What kind of cabling is that between the controller cards and the drives? I've never set up SAS, only SATA via ports on my mothboard.
> Currently have a Synology NAS with 10x3TB (9 + 1 parity). Works great, but expensive.


That's an SAS cable.


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## ALpHaMoNk

I haven't checked on your build in months and Wow you already have a second server up and running!! Looking good!


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## Ironman517

Just wondering, what made you choose a popcornhour device over the other devices on the market? Just trying to get some opinions









Also, do you play your movies from your 360?


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## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Ironman517*
> 
> Just wondering, what made you choose a popcornhour device over the other devices on the market? Just trying to get some opinions
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Also, do you play your movies from your 360?


A300/C300 are currently the best devices in my opinion. The others lack other functions, especially in the HD audio and BD ISO areas. None of the devices are perfect though, they all have issues.

I don't use my 360 to watch anything.


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## Shrak

My 15TB is so jelly.


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## Bonz(TM)

Quick question Murlocke,

Did your first 4224 come with the Orange backplanes or did you buy them afterwards? I imagen the newer 4224 came with the newer model.
I have the v3.7 backplanes in my 4220 and have had it since late 2011.


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## Kazimir

This is more a general question, but if you had ATX boards in those instead of MATX, could you have 1 mobo with 6 cards control both boxes?


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## linkdiablo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kazimir*
> 
> This is more a general question, but if you had ATX boards in those instead of MATX, could you have 1 mobo with 6 cards control both boxes?


I think he's restricted by the 24 drive slots from the case and not the controller cards, 3x 8 ports card = 24 Sata HD Enclosure Saturation.
On a side note: Since as far as I know you have the most hardcore home server Murlocke, have you seen this blog?
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/


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## Chokladkakan

The limit stems from software to! unRAID only permits 24 drives, even with the most expensive license.


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## Imrac

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Chokladkakan*
> 
> The limit stems from software to! unRAID only permits 24 drives, even with the most expensive license.


I would like to see someone run a hypervisor and passthrough the controllers to 2 or more unraid guests. Would be pretty sweet.


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## linkdiablo

Well that 24 drive limit is unfortunate, is there an alternative (not raid) that could run 44 drives as a single pool and keep a dedicated parity drive? Say you have maxed the pod with uniform size drives: 132TB, 184TB or 220TB, choose your size!

... Well, the 5TB drives are not out yet ... what are they waiting for? Didn't they make 5 platter drives in the past, and Hitachi released 1TB platters, so what's up with that?


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## ALpHaMoNk

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *linkdiablo*
> 
> On a side note: Since as far as I know you have the most hardcore home server Murlocke, have you seen this blog?
> http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/


Murlocke's build is very sweet! there are quite a few other high capacity builds on [H] as well.
As for the link I seen it before, only thing that scares me about the chasis is that the drives are so packed Heating could be an issue if used at home, and i think that some kinda of dampener would be needed to pad the cover to help the drives from vibrating too much.

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *linkdiablo*
> 
> Well that 24 drive limit is unfortunate, is there an alternative (not raid) that could run 44 drives as a single pool and keep a dedicated parity drive? Say you have maxed the pod with uniform size drives: 132TB, 184TB or 220TB, choose your size!
> ... Well, the 5TB drives are not out yet ... what are they waiting for? Didn't they make 5 platter drives in the past, and Hitachi released 1TB platters, so what's up with that?


I am not sure what the limit is. but alot of users also use flexraid as well. used to be free but i hear that it is now a paid. I believe no limit to parity drives as well.


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## linkdiablo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *ALpHaMoNk*
> 
> Murlocke's build is very sweet! there are quite a few other high capacity builds on [H] as well.
> As for the link I seen it before, only thing that scares me about the chasis is that the drives are so packed Heating could be an issue if used at home, and i think that some kinda of dampener would be needed to pad the cover to help the drives from vibrating too much.
> I am not sure what the limit is. but alot of users also use flexraid as well. used to be free but i hear that it is now a paid. I believe no limit to parity drives as well.


The Backblaze pod has a custom case that includes antivibration mounts on the slots, the backplane could propagate a bit but I doubt it should be much. They also have dampening on the top panel when the unit is closed. I looked closely at the drive section: it is tightly packed but fans are pushing air through the stack.

Is there any kind of thermal gel that could dampen and serve as a TIM between the drive's exposed side and the top panel, to make it into a big heatsink?

Based on quick views at their storage racks, they seemed to fit 10 pods per rack (until it was as tall as the guy servicing the rack); can you fit many more 4U servers in a rack?


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## McGeeked

I literally have read every single page of your old thread and this new one within the last day and I am quite inspired to try this for myself. I am pretty new to storage, but I just had an initial question for you Murlocke.

I think your old thread had mentioned that you were using a 1TB for your cache drive, and I could have sworn that it mentioned that you don't find the need to increase it any more then that, as you typically move things off within a week time frame and it was more than adequate. But I wanted to make sure, as if I can recall correctly you mentioned it somewhere in the middle of the old thread and I knew you were upgrading components up until this new thread. Have you moved that up at all? As the part list now only shows 3 TB drives on server 1 and a mix of 3TB and 2 TB on the second.

I am taking your recommendation and trying a basic free unRaid package with the 3 drives first to get a basic understanding before I jump into it, so I know that I wont be able to use the cache drive until then, but I wanted to plan ahead.

Hope you don't mind that I use some of your ideas here, as I am just so impressed by the build that I could not resist to try it for myself. Unfortunately I have quite a bit of learning to do to get everything going, I plan on living on unRaid's forums tomorrow to see what I am up against.

Thanks


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## Boyboyd

My favourite bit is that both servers are just a copy of each other. If I didn't know better i'd say that the first 2 pictures were just a mirror done in photoshop.

Do you get many vibrations running through the desk they're placed on? Or are they insulated by something?


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## Murlocke

Sorry for lack of replies, i've been busy lately.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Bonz(TM)*
> 
> Quick question Murlocke,
> Did your first 4224 come with the Orange backplanes or did you buy them afterwards? I imagen the newer 4224 came with the newer model.
> I have the v3.7 backplanes in my 4220 and have had it since late 2011.


I believe the orange blackplate is the newest version only. I swapped cases with a friend, and traded his new 4224 for my old 4224 + some money. I wanted the better LEDs on the new case, and now they match.








Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kazimir*
> 
> This is more a general question, but if you had ATX boards in those instead of MATX, could you have 1 mobo with 6 cards control both boxes?


unRAID max drives is 23 data, 1 cache, 1 parity. It likely won't support more than this for quite some time, the next steps for the software will probably be the ability to daisy chain 2 or more unRAID servers together and dual parity for users that want more protection. With them daisy chained, they would show up as 1 large server.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *McGeeked*
> 
> I literally have read every single page of your old thread and this new one within the last day and I am quite inspired to try this for myself. I am pretty new to storage, but I just had an initial question for you Murlocke.
> I think your old thread had mentioned that you were using a 1TB for your cache drive, and I could have sworn that it mentioned that you don't find the need to increase it any more then that, as you typically move things off within a week time frame and it was more than adequate. But I wanted to make sure, as if I can recall correctly you mentioned it somewhere in the middle of the old thread and I knew you were upgrading components up until this new thread. Have you moved that up at all? As the part list now only shows 3 TB drives on server 1 and a mix of 3TB and 2 TB on the second.
> I am taking your recommendation and trying a basic free unRaid package with the 3 drives first to get a basic understanding before I jump into it, so I know that I wont be able to use the cache drive until then, but I wanted to plan ahead.
> Hope you don't mind that I use some of your ideas here, as I am just so impressed by the build that I could not resist to try it for myself. Unfortunately I have quite a bit of learning to do to get everything going, I plan on living on unRaid's forums tomorrow to see what I am up against.
> Thanks


The cache drive size you want greatly depends on the user and how they set up the server. There's people using small SSDs because they move cache over daily and don't use large files. However, moving cache to the array spins up all drives so I tend to do it weekly and i'm dealing with very large files, I rarely exceed 1TB transferred to my server in a week unless I just ripped a bunch of huge TV shows or something. I didn't use a cache drive for the first year or so, but then I found out it fixed my time out issues.

I did upgrade the server, I went from 52TB on a single server to 83TB combined on 2 servers with room to expand an additional ~50TB with ease (with 3TB drives). I have 12.8TB free on one, and 10.9TB free on the other, when I fill these up i'll likely be able to start using 4TB-5TB drives for the empty slots. I think it will be about a year before I need to add more drives, maybe more.

Latest unRAID currently has some issues with the controllers I choose and are currently being worked on, so that's something to look out for.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Boyboyd*
> 
> My favourite bit is that both servers are just a copy of each other. If I didn't know better i'd say that the first 2 pictures were just a mirror done in photoshop.
> Do you get many vibrations running through the desk they're placed on? Or are they insulated by something?


I'm OCD, I spent quite some time getting them to look the same.









I don't really get that much vibration, a small amount can be felt when I set my hand on the table and this is with all drives doing a parity sync. I don't think it's enough to affect drive life. My main computer vibrates a heck of a lot more for comparison.


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## Sodalink

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *3930K*
> 
> Would these work well with a HTPC?


To have this previledges I used Server 2008 R2 and it seems to be ok. However, my server is still not done until I figure out which one of my 5 2tB drives running Raid 5 has bad sectors and replace it so redundancy doesn't fail. Also I think i might have a bad SATA cable. And while I was at it since I have an APU (A6 3500), I can game with this server too if I want to so it's not totally just sitting there wasting energy.

And I love the set up you have. If I had my own home which hopefully it'll be soon, I would have tried doing something similar.


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## Boyboyd

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I don't really get that much vibration, a small amount can be felt when I set my hand on the table and this is with all drives doing a parity sync. I don't think it's enough to affect drive life. My main computer vibrates a heck of a lot more for comparison.


I was actually talking from a noise point of view, but i suppose you have to look at drive life too. I ask because mine is pretty audible when doing a parity sync. Less of a vibrating sound but more of a whirring one.


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## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Sodalink*
> 
> To have this previledges I used Server 2008 R2 and it seems to be ok. However, my server is still not done until I figure out which one of my 5 2tB drives running Raid 5 has bad sectors and replace it so redundancy doesn't fail. Also I think i might have a bad SATA cable. And while I was at it since I have an APU (A6 3500), I can game with this server too if I want to so it's not totally just sitting there wasting energy.
> And I love the set up you have. If I had my own home which hopefully it'll be soon, I would have tried doing something similar.


I think Server 2008, and all Windows-based OSes, require you to scan drives on start up when connected to SATA/SAS controllers. So if you are planning on using a Windows-based OS I can't recommend my exact hardware config. For some reason my motherboard will not scan this many drives/controllers on start up without messing up. According to Supermicro, this is normal. It works with 2 SAS controllers but if I add a 3rd serious issues start happening until I disable PCI-E OPROM in the BIOS, which makes it so the drives are not bootable and are not scanned on startup. This works great for unRAID, since unRAID boots to a USB and doesn't need to detect drives on startup. Pretty sure my exact setup would not work on a Windows-based OS though after you added a 3rd controller.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Boyboyd*
> 
> I was actually talking from a noise point of view, but i suppose you have to look at drive life too. I ask because mine is pretty audible when doing a parity sync. Less of a vibrating sound but more of a whirring one.


Nah, they are the same level of noise when idle. I can't hear the vibrations/drives at all, I can only hear the fans which are pretty quiet.


----------



## McGeeked

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> Latest unRAID currently has some issues with the controllers I choose and are currently being worked on, so that's something to look out for.


What kind of issues are you running into? Critical to the main functionality, or just some newer features are not functioning? What specific version are you running now?

Thanks again.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *McGeeked*
> 
> What kind of issues are you running into? Critical to the main functionality, or just some newer features are not functioning? What specific version are you running now?
> Thanks again.


The linux kernel is having driver issues with SASLP-MV8 and SAS2LP-MV8 cards right now in the latest unRAID betas/RCs. RC6-test was suppose to fix it, and it seems it did for everyone but me... so I may have a hardware issue.

One of my servers is acting absolutely fine, the other has had parity taken offline due to read/write errors about 3 times since I built it. I've tested the drive thoroughly, and I can't find anything wrong with it. I'm about to try just replacing the drive even though it seems to be working normally, but i'm fairly sure it's a SAS driver issue.


----------



## parityboy

Those cards have always been flaky under Linux - I've followed their progress for a while over on [H]ardforum. It's a surprise seeing as the majority of servers in datacentres run Linux.

Supermicro really ought to stick to LSI chips...


----------



## ASUSfreak

sub'd


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *parityboy*
> 
> Those cards have always been flaky under Linux - I've followed their progress for a while over on [H]ardforum. It's a surprise seeing as the majority of servers in datacentres run Linux.
> Supermicro really ought to stick to LSI chips...


LSI chips are having serious issues right now with the newest linux kernel too. There's serious spindown/spinup issues with them, though I believe the solution was found recently and in the progress of being fixed.


----------



## herkalurk

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *parityboy*
> 
> Those cards have always been flaky under Linux - I've followed their progress for a while over on [H]ardforum. It's a surprise seeing as the majority of servers in datacentres run Linux.
> Supermicro really ought to stick to LSI chips...


That's why most businesses don't apply updates to systems right away. They'll let other companies take the bait and find the bugs, then let the companies like LSI release a bug fix, and after all that, then apply the update.


----------



## ethanwa

Murlocke -

I'm about to put together the exact same system you have. I already have the case, fans, CPU, SAS cards, 24 x 3TB hard drives, 4 external eSATA LG Blu-ray drives, etc. The only piece I am waiting on is the MB.

My question - Is there any special BIOS settings or SAS card settings that I need to be aware of and set up?

I've tried 3x SAS cards on standard Ivy Bridge motherboards (Gigabyte and MSI) and both don't see the card in the 3rd PCIe slot even with an Ivy Bridge CPU in. My two cards only spin up groups 0 and 1. I know it's not the card, and I've tried two different boards, so I am going with a known working one which is your Supermicro. I want to make sure that this is simply just plug and play and it goes.

When you start the system up, do you see it spin up group 0, 1, and 2 with all three adapters before it loads the OS?

