Stablebit + Flexraid questions from a beginner

Bjur · March 2013

Hi I'm new to flexraid and need some advice how to setup my system best with stablebit which I have been using a long time. My system is that I have 1xssd as OS WHS 2011, 4 x 2 TB internal discs and a 2 TB external USB 3.0 on the way. All My 4x2 TB is in the pool.

My questions are the following:

1. Will it be best to use the new external as ppu and add the next external drives in the Future as dru? (I only have 6 sata on motherboard and pci slott is in use already)

2. Will my system be slow on day to day tasks primary streaming my media or will it only be when I first initialize and restoring?

3. I read somewhere that smaller Files like pictures should be out of flexraid and backed up through stablebit. Should I then have a separate drive for this or should I mappen the folders instead of harddrives as dru?

4. I have a temperary location now which is in the pool where my downloads are going before they are processed. How can i do that the smartest way when using stablebit and flexraid together. Should i buy yet another harddrive just for that or how can i do it the smartest way.

I'm sorry for the many questions but I just want to do it right the first time:)

saitoh183 · March 2013

You will need to sacrifice a 2TB for PPU only (not recommended to use it to also store data since you will need the entire drive at some point). Its better to use a internal drive to no have speed issues that external drives can sometime have. So i would transfere 1 2TB content to the external

- You will add each 2TB drive to its own DRU , Do not put your OS drive.

- If you have a download/temporary area, you do not add this to the pool. If its located on 1 of your 2TB drives but outside of DP, then i suggest either you get another smaller drive (i have a 320GB just for temp stuff like sabnzb processing) and move your temp area to it. The other way is to add only the Folder you want to protect to the DRU and not the entire drive.

For the slow down, if your using snapshot mode, your system should be fine when your not doing the Flexraid taks (Update, verify, validate), you should do them while you sleep (update every night, Validate once a week is enough) If you plan on using Realtime Raid, i dont know what the impact could be on performance.

For small files, i havent really seen any problems, but lots of my pooled data is static.

Bjur · March 2013

Hi again and thanks you very much for your great knowledge.

To sum up:
1. I have now a download/temp area in drivepool on 1 of my 2 TB drives and have also my pictures in the pool.

So are your suggestion that I Either use my ssd as dl/temp drive or buy another drive to dedicate it to that and is it okay to have my smaller picture files in the drivepool and in flexraid??

2. And if im reading your post correct i will be better of using an internal drive as ppu instead of the external? I thought the best performance would be the other way around since the ppu is hardly used so i thought the external should be dedicated to ppu but this is very new to me so i hope you can explain me why im wrong:)

Again thanks for at help. Very appreciated!

saitoh183 · March 2013

1- if your SSD has room, then you can use it a temp/download location else a smaller dedicated drive (even if its a older Sata drive). The reason i suggest this is because it will avoid corruption when extracting rar/zip in within DP. Also This will avoid that Flexraid saving Downlad/temp location (with is something that changes often). Having small files is fine. What is less recommended is having directory/files that change often because it will make updating raid take longer.

2- For PPU its better because you will get better performance when the ppu is being used during the raid update process.

Bjur · March 2013

Excellent

One final question.

Should I format the internal drive after I have removed it from the pool or do I not win anything with that?

saitoh183 · March 2013

nope

Bjur · March 2013

Hi again. I'm about to make my flexraid, but 2 problems I can't seem to solve I'm hoping you can help with:

1. All my drives are 2 TB, but if I select URU would that conflict that my PPU drive will be smaller then? I can't get my head to if I should use URU or not.

2. I only have my Drivepool Serverfolder with subfolders I want to backup. The drive has letter E: so if I want to have that on all my DRU's should I then add E: to DRU1, 2, 3, 4?

I thought I could select the drives partition, so I select the individual drives to the DRU's.

3. ... And how do I select one distinct drive as PPU, when I don't have drive letters?

S_F · March 2013

1. URU is to be able to recover from an update which had undesirable effects. I personally don't use one.

2. I don't understand what you're talking about here. Do you mean you only have one HDD for storage in your system?

3. Why don't you have drive letters? You have to format your drives before adding them to the pool or FlexRAID.

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Stablebit + Flexraid questions from a beginner

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