russell

We want to start up a new raid, new 2TB hdds, and we want to format XFS. Sector size physical is 4096, and it seems we cant change that Have done a look around the forums and cant find anything on how to do this Is this possible? The 4096 is rather wasting a lot of space on the files we are storing...

Thanks to all for suggestions, been stable since my last post, and since taking the DIV-R off the network. Going to put max all back together again with new 2 x 5bay host swap bays for the hard drives, reformat the drives and reload the data.

Thanks all for the suggestions (thanks @Frank1940 for the latest contribution) I was just logging in to post a new update (We did the local master stuff yesterday) ITS ALIVE! We have an old network attached device that sits all by itself, and never looked at and out of site out of mind. It had its own network address, but something in that device is playing havoc with the unraid server. Its a DIV-R video recorder for our security cameras. During isolation testing, when that network segment was unplugged, up came unraid, when plugged in, it collapsed again. I don't need the DIV-R on the network unless we want to look at footage, so its staying unplugged. I will hold my breath for a few days, however I think its licked - if I plug it back in - MAX disappears, if I unplug the DIV-R - MAX comes back up again.

IP address is unique. We have tried with both a fixed IP with a reservation, and also auto ip from dhcp. Both have the same problem. This problem has been present on: 3 different installs of unraid, 3 different NIC chipsets, 2 different MB/CPU combos, bad ram and good ram, some bad hard disks and all good hard disks. Has to be networking collision of sorts, we have replaced everything else several times Will try this morning with almost everything unplugged

So we had Max (server name) stable on a no internet standalone network, very responsive, no drop outs in browsing or web gui. Put it back onto the main network, problems with browsing and gui immediately - bear in mind the non network config had all our computers on that network Put in a router to do NAT between our ADSL Modem Router (Draytek) and Max, and hung the rest of the business of the new NAT router - same problems Conclusion at first thought - get Max on the internet and he crashes Im going to try 2 more tests: 1 - Max on Draytek and only one other computer - no other devices 2 - Max and entire network on a new simple d-link modem Any ideas welcomed, thanks

A big thanks to @SSD, @kizer, @Squid, @pwm, @ken-ji, all of your contributions have been useful and encouraging to a novice unraid customer. We ran our server overnight on a new off net network with a plain modem for dhcp, no internet, server as WG Master Browser, and all seems stable so far. Will run it for the next few days in production back on our existing modem router on the main network with internet access to see how it performs. Currently running with no plug ins, no apps, no vm's and no parity for now to see if the most important feature (network shares) works fine on the main network. Then we will introduce Parity and 3 new drives to replace the drives with smart errors, test again, then we will add in syncthing and a w7pro vm for further testing.

@SSD, thanks for the helpful advise. Yes, in hind site we should have left off our background, we thought it relevant to help stop the basic obvious stuff, we are pretty full bottle on windows, but babies in Un-Raid. I am currently on a fresh USB, separate network, and only 2 hard drives all re-cabled, and fingers crossed, seems stable. It is currently on a standalone network so it is not interfacing with the workshop yet. If this stays stable, the problem will most likely be a networking fight going on with our network. I have always thought that might be the issue, but needed to try and isolate all possibilities. UN-RAID is fantastic in its features, we certainly were not setting out to blame it, I bet you have many thousands of happy customers. So for now, we will keep testing this very basic virgin installation, and if stable for a few days, then we will try and re-introduce it to the rest of the network again Thanks again for the helpful advise, and of course we will be more than happy to offer hardware advise if ever needed.

Thanks for the ideas, most helpful. I have tried safe mode, and I have just made new usb boot on the latest version, removed all my disks, and starting fresh, have tried the re-cable, this time around Im cabling again with no sata hot swap bay (icy box internal hot swap was used) going to cable just 2 hard disks to the new install, these are 2 new 2tb sata that are 2 of the original server that are identified as having no errors. So a virgin install, new cables, new hdd, new raid, tested ram... heres hoping it works!

That is exactly how we have been navigating to it - IP address 192.168.8.86 - fixed ip, outside of our DHCP scope in a reserved area of the router for fixed networking assets. This is the same method we used on the windows storage box... and is simple to navigate too, but shares just often do not respond, or they browse for a minute and disappear half way through file copying from the shares. Most annoying, as when it works it hammers along!

Thanks SQUID. Great suggestions. We will be happy to try updating to that version. We initially selected what was available as a stable build, rather than the latest. As a repair business, we have a ton of files and resources stored for use on computers that we repair. Up to 15 computers at a time are on the workshop bench being repaired. Since these are other peoples computers, setting manual networking settings is not very practical. We used to use a windows box for this, and didn't have the share problem near as much as we do now. I will try upgrading to the latest version. Is there an upgrade tool / exe to upgrade our USB stick, or should we just start up a new trial on a new key? What do you think is best?

I had a lot of words for you two here, but not worth it. This is a support forum, try being suportitive, or don't comment at all. In that spirit, I am still having stability issues with the GUI and the Shares, have changed the RAM - tested all fine with the mem test on boot. Hmmm - new ram - still gui issues Oh, can someone tell me if stability is effected by the time zone. We are testing, not in production yet, time zone will get there eventually, but do the disks only work when the sun comes up???

I have now tried setting master to NO, and tested. Seemed better in terms of getting to the shares from other windows computers. However today (next day from the previous posts) we have 2 or 3 computers than cannot see the shares, and when you can, they drop off quickly. I have done a fresh diagnostics which is attached. MEM test showed faulty memory. We have replaced and tested again, this has seemed to also make the web gui more reliable, but not 100% available. On the old memory it was about 20% of the time available, now on the new memory its around 70% of the time available. max-diagnostics-20171121-1551.zip

Have re-cabled the SATA backpane on the 5 main hard disks, new sata and power cables. Rebooted into GUI MODE, raid up, interface working on the unraid machine, however access to shares and interface via the network is still not functioning. Latest diagnostics attached here... max-diagnostics-20171120-1729.zip NOW running a boot time memory test

OK, will run this later today, just looking at replacing the hard disks that are showing as having smart issues. Do you have suggestions for BIOS settings that we might have missed???

Thanks for the diagnosics review, the hardware is solid, in that MB, CPU and RAM are all new, hard drives do have smart errors, we were not sure they would be causing issues, I will re-cable and probably replace the disks that are faulty and see what that does.