oconnellc Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 Ok, so stupid newbie question... I got all my hardware delivered this week and I'm hoping to put it all together on Sunday (the wife goes out of town for a week on Sunday morning, so I have freedom to swear at hardware for 6 straight days). Anyway, I my unraid software shows up in the mail yesterday and I'm looking at it and I have no idea what to do with it. I realize that I really didn't know what Tom was going to ship me, but this looks like something I should stick in a camera. How do I attach this to a motherboard? Thanks for your patience, Chris Quote Link to comment
lishpy Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 Ok, so stupid newbie question... I got all my hardware delivered this week and I'm hoping to put it all together on Sunday (the wife goes out of town for a week on Sunday morning, so I have freedom to swear at hardware for 6 straight days). Anyway, I my unraid software shows up in the mail yesterday and I'm looking at it and I have no idea what to do with it. I realize that I really didn't know what Tom was going to ship me, but this looks like something I should stick in a camera. How do I attach this to a motherboard? Thanks for your patience, Chris If it's a USB thumb drive, you put it in the USB port on the exterior of your computer (most likely attached to the motherboard side that will point out of the back of the computer). They do make an adapter for inside your PC, but to me, that's extra hardware you don't need. Otherwise, I have no idea what you are asking I am referring to something like this : http://lime-technology.com/Images/jd_firefly_lg.jpg Quote Link to comment
oconnellc Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 This is what I got: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?edc=960495&cm_mmc=sendtec-_-adwords-_-CDW_Skus-_-USM1GH&SendTecID=11376333 Sorry if this is obvious to others, but I don't know how to stick this into a USB port. Chris Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 This is what I got: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?edc=960495&cm_mmc=sendtec-_-adwords-_-CDW_Skus-_-USM1GH&SendTecID=11376333 Sorry if this is obvious to others, but I don't know how to stick this into a USB port. Chris It is a USB flash drive. It should plug right into a USB port on the motherboard. Quote Link to comment
oconnellc Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 It does. I'm a nitwit. Quote Link to comment
oconnellc Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 Well, I'm at the point where I have 3 of the 4 pins on the CPU heatsink to 'click' into place. That last one does not want to go. I'm about to take a hammer to it. Before I destroy it and have to start over, anyone got any ideas on how to get this thing into place? Quote Link to comment
oconnellc Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 Well, in case someone else finds this useful... I was able to twist the 3 that were clicked in and get them loose, but the 4th that I have been pushing on for the last couple hours was jammed, halfway in, halfway out. So, I used a knife to pry it loose. Then, I was able to reseat it starting from scratch. I got lucky that a different one close to the edge of the mobo was the one that I couldn't get to go. So, I had a pair of pliers and I used them to squeeze the last one in place. Just how fragile is this stuff, anyway? Did I destroy it all? Should I just go get another mobo/cpu and start over or keep at it with this pair? Quote Link to comment
lishpy Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 You'll be fine. I've had that happen to me before as well, same situation with the heatsink, and it's still truckin' along. Quote Link to comment
barbapapa Posted January 31, 2009 Author Share Posted January 31, 2009 Well, in case someone else finds this useful... I was able to twist the 3 that were clicked in and get them loose, but the 4th that I have been pushing on for the last couple hours was jammed, halfway in, halfway out. So, I used a knife to pry it loose. Then, I was able to reseat it starting from scratch. I got lucky that a different one close to the edge of the mobo was the one that I couldn't get to go. So, I had a pair of pliers and I used them to squeeze the last one in place. Just how fragile is this stuff, anyway? Did I destroy it all? Should I just go get another mobo/cpu and start over or keep at it with this pair? Those pins can be frustrating, for sure. I hated them at first but I've gotten to like them. I got a replacement heat sink because the stock one was just too loud for me. I popped off the heat sink, wiped the thermal compound off the CPU, and then plopped in the new heat sink. The new heat sink (Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7) went in first try, took me all of about 15-30 seconds to attach it solidly to the board, didn't have to remove the motherboard or anything, and didn't have to force any of the pins; they all clicked into place easily. Love the new heatsink. I can't even hear it, it's quieter than my case fans. