I have 2x20TB, 7x8TB, and 1x6TB spinners and 3x500GB SSDs, so a typical RAID setup isn’t really possible. I’m not buying any more hard drives for awhile.

I switched to unRaid from Windows/Drivepool/Snapraid because. Well I don’t really know why, wanted to try something new. Wish I had started with the trial instead of paying for the license, but hindsight is 20/20 as they say. Thankfully it wasn’t too expensive.

My big issue is just write speeds. I run sabnzb/sonarr/radarr/plex, and I’ve got everything configured properly, but sabnzb can barely handle 20 mb/s even though my 1gig cable isp pulls 100 mb/s.

I actually pulled the parity drive out of my array just to get better speeds because with parity you’re automatically 1/2-ing your disk write i/o. With WD shucks 5400 rpm’s I should be able to hit over 100 mb/s writes, but with parity plus sabnzb repairing I’m lucky to get 40 mb/s. It’s just abysmal.

I never had any slowdowns using windows and drivepool. Even during repair + download operations. Obviously snapraid is on demand so parity doesn’t play into things.

I have tried the cache drives, but then it just fills up and you’re in an even worse place where you have to wait on mover to move the data from the ssd cache to the array, but if you’re still downloading then you’re trying to download to the array and repair on the array too. That’s even slower than if you don’t have the cache setup.

I guess if I was downloading a tiny amount everyday it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but I’m trying to catch up on the time sonarr/radarr weren’t running while I moved my existing data to unRaid, as well as some new keywords for downloading x265 and upping some 720p content to 1080p. So think about a long, multi TB, queue in sabnzb.

So now I’m in the boat of thinking, maybe I should go back to windows. I’ve read about mergeFS and snapraid, but it seems like a fairly high learning curve when Windows worked fine for years. I wish I had never switched.

Am I missing something? I have reconstruct write “on” and took out the parity drive, and it does alright downloading, but a repair during download still brings it to a crawl. Is there something better out there I’m not thinking of?

Any tips would be appreciated.

  • alsdhjf1@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    As someone who went the other way - proxmox and TrueNas -> Unraid, I would caution you to think twice against going that way. You’ve admitted having issues with Unraid configuration, and TrueNas is significantly more complex (especially if you layer in proxmox). You’ll just be throwing away all the knowledge you have about Unraid and jumping into another setup where configuration is important. Except, in this case, if you screw up the ZFS setup you risk losing ALL YOUR DATA.

    Something doesn’t quite add up. How are you downloading 3TB a day and expecting it to fit into your existing drive setup? I would really recommend just biting the bullet and getting 2x4TB cache drives that you could fill up and then let the slow writes to array take over. If you’re telling me that you do 3TB every day, then what is your plan for 30 days from now when you’re out of array space?

    Something doesn’t quite add up - I’m not doubting you, but I think your frustration is pushing you to make a change, even if that change might not be the best for you in the long run.

    All that is to say, please don’t jump to TrueNAS with prod data for your first experience.

    • Freaky_Freddy@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      You’ll just be throwing away all the knowledge you have about Unraid and jumping into another setup where configuration is important. Except, in this case, if you screw up the ZFS setup you risk losing ALL YOUR DATA.

      I recently setup my truenas and it was pretty easy after following a youtube video

      but now i’m curious how i can lose ALL MY DATA with zfs

      Can you provide any examples of what would cause this?

      • alsdhjf1@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Sure, if you’re using ZFS’ RAID1 and lose 2 drives, it all goes. Or RAID2 and lose 3 drives, it all goes. Because the data is allocated across many drives, there is not a fundamental “one file one drive” scenario if SHTF.

        Whereas with Unraid, one file on one drive, with a parity check (or two) if you need to recreate.

        • Freaky_Freddy@alien.topBEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          if you’re using ZFS’ RAID1 and lose 2 drives, it all goes. Or RAID2 and lose 3 drives, it all goes. Because the data is allocated across many drives, there is not a fundamental “one file one drive” scenario

          That has nothing to do with how you setup ZFS though…

          That is just the reality of how redundant arrays work, whether its ZFS or hardware RAID

          Losing 2 or 3 disks at once should be a very low probability and either way it shouldn’t be a big issue if you have backups (raid and unraid aren’t backups)

          • alsdhjf1@alien.topBEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yes agreed, all that is true. Regardless of the reason, Unraid takes a different approach and has different tradeoffs which enable partial recovery in the SHTF scenario. I prefer the Unraid approach - plus it is more intuitive and feels simpler for me.

    • fundementalpumpkin@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      No the 3tb is just my initial download. It’s a bunch of shows from the time when I was moving from windows to unraid, plus I added a couple radarr keywords for x265 and I changed the profile on a lot of my old old 720p media to 1080p and did a search all on my entire sonarr list. Once this initial transfer finishes it should only be a few shows and maybe a movie a day.