Thanks,

Ethan


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *ethanwa*
> 
> Murlocke -
> I'm about to put together the exact same system you have. I already have the case, fans, CPU, SAS cards, 24 x 3TB hard drives, 4 external eSATA LG Blu-ray drives, etc. The only piece I am waiting on is the MB.
> My question - Is there any special BIOS settings or SAS card settings that I need to be aware of and set up?
> I've tried 3x SAS cards on standard Ivy Bridge motherboards (Gigabyte and MSI) and both don't see the card in the 3rd PCIe slot. My two cards only spin up groups 0 and 1. I want to make sure that this is simply just plug and play and it goes. When you start the system up, do you see it spin up group 0, 1, and 2 with all three adapters before it loads the OS?
> Thanks,
> Ethan


You have to disable PCI-E OPROM in the bios for all PCI-E slots to get everything to work. This will also make it so it doesn't scan any of the hard drives on startup, and they won't be bootable. It basically sets them as data drives. As long as you are booting to a drive that isn't on the SAS cards (or a USB stick like me), it should still detect them. Though I hear Windows requires drives to be scanned or it won't detect them.

If you are using unRAID, make sure you grab RC6-test1 on the forums because it's pretty much required to get our SAS cards to work correctly. One of my servers is still having some issues with it though. Hopefully 5.0 final comes out soon, but I suspect my issue may actually be a faulty hard drive.


----------



## ethanwa

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> You have to disable PCI-E OPROM in the bios for all PCI-E slots to get everything to work. This will also make it so it doesn't scan any of the hard drives on startup, and they won't be bootable.


I'm using FlexRAID in Windows BTW.

As for the PCI-E OPROM, I'm assuming that's a BIOS setting on the Supermicro motherboards? I didn't see that setting in either the MSI or Gigabyte boards I tried if I recall correctly. Or is that a setting on the cards themselves when I hit Cntrl-M to get into their own BIOS?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *ethanwa*
> 
> I'm using FlexRAID in Windows BTW.
> As for the PCI-E OPROM, I'm assuming that's a BIOS setting on the Supermicro motherboards? I didn't see that setting in either the MSI or Gigabyte boards I tried if I recall correctly. Or is that a setting on the cards themselves when I hit Cntrl-M to get into their own BIOS?


It should be in there on the Supermicro board's BIOS. Though, it didn't show up for me until I put the SAS cards in the slots. I'm not sure how FlexRAID does everything, hopefully it works out for you. If not, you'll have to check the FlexRAID forums or something. I had the exact same issue as you before I disabled OPROM, I thought it was the motherboard, but it turns out it's pretty normal. Hopefully Flexraid can still detect your drives with it disabled.


----------



## McGeeked

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> You have to disable PCI-E OPROM in the bios for all PCI-E slots to get everything to work. This will also make it so it doesn't scan any of the hard drives on startup, and they won't be bootable. It basically sets them as data drives. As long as you are booting to a drive that isn't on the SAS cards (or a USB stick like me), it should still detect them. Though I hear Windows requires drives to be scanned or it won't detect them.
> If you are using unRAID, make sure you grab RC6-test1 on the forums because it's pretty much required to get our SAS cards to work correctly. One of my servers is still having some issues with it though. Hopefully 5.0 final comes out soon, but I suspect my issue may actually be a faulty hard drive.


If you are booting to a USB and have disabled PCI-E OPROM in the Supermicro BIOS, how did you get unRAID to identify your Drives? How did you preclear and add them to the array?

Thanks again


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *McGeeked*
> 
> If you are booting to a USB and have disabled PCI-E OPROM in the Supermicro BIOS, how did you get unRAID to identify your Drives? How did you preclear and add them to the array?
> Thanks again


Windows is one of the only OSes that needs drives to be scanned on boot according to what i've read. When unRAID boots, it detects all my drives just fine, even though they are not scanned on start up and do not show in my BIOS.

I don't know if my setup would work on a windows based server. 2 cards would definitely work because you could leave OPROM on. After adding a 3rd card, I have to disable OPROM to get everything to work correctly . The Supermicro motherboard says if you are going to run 3 SAS cards you need to disable it. I have no idea why this is.


----------



## 2thAche

Those are truly amazing but the cost is pretty brutal for a home setup.

Great setup if you have people staying over alot and a full theater room.


----------



## McGeeked

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> Windows is one of the only OSes that needs drives to be scanned on boot according to what i've read. When unRAID boots, it detects all my drives just fine, even though they are not scanned on start up and do not show in my BIOS.
> I don't know if my setup would work on a windows based server. 2 cards would definitely work because you could leave OPROM on. After adding a 3rd card, I have to disable OPROM to get everything to work correctly . The Supermicro motherboard says if you are going to run 3 SAS cards you need to disable it. I have no idea why this is.


I see, well I am struggling right now to get your build working. When I turned it off in the BIOS, unRAID did not see the drives at all. So I am not sure what is different, but ill keep digging. I am trying the newest test2 build right now.

Edit - Just realized that I did not disable INT13 on the controllers, this was why unRAID was not identifying the drives properly. However my syslog is still getting flooded with errors after I initiate a preclear, so still searching for a solution.


----------



## ethanwa

So I got my motherboard and I can't seem the thing to boot up... I've got the same 2120 i3 that you have, same power supply, and nearly the same RAM. When I take my RAM out, no beeps from the on-board speaker.... in fact, I never get beeps for anything. The board does power up and the LED lights flash.

Is there some special trick to get this board to boot and show something on my monitor? Or do I just have a bad board?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *ethanwa*
> 
> So I got my motherboard and I can't seem the thing to boot up... I've got the same 2120 i3 that you have, same power supply, and nearly the same RAM. When I take my RAM out, no beeps from the on-board speaker.... in fact, I never get beeps for anything. The board does power up and the LED lights flash.
> Is there some special trick to get this board to boot and show something on my monitor? Or do I just have a bad board?


Are you using ECC Unbuffered RAM? It is required for i3s on most server boards, including this one. ECC Unbuffered RAM is pretty rare, and not in very large demand, so if you aren't sure chances are it's not. Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139262

If you are, I hope you didn't buy from some 3rd party merchant? There were some very old hardware revisions of the board that had issues with certain processors. No reputable store (Newegg, Amazon, etc) would be carrying them anymore. There was a thread that popped up awhile ago on here where someone did get a old revision from a board he purchased on eBay.


----------



## ethanwa

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> Are you using ECC Unbuffered RAM? It is required for i3s on most server boards, including this one.


I didn't realize that! Thanks... I will order ASAP.


----------



## ethanwa

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I hope you didn't buy from some 3rd party merchant? There were some very old hardware revisions of the board that had issues with certain processors. No reputable store (Newegg, Amazon, etc) would be carrying them anymore. There was a thread that popped up awhile ago on here where someone did get a old revision from a board he purchased on eBay.


Ordered the board and now the RAM from Amazon (direct from them, not a 3rd party). The board revision I have is Rev. 1.11A. Does that sound right to you?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *ethanwa*
> 
> Ordered the board and now the RAM from Amazon (direct from them, not a 3rd party). The board revision I have is Rev. 1.11A. Does that sound right to you?


I forget my revisions but it should be fine.

Just make sure you disable PCI-E OPROM in the motherboard's BIOS for every PCI-E slot, and also disable INT13 on all 3 SAS cards (Ctrl+M when it's scanning the drives to access their BIOS). I'm not 100% sure how flexraid will handle this situation though because it uses windows, hopefully it still detects your drives. Maybe you won't even need to disable this stuff, my systems didn't work correctly until I did.


----------



## Boyboyd

Just a side note, flexraid *can* run on linux if this makes life any easier for you.


----------



## Murlocke

Had my first ever non-hard drive hardware failure on my servers. A hotswap bay in my newest Norco 4224 started producing errors. Tried different SAS card, tried diff SAS cable, and tried different HD in the bay. It's definitely the hotswap bay. This is the same server I was having issues with earlier, so I hope it's related. I moved the drive to a different hotswap bay, and all is good now.

I will have to get Norco to replace this hotswap bay (luckily, they detach easily), and hopefully my previous problems with the server disappear. The other server, with exactly the same hardware and software settings, is still working 100% with absolutely no issues since I set it up.


----------



## cubanresourceful

Murlocke, sorry for going off topic but, what do you do for a living? Just wondering.









EDIT: On Topic: You mind updating your post with your network equipment? Wireless routers, switches, etc?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cubanresourceful*
> 
> Murlocke, sorry for going off topic but, what do you do for a living? Just wondering.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EDIT: On Topic: You mind updating your post with your network equipment? Wireless routers, switches, etc?


Just a tech support guy that saves money and doesn't buy much of anything other than computer related stuff.

My networking closet is only a modem, router, and a switch on a stand. It's really nothing amazing.


----------



## lboregard

awesome cable management Murlocke ..

how did you power the 3 120mm fans .. i resorted to daisy chain the molex connectors, 3 in 1 ... and for the 2 80mm ... i had to use a sata to molex adapter


----------



## cubanresourceful

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> Just a tech support guy that saves money and doesn't buy much of anything other than computer related stuff.
> My networking closet is only a modem, router, and a switch on a stand. It's really nothing amazing.


Nice! I do IT and it does help pay for my toys.









Lol, sounds like my networking setup. Are our clients wired? How's the performance wireless? I am thinking of making my home mostly (if not all) wireless, just upgraded my network from Wireless G to Wireless AC, so I wanna see if it's the right move.


----------



## sub0ptimal

I'm building a similar server this week. I have all the parts in except the memory. I got 3x M1015's from eBay, but otherwise it's the same as yours. I'm a little concerned about flashing the SAS cards, but hopefully that will go smoothly.


----------



## Imrac

Its not difficult at all to flash the cards. The only problem I ran into was after using the Mageraid utility I couldn't reflash the IT firmware with the LSI utility. I had to download the EFI LSI flashing utility and download an EFI shell to boot to. Then I was able to flash the card.

It's pretty safe, other than a power loss during the process, its very very difficult to brick the card.


----------



## seefilms

Like many following this thread (and your previous thread), I want to thank you. This has all been extremely informative.

I need to ask you a question that has been asked before...but it's been awhile (and then I have a brief follow-up question). Okay.

SO: Given the servers you have (and their Jelly-filledness) what would you change if you were to build them right now (or within the next several months)?

Follow-up question: What SAS cables are you using and where did you get them?

Thanks!!!


----------



## seefilms

Did this thread die or something? Or am I just passé?


----------



## edGe06

I hope it didnt die!

Murlocke has inspired me to build a new home server, and I'm going to be utilizing much of what he used to build his 2. The server i'm running now is old and quite outdated.

Just saving up the funds now before I place my order.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *seefilms*
> 
> Like many following this thread (and your previous thread), I want to thank you. This has all been extremely informative.
> I need to ask you a question that has been asked before...but it's been awhile (and then I have a brief follow-up question). Okay.
> SO: Given the servers you have (and their Jelly-filledness) what would you change if you were to build them right now (or within the next several months)?
> Follow-up question: What SAS cables are you using and where did you get them?
> Thanks!!!


I've just been busy.

I probably wouldn't change anything but the SAS cards still have slower than average parity sync speed due to linux drivers. I'm also not sure how my setup would work on non-unRAID servers because the motherboard doesn't like to have 3 bootable SAS cards installed and I think you need them set to bootable in most Windows server OSes. I bought the Norco SAS cables directly from IPCDIRECT.

The slow parity sync speed will hopefully be fixed, that's really my only issue. I parity sync monthly, and it takes about 20 hours to finish, i'm still able to watch movies and whatnot as it's going though.


----------



## seefilms

Thanks Murlocke...

So you know, I have followed in your footsteps. I've purchased the 4224, two sas cards (the third will come later), the motherboard, memory, power supply...the works. (well, not all the hard drives yet). I'm excited to give it a go. Looks fun and satisfying. I'm still trying to figure out how I'll watch my movies. I might do the popcorn thing...but I might try 'My Movies' on a window home server... dunno. I'd like to have an iTunes server going as well. More research I guess. If anyone has any input... I'd love to hear it.

Thanks again, Murlocke.


----------



## Murlocke

So a few weeks ago, hotswap bay died on me. Today, during my monthly parity sync, a drive started showing signs of failing which caused my sync to halt. I am now transferring files off of that drive just to be safe (I don't have an immediate replacement), and already have the advanced RMA set up with WD. No point in a data rebuild if I can just transfer the files off of it.

My other server... just sitting there minding it's own business since I built it. No errors at all. No idea what the problem is with the movie server, identical parts but stuff just keeps dying on me. I also have 2 drives in it with CRC errors, and since i'm using SAS cables i'm not sure how to go about it. You'd think all 4 drives on a SAS cable would get errors if it was faulty, not just 1. I either have 2 faulty SAS cables or the CRC errors were caused by the faulty hotswap bay I replaced.

Going to have to keep an eye on it...
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *seefilms*
> 
> Thanks Murlocke...
> So you know, I have followed in your footsteps. I've purchased the 4224, two sas cards (the third will come later), the motherboard, memory, power supply...the works. (well, not all the hard drives yet). I'm excited to give it a go. Looks fun and satisfying. I'm still trying to figure out how I'll watch my movies. I might do the popcorn thing...but I might try 'My Movies' on a window home server... dunno. I'd like to have an iTunes server going as well. More research I guess. If anyone has any input... I'd love to hear it.
> Thanks again, Murlocke.


Popcorn hour A400 is coming out this month, will have a dual core processor, support 3D, and a better video processor/upscaler (they don't allow you to use external upscalers so this will be a big improvement for SD/720p material). I'll be grabbing 2 of them. Just don't expect a headache free experience with ANY choice you make. It's pretty much impossible to have a perfect experience when you start getting so much data.


----------



## TheReciever

subbed, ill be looking to learn from you in the future!

Those servers look pretty awesome


----------



## legoman786

Could it be the SAS card? Possibly dirty contacts on the card/motherboard?


----------



## utnorris

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *seefilms*
> 
> Thanks Murlocke...
> So you know, I have followed in your footsteps. I've purchased the 4224, two sas cards (the third will come later), the motherboard, memory, power supply...the works. (well, not all the hard drives yet). I'm excited to give it a go. Looks fun and satisfying. I'm still trying to figure out how I'll watch my movies. I might do the popcorn thing...but I might try 'My Movies' on a window home server... dunno. I'd like to have an iTunes server going as well. More research I guess. If anyone has any input... I'd love to hear it.
> Thanks again, Murlocke.


I use the Apple TV2 Jailbroke with XBMC on it and it works great. I stream wireless too. Granted, it is only 720p, but it looks great and then I can add apps to the XBMC for stuff like live tv or various other things. I can also use my iphone to control it with the remote app, so i do not have to worry about line of sight or needing to be close enough for the remote to work, very handy app. They usually go for $150 on Ebay or if you can find an Apple TV2 that has not been jailbroken maybe less.


