PI 3 with 4 HDD works unpredictable , hectic. Please help if you can.

zsirvezer

Dear Masters and Power PI users

Currently I am using RetroPie v4.4 on PI3. I attached 4 HDD(4 TB WD MyBook, 4 TB WD MyBook, 6 TB WD MyBook, 8 TB Seagate Seagate Expansion, ) via Powered USB 3.0 HUB. I used this config for media player - Kodi out of box.

So My first problem is : After many of restart from these four HDD just appeared only 3. If I wait 3-5 min. The 4th HDD will appear , but sometimes this won't happens.
I can't tell which of My External Drive won't mounting at the start. This is almost always different.

My second problem: If I scrapped the movies , tv shows after the restart I can't access via library , because the the system doesn't find anymore the file.

How can I fix this problems ?

Respectfully,
Zs.

ChuckyP

You should provide the info requested at the top of the thread.

I would assume these drives have their own power supplies...? But if you plug too many power hungry devices into the Raspberry Pi it can cause these sorts of problems.

zsirvezer

@chuckyp Thanks, all of external HDD has own power supply. I closed out the not eligible power supply issue.

I forget mention at the start of PI ( splash screen ) I see that error message Failed to start usbmount@dev-sd(here comes a letter) .service see 'Systemct1 status...'

matchaman

Whoah that's a lot of media! :/

I suspect that even though they're powered by external PSUs, they're also drawing some power that the Pi can't handle. I would recommend using a small form factor PC with Linux (or Windows) instead of the Pi.

zsirvezer

@matchaman Hi thank you for your comment and yes I started thinking about it. But people builds a NAS upon on PI so that's why I thought it can't be a huge challenge for PI.
I think the root of my second problem is that when raspberry starting in different order mounting my medias that's can find the library anymore the earlier scraped movies.

mitu

@zsirvezer said in PI 3 with 4 HDD works unpredictable , hectic. Please help if you can.:

But people builds a NAS upon on PI so that's why I thought it can't be a huge challenge for PI.

Using an USB2 interface for 4 multi TB disks is not going to get you a stable NAS system. If you need a NAS, then buy one.

jonnykesh

@zsirvezer Have you tried manually mounting the drives using fstab rather than relying on them auto-mounting?
You might get better, more predictable results using fstab
Edited to add link: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/external-storage.md

steptoe

What about an external USB powered hub. I use one for the PC has that had big issues with USB3 device drawing too much power from the USB ports and constantly connecting/reconnecting the external USB3 hard drives, which gets annoying when your trying to use them. With a powered USB3 hub ALL connection issues went away

You then NEED to get a hub that won't feed power back to the PI. There are 'official' hubs that are guaranteed to not do this but cost a bit more than the £2.99 20 port hubs from China

https://thepihut.com/products/7-port-usb-hub-for-the-raspberry-pi

This explains in a bit too much detail, but you then know exactly whats going on and why

http://www.whatimade.today/how-to-protect-a-rasperry-pi-from-a-powered-usb-hub/

You might also see if you can add a delay to give your hard drives chance to power up and also add them manually as it suggests the USB service just can't cope with that many USB devices and just hasn't the time to process them all before the PI starts booting

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=41911

Mounting a hard drive manually

https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-mount-usb-drive/

edmaul69

@steptoe i use a self powered 11 port usb 2.0 hub that also draws power from the pi with 11 devices hooked up and have no issues. True im only using one hard drive...

jonnykesh

@edmaul69 I'm still going with fstab for mounting the 22TB of data on the 4 drives. I think that would actually work.

edmaul69

@jonnykesh i agree. I hate how long it takes to boot up 750gb let alone that much which is insane. The pi cant keep up. And if the pi boots too fast then you may have to reboot emulationstation after all the drives have fully booted

steptoe

This link might explain what you are suffering from, in that the PI just isn't giving the external hard drives chance to spin up so doesn't 'see' them. Its basically booting that fast the drives are still spinning up and its finished booting and simply doesn't realise you have more than one drive connected

https://kwilson.io/blog/force-your-raspberry-pi-to-mount-an-external-usb-drive-every-time-it-starts-up/

Quick copy and paste of some of what the guide is about :

The Issue
------------
Sometimes, when I boot up the Pi, it doesn’t mount the external drive. So, media is unavailable

The Solution
-----------------
We need to get the drive to automatically mount when the Pi starts up

zsirvezer

@steptoe Thank you Sir for your valuable help.

steptoe

Hope it helps. 22TB is a big media player. Not bad for a 'computer' that cost less than £35 and fits in your hand

Not 'straight out the box' but that also means you can configure exactly how you like

Clyde

@steptoe If the problem is that the Pi boots up quicker than the HDDs, you also could delay the booting process:

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/33037/how-to-add-delay-at-boot

zsirvezer

@zsirvezer I gave up the convince raspberry pie works as NAS , so I am using Win7 based solution for sharing my media files.
Thank to y'all the helps.

Clyde

@zsirvezer Whatever suits your needs is fine. Have fun.

cyperghost

@zsirvezer haha ... 4 month later ;)
It depends what you want to do. My Raspberry 1 still acts as internal ftp, samba and owncloud server. It is slow as hell but does it job for a fist full of users. NAS means always big data so USB3 and MBit LAN are just the minimum on communication interfaces. The Pie gots nothing of these

Clyde

@cyperghost said in PI 3 with 4 HDD works unpredictable , hectic. Please help if you can.:

NAS means always big data so USB3 and MBit LAN are just the minimum on communication interfaces. The Pie gots nothing of these

As always, it depends on your requirements. My Synology NAS from 2011 has neither USB3 nor MBit LAN, but it fulfills my needs completely up to this day. Only for backing up the NAS' drives itself I remove them and plug them into the mobile racks of my PC.

cyperghost

@clyde okay right but a full grown standalone USB2 transfers up to 40 MB/s that is 4 times faster as your LAN.

How fast is a Raspberry with his shared USB Controller? 10MB/s? 15? Didn't test but a NAS is dedicated for file moving and if the Pie 4 got some interface upgrades it is maybe as fast as your 2011 Synology (cool device BTW with the best UI I have ever seen)