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2012-07-08, 20:49
(This post was last modified: 2012-07-08, 20:50 by Sliphorn.)
Hello,
I'm considering building a new media server from the ground up. It'll likely have around 10TB or so of storage using 2TB WD Greens. I could use Linux or Windows. I have noticed in general that unRAID seems to curry a lot of favor on this forum...what about Flexraid? And of course I'm probably forgetting other options, or just don't know them.
I have an older RAID card capable or dealing with 12 SATA connections and setting up RAID6 and others. I could go hardware, since it's lying around collecting dust. However, software seems like the future. Thoughts? What are you using and why?
I don't want this to be a war, just some opinions from people with real-world experience with these options. Thanks for your input!
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I've gone with windows home server 2012 and flexraid because I wanted to stay with the windows environment. WHS can be had for a fraction of the cost of say Windows 7.
What sold it for me was that with Flexraid you can add a drive that already contains data, which is ideal for me because I had a mix of new and existing harddrives.
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i'm using a program called snapraid in conjunction with elucidate (GUI)
Not realtime raid, but I set it to run a snapshot sync every other day or so and it is really light on resources. I'm running it on a spare win 7 machine. Plus, I can access the data on my drives anyway I want.
I'm not that familiar with flexraid or unraid, but that is my preference.
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2012-07-09, 20:14
(This post was last modified: 2012-07-09, 20:15 by jangjong.)
I went with unraid because it boots from a usb stick so one more sata port for your data drive, and cheaper than flexraid...
however...now, flexraid is on sale for like $60 and WHS 2011 seems to go on sale for $30 pretty often.. so for $90, flexraid is not a bad option compare to free (3 drives) / $70 (6 drives) / $150 (21 drives) for unRAID.
now, what i'm wondering is if there is any performance difference in between unraid and flexraid? and i'm also wondering what unraid offers that flexraid doesnt?
I tried to research this before i went ahead with unraid but couldn't really find any comparison..
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lrusak
Team-Kodi Member
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FreeNAS. ZFS, snapshots, FREE.
"PPC is too slow, your CPU has no balls to handle HD content." ~ Davilla
"Maybe it's a toaster. Who knows, but it has nothing to do with us." ~ Ned Scott
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There is free and then there is paid.
Usually you are getting something extra with paid. Like an all in one piece of software that's easy to use and supported well by its developer who has a vested interest in its success. For me that's worth a very small one time fee. For others it may not be.
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It's amusing you'd say that on an XBMC forum.
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The two main contenders seem to be FlexRAID and unRAID. Assassin, you mentioned significant benefits for an HTPC using FlexRAID. Care to elaborate? Or perhaps link to the discussion you had earlier detailing these differences would be good.
What would be ideal is a chart detailing the similarities and differences side by side. I'm equally interested in knowing the disadvantages in each software.
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I have elaborated already on the benefits in multiple threads in the last few days.