----------



## Boyboyd

I'm lucky enough that my TV is within 10m of my sigrig, so i just use XBMC on that. My NAS is downstairs though, no way i could even hear the TV with that on.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *legoman786*
> 
> Could it be the SAS card? Possibly dirty contacts on the card/motherboard?


Norco was nice enough to send me 2 replacement SAS cables for absolutely free (saves me like $32 after shipping). I'm hoping it fixes the CRC errors on those drives.


----------



## Bonz(TM)

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> So a few weeks ago, hotswap bay died on me. Today, during my monthly parity sync, a drive started showing signs of failing which caused my sync to halt. I am now transferring files off of that drive just to be safe (I don't have an immediate replacement), and already have the advanced RMA set up with WD. No point in a data rebuild if I can just transfer the files off of it.
> My other server... just sitting there minding it's own business since I built it. No errors at all. No idea what the problem is with the movie server, identical parts but stuff just keeps dying on me. I also have 2 drives in it with CRC errors, and since i'm using SAS cables i'm not sure how to go about it. You'd think all 4 drives on a SAS cable would get errors if it was faulty, not just 1. I either have 2 faulty SAS cables or the CRC errors were caused by the faulty hotswap bay I replaced.
> Going to have to keep an eye on it...
> Popcorn hour A400 is coming out this month, will have a dual core processor, support 3D, and a better video processor/upscaler (they don't allow you to use external upscalers so this will be a big improvement for SD/720p material). I'll be grabbing 2 of them. Just don't expect a headache free experience with ANY choice you make. It's pretty much impossible to have a perfect experience when you start getting so much data.


Slim chances that it's the cable, but replacing is always the easiest step for that. If problems still ensue, swap the port on the HBA. Still problems? Pull the HDD out and run it through diagnostics with another machine. No problems with the drive, backplane.
The backplanes have been known to go bad. I had to call Norco up and get 2 replacements just a few months ago. 3 of my drives were throwing errors. (2 on 1 backplane, 1 on the other)


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Bonz(TM)*
> 
> Slim chances that it's the cable, but replacing is always the easiest step for that. If problems still ensue, swap the port on the HBA. Still problems? Pull the HDD out and run it through diagnostics with another machine. No problems with the drive, backplane.
> The backplanes have been known to go bad. I had to call Norco up and get 2 replacements just a few months ago. 3 of my drives were throwing errors. (2 on 1 backplane, 1 on the other)


Well, just noticed one of the drives getting CRC errors now has 17 pending sectors. No surprise, it's in the "trouble" server. I'm tired of dealing with it. I got Norco to send me 2x hotswap bays, and 2x SAS cables and I RMA'd both drives.

If the second server still gives me issues i'm probably going to flip out.


----------



## seefilms

Murlocke... okay. I have the exact unRAID Server as you (yes, I know, how unoriginal...but, as they say, 'imitation is the highest form of compliment')...

So... Can you tell me what settings you have your motherboard at? I cannot get this thing to start!


----------



## Nick Burns

Out of curiosity:
Are you doing anything for backup, or just relying on parity?
If these are strictly for TV/Movies, what do you use for backup of your files?


----------



## Murlocke

Got the second server up and running (again) with the new replacement parts. So far i've replaced 3 faulty drives, 2 hotswaps bays (3 if you count that one replacement was faulty too), and 2 cables in a short amount of time. So far it's working normally, so here's hoping that nothing else starts going bad in it. If I get another faulty part in the near future, i'm going to RMA the PSU. The other identical server still has not had a single error and it's been running for 3 1/2 months.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *seefilms*
> 
> Murlocke... okay. I have the exact unRAID Server as you (yes, I know, how unoriginal...but, as they say, 'imitation is the highest form of compliment')...
> So... Can you tell me what settings you have your motherboard at? I cannot get this thing to start!


Make sure BIOS are updated, then find PCI-E OPROM in the bios and disable it for all PCI slots. It only shows up if you have something in the PCI slot. I believe that was the only required changes for me.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Nick Burns*
> 
> Out of curiosity:
> Are you doing anything for backup, or just relying on parity?
> If these are strictly for TV/Movies, what do you use for backup of your files?


I only use parity, it is too expense to use additional backups with such large files.

In ~5 years of using unRAID, I've only had 2 drives flat out fail, and parity rebuilt the data correctly. The other faulty drives started showing some SMART errors, so I either transfer the data off and replace the drive ASAP, or fake a failure and rebuild the data onto a new drive immediately... depends if I have a spare or not. If I ever get 2 drives failing at the same time, chances are I will be able to recover 90%+ of the data before they completely fail, and in the worse case of complete 2 drive failure i'd only lose the data on those 2 drives. I could replace the files in this extremely unlikely scenario.









For business files or very critical files, i'd still use something that allows more than 1 drive failure at a time.


----------



## canadianpanda

Nice Setup!







- I was rather silent in your last thread but I must say this has really inspired me to finally go through with building my own.









I am looking to do something similar. I was wondering given the price difference between WD RED and WD GREEN Drives would you recommend going Red or Green? I am thinking of going with the 3TB Drives of either although I might go with 2TB drives. - More or less whatever gives the better deal in terms of Capacity/Price

Seems like the Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 is definitively the best SAS card in that price point right now.
Going to be building up my server over time so probably starting with 9 or 12TB Storage + 3 TB Parity + 1TB WD Black Cache. Probably add another 6TB when drive prices drop a little more or I have more cash to spare.

From what I have been reading Black seems like the best bet for the cache drive.


----------



## Boyboyd

I'm trying to get a norco 4224 in the UK. They're £420 from xcase who are usually quite good. However there's one on ebay that's £239 with a whopping £141 postage. Might settle for a 4220 and loose 4 bays. But it costs almost half as much.

Fortunately your SAS expander cards aren't difficult to find here, and they're pretty cheap.


----------



## Nick Burns

I'm thinking of building a replica of this system







. Murlocke, if you had the chance to build one of these today, what things would you change/update?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *canadianpanda*
> 
> Nice Setup!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> - I was rather silent in your last thread but I must say this has really inspired me to finally go through with building my own.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I am looking to do something similar. I was wondering given the price difference between WD RED and WD GREEN Drives would you recommend going Red or Green? I am thinking of going with the 3TB Drives of either although I might go with 2TB drives. - More or less whatever gives the better deal in terms of Capacity/Price
> Seems like the Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 is definitively the best SAS card in that price point right now.
> Going to be building up my server over time so probably starting with 9 or 12TB Storage + 3 TB Parity + 1TB WD Black Cache. Probably add another 6TB when drive prices drop a little more or I have more cash to spare.
> From what I have been reading Black seems like the best bet for the cache drive.


If I had an unlimited budget i'd go with red drives just because they should be more reliable and are faster. However, green drives fit my budget more.

Western Digital's RMA service is very fast for me (I get replacement drives 1-2 days after filing a request), so I always stick with their drives.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Nick Burns*
> 
> I'm thinking of building a replica of this system
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> . Murlocke, if you had the chance to build one of these today, what things would you change/update?


Overall, I wouldn't change anything.. but I haven't been following unRAID lately and there may be better builds now.

unRAID still has some issues with my setups. I'm 99.9% sure i've fixed the major issues I was having with one of the servers, and it was caused by faulty hardware. I'm sitting at 39 days up-time on both of them with no errors. The main issue I have is parity syncs take way longer than they should. I get about 60MB/s on the newer versions, which takes about 18 hours to complete, when it was about 90-100MB/s on the older versions. This isn't a gamebreaker and will probably be fixed before 5.0 goes final.

I am still unsure if running 3 SAS cards will work on a Windows server because you have to set the cards up as non-bootable in order to get it working correctly. unRAID boots from a USB stick, so it works fine. If you do decide to buy the same systems, make sure you look over the thread, there are a few BIOS changes that are needed. I'd also suggest reading around on the unRAID forums because it will not be a headache free experience for new users.


----------



## m1ndb3nd3r

Mmmm so much power... Your my hero...


----------



## Bonz(TM)

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *m1ndb3nd3r*
> 
> Mmmm so much power... *You're* my hero...


Fixed.


----------



## cubanresourceful

Just wanted to say thank you for this thread.







Been using it as a template for my "true" server build.


----------



## oomalikoo

can i please see a list of the media on them hard drives?


----------



## edGe06

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *oomalikoo*
> 
> can i please see a list of the media on them hard drives?


nice try MPAA


----------



## Pip Boy

Really Great build man. Its inspiring that you took the plunge on this and went all out









please don't take my questions as criticisms though, I was looking into unraid with some interest. Now, it does seem that the main selling point (given the home environment it is used in) is that data is kept separate on each disc.

this leads me onto a few questions:

First, given single parity, if a drive fails AND there are parity errors how do you know what files have gone on said main failed drive? Do you organise within unraid program or do to decide to put A-D on one drive, E-H on another and then mark each disc with a sticker to say what alphabetical order goes on where ? (would that even be a good idea?)

The standard is 15-20mins for ripping a 30GB 1:1 MKV on DVDfab. That is a LOT of time to re-rip or re-find. On my setup I have 140 purchased titles on 3TB which @ 20mins each works about at a massive 40- 46hrs of time to re-rip .. lets not forget that most of us have work and family time, weekends doing other stuff that 40- 46 hrs could be upto two months (or a massive coffee compound and a soul crushing holiday) re-ripping non stop from dusk till dawn!
Also Dont forget the 20hrs taken Zeroing out a HDD and how long until we see 5TB and 6TB drives, just how long will that take to zero ?? so there's some real time needed to rebuild and renew here

So the other question is, Why not use something with more redundancy and a greater level of error checking? If your controller, mainboard, O/S drive fails with ZFS you too can also recover the information like Unraid you can import a working pool back into a new ZFS build without too many headaches.

My feeling is that as your discs get individually bigger there are many more files and the re-rip times become 80hrs + 30hrs for 1 x 5TB drive failure? so very realistically you could be looking at 100HRS
What about the time differences between copying 30GB over lan to a ZFS server vs unraid speeds per movie too?

for a drive failure / parity errors! when do you call it quits? at what point do you allow for a $10 a month subscription to deliver your movies at 720p and eventually 1080p? ok they wont be Blueray quality for many years but the probability is that the kids and the wife wont notice









I still would consider unraid and if it could do two parity drives and a bit more performance i might just be a no brainer for a media server ! for much smaller installations 1 drive is easily enough i think and i would probably run the gauntlet on a 2TB drive loss with 80 movies for example.

as mentioned, exellent build and im not knocking it but you really have pushed the envelope of data size vs redundancy here









* edit i supose the 3rd question would be if unraid offered x2 parity would you use it?


----------



## tycoonbob

The main advantage of UnRAID (in my opinion) is that you can mix and match different drives (sizes, vendors, etc.). With hardware RAID it's best to use the same vendor, but you also have to use the same size drives (gigabyte boundary may be an option). I'd assume that ZFS you would also want to use the same size drives.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *phill1978*
> 
> Really Great build man. Its inspiring that you took the plunge on this and went all out
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> please don't take my questions as criticisms though, I was looking into unraid with some interest. Now, it does seem that the main selling point (given the home environment it is used in) is that data is kept separate on each disc.
> this leads me onto a few questions:
> First, given single parity, if a drive fails AND there are parity errors how do you know what files have gone on said main failed drive? *If this happens you would still recover the data, but some of it would be corrupt (probably only 1 file unless you had some serious errors). Parity errors should never happen if your server is working correctly.* Do you organise within unraid program or do to decide to put A-D on one drive, E-H on another and then mark each disc with a sticker to say what alphabetical order goes on where ? *You can organize anyway you want, there are endless possibilities. I keep each TV show on it's own drive, everything else is wherever there is space. It doesn't really matter since it's all pooled into the same directory*
> The standard is 15-20mins for ripping a 30GB 1:1 MKV on DVDfab. That is a LOT of time to re-rip or re-find. On my setup I have 140 purchased titles on 3TB which @ 20mins each works about at a massive 40- 46hrs of time to re-rip .. lets not forget that most of us have work and family time, weekends doing other stuff that 40- 46 hrs could be upto two months (or a massive coffee compound and a soul crushing holiday) re-ripping non stop from dusk till dawn! *I've put hundreds of hours into ripping and removing menus over the last few years. You can't have this much data, rip it yourself, and remove menus yourself, without doing some work.*
> Also Dont forget the 20hrs taken Zeroing out a HDD and how long until we see 5TB and 6TB drives, just how long will that take to zero ?? so there's some real time needed to rebuild and renew here
> So the other question is, Why not use something with more redundancy and a greater level of error checking? If your controller, mainboard, O/S drive fails with ZFS you too can also recover the information like Unraid you can import a working pool back into a new ZFS build without too many headaches. *I don't need more redundancy for these type of files, it's just a waste of space. I've been using unRAID for 5 years now and haven't had any data loss. ZFS has more cons than pros for my needs.*
> My feeling is that as your discs get individually bigger there are many more files and the re-rip times become 80hrs + 30hrs for 1 x 5TB drive failure? so very realistically you could be looking at 100HRS *Hardware gets faster as discs get bigger, I really don't see this happening. Ripping a 700MB CD when they first came out was not any faster than ripping a 50GB BD now.*
> What about the time differences between copying 30GB over lan to a ZFS server vs unraid speeds per movie too? *I don't care that it takes longer, it's not like i'm adding 300GB a day. You drag files over, and you go do something else. I don't need a blazing fast server for storage.*
> for a drive failure / parity errors! when do you call it quits? at what point do you allow for a $10 a month subscription to deliver your movies at 720p and eventually 1080p? ok they wont be Blueray quality for many years but the probability is that the kids and the wife wont notice
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I still would consider unraid and if it could do two parity drives and a bit more performance i might just be a no brainer for a media server ! for much smaller installations 1 drive is easily enough i think and i would probably run the gauntlet on a 2TB drive loss with 80 movies for example.
> as mentioned, exellent build and im not knocking it but you really have pushed the envelope of data size vs redundancy here
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *I have not had data loss and i've been using unraid for 5 years. If I lost data, i'd just re-rip it. There's no reason for me to have more redundancy when I have a physical backup. If you didn't have physical backups and had no way to get the data back, I could see why my setup would worry someone.*
> * edit i supose the 3rd question would be if unraid offered x2 parity would you use it? *Probably not. It's not needed, i'm not dealing with files that would cost me my job/life if I lost them. I'd rather use the 2nd drive as data.*


See bolds. I don't see myself getting rid of unRAID anytime soon. My servers have been running now for 121 days with 0 errors, and no data loss since I got it almost 5 years ago. I see absolutely no reason to go to ZFS for more redundancy/speed when I don't need either. ZFS would only give me pros that I don't need, and the rest would be cons.

