RFOneWatt

Hi Carlo, welcome Philmatic. Looks like Carlo is king but as he said 33TB isn't anything to sneeze at. Especially if it's running, working and reliable. I can certainly see your point on duplicating everything Drashna however that's basically the reason I run DrivePool. I have my important stuff duplicated and the replaceable stuff unduplicated. It's nice to pick and choose with folder duplication. I haven't really done the math but I *think* if I wanted to take that big of a hit on drivespace I'd run a conventional RAID. Maybe. (Not that there aren't plenty of other advantages to Drivepool..and I do need to rethink some things) I was kidding about my Drive Pool being ALL PORN however the majority of my pool is video. (my personal favorite being older TV) however I know I fit the definition of data hoarder. I've got every file and picture that's ever been on any of my machines since around 1997..heck.. even from before that. I've got all of my C-64/128/Amiga disc images, all of my old BBS files, clients, business' etc. all online. I also bought the first consumer digital camera that ever came out and went through several girlfriends with that one so needless to say "stuff adds up!' This new 4224 build is going to be Server 2012 Standard and I think I'll have some fun with deduplication. I can see it has it's place. I really want the disk subsystem to fly on the this new 4224 build. On hand I have a HighPoint 2740, a LSI 9240-8I and a Dell PERC H710P I scavenged in addition to the ports available on the motherboard, a Supermicro X-10DRI-O however I am not opposed to spending some "real money" on a new controller... Heck, here's a picture of most the hardware that has arrived so far, all sitting on top of my running 4220 on the mini "bench." I'm pretty sure the only thing missing in this picture are two additional EVO 850's that just showed up. (for a total of four) I do also have six 600GB 15K Cheetah SAS drives but I don't know if they will make it into this build or not. They are used with about two years of power on time but barely any usage. I'm pretty sure I'm going to populate most of the bays in the Norco with 7200RPM HGST NAS drives or WD Reds.. I haven't made up my mind yet. The 4224 case just arrived and is sitting next to this 4220 awaiting insertion of parts. Decisions, decisions. ~RF

Geez... I need friends like yours. EMBY... I've heard of it - appears to be a media server like say, Serviio / Plex? I remember trying Plex out a couple years ago and ditching it for that reason - terrible resource hog (compared to TVersity at the time.) Plex is so feature rich and robust these days I can't even consider running something else at the moment. (Although I do run a Serviio on a workhorse box of mine as backup to Plex.) Anyways, yes, The switch upgrade was a necessity. (along with most of the cabling) I've lived in the same house since 1997 so everything has been an addition to the network. Routers, neighbors, repeaters, etc. I will have that Cisco in place and all important wiring re-slung over the next couple of weeks. During that time I need to figure out the new backbone of the 4220 and 4224. I knew you'd notice the GBIC's on the SG200-26, Drasha. Can't get much past you. My 4220 box has the Supermicro X8-DTi-F and the new 4224 box is being built on the X10-DRi-0 board. What would be your configuration recommendation on getting these two boxes fluently yapping which each while simultaneously saturating all of the clients? <big grin> Hmmmm...... ~RF

Well, I certainly appreciate your dedication. Yes - It's actually a big problem when you start to accumulate so much data that's constantly in use. Where do you stick that data when you need to work/change, etc. Heck, I bit the bullet and began a second build rather than deal with downtime. Having to power cycle anything periodically to guarantee availability is completely unacceptable in my book.. even at home. I just picked up a Cisco SG200 26 port switch that will be replacing almost all of the cheap switches. Most of the cabling is being replaced also. I think it will be pretty interesting to see the change in performance. Speaking of PLex being a resource hog... below is my 4220 box serving one Xbox 360, two Playstation 3’s, two PS3's at the other neighbors, My daughters Samsung Tablet, my Galaxy S5 and our main Samsung TV along with two Chrome Plex clients. Everything is physically wired to the network at 1GB except for the tablet and my phone. (The XBOX next door is wired @ 100M) This is everything running perfectly, everything in 1080P HD. Anything more and we start to get stuttering….. Now I'm working out the best configuration between the switch and both Norco boxes.... hmm.... ~RF

Ahhhh!!! Very nice, Drashna. So your pool is the second largest I've ever seen!! 100% duplicated too. Nice,nice. I know you've been bit before but don't you feel the least bit cheated? I've used Adaptec controllers almost exclusively since I was a kid but I got a chance to play with an LSI a few months ago and was very impressed. If I remember correctly I was a bit annoyed about a specific feature (can't remember what it is at the moment) not being available without shelling out more $$. I remember thinking "nickle and diming the consumer" for some reason. I can't remember exactly why at the moment.. Either way, the price point was good and I bought one for my 4224 build. I liked most everything about the LSI and could tell from the get-go that it would be a bit easier than the HighPoints when it came to configuration and/or compatibility. My HighPoint controllers which are all FAST, stable and work wonderfully were finicky and a PIA to get right. Several hoops to jump through and even a bit of B.S... BUT -- They are rock solid now. I have zero complaints (at this point) I even have a RMA'd 2740 that I think is going to end up in my new 4224 build. Ok, so that explains the different 4220 cases. My 4220 is the one with the slot for the slimline CD drive. I have a small hole drilled in the plastic cutout where the CD drive would be that holds a POT for the fan speed control. (I am using Tornado brand fans.) and to the left of that sits the four WL 600's.... I think I have a picture here somewhere, actually.. As to what I am using my space for...... It's ALL porn. ~RF

