Spider99

Happy New Year!
the i3 has a passmark of about 5000
that will do a one or possibly 2 transcodes - depending on what you are transcoding
for comparison my qnap 853a with a n3150 (passmark 1600) can barely do a 1080p transcode - so you need a passmark of 2000+ to transcode on the fly a H264 1080p file - for HVEC and larger frame size you will need more power.
Emby does have support for intel quicksync - although its still experimental - but does work - which can help to lower the load - the i3 will be better for this as well
I pre transcode my video's so the clients can play them natively so the server does not work that hard - in that case a celeron would do fine as a file server

Yes thats the "quick and dirty" method - i used it when i setup my pool - 30TB+
As the data is on the disks its a "move" (from outside to inside the poolpart folder) rather than a copy process so is very quick as you are just changing the file location on the disk(s)

You could create two pools - one for each controller - with no duplication
then make a new pool of the the two pools with duplication - i.e a pool of pools

I got myself three Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8 drives to do some deep backup storage  https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01IAD5ZC6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
scanner see's them fine and chugs away checking the disks
 
But i was surprised when i swapped one for another that scanner was not picking up that the drive was different - i even gave it a clue as i changed the drive letter and named the volume differently and the signature of the disk would be different as well as the serial number
 
Scanner was attributing the scan results from the old drive to the new drive - which could be a problem and/or lead to confusion.
 
Yes these are USb drives but scanner is picking up all the Disk Details with no problem.
 
I closed the UI between swapping the drives

I bought the Q30 including the mobo, raid card and power supply from them.  They list a few sample configurations on their site, and have a configurator for more choices, but when I dealt with them they were super flexible in working with each clients' specific needs.  The configurator can be a starting point but then you can order off the menu.  In my use case I wanted a different CPU than what they had on the configuraator; they could not source the specific one I asked for but understood my requirements and suggested an appropriate alternative they could source.
 
You can check out these articles if you are not familiar with storage pods;
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/178757-how-to-build-your-own-180tb-raid6-storage-array-for-9305
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-server/
or search the web for something like "backblaze storage pod" and maybe add "open source" if you really are interested in just acquiring a case from a metal shop and not all the internals.
 
For some history as I understand it;
45Drives was an early supplier to BackBlaze but is no longer.  I think BackBlaze is up to version 6 or higher of the pod.  Around version 4 or so, BackBlaze switched to BackupPods.com and possibly others as suppliers of the pods.  However the pod designs are open source and can be bought and put together from a parts list if one desires.
 
I needed something that arrived working and was not a server build learning experience, so I bought a system assembled and tested sans drives.  I then just dropped my drives in, installed Win 7 and DP and was basically ready to go.  Most drives were moved from some other computers, one of which had been running DP, and I added a few blank drives, so I did have to move some files around to get them into the new pool and duplicated properly. 
 
http://www.45drives.com/
https://www.backuppods.com/
http://protocase.com/products/electronic-enclosures/45drives-storage-pods.php
 
My perhaps faulty recollection was that 45Drives wouldn't necessarily sell you all the nuts and bolts and individual parts one by one like at Radio Shack of old but would be very flexible in putting together (or leaving out) the major electronic components that go into a server to a clients' needs, and that BackupBods was the opposite on either ends of that;.they would either sell you a completely built working machine with all the drives and little customization, or they would sell you all the nuts and bolts and individual parts a la carte to assemble yourself.
 
I'd contact both companies and explain what you are looking for. (metal case, metal case with backplanes, etc.)  Protocase is the metal fab shop for 45Drives, so if you really are just interested in the chassis and not the backplanes, etc, you could contact them.
 
This info may have changed in the past 1.5 years.
 
Cheers,
David

Here you go so more stats on HDD failures
 
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q3-2016/
 
I am going to tune in for their Friday webinar to see what they have to say

Hi
 
Proud owner  of a shinny new Essential Server
 
Its along time since i played with Windows server - some things are the same but a lot has changed so....
 
Any recommendations on what to read/watch on how to set it up and use some of the features etc
 
There appears to be a lot of info but where to start with a good guide etc?
 
Thanks
T

using the Statistics plugin i see 

Is it possible to reorder the way the pools appear in the UI and/or the order in which they are measured?
 
At the moment my large G Pool is listed first in the UI and is re-measured first whenever is considered inconsistent.
 
I'd like my smaller D pool to be first in the UI and "Next Pool" would take me to the G pool.  D is more important, would re-measure quicker, and D comes before G in the alphabet.
 
Thanks,
David

similar to Chris
 
Large part of mine is Blu-ray backup copies, Movies and TV series ripped, home movies plus historical data etc etc
 
Duplicated mostly except the Blu-Ray backup copies as still have the original media
 
I think you better start collecting to catch up

similar to Chris
 
Large part of mine is Blu-ray backup copies, Movies and TV series ripped, home movies plus historical data etc etc
 
Duplicated mostly except the Blu-Ray backup copies as still have the original media
 
I think you better start collecting to catch up

10x/x2 means the folder containing the file is across 10 disks (poolparts) and the file is duplicated twice on 2 of the 10 disks
 
x2 is the expected number of parts
 
if you look at the example in the dpcmd thread it shows a x3/x2 with 3 poolparts and two copies
 
if you have 10 disks the root folder will be on all disks - sub directories may or may not be on all disks as you go down the tree of directories the number of disks containing directories generally decreases down to x2(or more) at the bottom of the tree.
 