ZFS is not a bad solution, but in my eyes it's not the best solution for my situation. I see the appeal and my friend actually has an unRAID server for his media and a ZFS server for his other files.


----------



## srsparky32

That looks great. Makes my NAS look like childs play.


----------



## cubanresourceful

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *phill1978*
> 
> Really Great build man. Its inspiring that you took the plunge on this and went all out
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> please don't take my questions as criticisms though, I was looking into unraid with some interest. Now, it does seem that the main selling point (given the home environment it is used in) is that data is kept separate on each disc.
> this leads me onto a few questions:
> First, given single parity, if a drive fails AND there are parity errors how do you know what files have gone on said main failed drive? Do you organise within unraid program or do to decide to put A-D on one drive, E-H on another and then mark each disc with a sticker to say what alphabetical order goes on where ? (would that even be a good idea?)
> The standard is 15-20mins for ripping a 30GB 1:1 MKV on DVDfab. That is a LOT of time to re-rip or re-find. On my setup I have 140 purchased titles on 3TB which @ 20mins each works about at a massive 40- 46hrs of time to re-rip .. lets not forget that most of us have work and family time, weekends doing other stuff that 40- 46 hrs could be upto two months (or a massive coffee compound and a soul crushing holiday) re-ripping non stop from dusk till dawn!
> Also Dont forget the 20hrs taken Zeroing out a HDD and how long until we see 5TB and 6TB drives, just how long will that take to zero ?? so there's some real time needed to rebuild and renew here
> So the other question is, Why not use something with more redundancy and a greater level of error checking? If your controller, mainboard, O/S drive fails with ZFS you too can also recover the information like Unraid you can import a working pool back into a new ZFS build without too many headaches.
> My feeling is that as your discs get individually bigger there are many more files and the re-rip times become 80hrs + 30hrs for 1 x 5TB drive failure? so very realistically you could be looking at 100HRS
> What about the time differences between copying 30GB over lan to a ZFS server vs unraid speeds per movie too?
> for a drive failure / parity errors! when do you call it quits? at what point do you allow for a $10 a month subscription to deliver your movies at 720p and eventually 1080p? ok they wont be Blueray quality for many years but the probability is that the kids and the wife wont notice
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I still would consider unraid and if it could do two parity drives and a bit more performance i might just be a no brainer for a media server ! for much smaller installations 1 drive is easily enough i think and i would probably run the gauntlet on a 2TB drive loss with 80 movies for example.
> as mentioned, exellent build and im not knocking it but you really have pushed the envelope of data size vs redundancy here
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> * edit i supose the 3rd question would be if unraid offered x2 parity would you use it?


I want to make a point here for you in particular. If you want, you can use SnapRAID. It has the benefits of unRAID with the checksumming behavior of ZFS.


----------



## Shawnb99

I'm so glad i found this thread, i've been wanting to build a media server for years and now i've found the perfect one to copy.
I'll be asking questions when i'm closer to being ready to start building but i really love your set up


----------



## Pip Boy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cubanresourceful*
> 
> I want to make a point here for you in particular. If you want, you can use SnapRAID. It has the benefits of unRAID with the checksumming behavior of ZFS.


Thanks +rep


----------



## cubanresourceful

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *phill1978*
> 
> Thanks +rep


Also, for further FYI, here's a direct comparison (of course, done by the people behind SnapRAID, but seems to be actually honest): http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html


----------



## Pip Boy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cubanresourceful*
> 
> Also, for further FYI, here's a direct comparison (of course, done by the people behind SnapRAID, but seems to be actually honest): http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html


snapraid seems nice.

thanks for the heads up.

im at

Ubuntu server + snapraid + shares using webmin

or

ZFS Guru.

until the next update of ZFS guru i dont think its quite as featured as the above but it is easier to setup the pools and more powerfull.

thanks again, i shall post my server soon although it wont be as good as this 83TB beast


----------



## Kazimir

If you were to run an ATX/EATX (Assuming 7 PCI-E slots) board in one, could you put 6 cards in 1 machine and run both servers off the single machine? Just figure out a way to get data cables from 1 machine to the other.


----------



## Ellis

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kazimir*
> 
> If you were to run an ATX/EATX (Assuming 7 PCI-E slots) board in one, could you put 6 cards in 1 machine and run both servers off the single machine? Just figure out a way to get data cables from 1 machine to the other.


unRAID has a drive limit of 21, so you'd be limited by software in the end. I'm also not sure that a board would be able to provide the bandwidth for that many cards at full speed, even if it had enough slots.


----------



## Murlocke

I still have 19.55TB of free space between the servers. Been adding a lot of stuff lately, and I still think it will be another year before I fill them up again. I'm really hopping for 4TB drives for the remaining empty hotswap bays.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Shawnb99*
> 
> I'm so glad i found this thread, i've been wanting to build a media server for years and now i've found the perfect one to copy.
> I'll be asking questions when i'm closer to being ready to start building but i really love your set up


I can't stress it enough that my build may not work for everyone (especially if you choose to use something other than unRAID), and I don't always check this thread that much. There are driver issues still with unRAID and these builds, but they are related to speed and not stability.

The last thing I want is people to spend a lot of money copying me and then not have it work for them. I really suggest doing research before buying everything, and not straight up copying the builds. There was a lot of headache getting these servers working correctly, and a few BIOS settings that needed to be changed in order for everything to play nicely.








Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Ellis*
> 
> unRAID has a drive limit of 21, so you'd be limited by software in the end. I'm also not sure that a board would be able to provide the bandwidth for that many cards at full speed, even if it had enough slots.


He added more drive support for people with 24 bay cases. It something like 26 or 28 drives if you are running the latest 5.0 RC. Seems like he wants to run something like 48 drives though...
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kazimir*
> 
> If you were to run an ATX/EATX (Assuming 7 PCI-E slots) board in one, could you put 6 cards in 1 machine and run both servers off the single machine? Just figure out a way to get data cables from 1 machine to the other.


You'd be limited to something like 26 drives. I don't think any consumer-grade board on the market can provide that type of bandwidth, just because it has 7x PCI-E slots doesn't mean they all can run at full speed at the same time. Even with my server motherboard it runs my 3 cards at 8x/8x/4x. Many high end gaming motherboards apparently won't even accept SAS/SATA controllers in their PCI-E slots. They've been a hit or miss over on the unRAID forums, which is why I ended up going with the server motherboard that's designed for these SAS cards.

The cheapest method if you need more than 24 slots is to just build another server. Any other method and you are probably looking at 3-5 grand instead of 1-2 grand (hard drives not included). They don't really make any consumer/home solutions beyond 24 drives that I could find, and unRAID definitely won't support them if they do exist.


----------



## Ellis

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I still have 19.55TB of free space between the servers. Been adding a lot of stuff lately, and I still think it will be another year before I fill them up again. I'm really hopping for 4TB drives for the remaining empty hotswap bays.
> I can't stress it enough that my build may not work for everyone (especially if you choose to use something other than unRAID), and I don't always check this thread that much. There are driver issues still with unRAID and these builds, but they are related to speed and not stability.
> 
> The last thing I want is people to spend a lot of money copying me and then not have it work for them. I really suggest doing research before buying everything, and not straight up copying the builds. There was a lot of headache getting these servers working correctly, and a few BIOS settings that needed to be changed in order for everything to play nicely.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> He added more drive support for people with 24 bay cases. It something like 26 or 28 drives if you are running the latest 5.0 RC. Seems like he wants to run something like 48 drives though...
> You'd be limited to something like 26 drives. I don't think any consumer-grade board on the market can provide that type of bandwidth, just because it has 7x PCI-E slots doesn't mean they all can run at full speed at the same time. Even with my server motherboard it runs my 3 cards at 8x/8x/4x. Many high end gaming motherboards apparently won't even accept SAS/SATA controllers in their PCI-E slots. They've been a hit or miss over on the unRAID forums, which is why I ended up going with the server motherboard that's designed for these SAS cards.
> 
> The cheapest method if you need more than 24 slots is to just build another server. Any other method and you are probably looking at 3-5 grand instead of 1-2 grand (hard drives not included). They don't really make any consumer/home solutions beyond 24 drives that I could find, and unRAID definitely won't support them if they do exist.


Ah right. I just checked on the site where it said that the maximum number of drives for unRAID Pro is 21 but I guess that doesn't include RC and beta versions.


----------



## Megalodon

Murlocke can I ask how you set your Noctua fans up, did you use the motherboard headers, and did you use PWM versions, if not what speed did you set them at.


----------



## kujon

is that 850w psu the bare minimum to get all the hard drives powered? ive got a seasonic 750w psu and was wondering if that would be able to power a case with all the hard drives in there.

thanks


----------



## tycoonbob

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kujon*
> 
> is that 850w psu the bare minimum to get all the hard drives powered? ive got a seasonic 750w psu and was wondering if that would be able to power a case with all the hard drives in there.
> 
> thanks


Typical consumer 7200 RPM drive needs ~6.5W for startup. So ~156W to start up the drives. The same drives idle around 3.5W though. So whatever your computer requirements are, add ~175W to it (or so).


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Megalodon*
> 
> Murlocke can I ask how you set your Noctua fans up, did you use the motherboard headers, and did you use PWM versions, if not what speed did you set them at.


The fans linked in the original post are the exact ones I ordered, non-PWM. They are connected with simple molex connections and ran at full speed. They are still pretty quiet. I'd say about 8x quieter than the stock fans.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kujon*
> 
> is that 850w psu the bare minimum to get all the hard drives powered? ive got a seasonic 750w psu and was wondering if that would be able to power a case with all the hard drives in there.
> 
> thanks


The 850W is overkill and is mainly just because I wanted more amps on the 12v. 24 drives spinning up at the same time is a lot of amps. Your 750W should be fine, it's not a crappy brand. My friend was using a 650W Corsair with 20 green drives and had no problems.


----------



## kujon

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> The fans linked in the original post are the exact ones I ordered, non-PWM. They are connected with simple molex connections and ran at full speed. They are still pretty quiet. I'd say about 8x quieter than the stock fans.
> The 850W is overkill and is mainly just because I wanted more amps on the 12v. 24 drives spinning up at the same time is a lot of amps. Your 750W should be fine, it's not a crappy brand. My friend was using a 650W Corsair with 20 green drives and had no problems.


yeah, i just wanted to make sure i'd have enough connectors. I'm guessing that I'd need some molex to sata convertors?


----------



## hollywood406

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *srsparky32*
> 
> That looks great. Makes my NAS look like childs play.


I agree









I run a freeNAS server on the older version 7 software. It's old and not very speedy but it serves my purpose. I don't use it as a media server, I just backup my computers/data to it. Mine is a 4.5TB raid 5 array, composed of (4) 1.5TB Samsung f3's running on a cheapie ECS mobo, a Sempron 140 processor and a couple gig of ram.

I'd love to build something a little more robust or just get a readyNAS box but each time I look at the expense, my little freeNAS box still looks good


----------



## Leader2light

I Need to start building one of these. I have just been adding external HDD's to my pc and am about to run out of drive letters. Close to 30TBs, and im just lucky iv never had a drive fail.


----------



## Master__Shake

blasphemy!! how can you have a norco 4224 and not enjoy the deltas on the mid plate.


----------



## Bonn93

Wouldnt the CPU bottleneck all this?


----------



## trulsrohk

quite simply, no

You can run unRaid with a sempron and 1gb of ram just fine.


----------



## CaptainBlame

Didn't read the whole thread, but why Unread instead of say FreeBSD + ZFS? What does Unraid give you?


----------



## HPE1000

This is amazing


----------



## Boyboyd

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CaptainBlame*
> 
> Didn't read the whole thread, but why Unread instead of say FreeBSD + ZFS? What does Unraid give you?


The ability to expand the array by 1 drive at a time.


----------



## Bonn93

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Boyboyd*
> 
> The ability to expand the array by 1 drive at a time.


You can do that with ZFS...


----------



## Imrac

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Bonn93*
> 
> You can do that with ZFS...


You can't expand a raidz vdev by adding a drive. You would need to create another raidz vdev and add it to the pool, or replace each disk one by one with a larger disk.

Unraid allows you to add 1 drive at a time, and can be any size as long as it's smaller than the parity drive.


----------



## CaptainBlame

I can't really say that that limitation of ZFS has ever really been a major for me, since I plan my array width from the start. This seems a minor tradeoff to all the other benefits you get with ZFS.


----------



## ipv89

your servers are just cool thats all i can say lol. I hope to create something like this one day


----------



## Pip Boy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CaptainBlame*
> 
> I can't really say that that limitation of ZFS has ever really been a major for me, since I plan my array width from the start. This seems a minor tradeoff to all the other benefits you get with ZFS.


whats your build? or rather have you a thread on it?


----------



## eng050599

I'm hoping someone can help me. I've basically built the same system as the OP, but I've run into a bit of a snag. I've got the 3 AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 cards positioned in slots 7, 6 and 5 on the MB (the three closest to the processor 8X, 8X, 4X) and if I have the drives plugged into the bays associated with Slot 7, everything works fine. If I try to use the other bays, I get a freeze on boot at the4 following screen.



Before this, there is a screen stating the drives are spinning up, but that's it. The keyboard options do nothing, and I've even tried using different keyboards (PS2 and USB), so I'm not sure what the problem is. If I have no drives plugged in, or they're plugged into whatever card is in Slot 7, the system boots without a problem

A few more details:

Motherboard: X9SCM-F (2.0 BIOS)
CPU: i3 3220
RAM: Kingston Value ECC UDIMM 4X4GB
Case: Norco RPC-4224

I've only got 4 drives in the case right now, as I'd like to figure out what is going on here.

Any help is appreciated, and if this is in the wrong place, I apologize, and would appreciate being directed to the right place. Supermicro's support has been awful in getting back to me.


----------



## hypyke

I had a lot of problems with these cards as well. I have no idea if this is related but to get mine to work reliably and detect all drives, etc, I had to turn of INIT13 in the card's firmware screen AS WELL as the interrupt 19 function of my BIOS.

The assumes, of course, that you are not trying to boot from one of the drives connected to those controllers.


----------



## eng050599

Yeah, I managed to solve the issue by removing al the drives connected to Slot 5 and 6 on teh MB, then disabling the INIT13 on the two cards through their BIOS. I also switched the PCI ROM priority to UEFI first, but I'm not sure if that helped, and I don't want to change anything now that I've got it working.

