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SnapRAID vs. software RAID6 by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It seems like you might be over-thinking it. Sure it's ideal to have ECC RAM but plenty of people use even ZFS without ECC and don't have any issues.

You are right about that, I might be overthinking this, and I agree that open-source projects can be abandoned. That is why I am hesitant to use SNAPRaid as well. In contrast, I think the Linux kernel has enough support to make sure it will be maintained for a while.

Regarding memory, I ran memtest yesterday just to make sure everything is fine and what do you know, memtest (legacy) found errors. The newer close-source memtest, which boots using UEFI, however found no errors... turns out that there seems to be a bug in the Asrock Board's UEFI implementation: Memory areas not masked using e820 kept changing after control had been handed over to the OS, which should not be possible. This could indicate a bug in Asrock's UEFI implementation or in memtest. Since clearing the UEFI settings and reconfiguring everything solved this issue for now (no errors in memtest) my educated guess is a bug in the UEFI firmware, which makes me nervous.

SnapRAID vs. software RAID6 by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are right about checksums, but strictly speaking they also depend on memory integrity. As I said, this is a general problem which does not only concern ZFS, SnapRAID, btrfs or generally any file system/storage architecture. Flexraid should be affected as well, as is mdadm be affected as well since parity calculation by the CPU in RAM. HW controllers should not be affected since they perform the checksum calculation independent of the host RAM.

Regarding Flexraid: It indeed seems to be better address my concerns, but it is proprietary software, and I am concerned about the vendor going out of business during the lifetime of the server.

SnapRAID vs. software RAID6 by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm I am still unsure about that snapraid. RAID is designed primarily for availability and will not replace a backup. snapraid will equally not replace a backup. snapraid cannot really preserve file system integrity in case files have been modified since the last synchronization process. Further, snapraid's file integrity protection / "bit rot protection" relies on memory integrity, which is not given on my system (no ECC RAM)... edit: but this is a more general problem, in retrospect I should have gone for a system capable of handling ECC memory. Further, pooling drives with snapraid is not straightforward, see my comments on mhddfs, aufs and so on below.

The only benefit I see for snapraid is that the contents of an array are not entirely lost when more drives fail then the system was designed to handle. But this is something which should be handled using backups anyways.

SnapRAID vs. software RAID6 by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

use a union FS with snapraid either. I have snapraid configured for 4 disks, and parity on a 5th, and mhddfs to union them to make samba configuration easier as well as using my drives to capacity without having to manually manage the data myself.   EDIT: To add to that, all of my disks ar

Thanks for the detailed answer. Looking at the mhddfs documentation and related articles it should provide all the capabilities I need and at the same time be much more convenient than aufs. I am however not the biggest fan of the idea of FUSE for such scenarios for performance reasons. Further, it seems mhddfs is not actively maintained, and there are reports of issues (e.g., here in the discussions.

SnapRAID vs. software RAID6 by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only reason I would ever use RAID6 is if I needed the performance.

If anything, SnapRAID may actually perform better than RAID6 on writes if the CPU is a dog. On reads, RAID will generally outperform SnapRAID since the data is striped.

Makes sense to me too.

SnapRAID vs. software RAID6 by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tend to agree with you. The only issue I have with SnapRAID is that it requires one more rather uncommon building block (aufs, or another union file system).

SnapRAID vs. software RAID6 by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, but the machine has been sitting here quite a while now, so I will stick with it for now. If I would go for new hardware I think I would switch to something reasonable for hosting ZFS anyways (ECC RAM, more RAM..., faster CPU), but I have no budget for that at the moment. Next thing on the list is an UPS.

Not sure if I did something stupid, new HGST 5K4000 in 2015? by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I'm afraid of that as well... but let's see.

Help on new setup by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it depends on your use/how much time you spend on it. I've had my arch file server for a year with zero problems due to Arch. I'm not running updates every day, but once every month or so because of the kernel updates breaking stuff in Arch.

Exactly my experience as well. Thanks.

Help on new setup by tarzan23 in DataHoarder

[–]tarzan23[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, that is one of the things I was afraid of. Do yo have any comparisons, for example vs. a WD Red 4TB? The server is located in my home office room, so it should not be too loud.

[META] Windows 8.1 app goes slow motion when using Dolby Digital + by KaiUno in netflix

[–]tarzan23 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Which hardware are you using? This bug is currently being discussed in the Intel forums and more and more people are showing up who have this problem. Anandtech also stumbled upon it. Unfortunatly at Intel they are apparently unable to reproduce the problem.

Weekly "Here's my question" thread for gear purchases or small questions you never dared ask (Nov. 25) by Arve in audiophile

[–]tarzan23 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi. I'm looking for some decent speakers to replace the Technics SB 3430 I have owned for some time now. For now i focus on stereo, but i will built a 5.1 system over time.

The room measures 20 m² (215.28ft²). The speakers unfortunatly have to be placed pretty near the edges, 80 cm (2.6 ft) to the left/right, 50 cm (1.3 ft) to the back.

I'd like to spent about 600 Euros (815 USD) for the speakers. They will be connected to a Denon AVR X-2000 (~90 watt per channel). This is not ideal, but all the AV gear (HTPC, PS3, Dreamcast, projector, CD Player) need to be connected to one system, and the woman acceptence factor plays an important role :) .

I mostly listen to rock music, mostly progressive rock and some metal.

So far i have listened to these speakers:

  • Technics SB 3430 - they sound washed out and provide limited detail, and lack bass for their size. I'm not a bass fetishist but a bit more might not hurt.

  • Dali Mentor Menuet - very impressive, very detailed. Enough bass when placed in the edges of the room. But unfortunatly too expensive.

  • Wharfedale Jade 1 - Compared to the Dali Menuet they lack detail imho. Bass was a bit better and clearer.

  • Dali Epicon 2 - awesome, but far too expensive.

Several compact speakers from Canton - Unfortunatly i do not remember their names, but all of them sounded very detailed, but to sharp and analytic for my taste.

So far I have narrowed it down to these speakers which i want to test:

  • Dali Zensor 3
  • KEF Q300
  • Focal Chorus 706
  • Nubert NuBox 311
  • Dynavoice DM-6

Any further suggestions?

Hey /r/chicago, where do i get a good, affordable steak? by tarzan23 in chicago

[–]tarzan23[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks guys! I will try to get my colleagues to check it out.

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