Advanced Format 4k mixed drives Raid5

[Desertsweeper]

OK so it seems this is a story without definitive answers. I go step by step following the official installation document for doing Raid5 and i get to the point where it should mention something about the "Advanced Format 4k" tick box thats on my screen..but it doesn't. So i spend a day googling trying to see what I should do and don't really get anything watertight. Do I tick it or not? The question is complicated slightly by the fact that the 5 2TB Seagate drives I am adding are of two different models. From my research it appears that one of them is 512b and the other is 4k sectors. But even that cannot be definitively confirmed as I find conflicting information everywhere. Anyways the 5 drives are:

3 x ST32000542AS which Seagate claims in their spec is 512b but people say they are actually 4k "smart align" aware drives. Go figure
2 x ST2000DL003-9VT166 rescued from painfully slow external USB boxes. It seems these are 4k drives but again there are conflicting statements everywhere.

All I want to know is do I tick that box..?

[ChriZathens]

A few weeks ago when I setup my backup nas with.5x500GB drives ( old models before the af fashion) in raidz, I ticked the af check box, because I am planning to replace them with larger disks in the future (which most probably will be af drives)
I did it because it is not possible to be done afterwards and because I read that 512drives with 4k alignment have no issues, whereas 4k drives with 512 alignment will most probably have performance issues.
Since now I noticed nothing wrong and transfers using samba are at about 85-90 MB/s.
So my suggestion is to use 4k alignment.

[Desertsweeper]

OK thanks, it's ticked and on I go! Will report back if it works or if I face any problems.

[Desertsweeper]

Ok so the Raid building finally finished and everything looked normal. The logs were fine. I started out by copying a large file to it (30 Gig) as this is primarily what i will use this box for. It happily started copying at all of 11MB/s which is about half the speed of my ancient Buffalo Terastation Pro running Raid 5 also. I connected my laptop directly to the box with a cross-over cable and tried again. The speed jumped up to around 40MB/s a decent enough improvement but still well short of what i was expecting given that the NAS and my laptop are both showing Gigabit and the laptop has a fast SSD that i am copying from. I went in to CIFS/SMB and changed the "Max Protocol" from SMB2 to NT1 as I found posts where this seemed to improve copy speeds from Windows 7. After saving the change I rebooted the NAS box and my laptop to give eveything a fresh start. As the box booted up I noticed "GPT" and "Corrupt" stuff flying up the screen that were not there before. This was the first reboot after the RAID 5 build. Despite the errors i was suddenly able to copy at around 87 MB/s. However the log shows alarming errors:

Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada2: Previously was known as ad8
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada3 at ahcich3 bus 0 scbus3 target 0 lun 0
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada3: <ST2000DL003-9VT166 CC98> ATA-8 SATA 2.x device
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada3: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada3: 1907729MB (3907029168 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada3: Previously was known as ad10
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada4 at ahcich5 bus 0 scbus5 target 0 lun 0
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada4: <ST2000DL003-9VT166 CC98> ATA-8 SATA 2.x device
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada4: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada4: 1907729MB (3907029168 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada4: Previously was known as ad14
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: SMP: AP CPU #1 Launched!
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: Timecounter "TSC-low" frequency 10139603 Hz quality 800
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM: da0: geometry does not match label (16h,63s != 255h,63s).
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM: da0: media size does not match label.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM: ada0: corrupt or invalid GPT detected.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM: ada0: GPT rejected -- may not be recoverable.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM: ada1: corrupt or invalid GPT detected.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM: ada1: GPT rejected -- may not be recoverable.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/md0 []...
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM_RAID5: registered shutdown event handler.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM_RAID5: Raid5int: device created (stripesize=131072).
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM_RAID5: Raid5int: ada4(4): disk attached.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM_RAID5: Raid5int: ada3(3): disk attached.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM_RAID5: Raid5int: ada2(2): disk attached.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM_RAID5: Raid5int: ada1(1): disk attached.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM_RAID5: Raid5int: ada0(0): disk attached.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM_RAID5: Raid5int: activated.
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free afpd[1992]: AFP/TCP started, advertising 192.168.1.250:548 (2.2.4)
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: ada1 ada2 ada3 ada4