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 31, 2009 Share Posted January 31, 2009 I thought I'd update everyone too... I've been running my Unraid TeraKiller for a week and a half or so now... The only problem - I keep adding crap to it. ... I've discovered I have way more crap laying around ... and oh crap... I've got leftover IDE drives everywhere... Should I just keep the new 1.5TB drives and scrap the rest - or is that the whole idea - to be able to salvage older drives from the scrapheap until I replace them with larger ones? I knew that would be the case and you would see the benefit of unRAID. I would say weigh the benefit of the smaller drives against the electricity to run them vs how much data they can store and finnally vs how much life time is left on them. They do have a high MTBF hourly rate, but if you calculate the drives power on hours and it's higher then say 3 years.. I might just retire it. Finally, the cost of running the older spindles may be offset by condensing all the data on them to a single WD green drive. Add in heat, cooling and noise. In my case I probably would not use anything under 300GB. Even then a 300GB in good shape may sell for $40 on eBay and 3 of those dirves would pay for 1TB drive. Quote Link to comment
oconnellc Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 Hi Barbapapa, Looks like you're headed down the same road... I appreciate the companionship... I've bought all the hardware and it arrived today... I haven't built a computer in about 10 years, but it was relatively easy... 5. Drop the motherboard into the case and attach it with NINE of the rounded head screws. 11. Connect the front face cables to their respective connectors on the motherboard: A - Power + LED goes in the top left pin of the JF1 Connector. B - Power - LED goes in the top right pin of the JF1 Connector. C - HDD LED takes up the second row of the JF1 Connector. D - Power SW takes up the very last row of the JF1 Connector (this one makes the power switch work - others are optional). 20. I think it should work - but mine isn't... :-P See this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2993.0 So, I'm up and running. Apparently, they make this motherboard strong enough to handle me hitting it with a hammer. I had nothing but trouble getting the heatsink attached. Note to anyone reading this... Change the steps above so that you do not attach the motherboard to the case until after you at least install the CPU and heatsink on it. Might as well snap the memory into place as well. Next, I'm pretty literal, so this threw me, but the instructions only show installing 4 of the spacers on the case before attaching the mobo to them (i.e. not screwing the mobo directly into the case). This seems obvious to me now, but you actually need to put all 9 of the spacers in place and screw all of the attaching screws into them when attaching the mobo. Also, not a big deal, but I had to reverse the locations of the + - connectors in step 11. I didn't wait to have problems, I just implemented the fix in the thread referred to in step 20. Don't know if this is hurting me or not... I haven't really done anything else with it. I found a thread with instructions for running new drives through a few tests before setting up the raid and I haven't had time to do that yet (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817). I'm looking forward to finally confirming the health of the drives and starting to copy my content over to it. I've gotten paranoid and I've actually just shut down all the external drives I've been using so that they can't die on me until I can get my content copied over. Only wish at this point was that unraid had an 'out of the box' notification so that my system would send me an email if something bad happened (like a drive failure or something like that). Thanks to everyone for posting all their tips/issues/hints. Chris Quote Link to comment
RussellinSacto Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Wow Guys, Amazing how this thread has continued... and following my all newbie instructions it sounds like a few more have been LIMEd! I'm up and running for over a month now - critical data now onboard my unRaid. I am, regretably, having a few issues (you can find the threads), but overall it's nice. I've got GoodSync (a nice little software package) backing up my Super critical data to my now-endangered-species-list TeraStation. Burning piles of DVDs too for archiving... but I love the freedom I have now - with so much drive space. Thanks everyone, Russell Quote Link to comment
megabits Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 I hope this is a simple overlook, but I've just built a new system using the Supermicro C2SEE and configured a spare USB flash with syslinux loader and basic 4.4 (pro version is on its way, can't wait). It won't load unRAID and I'm not sure if its a bios boot issue or my USB drive is bad. The AMI bios (2.61, build 8.00.15) doesn't have a lot of options, floppy or HD. I've tried without changes and priority to SATA. I've rebuilt the flash a couple of times (FAT, -ma, checked extracted 4.4 contents,...) and using the USB port on-board. Theres not a lot to go wrong, yet I can't get out of the gate... thanks for you help... Quote Link to comment
oconnellc Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 I went through this a week ago, same mobo and had no problems. I used my flash drive from Tom, so I didn't have to do this, but make sure that the Volume name on the drive is 'UNRAID', all caps. You should be able to do this by plugging it into a windows machine and editing the name that way. Good luck... I'm about a week ahead of you, so hopefully I will be able to help if you run into problems. Assuming you get it working, I have been playing with this for the past couple days, running a few new drives I bought through their paces before I start copying data over: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.0 Good luck! Chris Quote Link to comment