One final option is to disable the OPROM fro each slot. It will still be recognized by UnRAID, but there could be issues with Windows-based systems, as the drives will not be spun up and recognized on boot. I haven't needed to do this yet, but it's an option floating around on other sites.


----------



## cubanresourceful

Murlocke, do you happen to know how much kWh one of your servers use? At the plug?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cubanresourceful*
> 
> Murlocke, do you happen to know how much kWh one of your servers use? At the plug?


I only go by what the UPS tells me... about 75W per server.


----------



## dubboxster

Murlocke,

What kind of SAS cables are u using on ur servers. They look nice with cover.


----------



## murderbymodem

All I have to say is:


I wish I had a NAS that was more than an old Sony Vaio with a Pentium 4 and a few old 500GB IDE drives.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *dubboxster*
> 
> Murlocke,
> 
> What kind of SAS cables are u using on ur servers. They look nice with cover.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133034


----------



## TurboTurtle

This has probably been asked in either this thread or the original, but I couldn't turn anything up.

Was there any specific reasoning to go with Western Digital over another brand? I know the aggregate data for failure rates between all manufacturers is basically the same when you look at the big picture.

Reason I ask is I've heard of a number of bad batches leaving WD in the last year or two, but people still seem to be stung by the .11 firmware issues Seagate had. I personally am using .12 Seagate's in my server and everything has been working fine - only thing that gets me is the heads occasionally reset on my drives (fixable via firmware update that I've been too lazy to do). It doesn't hurt anything it just sounds awful >.>


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *TurboTurtle*
> 
> This has probably been asked in either this thread or the original, but I couldn't turn anything up.
> 
> Was there any specific reasoning to go with Western Digital over another brand? I know the aggregate data for failure rates between all manufacturers is basically the same when you look at the big picture.
> 
> Reason I ask is I've heard of a number of bad batches leaving WD in the last year or two, but people still seem to be stung by the .11 firmware issues Seagate had. I personally am using .12 Seagate's in my server and everything has been working fine - only thing that gets me is the heads occasionally reset on my drives (fixable via firmware update that I've been too lazy to do). It doesn't hurt anything it just sounds awful >.>


Cross-ship with prepaid shipping label from WD cost me about $5. I get replacement drives 1-2 days after starting an RMA. No other company comes close to that for me. With this many drives you tend to have one that shows a few errors every 5-6 months or so, so having a good and fast RMA process is a must.

Go with which you prefer though, WD has been good to me.


----------



## Boyboyd

I apologise if this is written somewhere, but what version of unraid 5 are you running? I'm in the process of migrating my server to unraid, but i've chosen 4.7. From what i've seen though it's relatively easy to upgrade.


----------



## Abula

Murlocke,

Pretty impressive servers, by far the best unraid servers i have seen. Im about to rebuild my server, as im running out of storage (22tb of usable on WHSv1), but my initial though was just to go with WHS2011 + Stablebitt to have the same functionality of WHSv1 (but with support for 3tb+) hdd, but since saw your servers, specially as my use is about the same (storeage of iso and blu ray movies), i been considering seriously unraid. But my question goes into if you were to do a new unraid server would you change anything from your previous builds? like HBAs or CPUs? or will still think its as good as there is in the market for unraid.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Boyboyd*
> 
> I apologise if this is written somewhere, but what version of unraid 5 are you running? I'm in the process of migrating my server to unraid, but i've chosen 4.7. From what i've seen though it's relatively easy to upgrade.


I always stay on the latest 5.0 RC, it looks like 5.0 final should be released sometime within the next few days though.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Abula*
> 
> Murlocke,
> 
> Pretty impressive servers, by far the best unraid servers i have seen. Im about to rebuild my server, as im running out of storage (22tb of usable on WHSv1), but my initial though was just to go with WHS2011 + Stablebitt to have the same functionality of WHSv1 (but with support for 3tb+) hdd, but since saw your servers, specially as my use is about the same (storeage of iso and blu ray movies), i been considering seriously unraid. But my question goes into if you were to do a new unraid server would you change anything from your previous builds? like HBAs or CPUs? or will still think its as good as there is in the market for unraid.


I haven't really looked at new parts, there may be better out there now. I had lots of issues when I first built these, but i've fixed them all now. Many of the issues were caused by unRAID, and have since been fixed. That's what I get for being on beta, sadly my parts required it though.

The new "prebuilt" unRAID servers that just went on sale are very similar to my builds, so they are probably some of the best parts you can use. As long as you change a few settings, everything should be smooth (I forget all the settings but i've listed them on this thread a few times).


----------



## solaris8

hi Murlocke
thanks for sharing your build with us. I am trying my best to build almost exact same as yours.
I have a question about cable from PSU to Disks.
the red arrow pointing position.

you have a customized cable with multiple 4Pin? such as 1 6pin sata to 6 4pin sata ?

thanks


----------



## SDriver

Let me first say thats one sweet server you've built!

I'm currently separating my HTPC/Server into two individual systems. I'm interested in something very similar to yours. In your Norco case with those SAS card does each port on the card control an entire row of drives in the case? I'm trying to come up with the good way of fitting many drives in my server. This looks promising.

Thanks.


----------



## solaris8

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *SDriver*
> 
> Let me first say thats one sweet server you've built!
> 
> I'm currently separating my HTPC/Server into two individual systems. I'm interested in something very similar to yours. In your Norco case with those SAS card does each port on the card control an entire row of drives in the case? I'm trying to come up with the good way of fitting many drives in my server. This looks promising.
> 
> Thanks.


SF087 to SF8087 cable, miniSAS to miniSAS, so one port control 4 SATA disks.then I think so.


----------



## aaronwt

I like using external enclosures to house most of my drives in my unRAID setups. I used to have seven external, 4 bay enclosures, for my WHS along with the four internal drives for a total of 31 drives. But I repurposed the drives to setup my third unRAID setup. I had been using the WHS for several years but with duplication you really only have half the storage available. Which is why I finally setup that third unRAID setup since I was running out of space in the first two unRAIDs.

My unRAID1 setup is maxed out with drives and has 38TB of storage. It uses four, 4 bay, enclosures, one 5 bay enclosure, and the other four drives are inside the MB case.

My unRAID2 setup is also maxed out in drives and has 51TB of storage. It is using four, 4 bay, enclosures, one single drive enclosure and the other eight drives are inside the MB case. I had to add the single drive enclosure when I decided to add a cache drive to that setup last week.

My unRAID3 setup I recenttly setup earlier this month so it is not maxed out on drives yet. I only have 18 drives in that array plus the cache and parity drive. I have five drives in an N54L Microserver and the other 15 drives are in four, 4 bay, enclosures. I can still add a fifth enclosure to expand it at some point. But what I would like to do is get five 3TB drives when I can get a good deal, and replace the five 2TB drives inside the N54L and move them to the fifth enclosure plus the open slot in the fourth enclosure. That way I can get 51TB in my unRAID3 setup like is in my unRAID2 setup.


----------



## Murlocke

Sorry for late responses, forgot to check thread.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *solaris8*
> 
> hi Murlocke
> thanks for sharing your build with us. I am trying my best to build almost exact same as yours.
> I have a question about cable from PSU to Disks.
> the red arrow pointing position.
> 
> you have a customized cable with multiple 4Pin? such as 1 6pin sata to 6 4pin sata ?
> 
> thanks


No, but I did buy 2 extra cables from the corsair site so I could wire my fans nicer. These cables come with the PSUs, but there was only 1.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *SDriver*
> 
> Let me first say thats one sweet server you've built!
> 
> I'm currently separating my HTPC/Server into two individual systems. I'm interested in something very similar to yours. In your Norco case with those SAS card does each port on the card control an entire row of drives in the case? I'm trying to come up with the good way of fitting many drives in my server. This looks promising.
> 
> Thanks.


Yup, SAS is 4 drives with 1 cable. You can spin them up and down and still control them individually.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *aaronwt*
> 
> I like using external enclosures to house most of my drives in my unRAID setups. I used to have seven external, 4 bay enclosures, for my WHS along with the four internal drives for a total of 31 drives. But I repurposed the drives to setup my third unRAID setup. I had been using the WHS for several years but with duplication you really only have half the storage available. Which is why I finally setup that third unRAID setup since I was running out of space in the first two unRAIDs.
> 
> My unRAID1 setup is maxed out with drives and has 38TB of storage. It uses four, 4 bay, enclosures, one 5 bay enclosure, and the other four drives are inside the MB case.
> 
> My unRAID2 setup is also maxed out in drives and has 51TB of storage. It is using four, 4 bay, enclosures, one single drive enclosure and the other eight drives are inside the MB case. I had to add the single drive enclosure when I decided to add a cache drive to that setup last week.
> 
> My unRAID3 setup I recenttly setup earlier this month so it is not maxed out on drives yet. I only have 18 drives in that array plus the cache and parity drive. I have five drives in an N54L Microserver and the other 15 drives are in four, 4 bay, enclosures. I can still add a fifth enclosure to expand it at some point. But what I would like to do is get five 3TB drives when I can get a good deal, and replace the five 2TB drives inside the N54L and move them to the fifth enclosure plus the open slot in the fourth enclosure. That way I can get 51TB in my unRAID3 setup like is in my unRAID2 setup.


Nice, with 4TB drives I am capable of getting 196TB off these 2 servers. With WD releasing 5TB greens later this year, I'll be able to go up to 240TB. I never see needing to build a 3rd server. I am holding off for 5TB drives, as I still have a 7TB free in each server. Hopefully I can find someone that is able to sell at bulk discount, I got a really good deal when I bought 20 3TB greens.


----------



## Murlocke

Just placed an order for 2x Klipsch RF-7, 1x Klipsch RC-64, and 1x SVS PC13-Ultra.

*Future HT upgrades:*
OLED (4K or not depending on prices in 2-3 years)
4K 9.2 Audyssey XT32 Receiver (Huge price tag, but anything less would be a downgrade if I want 4K)

*Future server upgrades:*
Lots of 5TB Greens (Still rumors that WD is releasing them later this year.

Thanks for anyone still following the thread, I have been too busy to update it regularly and there hasn't been much going on with them. Servers have been working flawlessly for over half a year now.


----------



## Murlocke

I'll likely be placing a bulk order for somewhere between 20-60 3TB Western Digital Reds within the next week. I'm still seeing if I am able to get a bulk discount on the new 4TB Reds that just appeared yesterday. Sadly, the drives aren't all for me, it's a bunch of RL friends pooling money to get discounts. I'll likely "only" be keeping 10-20 of them depending on how many we order.

I originally wanted to wait for 5TB greens, but they want to buy sooner. We've decided to go with Reds instead of Greens for the extended warranty and other benefits.

Time to break the 100TB barrier.


----------



## TheNegotiator

Nice build!







Do you still use the popcorn hour to stream content? I'm looking for something new to stream my content and would love to hear your thoughts on it.

I've been using PowerDVD 12 to play .mkv files from my server, but I've always had problems with random pauses and audio drop outs. VLC works without a problem, but doesn't support HD codecs. At this point I'd rather use a standalone box instead of a HTPC.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cmgunn*
> 
> Nice build!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you still use the popcorn hour to stream content? I'm looking for something new to stream my content and would love to hear your thoughts on it.
> 
> I've been using PowerDVD 12 to play .mkv files from my server, but I've always had problems with random pauses and audio drop outs. VLC works without a problem, but doesn't support HD codecs. At this point I'd rather use a standalone box instead of a HTPC.


I still use the Popcorn Hour A400, its capable of pretty much anything including 3D.

Popcorn Hours aren't perfect, infact when this device first released it was unusable for a good 6 months or so. They provide firmware updates at a regular basis, and over time their products get more stable (in theory). There's still some issues on mine where I won't get audio and will have to restart it, and there's some display issues that cause some artifacts for a few frames at random times. Subtitle support is sort of lacking. You can't have HD subtitles in a MKV container and these devices will never support that. You can have HD subtitles in a ISO container though. I've had some issues with forced subtitles as well, it handles some of them correctly and other you need to manually enable the forced subtitle track. If you are into anime these devices do not support 10bit MKVs.

I've been using them for 3 generations and haven't really found better for what I want to do... but they are far from perfect. PowerDVD is more stable but I also feel it's has less quality.

Have you tried using CCCP? After installing it you can go into the LAV Audio Settings and make it bitstream any codec you want, including lossless. I've always preferred CCCP over VLC, it provides better quality in my opinion and it plays everything. It's also extremely lightweight, so don't let the fact it's a codec pack ruin it. It doesn't have any background tasks unless your watching a video.


----------



## TheNegotiator

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I still use the Popcorn Hour A400, its capable of pretty much anything including 3D.
> 
> Popcorn Hours aren't perfect, infact when this device first released it was unusable for a good 6 months or so. They provide firmware updates at a regular basis, and over time their products get more stable (in theory). There's still some issues on mine where I won't get audio and will have to restart it, and there's some display issues that cause some artifacts for a few frames at random times. Subtitle support is sort of lacking. You can't have HD subtitles in a MKV container and these devices will never support that. You can have HD subtitles in a ISO container though. I've had some issues with forced subtitles as well, it handles some of them correctly and other you need to manually enable the forced subtitle track. If you are into anime these devices do not support 10bit MKVs.
> 
> I've been using them for 3 generations and haven't really found better for what I want to do... but they are far from perfect. PowerDVD is more stable but I also feel it's has less quality.
> 
> Have you tried using CCCP? After installing it you can go into the LAV Audio Settings and make it bitstream any codec you want, including lossless. I've always preferred CCCP over VLC, it provides better quality in my opinion and it plays everything. It's also extremely lightweight, so don't let the fact it's a codec pack ruin it. It doesn't have any background tasks unless your watching a video.


Thanks for the response.

So it sounds like the Popcorn Hour would work pretty well for my TVs but not so much for the theater, where everything is pretty picky. I don't have any subtitle support in PowerDVD, which is often a problem since most of the movies I own use forced subtitles during the film.

I haven't tried CCCP. I'll download it and give it a go.

Also, what are you using to create the ISO container? I've always been told .mkv was the way to go, but they seem to glitch a good percentage of the time.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cmgunn*
> 
> Thanks for the response.
> 
> So it sounds like the Popcorn Hour would work pretty well for my TVs but not so much for the theater, where everything is pretty picky. I don't have any subtitle support in PowerDVD, which is often a problem since most of the movies I own use forced subtitles during the film.
> 
> I haven't tried CCCP. I'll download it and give it a go.
> 
> Also, what are you using to create the ISO container? I've always been told .mkv was the way to go, but they seem to glitch a good percentage of the time.


