can RAM couse checksum error or is my drives faling?

[jgreco]

Bearing in mind that we don't have any way to know what actually happened on your pool, all that can be said is that errors might have been injected into your pool, either when the data was written, or when it was scrubbed, or when it was read off the pool. There's no guarantee that anything has been corrupted, but (more worryingly) there is also no guarantee that there's been no corruption. You can of course back up whatever you want, and reinstalling FreeNAS is not a bad idea.

 

[danb35]

Use the new backup / restore feature of FreeNAS 9.3. It's exactly this sort of Disaster Recovery scenario it was designed for.

Is there any documentation of this feature? I'd asked here https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/backup-restore-options-on-console-menu.27302/, but no response there, and there's nothing in the manual about it.

 

[jgreco]

I was going to say something bitter and cutting about advising new users to use new, undocumented features that nobody in the forums has familiarity with, but I couldn't come up with anything suitably grinchy. I did spend some time looking through the manual where it is listed as a post-9.3 feature, but I found no details.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

Jordan, what version are you running?

 

[kaspernordmark]

Okay so after a lot of research I found out that my system actually supports ecc ram so I'm thinking about switching to that so what do you guys think about this setup? will it work?

Motherboard: ASUS M4A79T Deluxe, Socket-AM3 http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M4A79T_Deluxe/overview/ (and In a few years I will probebly switch to the ASUS M5A97 R2.0, Socket-AM3+ http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A97_R20/ )
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 245 (soon I will switch to the AMD Phenom II X4 965)
Graphics: not sure but I think it is "ati 102-b17002(b)"
Ram: Kingston 16GB 1333MHz Reg ECC Low Volt https://www.komplett.se/kingston-16gb-1333mhz-reg-ecc-low-volt/818233#!tab:extra
Harddrives: 2 Seagate barracuda 3tb, 1 western digital 160GB
Power: enlight GPS-300AB-100 U 290Watt
OS runs from a 8GB Datatravel USB stick

 

[cyberjock]

Why wouldn't I listnen to you? I have followed your advice on a lot of other stuff.

It's not that you won't listen to us, but 95% plus don't. So we generally just take it for granted. We *definitely* appreciate people that do take our advice seriously. We just want you to have a good experience with FreeNAS and have your data stored in something you can actually rely on when things do get ugly. I hate hearing stories about lost data (and believe me I've seen enough for a lifetime from this forum).

 

[jkh]

Jordan, what version are you running?

FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201502050159

Using the backup feature is easy, seriously. Just go to System->Advanced, click Backup, and enter the hostname, username and password of a machine that supports ssh access. Give a path name (you can just specify "." if you want to place the backup in the home directory of that username) and go. Your machine will be backed up in the background - you can even revisit the UI periodically to see how your backup is going; you don't need to just sit there and watch it do its thing. Then, later, you can use the Restore console option to restore. Simple.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201502050159

Using the backup feature is easy, seriously. Just go to System->Advanced, click Backup, and enter the hostname, username and password of a machine that supports ssh access. Give a path name (you can just specify "." if you want to place the backup in the home directory of that username) and go. Your machine will be backed up in the background - you can even revisit the UI periodically to see how your backup is going; you don't need to just sit there and watch it do its thing. Then, later, you can use the Restore console option to restore. Simple.

Learned something today. Thank You.

 

[rogerh]

Yes I think I'm gonna do what you said but can I/ is it safe to copy all the movies that I have on the server to a backup before destroying the pool? And do I have to reinstall freenas on the boot drive? (USB stick)

Just to reassure you, the odd bit-error in a movie is very unlikely to be harmful in any way. It is meta-data in the original ZFS file system that is the main worry, and perhaps some types of backed up files with errors could cause you problems in future. But I doubt very much if this applies to movies.

 

[Mr_B]

Okay so after a lot of research I found out that my system actually supports ecc ram so I'm thinking about switching to that so what do you guys think about this setup? will it work?

Just make sure it's un-buffered, and it should work.
At least your on a aDDR3 based system, so you can get 2GB+ memories... It's not a great solution, but it should do... Still a bit slow i suppose.
B!

 

[kaspernordmark]

Just make sure it's un-buffered, and it should work.
At least your on a aDDR3 based system, so you can get 2GB+ memories... It's not a great solution, but it should do... Still a bit slow i suppose.
B!

Do you think these will do the job? http://www.kingston.com/dataSheets/KVR16R11D4_16.pdf

 

[Mr_B]

Do you think these will do the job? http://www.kingston.com/dataSheets/KVR16R11D4_16.pdf

According to that PDF, these are registered. That means "no".
You need unregistered / unbuffered.
B!

 

[kaspernordmark]

According to that PDF, these are registered. That means "no".
You need unregistered / unbuffered.
B!

Okay one final attempt. These then? http://www.kingston.com/dataSheets/KVR1333D3E9SK2_16G.pdf

 

[Mr_B]

I actually had to go through the memory search feature to find the same memory, since the spec is there, and not in the PDF. Not sure why it's not put in plain text in the PDF, but i suppose if it doesn't say registered, they just expect you to figure out that they are unbuffered and unregistered. That IS the way it works, it just would be nice to have it in plain text....
Anyway:

16GB Kit (2x8GB) - DDR3 1333MHz
Part Number: KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G
HTS: 8473.30.1140, ECCN: EAR99
Specs: DDR3, 1333MHz, ECC, CL9, X8, 1.5V, Unbuffered, DIMM,

Yeah, that should be the right stuff.
B!

Edit
Come to think of it... You probably could do with faster memory if it's in the same price range, or even cheaper. They all include JEDEC standards for the slower speeds, so they should (within reasons) run fine on this board without the overclocking feature, while still giving you a bit more performance if your really switching to the other motherboard down the line.

However... I have no idea what memory bandwidth means to FreeNAS. It could be a complete waste of money to look for something slightly faster. Someone around here should know...
/Edit

 

[HoneyBadger]

I have no idea what memory bandwidth means to FreeNAS. It could be a complete waste of money to look for something slightly faster. Someone around here should know...

I'm a someone. ZFS cares way, way more about quantity of RAM than quality. (With the exception of this whole "ECC" thing we've been talking about here.) If you want more performance, the first step is generally "add more RAM."

 

[Mr_B]

In that case... Go with said memory above. That will work with the next platform as well, and if memory speed isn't much of an issue, there is no point in fuzzing over it.
In general memory bandwidth is only good for benchmarks anyway.

I guess it could depend somewhat on what your going to do with the server once it's up and running, multiple instances of plex transcodes for simultaneous streams of video might tax the system more then "just" acting as a storage server. But at that rate i think the CPU might bottle neck before the memory.

Good luck with the build.
B!

 

[Carlos Capriotti]

Thinking about RAM speed, and what kind of impact it has on systems, if ZFS relies on ARC heavily, which on its turn resides on RAM, faster RAM means better ARC, thus better "file access performance". Or am I too far from reality ? I'd expect that to be specially true for smaller files, accessed more frequently.

Larger, "linear" movie files, accessed by one or two persons (two siblings, mom and dad at home, I'd guess) wouldn't see a lot of benefit, I agree, but still, doesn't the theory add up ?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Even the slowest DDR3 modules can transfer data at 6400MB/s. That's way, way faster than any other component in the system, so even at that speed they're always waiting on something else.

 

[jgreco]

I'd rather have twice the RAM at half the speed.