megabits Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 thanks Chris, just checked the label, its good. If its not too much trouble, next time you reboot if you could verify your bios version and build date and possibly your boot priority settings. thanks... Quote Link to comment
oconnellc Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 I would be happy to do that. However, I have a problem. I only have a DVI cable that I use to plug my monitor into my PC. I can't plug the DVI cable for my monitor into my tower, so I can't check that stuff out when I reboot. Does anyone know how to check that via a telnet session? If I could figure out how to do that, I'd be happy to see what I can find. Quote Link to comment
megabits Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 OK another day and a fresh cup of coffee. I tried another flash this morning, and it worked (after I entered the MAC address into my router) :) I didn't try the U3 utility on the 1st flash cause I didn't think U3 was installed. The 2nd flash is an old 512 Verbatim drive which I simply loaded the Linux loader (-ma), extracted 4.4 contents, and renamed the label. presto, the LimeTech main page... still waiting for my SanDisk Cruzer and will buy the Plus license, but this will get me going... now I've got to upgrade the firmware on my ST31000340AS Seagate drive which I plan to use for parity... cheers! Quote Link to comment
ix400 Posted October 21, 2010 Share Posted October 21, 2010 Hi, can I use the SUPERMICRO MBD-C2SEE-O for a 20 drive unRAID? Or asked differently, has anyone tried to build in two of Supermicro's SASLP-MV8 in to that board? Is this possible? Or do you recommend a different SATA card for that purpose? Sorry for my bad english. Would be nice if someone could help me. Cheers, Chris Quote Link to comment
Rajahal Posted October 21, 2010 Share Posted October 21, 2010 Yes, that motherboard should work fine for a 20 drive build (it could actually support up to 22 drives). It should support two of the supermicro cards with no problems. Quote Link to comment
ix400 Posted October 21, 2010 Share Posted October 21, 2010 Thanks Rajahal, i was just confused because I found the following specs for the board un Supermicro's Webpage: Expansion Slots PCI-Express 1 (x16) PCI-e 2.0 slot 1 (x4) PCI-e (using x16 slot) 1 (x1) PCI-e slot PCI 4x 32-bit 33MHz PCI (5V) slots I guess I have to put the two cards in the x16 and x4 slots. Right? The x16 slot works then in a sort of "downscaled" mode? I was asking because this motherboard is officially supported but difficult to find, and I could buy a used one from a local shop. Chrers, Chris Quote Link to comment
ix400 Posted October 21, 2010 Share Posted October 21, 2010 I forgot something to ask: What is the difference between the C2SEE-O and the C2SEE-B. The latter one was offered to me for about 100€. Are -O and -B technically the same boards? Don't wan't to buy rubbish... Cheers, Chris Quote Link to comment
Rajahal Posted October 21, 2010 Share Posted October 21, 2010 Yeah, I think those specs are confusing as well. Translated in to plain english, they are saying: The motherboard has one PCIe x16 slot that can operate at x16, x8, or x4 speeds. The motherboard also has a PCIe x4 slot that can only operate at x4 speeds. However, this slot physically looks like an x16 slot (but won't operate at those speeds). So you can run two PCIe x4 cards, one in each slot. Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted October 22, 2010 Share Posted October 22, 2010 Yeah, I think those specs are confusing as well. Translated in to plain english, they are saying: The motherboard has one PCIe x16 slot that can operate at x16, x8, or x4 speeds. The motherboard also has a PCIe x4 slot that can only operate at x4 speeds. However, this slot physically looks like an x16 slot (but won't operate at those speeds). So you can run two PCIe x4 cards, one in each slot. Not trying to be picky, but think it is important to know that "speed" is not the difference between the x1, x4, x8 and x16 slots. They all run at exactly the same speed. The difference is the WIDTH. A x1 is ONE lane, an x4 is FOUR lanes, an x8 is 8 lanes, and an x16 is 16 lanes. More lanes means more data traveling in parallel, but not at a faster speed. Quote Link to comment
oconnellc Posted October 22, 2010 Share Posted October 22, 2010 Just making sure I understand this... So, if I have fewer than 4 drives connected to one of these cards, it wouldn't make any difference if it was 4x or 16x, since I have fewer than 4 cards, I would use fewer than 4 lanes and there would be no bottleneck (well, there probably would, but it would just be somewhere else). Thanks, Chris Quote Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted October 22, 2010 Share Posted October 22, 2010 You can put 8 drives on an x4 lane and not see any significant performance penalty. It is not a 1 drive to 1 lane type deal. A PCE-e x1 card is capable of 250 each direction and 2 new HDD running on the outer tracks would have a hard time completely saturating it. Once you get to the inner tracks of the HDD the speed will decrease and the reads will be slower. 4 drives on a PCI-e x1 slot is about the max I would go if you want to still have good performance. Quote Link to comment
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