I use "Main Movie Only" option in DVDFAB's BD Copy. I use discs, I don't think it's possible to turn a MKV into an ISO easily.

ISO would be rather annoying without a popcorn hour because you'd have to mount them in order to watch them.


----------



## TheNegotiator

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I use "Main Movie Only" option in DVDFAB's BD Copy. I use discs, I don't think it's possible to turn a MKV into an ISO easily.
> 
> ISO would be rather annoying without a popcorn hour because you'd have to mount them in order to watch them.


I'll have to look into that. I still have the disks for all the movies on my server.


----------



## Murlocke

New Total Space: *117TB*

Just ordered 40 of the 4TB Reds. Updated thread to include the 10 4TB red drives that will be going into these servers shortly. May or may not have another 10 to add in a month or so, followed by another 10 the month after that. I'm not sure yet, currently getting good bulk discounts on these drives and may take advantage of it as soon as I have more money to do so.

EDIT:
Please don't PM me asking about where to get bulk discounts on hard drives, or if you can pool money with me. Our money is pooled between a couple trusted RL friends and given to a wholesaler we know on a personal level. We are under strict orders that if we resell for profit, or buy for others, he wouldn't sell to us at these prices again. He getting virtually no profit on these transactions.

I suggest anyone looking to buy in bulk to check eBay. There's usually people on there selling 20+ individual drives for well below MSRP, if you shoot them a PM they may be willing to sell to you at further discount in bulk. This is how I use to do it. Just make sure they have a lot of 100% positive feedback, only pay with Paypal, make sure their PayPal is verified, and do not pay with "gift" or any other method. I'd also make sure it says on the PayPal invoice what you are buying and the quantity of them.


----------



## kujon

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> New Total Space: *117TB*
> 
> Just ordered 40 of the 4TB Reds. Updated thread to include the 10 4TB red drives that will be going into these servers shortly. May or may not have another 10 to add in a month or so, followed by another 10 the month after that. I'm not sure yet, currently getting good bulk discounts on these drives and may take advantage of it as soon as I have more money to do so.
> 
> EDIT:
> Please don't PM me asking about where to get bulk discounts on hard drives, or if you can pool money with me. Our money is pooled between a couple trusted RL friends and given to a wholesaler we know on a personal level. We are under strict orders that if we resell for profit, or buy for others, he wouldn't sell to us at these prices again. He getting virtually no profit on these transactions.
> 
> I suggest anyone looking to buy in bulk to check eBay. There's usually people on there selling 20+ individual drives for well below MSRP, if you shoot them a PM they may be willing to sell to you at further discount in bulk. This is how I use to do it. Just make sure they have a lot of 100% positive feedback, only pay with Paypal, make sure their PayPal is verified, and do not pay with "gift" or any other method. I'd also make sure it says on the PayPal invoice what you are buying and the quantity of them.


id love to be your rl friend just so i could clone your server or just come over and watch a movie lol


----------



## m1ndb3nd3r

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kujon*
> 
> id love to be your rl friend just so i could clone your server or just come over and watch a movie lol


I was thinking he just opens it up so we can stream from home. He can be our own private Netflix.


----------



## Murlocke

Just gonna leave this here:


160TB.


----------



## Mv740

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> Just gonna leave this here:
> 
> 
> 160TB.










are you doing a backup of the internet lol i've been watching your build for a while, i wanted to tell you that i'm impressed







how much watt is 160tb gonna pull?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Mv740*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> are you doing a backup of the internet lol i've been watching your build for a while, i wanted to tell you that i'm impressed
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> how much watt is 160tb gonna pull?


Currently both servers combined:
Idle: 152W
Spun up: 324W
Parity Check: 369W

Shouldn't be much more than that, probably about 20% more, still less than my computer.


----------



## Murlocke

The 10 drives that i'm keeping survived my 48 hours of stress testing with no errors. I've added them to the array. I've yet to have a single bad drive when dealing in bulk and the warranty on these drives is also 3 years and 2 months!

I've finally surpass 100TB of usable space:


Now to figure out if we're going to buy another 40, which I would keep only 10 of those as well. I really don't need anymore space though, but i'm not sure if the current prices we are getting these drives for will hold. More space is never a bad thing...


----------



## xNovax

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> The 10 drives (out of the 40) that i'm keeping survived my 48 hours of stress testing with no errors. I've added them to the array. I've yet to have a single bad drive when dealing in bulk and the warranty on these drives is also 3 years and 2 months!
> 
> I've finally surpass 100TB of usable space:
> 
> 
> Now to figure out if we're going to buy another 40, which I would keep only 10 of those as well. I really don't need anymore space though, but i'm not sure if the current prices we are getting these drives for will hold. More space is never a bad thing...


You must have only a few movies and tv shows.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *xNovax*
> 
> You must have only a few movies and tv shows.


Probably not much more than other people who store movies/tv shows, mine are just much higher quality and have lossless audio. I have a couple TV shows taking up 1TB or so by themselves.

If I used 720p MKVs with much lower bitrate and lossy audio, like most people, it'd probably be about 4-5TB of data but that's no fun. It's a night and day difference in both audio and video departments on good equipment...


----------



## Abula

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> The 10 drives (out of the 40) that i'm keeping survived my 48 hours of stress testing with no errors. I've added them to the array. I've yet to have a single bad drive when dealing in bulk and the warranty on these drives is also 3 years and 2 months!
> 
> I've finally surpass 100TB of usable space:
> 
> 
> Now to figure out if we're going to buy another 40, which I would keep only 10 of those as well. I really don't need anymore space though, but i'm not sure if the current prices we are getting these drives for will hold. More space is never a bad thing...


Only 10 of 40 passed your stress test? so 25% were good enough, is this the usual that you have gotten on past batches? Btw whats your 48 hour stress test?


----------



## TheNegotiator

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Abula*
> 
> Only 10 of 40 passed your stress test? so 25% were good enough, is this the usual that you have gotten on past batches? Btw whats your 48 hour stress test?


I think he did a group order and 10 out of the 40 were his.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Abula*
> 
> Only 10 of 40 passed your stress test? so 25% were good enough, is this the usual that you have gotten on past batches? Btw whats your 48 hour stress test?


No, I'm only keeping 10 of the 40. So far there hasn't been 1 drive that has been bad out of the 40.

My stress test is a plugin for unRAID.


----------



## m1ndb3nd3r

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> No, I'm only keeping 10 of the 40. So far there hasn't been 1 drive that has been bad out of the 40.
> 
> My stress test is a plugin for unRAID.


what are your requirements?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *m1ndb3nd3r*
> 
> what are your requirements?


I do 2 full read and write passes, which takes about 48 hours depending on the drive. I then check SMART and check the error values. If there is a single pending sector, bad sector, multi-zone error, raw read error, etc... It goes to RMA. So far i've gotten a 0% failure from bulk purchases (60 drives in total). Based on my purchases, Newegg is the worst offender with a near 25% failure rate. Amazon has about a 10% failure rate.

Majority of faulty drives will fail within those first 48 hours of load, and if there's an error I just don't trust them in my servers.


----------



## ndoggfromhell

I'm guessing the newegg failures are from the rather terrible shipping they're done as of late. I get a drive in a plastic bubble in a tiny box that probably gets punted around the UPS facility.


----------



## r3skyline

So next year, my wife is giving me the green light to build my server for our home theater. I am probably going to mimic your builds. If you could, where are getting your bulk deals? I'll prob purchase around the same amount that you have next year.


----------



## jibesh

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *r3skyline*
> 
> So next year, my wife is giving me the green light to build my server for our home theater. I am probably going to mimic your builds. If you could, where are getting your bulk deals? I'll prob purchase around the same amount that you have next year.


He already answered this. See below link.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1282253/117tb-unraid-servers/150#post_20765243


----------



## rickyman0319

I am wondering does your SAS card support 5TB+ HD or not?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rickyman0319*
> 
> I am wondering does your SAS card support 5TB+ HD or not?


The barrier was 2.2TB, the next barrier is not in the foreseeable future. I forget exactly what it is, but it's high enough that we probably won't see it in our lifetimes.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *r3skyline*
> 
> So next year, my wife is giving me the green light to build my server for our home theater. I am probably going to mimic your builds.


Somewhere around here I listed the couple BIOS changes I had to do, it's been so long I don't even remember exactly what they were. The build is common over on unRAID forums, so i'm sure they'd know. Also make sure you flash the SAS cards with the latest firmware, I recently had a server become unresponsive due to a bug during extremely high bandwidth situations. The new firmware fixes it though, and will probably be on any new cards.

Outside of that I haven't had any issues for months.


----------



## m1ndb3nd3r

Have you looked at the new 6tb hard drives? WD came up with them.


----------



## Murlocke

Figures, months of no problems. Post on here everything is going fine, then a day later both servers drop a couple drives. Spent a few hours figuring it out and i've come to the conclusion that the top x4 slot, which doesn't share PCI bandwidth with the other slots, paired with the two x8 slots having timing issues. As soon as I got a couple drives on the controller connected to this slot, problems started happening during parity checks on both servers.

To fix it, I had to move the bottom card down to the other x4 slot, which shares bandwidth and runs off the same controller as the top x8 slots. This resulted in about 5-10% slower parity checks, but it is now stable. I'm not sure what to think of this. This makes the main feature of the X9SCM motherboard, the standalone x4 slot, pointless because it has timing issues with the other slots.

Thought I would share for anyone that plans (or has) copied these builds. Make sure you also do the following if you don't need to boot to any of the drives (unRAID boots from USB):
- Disable all 3 settings for PCI OPROM in the BIOS.
- Disable INT13 on all SAS cards.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *m1ndb3nd3r*
> 
> Have you looked at the new 6tb hard drives? WD came up with them.


7 platters, reliability is extremely sketchy. On paper that would be nearly a 2x increased failure rate over the 4 platter 4TB reds. They will also be slower to my understanding. 6TB with 7 platters would be ~850GB platters, when the Reds have 1TB platters. I haven't seen anything about warranty and usage, but the reds are designed for 24/7 usage and come with a 3 year warranty as well.

I won't touch those until extensive testing has been done that the helium does something to increase the lifetime and the speed over "traditional" drives.


----------



## r3skyline

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> The barrier was 2.2TB, the next barrier is not in the foreseeable future. I forget exactly what it is, but it's high enough that we probably won't see it in our lifetimes.
> Somewhere around here I listed the couple BIOS changes I had to do, it's been so long I don't even remember exactly what they were. The build is common over on unRAID forums, so i'm sure they'd know. Also make sure you flash the SAS cards with the latest firmware, I recently had a server become unresponsive due to a bug during extremely high bandwidth situations. The new firmware fixes it though, and will probably be on any new cards.
> 
> Outside of that I haven't had any issues for months.


Thanks for letting me know and that new issue you had arise


----------



## PolyMorphist

Awesome setup! May I ask what the cache and parity drives are used for? Can you fill them up with files or are they used for a specific purpose? Also, is the unRAID OS an actual, full operating system or is it an add-on for Windows? I'm not very good when it comes to storage, let alone 1/10th of a Petabytes worth


----------



## void

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *PolyMorphist*
> 
> Awesome setup! May I ask what the cache and parity drives are used for? Can you fill them up with files or are they used for a specific purpose? Also, is the unRAID OS an actual, full operating system or is it an add-on for Windows? I'm not very good when it comes to storage, let alone 1/10th of a Petabytes worth


I don't mean to be rude or anything but simply typing unRAID into google gives you the product page as first hit ( it's also linked in the original post) it explains what unRAID is and links to the technology page which explains how it uses parity drives.

http://lime-technology.com/unraid-server/

http://lime-technology.com/technology/


----------



## PolyMorphist

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *void*
> 
> I don't mean to be rude or anything but simply typing unRAID into google gives you the product page as first hit ( it's also linked in the original post) it explains what unRAID is and links to the technology page which explains how it uses parity drives.
> 
> http://lime-technology.com/unraid-server/
> 
> http://lime-technology.com/technology/


Fair enough, but maybe I read the product description and just hadn't understood some of the main points of the OS. Like I said, I am very naive when it comes to storage, so someone who is very familiar, like Murlocke, could potentially enlighten me to my questions.


----------



## Murlocke

Cache drive acts like a middle man, unprotected data that is capable of full write speeds. It then moves data over to the array slowly on off-hours. You can store files on it too.

Parity drive stores the information of all the other drives, allowing you to rebuild any single failed drive from scratch. It's a complex system, and you can't store files on this drive.


----------



## lightbringer

Amazing, just one question..
Does anyone really need 117TB for home use?


----------



## Crazy9000

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *lightbringer*
> 
> Amazing, just one question..
> Does anyone really need 117TB for home use?


If you watch a lot of movies and shows, then yes.


----------



## lightbringer

Well.. What's the file size of a movie ISO of the format he's using?
Just wonder how many movies would fill the beasts.


----------



## deafboy

Definitely curious to see how those drives treat you in the long run... been wanting to do a similar build for a while.


----------



## Abs.exe

In 1982 people would have think you are a wizard.

117 TB XD


----------



## cones

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *lightbringer*
> 
> Well.. What's the file size of a movie ISO of the format he's using?
> Just wonder how many movies would fill the beasts.


Anywhere from 0.5-8gb a movie for SD, 2-35gb for HD, is average depending on compression. TV would be about two gigs an hour for HD, probaly alittle off. And nice servers.


----------



## legoman786

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cones*
> 
> Anywhere from 0.5-8gb a movie for SD, 2-35gb for HD, is average depending on compression. TV would be about two gigs an hour for HD, probaly alittle off. And nice servers.


That's children's play. 12GB rip of a AAA blockbuster title. xD


----------



## cones

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *legoman786*
> 
> That's children's play. 12GB rip of a AAA blockbuster title. xD


For SD? DVDs max at around 8gb.


----------



## legoman786

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cones*
> 
> For SD? DVDs max at around 8gb.


Full rip of the AV stream off a blu ray disc, including 7.1 audio.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *legoman786*
> 
> Full rip of the AV stream off a blu ray disc, including 7.1 audio.


You may want to check your program settings, out of the ~2000 BDs i've ripped i've never had one be as small as 12GB. I remove all the menus/extras/etc, and my smallest BD is still 16.3GB, with the largest being 45.6GB. An uncompressed BD ISO with all the extra crap ripped out tends to average about 21-36GB, assuming you keep the lossless audio, otherwise it'll be about 2-3GB less.