DISKS>MANAGEMENT shows all 5 drives online
DISK>SOFTWARE RAID>RAID5 shows a status of "Complete"
STATUS>DISKS all looks good:

ada0 1907730MB ST32000542AS CC95 ST32000542AS 5XW0JLGK SoftRaid 115.61 KiB/t, 6 tps, 0.69 MiB/s 34 °C ONLINE
ada1 1907730MB ST32000542AS CC95 ST32000542AS 5XW0K9EK SoftRaid 115.89 KiB/t, 6 tps, 0.70 MiB/s 32 °C ONLINE
ada2 1907730MB ST32000542AS CC95 ST32000542AS 5XW0JLS9 SoftRaid 118.54 KiB/t, 6 tps, 0.70 MiB/s 34 °C ONLINE
ada3 1907730MB ST2000DL003-9VT166 CC98 ST2000DL003-9VT166 5YD9PFG4 SoftRaid 118.95 KiB/t, 6 tps, 0.69 MiB/s 32 °C ONLINE
ada4 1907730MB ST2000DL003-9VT166 CC98 ST2000DL003-9VT166 5YD9YT56 SoftRaid 117.08 KiB/t, 6 tps, 0.70 MiB/s 31 °C ONLINE
da0 3823MB General USB Flash Disk 1100 General USB Flash Disk 1100 13120114210326000105 UFS 1.64 KiB/t, 0 tps, 0.00 MiB/s n/a ONLINE
Raid5int 7630916MB Software RAID n/a n/a UFS n/a n/a COMPLETE

The hardware is:
HP N36L Microserver with hack BIOS to allow 5th port to run AHCI mode
4GB Kingston non-ECC RAM (2 x 2GB)
5 x Seagate 2TB drives as previously detailed.
Running: 9.1.0.1 - Sandstorm (revision 573) x64-embedded on AMD Athlon(tm) II Neo N36L Dual-Core Processor

Laptop is lenovo x200 with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD running Windows 7 -64 bit.

I rebooted again in an orderly fashion. Same log errors appear. Could this be as a result of ticking the 4K Advanced Format option?

[Desertsweeper]

OK to answer myself it seems that part of this is normal behaviour:

http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=faq:0047

However I am still not sure about possible problems with the USB boot drive:
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM: da0: geometry does not match label (16h,63s != 255h,63s).
Jan 14 23:40:19 nas4free kernel: GEOM: da0: media size does not match label

Does this mean a bad install to the USB Boot key? Re-install it?

[raulfg3]

I do not find the post, but I remember that is not important and is related of How BSD use the USB heads or a change in number of heads between FN and N4F:

try to search forum about geometry does not match label: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=1022&p=3534&hilit= ... abel#p3534

[shakky4711]

Hello,

Just a hint, your HP is able to be equipped with 8GB RAM.

Standard Raid5 is declared as obselete from the developers since ZFS got mature. Nearly 95% from all problems at the Software raid section or with rebooting/not more booting systems are based on damaged raid5 arrays.

So I strongly recommend to setup a raid-z1 zfs array, this will bring your data on a really secure level, it is compared with obselete raid the high-tech hybrid engine instead a steam machine

Shakky

[fsbruva]

So I strongly recommend to setup a raid-z1 zfs array,

AGREED!!!

Also, to know what your drive's capabilities are, just add them to the management console, and enable SMART monitoring. Then, type this at the console:

Code: Select all

smartctl -i /dev/ada4

You should see something like:

Code: Select all

smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [FreeBSD 9.1-RC2 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Toshiba 2.5" HDD MK..59GSM (Adv. Format)
Device Model:     TOSHIBA MK1059GSM
Serial Number:    914GPE74T
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000039 3829010a4
Firmware Version: GU001U
User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Mon Oct 22 05:18:45 2012 PDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Notice the Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical. If you see 4096 bytes physical, then you are good to go for advanced formatting.

[Desertsweeper]

Thanks for all the advice folks. The reason i went Raid5 is because:

1) I am old school and conservative and I completely understand RAID5
2) before someone mentioned "bit rot" the corporate world was very happy running Raid5
3) Googling ZFS brings up a long list of issues and debates. The performance issue was the killer for me as my little NAS box has a slow low-powered CPU. When I did the Rsync the client PC was maxed out so bad I couldnt even access the GUI.
I am only storing my 800 ripped DVD's on there so if a bit goes awry so be it.

Having said all that I will have a play wih ZFS on another box to get to grips with the modern world!