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Entry-Level unRAID Server Build
#16
seand Wrote:Not a hardware issue but for me of the various guides and threads I actually found the wiki to be the most straightforward and up to date set of instructions for installing unRAID with SABnzbd, Sickbeard, Couch Potato.

I've had my setup running for about a year now, so I don't need it, but that guide is INCREDIBLE! Very well done, should make installing all of the goodies a piece of cake.

For the record, I love my Cooler Master 4-in-3 drive cages. Yes you need to disconnect all 4 drives when taking one drive out but for how often that happens it doesn't bother me at all. It only takes a few minutes. Nice quite 120mm fan with a filter on the front and look good to me. A hell of a lot cheaper then the hot swap cages.
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#17
Nod
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#18
How well would this build cope with SABnzbd and Sickbeard running whilst streaming?
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#19
T800 Wrote:How well would this build cope with SABnzbd and Sickbeard running whilst streaming?

I would get a little beefier CPU and maybe a cache drive, but otherwise its good.

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#20
eskro, many thanks for starting this thread. I was wondering if you have any mini-itx solutions bouncing around in your head. I haven't got the space for a large NAS case setup unless I start removing family members. The Lian-Lin PC-Q08B suits my needs as it fits into the space that I've have available but. Apologies for any hijacking of this thread,
Mucus
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#21
poofyhairguy Wrote:I think the Cooler Masters are a great value at half the price (at worst) of the cheapest 5 in 3 hot swap backplates. The provide a quiet 120mm fan, a filter, vibration protection, and better storage density than traditional 1 to 1s.

For storage density nothing beats a 5 in 3 backplate though, and if you are willing to pay they are the only way to maximize storage density in tower cases.

With that said, Unraid does not support hot swap and hopefully you will not be swapping HDs often once they are in the array so its basically a trade-off between the small amounts of PITA when you put in a HD every time (I can do it in 5 minutes) vs. the huge PITA the one night you have to break off all the little tabs in a case for the backplate to fit. Unless you buy one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6811219033

And then, well....
All good points. I primarily wanted to highlight the fact that you have to remove the entire cage to replace or add a new HDD. I noticed that nobody had mentioned that issue. I too thought that once I got my array up and running that I would not be moving my drives around but that has not been the fact. I seem to go through brief periods of disk swapping activity from time to time and when it happens I always wish I had the 5-in-3 hot swap enclosures. Plus, is it likely that a user is going to add a new drive cage fully populated with disks? I say no. A more likely scenario is that they would add to their array one drive at a time which means repeated removals and installs of the entire cage. Granted unRAID does not support hot swapping but the disk accessibility provided by the hot swap enclosures is definitely a big plus. However one should also not overlook the fact that the hot swap enclosure is more complicated thus is more susceptible to failure as well. The bottom line is that I just wanted to add some more info to the discussion so that people are more aware of what is being recommended. Purchase price is not the only contributor to value.
HTPC: Win 7 Home 64-bit | MB | CPU | GPU | RAM | Case | PSU | Tuner | HDDs: OS, Media | DVD Burner | Remote
Media server: unraid 4.7 | CPU | MB | RAM | Case | PSU | HDDs: Parity-2TB, Data-2x2TB
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#22
poofyhairguy Wrote:the huge PITA the one night you have to break off all the little tabs in a case for the backplate to fit.
I used one of these to bend rather than break the tabs to fit in my 5-in-3. It was not really a PITA at all. Tighten it down for minute, back it up, slide the clamp down an inch or so, retighten. It took about 3 grabs a rail to bend the rails enough for my 5-in-3 box to slip in. I did it while I was watching the Daily Show. The rail was to be honest not completely flat all the way in the back but was it flat enough for my 5-in-3 to sit flush with the front of the case. I already had the C-clamp.

Maybe before I get my next 5-in-3 I will (gasp!) splurge for one of these and do a really pro job.

It really quite easy.

I read about the "use a C-clamp to bend back the drive rail tabs" somewhere on the UnRAID forums. Works a charm. FWIW.
Acer Revo 3610 w/ Ubuntu 10.10, Giada Cube Win 7, 2 ATV 1's one w Crystal HD card, UnRaid server w/ SAB/SickBeard/Couch Potato/Transmission, MacBook Pro, Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v
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#23
T800 Wrote:How well would this build cope with SABnzbd and Sickbeard running whilst streaming?

I upgraded from the cheapest single core AMD to the cheapest dual core AMD for like an extra $12 or something and I probably erred on the side of caution. UnRAID only recently started to even use multiple cores at all. I do not notice any difference at all in terms of HD playback between when I'm downloading and not.

The one thing I do notice sometimes with UnRAID is that if I am accessing a video on a spun down drive that XBMC will do two or three seconds of "buffering" at the very beginning but that does not seem to be affected either way by if SAB is downloading currently or not. Still thats better than the wasted electricity and drive life span of all the drives spinning constantly.

SAB, SickBeard, and esp. Couch Potato keep your cache drive spinning (assuming you install it on a cache drive) but for my cache I used the cheapest possible open box AV drive I could find on NewEgg and its been fine so far. If I get to a full 15 drives and find I really want the slot the cache drive takes up I have an external eSATA box and I'll drop in the cheapest eSATA card I can find.