----------



## legoman786

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> You may want to check your program settings, out of the ~2000 BDs i've ripped i've never had one be as small as 12GB. I remove all the menus/extras/etc, and my smallest BD is still 16.3GB, with the largest being 45.6GB. An uncompressed BD ISO with all the extra crap ripped out tends to average about 21-36GB, assuming you keep the lossless audio, otherwise it'll be about 2-3GB less.


Eh... Wasn't my rip. Found it on a newsgroup.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *legoman786*
> 
> Eh... Wasn't my rip. Found it on a newsgroup.


It's definitely re-encoded, but the H264 codec is pretty good and I think most would struggle to see the difference on anything less than a high end setup.


----------



## cones

So Murlocke you just extract the movie and don't compress them any?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cones*
> 
> So Murlocke you just extract the movie and don't compress them any?


DVDFab extracts just the movie then makes it an ISO again. Cause yeah, there's about 10-15GB of extra features and additional audio on each disk.


----------



## m1ndb3nd3r

Is there a drive limit for unraid


----------



## PuffinMyLye

What kind of data transfer speeds to you get writing to and read from your UnRAID pools over LAN?


----------



## SergeantCC4

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> You may want to check your program settings, out of the ~2000 BDs i've ripped i've never had one be as small as 12GB. I remove all the menus/extras/etc, and my smallest BD is still 16.3GB, with the largest being 45.6GB. An uncompressed BD ISO with all the extra crap ripped out tends to average about 21-36GB, assuming you keep the lossless audio, otherwise it'll be about 2-3GB less.


Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> DVDFab extracts just the movie then makes it an ISO again. Cause yeah, there's about 10-15GB of extra features and additional audio on each disk.


So you use DVDFab to get the ISO, but does it also rip out the crap you don't need or does it just do the ISO feature only. If not then what program do you use to rip out the crap you don't need/want?

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> No, I'm only keeping 10 of the 40. So far there hasn't been 1 drive that has been bad out of the 40.
> 
> My stress test is a plugin for unRAID.


Could you provide a link to said stress test, or is it one that you've designed personally?

Also, what sort of power distribution do you have for your server? I see that you have an AX 850, but I couldn't tell if you have all of your drives connected to your main 12V rail or if you have any of them connected to the 5V one.

I'm about to get the 4224, and I just want to make sure I'm going to be hooking everything up correctly when i transfer everything from my old case to my new one and a new power supply to accomodate more drives...


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *m1ndb3nd3r*
> 
> Is there a drive limit for unraid


It's either 23 or 24 data disks with the pro version. Far less with the cheaper/free version. They offer a 2 pack at great discounts if you want to run 2 servers like me, but most wouldn't need.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *SergeantCC4*
> 
> So you use DVDFab to get the ISO, but does it also rip out the crap you don't need or does it just do the ISO feature only. If not then what program do you use to rip out the crap you don't need/want?
> Could you provide a link to said stress test, or is it one that you've designed personally?
> 
> Also, what sort of power distribution do you have for your server? I see that you have an AX 850, but I couldn't tell if you have all of your drives connected to your main 12V rail or if you have any of them connected to the 5V one.
> 
> I'm about to get the 4224, and I just want to make sure I'm going to be hooking everything up correctly when i transfer everything from my old case to my new one and a new power supply to accomodate more drives...


DVDFab rips the extra crap out. MakeMKV should do the same, but the end result will be MKV and you may come across a few movies that refuse to work correctly (usually involving subtitle issues). I may start the long process of switching over to lossless MKVs, but i'm still waiting for a few bugs to be fixed with the popcorn hour and DVDFab. ISO just "works" with no headaches.

I use a preclear script that will only work under unRAID, found here. Any program that allows you to do full reads and writes to a drive will do the same.

I have them all on the 12v, green and red drives don't need much and the AX850 is overkill in my opinion. I could of went with the AX750. Just make sure its a quality PSU with good single 12v rail (more than 50 amps or so).


----------



## SergeantCC4

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> DVDFab rips the extra crap out. MakeMKV should do the same, but the end result will be MKV and you may come across a few movies that refuse to work correctly (usually involving subtitle issues).
> 
> I use a preclear script that will only work under unRAID, found here.
> 
> I have them all on the 12v, green and red drives don't need much and the AX850 is overkill in my opinion. I could of went with the AX750. Just make sure its a quality PSU with good single 12v rail (more than 50 amps or so).


Yea I currently use MKVmerge as I heard of some issues with MakeMKV such as the ones that you mentioned, but i was just looking for other options.

Thanks for the script link. I'm going to test all my future new drives with that. There it said that you can run the pre read and writing anywhere from 1 to 20 times and for a 2 TB drive it's about 30 or so hours.
In your experience would once be enough? I'm willing to take the time to go the "extra mile" in making sure it works, but at the same time I don't want to have a potential data drive being hung up for a week and a half while it's being load tested...

And thanks for the PSU info!


----------



## sub0ptimal

I didn't time it, but the preclear for a 3TB WD green went overnight and into the next day for one pass. I was doing 4 at a time.

I transcode everything into x.264. (I keep the AC3/DTS tracks as-is) When I started archiving, I didn't have software that could play .iso natively, and space was at a premium. In some busy CGI scenes, there is some judder, but I see that on the original discs too. If there is a reduction in quality, I don't notice it enough to change. I have ~ 3000 discs in a combination of DVD and Blu-ray, averaging 3GB/disc. If I continue transcoding, I have storage for another 5000 discs, and it's likely that Hollywood will stop making optical media before then.


----------



## SergeantCC4

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *sub0ptimal*
> 
> If I continue transcoding, I have storage for another 5000 discs, and it's likely that Hollywood will stop making optical media before then.


haha yea especially with 4k becoming big in the not-too-distant future. Although when trying to determine a way to find if a blu-ray disc is dual or single layer by physical inspection (which I still can't figure out) I was reading that there were triple and quadruple layer blu-ray discs which can store 100 and 128 GB of data respectively. Storing movies of that size would fill up a 117 TB server quite quickly...

On another note I also don't understand how a single and dual layer blu-ray is roughly 25 and 50 GB but a triple and quadruple is 100 and 128.... strange...


----------



## xnotx2

Nice setup









Anyone have any experience with the Seagate NAS HDD's?
I'm building an unraid server, have a plus license and purchased a WD black 1TB for cache.

I'm still deciding on my parity and storage drives.... I do like the idea of a faster drive, and reports of drive failure or DOA with the seagate look much lower?

Also a question about drive limit.. does the 7 drive limit include the cache and parity drive?


----------



## SergeantCC4

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *xnotx2*
> 
> Also a question about drive limit.. does the 7 drive limit include the cache and parity drive?


The 7 limit is the data drive limit as far as I know. I have the dual pack of Pro keys like the OP has, so the Norco 4224 is the perfect fit for having a lot of drives with a parity and cache disk.

Now keep in mind that the read speeds of the data drives are the only important things to consider assuming that you have a cache disk of sufficient size. If you write too much to the server (rare in your 1TB cache drive case) then it will have to write to the array as normal with speeds limited by your slowest disk (parity or data).

As said earlier in this thread if you are worried about drive failure, you can stress the drive before use to check for any damaged sectors and return the drive under that pretense.


----------



## Rexel

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *SergeantCC4*
> 
> The 7 limit is the data drive limit as far as I know. I have the dual pack of Pro keys like the OP has, so the Norco 4224 is the perfect fit for having a lot of drives with a parity and cache disk..


Quote:


> Originally Posted by *xnotx2*
> 
> Also a question about drive limit.. does the 7 drive limit include the cache and parity drive?


The 7 disk drive limit is for the data drive and the parity drive. so you can have 6 data drives and 1 parity drive
Sorry the 7 drive limit is for all drives, 5 data drives 1 parity and 1 cache


----------



## Icekilla

What's your network setup? As in routers and switch.


----------



## pras1011

I used to use ISO for blurays. But you only need ISO if you want to keep all the extras as well as the movie. ISO is not as compatible as MKV on things like Popcorn hours and ISO can't be scanned fully with YAMJ (due to Mediainfo) where as MKV can.

I have been using Makemkv to convert all of my ISO to mkv. Its a 1:1 bit perfect conversion. And by doing this you save 1gb in the conversion process. And Makemkv is free and it way better than DVDfab.

I send the output mkv file straight to my Unraid server without ripping to pc first and the send to server.


----------



## Icekilla

Also, why not rack 'em?


----------



## albrnick

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I've been using unRAID for about 6 years, have had a few drive failures over the years, and have not lost any data.


First off, great thread/so much great info! Thanks!! = )

I'm looking to emulate what you have, but had some questions about when you've had failures with these cases/followups to this thread









How were you notified of a failure?
How did you know which slot in the case has the bad drive?
How did you swap it out? I've ready about some possible issues with hot swapping with the 4224
Has the latest unRAID fixed your parity sync speed issue?
The SAS cables you referenced, did you buy separately? Or did they come with the cards?
Thanks for your time,








-Nick


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *pras1011*
> 
> I used to use ISO for blurays. But you only need ISO if you want to keep all the extras as well as the movie. ISO is not as compatible as MKV on things like Popcorn hours and ISO can't be scanned fully with YAMJ (due to Mediainfo) where as MKV can.
> 
> I have been using Makemkv to convert all of my ISO to mkv. Its a 1:1 bit perfect conversion. And by doing this you save 1gb in the conversion process. And Makemkv is free and it way better than DVDfab.
> 
> I send the output mkv file straight to my Unraid server without ripping to pc first and the send to server.


Hmm? I have a RL friend that is practically emulating my setup and we both have *far* less issues with ISOs on our A400 and A300. ISOs can be fully scanned if you install the mediainfo-rar plugin too.

You are not doing any 1:1 perfect conversions and saving 1GB, if you are that is extras off the disk you'd remove with DVDFab's main movie only option too. I just tested your theory and ran a BD disc through both programs. The movie-only ISO was only 768 bytes larger, probably due to the BD structure.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Icekilla*
> 
> Also, why not rack 'em?


Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Icekilla*
> 
> What's your network setup? As in routers and switch.


Good racks are not cheap.







The table is free and serves the same purpose. For networking i'm just using standard D-Link stuff, nothing special.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *albrnick*
> 
> First off, great thread/so much great info! Thanks!! = )
> 
> I'm looking to emulate what you have, but had some questions about when you've had failures with these cases/followups to this thread
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How were you notified of a failure?
> How did you know which slot in the case has the bad drive?
> How did you swap it out? I've ready about some possible issues with hot swapping with the 4224
> Has the latest unRAID fixed your parity sync speed issue?
> The SAS cables you referenced, did you buy separately? Or did they come with the cards?
> Thanks for your time,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -Nick


- I check SMART values about every 4-6 months and keep record of what they all were, if I see a drive getting increased errors I generally replace it. Anytime a drive fails to write in unRAID, it will take it offline and you'll be able to see it in the GUI.
- Knowing what serial # is in what slot.
- I've had no issues hotswapping, I assume the issues are with people who don't take the array offline before hotswapping. It states in the unRAID documentation you aren't suppose to do that.
- I had to adjust some default unRAID tunables to fix my parity speed issues. I've been issue free on these setups for about half a year.
- Separate.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *sub0ptimal*
> 
> I didn't time it, but the preclear for a 3TB WD green went overnight and into the next day for one pass. I was doing 4 at a time.
> 
> I transcode everything into x.264. (I keep the AC3/DTS tracks as-is) When I started archiving, I didn't have software that could play .iso natively, and space was at a premium. In some busy CGI scenes, there is some judder, but I see that on the original discs too. If there is a reduction in quality, I don't notice it enough to change. I have ~ 3000 discs in a combination of DVD and Blu-ray, averaging 3GB/disc. If I continue transcoding, I have storage for another 5000 discs, and it's likely that Hollywood will stop making optical media before then.


I can blind test a 3GB MKV vs a uncompressed BD with both video and audio _with ease_ on my setup. The movie needs to be about 10-15GB with lossless audio intact for me to start to struggling with blind tests on some scenes. However, during high pace, rain/snow, and other fast motion scenes the BD is still a night and day difference.

What equipment are you using? You need pretty high end equipment to be able to justify it. I've got around $10-11 grand in audio equipment, and about $4-5 grand in video equipment so my situation definitely isn't the norm. Spending that kind of money, and then playing anything but the highest quality source material seems criminal to me.

I do agree optical media will still die out within the next decade though. Not many people spend this kind of money to make it justifiable. Most people just want to Netflix 1080p at low bitrates and stereo, and they are happy with that. When 4K comes out, chances are H265 will be the way to go. I'm definitely not storing 150GB movies on my servers.


----------



## albrnick

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> - I had to adjust some default unRAID tunables to fix my parity speed issues. I've been issue free on these setups for about half a year.


Again, thanks so much for all the info! Much Appreciated!









Do you remember what you changed those those values to? Or have a link where I could research?

Thanks for your time,
-Nick


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *albrnick*
> 
> Again, thanks so much for all the info! Much Appreciated!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you remember what you changed those those values to? Or have a link where I could research?
> 
> Thanks for your time,
> -Nick


http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=29009.0


----------



## sub0ptimal

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> What equipment are you using? You need pretty high end equipment to be able to justify it. I've got around $10-11 grand in audio equipment, and about $4-5 grand in video equipment so my situation definitely isn't the norm. Spending that kind of money, and then playing anything but the highest quality source material seems criminal to me.


Not counting construction and furniture, I have about $10k in my theater. 110" FP, 7.1, etc. Midrange consumer hardware.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I can blind test a 3GB MKV vs a uncompressed BD with both video and audio _with ease_ on my setup. The movie needs to be about 10-15GB with lossless audio intact for me to start to struggling with blind tests on some scenes. However, during high pace, rain/snow, and other fast motion scenes the BD is still a night and day difference.


I agree that 3GB for BD video is pushing it. It's an average 3 GB/film over all the discs I have. Some are 600-1200 MB DVD rips, some are 5-15 GB BD rips. It's a judgement call. BD already has lossy video on the disc. They are just using a higher bitrate than the x264 (CQ=20) I transcode into. Going a step further, if I remember correctly from college many years ago, even lossless audio has quantizing errors in the A/D conversion. It's just that the errors are so small as to be undetectable.

I've tried it both ways, transcoded and not transcoded, and I couldn't see enough difference to make me switch. I don't watch many CGI-heavy action movies, though, so maybe that skews my opinion.