In the gui if you put your mouse over each disk in turn it will amongst other things show you how much "other" is on each disk - you might find one disk has a lot more than the others
 
On a pool of 13 disks - i have 16.3gb on another pool of 20 disks i have 11.9GB - it goes up and down while it balances as it moves data from my ssd's to the pool as the "in transit" data gets added to the "other" until its fully copied - hence why you see it going up and down - if its large files being moved you can see the "other" data as its added to a disk "grey" bit which then turns blue when fully copied. Each disk has a few hundred meg of other - mostly ntfs data that you cannot see or access and its only because DP shows it to you that its an "issue" - in normal windows you cant see this data so you dont know its there but it is - its usually the master files records for the disk a database managed by windows all normal as long as its does no get into the multi 10's gb range which it looks like your are not. Also as Chris said if you have data outside the poolparts directory this will be counted as other as well. Also any System Volume Information directories are another culprit with volume snapshots etc (pia mostly)
 
Have fun

Hi
 
Proud owner  of a shinny new Essential Server
 
Its along time since i played with Windows server - some things are the same but a lot has changed so....
 
Any recommendations on what to read/watch on how to set it up and use some of the features etc
 
There appears to be a lot of info but where to start with a good guide etc?
 
Thanks
T

Uhm, I actually want DP to be as simple and fast as possible and would prefer not to have fancy placement stuff in there. But then, I consider the File Placement Rules evil as well. My fear would be that as DP does more, it becomes more vulnerable to bugs and user mishaps. I wonder (but I may be well off here) whether using seperate HDDs and then defining libraries in Windows would not be a more logical solution for the suggested function here.
 
One of my main concerns is that (and I have looked at the UnRAID link provided above briefly) either DP can not guarantee placement as expected, causing issues when one expects to recover easily, or must check and produce error reports. Let's say for instance that you want a certain folder on one HDD, the folder size is 3TB and the biggest HDD is 2TB. What should it do? It may then spill over to others (this is what happens with File Placement Rules if I am not mistaken) but unless this is reported clearly, a user may still be off as bad as with random placement (where the user knows placement is "random"). If it is reported clearly then the user must still micromanage. DP may also say there is not enough space but you might have a 10TB Pool with 5TB free and still run into this. Another concern is that DP would have to become more context-aware when placing files or balancing and, when free space becomes limited, may need to reshuffle entire folders to make room for an addition to another. The UnRaid document alludes to such issues as well with their implementation of split levels (and as far as I can tell it does not do a reshuffling at all but errors out on free space even if in the aggregate there is a lot available).
 
I prefer DP to offer a single virtual drive and manage placement as it seems fit (use least occupied HDD or fill all equal %-age), run as unattended as possible and, if you have duplication, it will recover itself (for instance if you have a hierarchic Pool with one base-Pool/string as Amazon Cloud Drive Unlimited with a 500 Mbit connection and local HDDs as the other base-Pool/string). If it becomes bloated with user options and suffers in stability then that would, IMHO, be a bad thing.
 
Anyway, just my 0.02$ worth.

And all is "done" for now.
 
Had the stents removed and the drain removed (last month, actually). 
 
And I'm doing fine now.  Still need to be careful about how much fat I eat, but that's a  good thing (IMO).

Hi
 
Red pro are noisy and run hot although a good drive - but expensive for what you get if you are not going to use them in a NAS
 
i have HGST (4tb) drives and they are fast at 170 + MB/s when lightly filled when full they drop down to ~ 120 MB/s with large files
 
SSD's obviously significantly faster
 
Have you thought of Raid 0 for stream - as long as you have a good backup strategy to protect your data - then cheaper/smaller SSD's could be used as a failure will take out the whole raid as 0 has no redundancy 

did the drives have files on before you combined them into the pool?
 
if so you need to move the files into the poolpart (hidden) directory on the drives then they will appear in the pool

Assuming the c: drive is not part of the pool then you have little to worry about
 
re installing win 7 will only install on the c: drive - you are in control of that anyway - or just disconnect the power leads to the pool drives while you do the install
 
then reinstall DP/Scanner etc and the pool will be recognised by default 
 
If the drives come back with different letters just change them in disk management before you install any other software
 
As for the backup - look at something like syncbackpro - there is a free version as well
 
RDP will be fine

Interesting article from backBlaze on SMART info
 
Not definitive but interesting
 
Wish they would learn how to present stats and % properly as it makes it difficult to figure out what the numbers mean!
 
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-smart-stats-indicate-hard-drive-failures/

lol - yes have three of the 950 Pro's
 
doubt you need to raid 0 them as you are unlikely to have anything that will stress them
 
Make sure you get Samsung Magician and the Samsung NVME drivers as Windows 10 only has a basic driver
 
IIRC scanner might have issues with getting the SMART info off the drives - but it will get fixed im sure
 
Make sure the NVME drives are very well cooled as the run very hot 60-80c in operation and can easily overheat - then they throttle their speed 
 
Enjoy

Yes its essentials - had it happen a few times yesterday when creating directories on a shared drive via windows explorer
 
that shared drive is under server folders not shared folders

The life for your ssd is 150TB 
 
so 15Tb per year
 
you are well under per year
 
My 2012r2 is very chatty with its disk at about 4tb for 4-5 months
 
If you look in scanner there is an almost constant read/write going on - i have yet to find the culprit(s) even with search turned off

its three+ years old i would plan for a replacement pronto
 
keep a close eye on the 220's and see if its changing (which i suspect it is) 
 
SSD's only have so much life and when it runs out the disk goes read only
 
how much has it written - its in the smart info further down

its three+ years old i would plan for a replacement pronto
 
keep a close eye on the 220's and see if its changing (which i suspect it is) 
 
SSD's only have so much life and when it runs out the disk goes read only
 
how much has it written - its in the smart info further down

Thanks for the great responses!

I'm going to mark this as "Solved" and maybe get to work on setting this thing up - mostly because my laptop is still out of commission and it looks like I need to buy tires for my truck.

Hoping to pop back in with pics once it's up and running.

Cheers!