I do run SAB on my cache drive, have it write completed files to their correct shares on the cache and then let UnRAID do its daily transfer from cache to the parity-protected array on its usual daily schedule. I know some people like running it on a drive completely outside the array, though.
Acer Revo 3610 w/ Ubuntu 10.10, Giada Cube Win 7, 2 ATV 1's one w Crystal HD card, UnRaid server w/ SAB/SickBeard/Couch Potato/Transmission, MacBook Pro, Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v
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#24
One thing about cramming in the drives - which is why I (in theory) like the 5-in-3's - its still smart to get "green" low heat drives when you are going to load up on 10+ HD's whatever cage you put them in, 4-in-3 or 5-in-3. In a media server like this, heat, rather than the marginal increase in access speed between 5400 rpm green drive and a hot 7200 rpm drive is whats important.

Or so I read.
Acer Revo 3610 w/ Ubuntu 10.10, Giada Cube Win 7, 2 ATV 1's one w Crystal HD card, UnRaid server w/ SAB/SickBeard/Couch Potato/Transmission, MacBook Pro, Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v
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#25
mucuskipper Wrote:eskro, many thanks for starting this thread. I was wondering if you have any mini-itx solutions bouncing around in your head. I haven't got the space for a large NAS case setup unless I start removing family members. The Lian-Lin PC-Q08B suits my needs as it fits into the space that I've have available but. Apologies for any hijacking of this thread,
Mucus

Well you can take a look at this: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.p...ic=13632.0

It is for sale as you can see, if your not interested in it then you can just steal the specs if you want. That build is awesome though, the board is actually recommended by unRAID. Tested it all out and never had a single hiccup. I had all the programs running on it SABnzbd, Sickbeard, CoachPotato, and mysql.
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#26
wsume99 Wrote:All good points. I primarily wanted to highlight the fact that you have to remove the entire cage to replace or add a new HDD. I noiced that nobody had mentioned that issue. I too thought that once I got my array up and running that I would not be moving my drives around but that has not been the fact. I seem to go through brief periods of disk swapping activity from time to time and when it happens I always wish I had the 5-in-3 hot swap enclosures. Plus, is it likely that a user is going to add a new drive cage fully populated with disks? I say no. A more likely scenario is that they would add to their array one drive at a time which means repeated removals and installs of the entire cage. Granted unRAID does not support hot swapping but the disk accessiblity provided by the hot swap enclosures is definately a big plus. However one should also not overlook the fact that the hot swap enclosure is more complicated thus is more susceptible to failure as well. The bottom line is that I just wanted to add some more info to the discussion so that people are more aware of what is being recommended. Purchase price is not the only contributor to value.

Agreed. Great post.

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#27
poofyhairguy Wrote:I think the Cooler Masters are a great value at half the price (at worst) of the cheapest 5 in 3 hot swap backplates. The provide a quiet 120mm fan, a filter, vibration protection, and better storage density than traditional 1 to 1s.

For storage density nothing beats a 5 in 3 backplate though, and if you are willing to pay they are the only way to maximize storage density in tower cases.

With that said, Unraid does not support hot swap and hopefully you will not be swapping HDs often once they are in the array so its basically a trade-off between the small amounts of PITA when you put in a HD every time (I can do it in 5 minutes) vs. the huge PITA the one night you have to break off all the little tabs in a case for the backplate to fit. Unless you buy one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6811219033

And then, well....


That was my reasoning, maybe if you have a 20 drive setup then hotswaps are the way to go, but really the amount of time it takes to pull out the cage screws and ease that enclosure out is minimal. I can have that enclosure out in about 8 minutes, take off the doors (4 thumb screws), spin out 8 screws (4 to a side), unplug the sata and power connections, pull out enclosure.

Even if you did that once a month that's like 3 hours a year?
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#28
I think everyone agrees, the attraction to the hot swap cages is basically that it provides that much more (20% more than the Cooler Master I guess) drive density. The CoolerMaster 4-in-3 is nonetheless still more drive density than a regular rack and in terms of drives to dollar ratio a better deal. You win.

The pain factor fitting in 5-in-3's using the C-clamp method is so minor as to be neglible.

Mostly I am ammused by the notion that its acceptable to splurge for hot swap if you are building a 20-rack at $319 (because its so sexy) but imprudent to buy 5-in-3's at $82 a pop if you are planning to eventually get to squeeze a 15-rack a little at time into a tower by buying it in 5 drive increments. Why is this
Image
considered so much more sexy than this?
Image

The dollar to drive ratio for 15 drives with 5-in-3's is actually less - and you can get it a little at a time - which after all is the American way. Dream big but buy it on the installment plan.

That all said getting to a 12 drive build out of tower using the the Cooler Master 4-in-3's at $28 per 4 is cheaper again dollar per drive by half so it is by far the best deal per drive. Maybe slightly less of a bargain if you have to upgrade the fan that comes with 4-in-3 as some claim is necessary. Whatever.

I'm not kicking myself for getting the 5-in-3, that much.Wink

I hadn't read this thread and was being cautious following the template of the recommended build. I would not be surprised if the hot swap performed better cooling wise for being 2 slightly smaller fans than one slightly bigger one on the CoolerMaster. I'm going to get 3 MORE DRIVES into my tower (just kidding).
Acer Revo 3610 w/ Ubuntu 10.10, Giada Cube Win 7, 2 ATV 1's one w Crystal HD card, UnRaid server w/ SAB/SickBeard/Couch Potato/Transmission, MacBook Pro, Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v
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#29
is there a slightly maybe sexier case available which makes it look less like a PC tower? how quiet does this run taking into account all the fans?
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#30
is there a way to start all over from scratch on unraid. If I took the usb thumbdrive and wanted to use a different computer and hardrives?
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Entry-Level unRAID Server Build1