Hey Guys -- Sorry to bail on this thread so long ago. After I read it Mr. Drashna got me thinking.... Let's say this: It appears that it's a bad idea to have every piece of network hardware in the house(s) on battery back-ups --particularly when it's cheap hardware. The power in the neighborhood hasn't gone out for a significant amount of time which meant I had several "junk/dumb" GB switches (meaning Trendnet, TP-Link and the like.) that haven't been power cycled in many, many months. So.....I'm not sure which switch/router was the problem but after power cycling all of them (and doing nothing else) everything basically matches your guesstimates above. So with this system now up, running & stable I'm about to begin a 4224 build. Once that's up and running I can revisit the 4220 box and clean up a few loose ends that are bugging me..but at this point it's 100% stable. With my new 4224 build (Meant to separate my media server from my storage server) I can do things a bit more slowly and concentrate on a few key points. Originally I was just going to upgrade the motherboard in the 4220 and call it a day but at this point I can't afford any significant downtime and wanted to spend time tweaking (specifically the network side of things) so I decided a totally new build was in order and began collecting all the pieces which have mostly arrived. I'm sure you don't remember me Drashna but you came to my rescue a couple times (On two separate Sundays no less) during the 4220 build which was my first "serious" experience with DrivePool & Highpoint controllers... I sincerely appreciate it. ~RF

Well, hopefully we'll find that person. Lookin' good Drashna! I was a lurker here for a good long time before I built this system (AP1, for reference) so I have read your thread and was certainly influenced by it. No, I don't have two internal drive bays unless you are counting the space on top in the front that is now occupied by four more slots in the 4224? In that space I have four 600GB White Label Velociraptors acting as my two feeder drives. (hardware striped) The Norco case came from E-Bay about eight months ago from some strange fella who had a single unit. I think I paid $317.00 delivered for it and I do believe it's the older chassis? The only thing I did was change the fan wall out from the three stock 80MM fans to the "upgraded" wall for three 120MM units. In back, tucked on the side of the power supply (a RaidMax RX-1000AE) is a single Samsung 840 Pro w/ the O/S and the transcoding cache for my Plex server. (this is a bad idea and was meant to be temporary as this drive is on an internal SATA2 motherboard port. No SATA3 on this older Supermicro X8DTi-F) This server has two controllers, a Highpoint 2740 and a 2720. Highpoint 2720 Highpoint 2740 Just about all the components have arrived for my new Norco 4224 build, tentatively named WOPR (because we all know how important server names are ) I've been slowly purchasing everything for this build (as I can afford it) basically since the above build was finalized so I'm pretty excited to get moving on that. This will allow me to separate my media server (Plex) from my (primary) storage server. This will also allow me to move forward slightly slower with this configuration and do things a bit differently based on the knowledge gained from building and running the above server for the last several months. I'm not much of a hardware guy but I'm learning. ~RF

Someone has to have it, right? How about we start with the largest pool of the members that participate here? I'm taking an uneducated guess that theoretically Drivepool should scale indefinitely (or to some insane limitation imposed by the O/S, hardware or something else) however we all know the real world is where it's at, yes? I'm sure I'm nowhere near the largest but I've maxed out my Norco 4220, and then some. It's NOW time to start building the successor! Would love to see what everybody else has going on! ~RF

Well, it appears I have other issues because from my personal workstation I am seeing MAX write speeds of 50 mbps to the storage server. Local copies to the pool average around 100-250 mbps depending on what's going on. Reads from the pool are 50-90 mbps. (Most of the drives in the pool are 5900 RPM HGST's) Other machines on the same network are even worse - a couple only topping out at around 10. I am thinking maybe I've got a bad patch cable (it's all Gigabit over CAT 5E) or possibly a bad switch? Sigh. Right now the O/S is Server 2008R2, soon to be 2008R2 Enterprise or possibly Server 2012 standard. Thanks guys, Tony

Hi, I am looking for suggestions on increasing the network read/write speed for my DrivePool. I am currently using four 600GB 10k RPM drives as feeder drives - striped on a Highpoint 2720 controller. (2 drives per stripe set) Most of the rest of the pool is on a Highpoint 2740. I'm not sure of the best way to approach this and am looking for suggestions. I am thinking that NIC teaming might be somewhere to start? Or maybe it's time to be looking at fiber? At the moment I am using several cheap gigabit switches that I will be consolidating to a larger, more intelligent switch. The motherboard has an Intel 82576 dual GB controller but I will be upgrading to a Supermicro X10DRI-O shortly. Any suggestions / advice would be appreciated Thanks!! -Tony