----------



## pras1011

I use to rip every bluray to iso with dvdfab from 2010 onwards. It was so slow. It would first copy the bluray to hdd in a folder structure and then convert to ISO. Basically writing twice. The isos it produced were massive. 1.5 years ago I started using makemkv and its one continuous rip. The 1 gb space I save in the conversion of iso to mkv is more than likely the rubbish dvdfab left behind. I use mediainfo to check before and after. Mkvs are sooooo much better than iso due to compatability. Mediainfo rar plugin doesnt work anymore for me. Dvdfab cant actually make 1:1 mkvs. But anyway what do I know.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *pras1011*
> 
> I use to rip every bluray to iso with dvdfab from 2010 onwards. It was so slow. It would first copy the bluray to hdd in a folder structure and then convert to ISO. Basically writing twice. The isos it produced were massive. 1.5 years ago I started using makemkv and its one continuous rip. The 1 gb space I save in the conversion of iso to mkv is more than likely the rubbish dvdfab left behind. I use mediainfo to check before and after. Mkvs are sooooo much better than iso due to compatability. Mediainfo rar plugin doesnt work anymore for me. Dvdfab cant actually make 1:1 mkvs. But anyway what do I know.
> 
> Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk


Have you used DVDFab in the last 2 years? Despite what you claim... DVDFab can do 1 continuous rip to MKV, including 1:1 MKVS, there's even a built-in MKV passthrough profile that keeps both lossless audio and has no re-encoding.

Proof:


This single profile contains a _very_ tiny amount of what the program can do and it still does everything MakeMKV can do and more. ISO to ISO is going to be 2 writes with any program. There's no other way you could make it into an ISO again without that step, so that has nothing to do with DVDFab. You need 2 drives (source/destination drive, and a temp drive) to make it fast. It takes me about 10 minutes per 50GB disk.


----------



## phillihp23

First off I want to say your server is awesome....I have been debating building a server for sometime and this build of yours inspired me in what direction to go. I had not even heard about UnRaid before. I have been reading through numerous blogs since on the UnRaid software and it would be the perfect solution as far as I am concerned for building a data server for home media.

Which one of these motherboards would you recommend for a server build similar to yours:
SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O LGA 1155 Intel C204 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard
http://]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182253[/URL]

SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O LGA 1155 Intel C202 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182251

And which one of these CPU would be recommended: Ivy or Sandy Bridge

Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 69W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80637E31230V2

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117286

Intel Xeon E3-1230 Sandy Bridge 3.2GHz LGA 1155 80W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31230
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115083

What cables should I order to connect the SAS Cards to the drives....will be using the Norco 4224 case.

I have also read that you could Upgrade the flash drive to a Flash Reader....how would I do that and what parts would be needed.

Lastly, have you been using the DVDFAB MKV Lossless for media rips lately, and if so what do you think of it compared to ISO or standard MKV rips.


----------



## auteur

very nice servers!

1) if you built those beasts today what would you change?

2) why do you choose unRaid and not ZFS, XPEnology (synology software) or any other?

3) what is the pros and cons of unRaid versus the others?

I'm looking to built one and add a new drive every 2 months.. but i would like to spend no more than 300-400$ for server components..

i already have 2 (one 8 drive NAS and one 10 drive file server) and i want to built a new one (capable of 10-20 drives) only for storing Bluray discs.
i have my NAS operate 24/7.
and the 2 others will be shut down most of the time.

i seek one filesystem that has the best security/fault tolerance but without sacrificing half of the discs...


----------



## PuffinMyLye

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *auteur*
> 
> very nice servers!
> 
> 1) if you built those beasts today what would you change?
> 
> 2) why do you choose unRaid and not ZFS, XPEnology (synology software) or any other?
> 
> 3) what is the pros and cons of unRaid versus the others?
> 
> I'm looking to built one and add a new drive every 2 months.. but i would like to spend no more than 300-400$ for server components..
> 
> i already have 2 (one 8 drive NAS and one 10 drive file server) and i want to built a new one (capable of 10-20 drives) only for storing Bluray discs.
> i have my NAS operate 24/7.
> and the 2 others will be shut down most of the time.
> 
> i seek one filesystem that has the best security/fault tolerance but without sacrificing half of the discs...


http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html


----------



## Freelancer852

I have a Norco 4224 chassis and Intel RES2SV240 24 port SAS expander on order to pair up with my LSI 9260-8i. Gonna be converting my current 4 x 4TB RAID 5 to a RAID 6 with the addition of another 4 TB drive, then slowly expanding as I can afford more 4TB drives.

Any tips for building in the 4224?


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *phillihp23*
> 
> First off I want to say your server is awesome....I have been debating building a server for sometime and this build of yours inspired me in what direction to go. I had not even heard about UnRaid before. I have been reading through numerous blogs since on the UnRaid software and it would be the perfect solution as far as I am concerned for building a data server for home media.
> 
> Which one of these motherboards would you recommend for a server build similar to yours:
> SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O LGA 1155 Intel C204 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard
> http://]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182253[/URL]
> 
> SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O LGA 1155 Intel C202 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182251
> 
> And which one of these CPU would be recommended: Ivy or Sandy Bridge
> 
> Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 69W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80637E31230V2
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117286
> 
> Intel Xeon E3-1230 Sandy Bridge 3.2GHz LGA 1155 80W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31230
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115083
> 
> What cables should I order to connect the SAS Cards to the drives....will be using the Norco 4224 case.
> 
> I have also read that you could Upgrade the flash drive to a Flash Reader....how would I do that and what parts would be needed.
> 
> Lastly, have you been using the DVDFAB MKV Lossless for media rips lately, and if so what do you think of it compared to ISO or standard MKV rips.


I don't feel you can go wrong with any of those options, just get whatever fits your budget or build better. Norco has SAS cables you can buy. No idea on the flash drive, I bought preconfigured USB drives from the unRAID site.

I'm still using ISO at the moment, but MKV is great if whatever your using for playback doesn't have issues with it. The popcorn hour still has issues with PGS subtitles inside an MKV container.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *auteur*
> 
> very nice servers!
> 
> 1) if you built those beasts today what would you change?
> 
> 2) why do you choose unRaid and not ZFS, XPEnology (synology software) or any other?
> 
> 3) what is the pros and cons of unRaid versus the others?
> 
> I'm looking to built one and add a new drive every 2 months.. but i would like to spend no more than 300-400$ for server components..
> 
> i already have 2 (one 8 drive NAS and one 10 drive file server) and i want to built a new one (capable of 10-20 drives) only for storing Bluray discs.
> i have my NAS operate 24/7.
> and the 2 others will be shut down most of the time.
> 
> i seek one filesystem that has the best security/fault tolerance but without sacrificing half of the discs...


I wouldn't change anything because the hardware is already overkill for a data server, and it allows me to utilize all 24 drive bays.

The rest has already been covered in this thread. I still feel unRAID is the best solution for large scale home storage, as long as you don't need read speed overs 100MB/s, and write speeds over 25MB/s.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Freelancer852*
> 
> I have a Norco 4224 chassis and Intel RES2SV240 24 port SAS expander on order to pair up with my LSI 9260-8i. Gonna be converting my current 4 x 4TB RAID 5 to a RAID 6 with the addition of another 4 TB drive, then slowly expanding as I can afford more 4TB drives.
> 
> Any tips for building in the 4224?


I stuffed a lot of wires between the case and the PSU, there's a nice gap there. Other than that it's all trial and error to get the best wire management.


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## Murlocke

Today is the day I slowly start converting ~100TB of ISOs to MKV because the major issues seem to be fixed with PGS + MKV.









This is going to probably be a 200-300 hour job, luckily it's easy to batch and let it run overnight.


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## Bonz(TM)

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> Today is the day I slowly start converting ~100TB of ISOs to MKV because the major issues seem to be fixed with PGS + MKV.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is going to probably be a 200-300 hour job, luckily it's easy to batch and let it run overnight.


Still uncompressed though right? Hopefully no encoding being done


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## pras1011

Hahahhahahah

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk


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## Pip Boy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *PuffinMyLye*
> 
> http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html


seems like the best of all worlds with unraid coming very close. the question is even if snap raid is better (through data integrity, more redundancy i.e more than one parity and snapshots) it means nothing if there isnt a.) great software that's easy to use b.) good support community, not just for bugs but for plugins.

which means at the current time the simplicity of unraid is not bettered here.


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## PuffinMyLye

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *phill1978*
> 
> seems like the best of all worlds with unraid coming very close. the question is even if snap raid is better (through data integrity, more redundancy i.e more than one parity and snapshots) it means nothing if there isnt a.) great software that's easy to use b.) good support community, not just for bugs but for plugins.


I wasn't suggesting SnapRAID, I was only providing the chart so that people could see a comparison of the different options. I had reviewed that chart prior to setting up my own server and decided to go with UnRAID myself. I'm pretty happy with my choice. The only thing I'm unhappy with is the transfer speeds to my UnRAID server from my Windows boxes. Even using a cache drive the most I ever get is 45-50MB/s).


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## Pip Boy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *PuffinMyLye*
> 
> I wasn't suggesting SnapRAID, I was only providing the chart so that people could see a comparison of the different options. I had reviewed that chart prior to setting up my own server and decided to go with UnRAID myself. I'm pretty happy with my choice. The only thing I'm unhappy with is the transfer speeds to my UnRAID server from my Windows boxes. Even using a cache drive the most I ever get is 45-50MB/s).


yea thats very slow. there is a guide on the unraid forums for speeding things up, looks complicated though. also you could in theory add a cache drive but in non caches situations it would still be slow. Having said that, when all is said and done the real use scenario for unraid is for home media, no blueray mk4 or even 4K mkv will hit 50megs a second (that's still half a 0.5gbps connection) blueray is only 24mbps so in theory less than 3.0megs a second if i got my maths right? that would be x4 4K would 12meg? but then the encoder is more efficient so its probably more like 9 - 10megs a second.. which is close to a 100mbps ethernet link anyway.

i guess the real pain in the arse is transferring 20- 30Gb MKV rips to the array







beyond the 20 mins it takes to rip them in the first place the total time taken for 1 film could be well over an hour to get it transferred.. now losing a typical 3TB HDD beyond the 1 parity disc with 100 films would take weeks to replace and be fairly soul crushing.


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## pras1011

Use Telnet/Putty command mdcmd set md_write_method 1

This pushes my write speed to 80 MB/s+ with no cache drive!

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk


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## Pip Boy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *pras1011*
> 
> Use Telnet/Putty command mdcmd set md_write_method 1
> 
> This pushes my write speed to 80 MB/s+ with no cache drive!
> 
> Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk


that's something.

people should disable telnet on their unraid server and run only ssh


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## Pip Boy

I have (probably a very nooby ) question. Im wanting to try the free trail of Unraid. I have a usb pen but i run linux, the instructions are for windows (bat file to create bootable) and mac ( same) there is also a suggestion to use unetbootin but i downloaded the latest version and unraid isnt in the list. How can i make a bootable unraid instance from within linux seen as it is not an iso the usb image writer doesn't work?

i did look for quite sometime but didn't find anything that helped. Im sure its easy enough.. well hope so.


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## PuffinMyLye

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *phill1978*
> 
> yea thats very slow. there is a guide on the unraid forums for speeding things up, looks complicated though. also you could in theory add a cache drive but in non caches situations it would still be slow. Having said that, when all is said and done the real use scenario for unraid is for home media, no blueray mk4 or even 4K mkv will hit 50megs a second (that's still half a 0.5gbps connection) blueray is only 24mbps so in theory less than 3.0megs a second if i got my maths right? that would be x4 4K would 12meg? but then the encoder is more efficient so its probably more like 9 - 10megs a second.. which is close to a 100mbps ethernet link anyway.
> 
> i guess the real pain in the arse is transferring 20- 30Gb MKV rips to the array
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> beyond the 20 mins it takes to rip them in the first place the total time taken for 1 film could be well over an hour to get it transferred.. now losing a typical 3TB HDD beyond the 1 parity disc with 100 films would take weeks to replace and be fairly soul crushing.


I have a cache drive and still get those speeds. But yea I may have to look further into more customized config. But as you said it doesn't affect my media playback at all.


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## Pip Boy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *PuffinMyLye*
> 
> I have a cache drive and still get those speeds. But yea I may have to look further into more customized config. But as you said it doesn't affect my media playback at all.


i have an issue with even trying unraid out as a test. how can you make this work from ubuntu? I have a pen with fat32 and the files across, the pen says its not bootable? normally i would write an iso but the files are separated and there is only a mac and windows script to enable the boot config?

any ideas before i walk off and try something else (which is also more resilient and faster like freenas)


----------



## PuffinMyLye

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *phill1978*
> 
> i have an issue with even trying unraid out as a test. how can you make this work from ubuntu? I have a pen with fat32 and the files across, the pen says its not bootable? normally i would write an iso but the files are separated and there is only a mac and windows script to enable the boot config?
> 
> any ideas before i walk off and try something else (which is also more resilient and faster like freenas)


I don't have any experience with Linux unfortunately. I did actually test out FreeNAS for a month before switching to UnRAID though. Never got the performance I was after, configuration is a little too complex for my liking (I'm a Windows guy so like I said no linux/unix experience), and the community while strong in support numbers is very arrogant and rough around the edges in my experience. Basically don't even CONSIDER posting a question until you've read the manual 2 times through and tried every single test there is for your specific problem. Otherwise it's flame city USA.


----------



## cones

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *phill1978*
> 
> I have (probably a very nooby ) question. Im wanting to try the free trail of Unraid. I have a usb pen but i run linux, the instructions are for windows (bat file to create bootable) and mac ( same) there is also a suggestion to use unetbootin but i downloaded the latest version and unraid isnt in the list. How can i make a bootable unraid instance from within linux seen as it is not an iso the usb image writer doesn't work?
> 
> i did look for quite sometime but didn't find anything that helped. Im sure its easy enough.. well hope so.


What do they give you an ISO or an IMG? I haven't messed with it in a while.


----------



## Pip Boy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *cones*
> 
> What do they give you an ISO or an IMG? I haven't messed with it in a while.


i fixed it with the help of unraid forums. You basically download unetbootin, change the .zip file to an .iso and write that to the usb using unetbooting, then say yes to all when it ask about stuff..










so i agree with puffinmylye the community are helpful.


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## Murlocke

Sorry guys, tonight DVDFab was raided and shutdown. I'm terminating this thread because even though I don't consider breaking copyrighted protection on things YOU OWN illegal, it's a gray area. It is not worth the risk to me, even though I physically own pretty much everything on my servers.


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