[SFF] unRAID Server

Beer40oz Wrote:Good news! I went over to my bios I checked and found "Backup BIOS Image to HDD: DISABLED"

That means I don't have to worry about that now I know there is no HPA in my HD's..... thanx

That is good news. Most of the Gigabyte MBs released in 2010 and after have the Backup BIOS Image to HDD option DISABLED by default in the BIOS. Some of the older boards have a BIOS update that made the default setting DISABLED but some do not. I've had three Gigabyte MBs and all of them have been DISABLED by default.

Beer40oz Wrote:Eskro sweet program.... yes its also here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.p...5#msg66465

way cool.... I tried it and yes there is no HPA on any of my hard drives.....

o.O

i didnt know it was on unRAID FORUM LoL

Beer40oz Wrote:Ordering the D-Link DGS-1008G since it's $32 bucks off at the moment.....

+1, amazing DEAL

wsume99 Wrote:@Zedd - I am sorry to hear that you had a difficult time getting your problems addressed. My comments are based upon my own personal experiences as well as observations of the activity on the unraid forums. Based upon what I have experienced/seen I would say that your experience in getting help is not the norm but it can happen. So thank you for adding that insight. I've edited my original post.

Now WRT the syslog disappearing, I have seen many posts on the unraid forums that outline what can be done to capture the syslog when you have a situation that involves a hard crash of the server - use telnet or putty to connect remotely to the server and execute a tail command to display the syslog. When the server crashes the syslog will be preserved in your telnet/putty window. You can read here for more detail. So while it may be frustrating to have that occur there are documented ways to help diagnose what is happening.

I certainly didn't mean that be taken as a rebuke of your very good advice, amending your post wasn't necessary just offering my own experience. Since your one of the people that have helped me along on this HTPC/Unraid ride offending you is the last thing on my mind.

The tail command can be useful but the remote computer would have to stay on and never sleep for a couple weeks probably until the next inexplicable crash and I just haven't wanted to pay that power bill yet =). I just wish the OS had a built in way to write every syslog line as its created to the ginormous amounts of harddrive space surrounding it, seems a no brainer to me but what do i know!

@Zedd - I was not offended by your post. Hopefully you'll find a resolution to your issue.

What split level do you use if you want to use all the hardrives? I am using 4.7 version.

matthew1975 Wrote:What split level do you use if you want to use all the hardrives? I am using 4.7 version.

You haven't really given enough info to give you a specific answer. So I'll offer you two alternatives...

1. If you DON'T care at all how the files are arranged on the drives but just want them to be evenly spread out across all your hard drives then set the split level to a really big number like 999 and use the most free allocation method. I'm not recommending that you do this but that is a possible answer to your question.
2. If you DO care about how your files are arranged on the drives but still want them to be reasonably spread out across all your hard drives then set the split level to something greater than 0 and use the most free allocation method. What exact split level value to use depends on your directory structure and your personal preference.
   

why dont u recommend 999 ??

thanks for the answers, but like eskro asked why not 999, since it spreads it the most evenly. I guess I don't care how they go on to the drives, I just want to use all the drives.

eskro Wrote:why dont u recommend 999 ??

Here are my reasons:

1. If you have ripped DVDs (VOBs) on your server you need to have all the files for a single movie on the same disk otherwise you could encounter a delay during playback when the movie transitions from one VOB to the next because the disk it is on is spun down. If you never spin down your disks then you should not have this problem, but there is a penalty to that workaround (see #2). Basically you want all the files needed to playback a movie to be located on the same disk. So another issue would be a .mkv and .srf file on seperate disks. This means two disks will have to be spinning to playback a movie. Again this causes more power consumption and it is totally avoidable.
2. Having your files spread all around willy nilly does not provides you with the most energy efficient server. In the long rung you will need to have more disks spinning in order to access your files. The more your disks spin the more energy they'll use. Also you'll probably put more wear and tear on your drives as well because they'll be spun up and down more frequently by using a split level of 999. This assumes that you're using spin-down timers, if you're not then this won't matter much to you.
3. There is not that big of a penalty to using a low split level say 1, 2, or 3 to avoid the downsides from #1 & 2 above. You just have to think about what you are doing and you can still achieve a pretty even balance of free space between the disks.

Again, using a split level of 999 will work and may actually be the ideal setting depending on your specific situation but I would never use that on my media server. It's your system so feel free to configure it however you wish to suit your needs.

so what are your split levels?