I'm with this guy on the promoting of mutual respect thing. I'll open up a ticket, Christopher. Just because it's dangerous to have files sitting on those striped White Label drives. I am using six of them now so the odds increase! Thanks, Tony

Hey Drashna -- Still having the same issue. I let it sit and balance for at least 24 hours and my feeder disks are still about the same capacity. Any other ideas? Also, this may be part of the reason -- am I mistaken in believing that when I have feeder disks enabled, all new files should land on one or the other initially? When copying to the pool the files seem to go directly to an archive disk and not to the feeder disks. ~rf

Speaking of feeder disks, what's the best way to keep them file free? I am using two striped disks (4 physical drives) as SSD feeders and don't want any files parked there for any length of time. It looks like there might be a couple different ways of accomplishing this however I'm not sure what would be the most efficient. Thanks guys!! ~rf

That answers my question! I have Ordered FIle Placement turned off and am using SSD Optimizer. Thanks!! ~rf

Hello & Good Day! Today when I looked at my pool I noticed the red arrow that when hovered over says "New File Placement Limit 0.0%" This pool is only a couple of weeks old and everything seems fine. There is largely no activity on the pool. I've never seen it before and the fact that the arrow is red makes me wonder what's up. I was pretty sure I induced a conflict with the balancers so I reset them all to default however it didn't seem to make a difference. Anybody know whats going on? Happy Holidays & Thanks!! ~rf

Thanks for the clarification Drashna. I was just curious as I have a LSI 9240-8i that I was considering using in a recent Norco 4220 build. This was my first experience with LSI stuff and I like it so far, for the most part. I believe the M1015 is a clone of this card? I ended up going with Highpoint cards on this build though, pretty much because I had matching Highpoint cards on hand (a 2740 & 2720.) I am doing another build over the next couple of weeks and I think I'm going to go with LSI. Question: I've never used a SAS expander. Do they work with most cards? Everything I've ever done when it comes to RAID is enterprise class Adaptec.. no other real experience. (although I did some cool ISCSI stuff for a Casino a few years back with a Cisco storage router and an Apple SAN.. that was fun..) Thanks! ~rf

Drashna, Sorry to pop in with an "off topic" question but what's the benefit of if flashing the M1015 to IT mode rather than passing it through JBOD? Just because it adds another layer? (as in ties those drives to that card?) Is there a performance difference? Also, can you freely flash back? (I don't see why not) Those cards appear to be quite versatile and from what I understand, reliable. Certainly affordable. Thanks, ~RF

Hi Drashna, That's the way I've had it set up. I am guessing I need to set the Ordered Placement options in the SSD balancing plug-in even though I don't really care what order the drives are filled, providing the free space is equalized. I did try setting the slider for filling the SSD to 1% but that doesn't seem to make a difference. (BTW, there is NO duplication on this pool - yet)

Hello and good Day to all! My Question Is -- What is the best way to keep my feeder array file free? I am using three Velociraptor "knock-off's" in RAID0 to speed up writes to my 64TB drive pool and I don't want ANY files stored on it (for obvious reasons) It looks like there are a couple of ways to accomplish this however I'm wondering which way would be the best? Thanks!!! ~rf

Just kind of an FYI.. Seagate says these sounds are normal. I have several of these drives scattered about and they all still make this sound to this day. None have failed. NONE pass Seatools when I originally ran it on the drives. (when I created the video) <Shrug> I don't use them in anything important. -Tony

Very true...but you are talking all logical-like. Sometimes logic has no place when it comes to marketing. Ever check out the IMTOO suite? (and however many other brands they have) Talk about repackaging code... It's insane. http://www.imtoo.com/products-win.html I understand your point though. Your products are geared more towards people that would just use Handbrake instead of anything above. I was really just thinking out loud. I was looking for a discounted 12/12 bundle of both DP and scanner. I do need another install key for DP immediately though so I'm going to go snatch the 12 bundle now before you guys raise prices. This software is way too cheap. Thanks!! -RF

I love scanner too. Not as much as I love Drive Pool though. When I first installed scanner I thought it was a nice package, for what it was - A SMART monitoring program. A really nice one at that. Where it REALLY shines is when used in conjunction with Drive Pool. That's when the game changes and things get really impressive. Hmmm.. I'm wondering if from a marketing perspective there's a place for a combined program. (I'm probably thinking about it because I just went to purchase a 12 license copy of Drive Pool and I was looking for the option of buying a 12 count of both at the same time.) I'm honestly surprised Microsoft hasn't caught on to this little GEM of code and sent the developers and their support team a fat check. It would make a great feature baked into the OS...Simply right click on a drive and select 'POOL." Of course it would suck after that so the deal would have to include positions at Microsoft for one or two of the original Covecube developers. Ok, sorry for semi-derailing the thread and babbling. Keep up the great work guys. -RF