Looking to Build Your Very First unRAID Server?

(2012-05-01 16:38)mattchapman Wrote:  

(2012-05-01 03:51)Diggs Wrote:  The advantage of Unraid or any RAID setup is redundancy. I have a lot of time invested in my media library and if a drive fails, then I get to do all the work over again to get it back onto a drive from either BR or DVD. With Unraid, if I lose that drive then I pull it from the server, drop a new one in and it will rebuild the failed drive. While the rebuild of the failed drive isn't quick, it is certainly simple and quicker than repopulated the drive by ripping the data again. The reason I chose to go with Unraid over a traditional raid array was the way it writes data to the drives. There is no stripe set across all the drives, so if I lose 2 drives I can still read the data off the remaining drives. If I went with a RAID 5 setup and lost 2 drives, then all the data is gone.

Raid is not a backup, you need a duplicate copy off site in order to achieve a full on backup solution, but it does add a big layer of security for your data where using drives on a windows 7 setup with no RAID offers no redundancy at all.

I thought UnRaid can only recover from a single drive loss which it then rebuilds using the Parity drive.?

That is correct, it can only rebuild one drive from the parity drive. However, if you should lose 2 drives the other drives are still readable unlike having a traditional RAID 5 setup where you need a functioning array to read any data from any of the drives. My setup is using 5 drives currently and will be expanded to 6 in the near future. If 2 of the drives should fail, one being the parity drive, then the 4 drives of data are still usable. If I lost 2 data drives, then I should still be able to read the data from the remaining 2 drives and if I remember correctly, the parity drive would still rebuild one of the two lost drives. RAID 5 can't do that, at least that is my understanding. Someone correct me if that is not correct.

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(2012-05-02 02:04)ivseenbetter Wrote:  

(2012-05-01 03:51)Diggs Wrote:  The advantage of Unraid or any RAID setup is redundancy. I have a lot of time invested in my media library and if a drive fails, then I get to do all the work over again to get it back onto a drive from either BR or DVD. With Unraid, if I lose that drive then I pull it from the server, drop a new one in and it will rebuild the failed drive. While the rebuild of the failed drive isn't quick, it is certainly simple and quicker than repopulated the drive by ripping the data again. The reason I chose to go with Unraid over a traditional raid array was the way it writes data to the drives. There is no stripe set across all the drives, so if I lose 2 drives I can still read the data off the remaining drives. If I went with a RAID 5 setup and lost 2 drives, then all the data is gone.

Raid is not a backup, you need a duplicate copy off site in order to achieve a full on backup solution, but it does add a big layer of security for your data where using drives on a windows 7 setup with no RAID offers no redundancy at all.

I see. Good info. Thanks.

I keep hoping I can find info that proves unraid is a "green" solution but assume it would use the same amount of wattage as the win 7 box if I am using the same hardware.

Unraid is simply an operating system. While I haven't played around with the energy settings, I think you will find the hardware used will make a larger impact on the amount of power used. I am pretty sure you can adjust the time before the array spins down, which is likely the biggest consumer of power in my server. I just left mine at the default settings, and have only had it running for a few weeks now. It's great having one share on XBMC for movies and one for TV instead of having them spread across multiple locations. I just returned from vacation and this weekend I hope to install MySQL onto the Unraid server so all my XBMC HTPCs will have one database to flow from. Watched and unwatched and resume points should be the same throughout the house after that, as well as the actual settings of XBMC so each system has the same skin and layout. Change to one, changes all of them.

(2012-05-01 16:38)mattchapman Wrote:  

(2012-05-01 03:51)Diggs Wrote:  The advantage of Unraid or any RAID setup is redundancy. I have a lot of time invested in my media library and if a drive fails, then I get to do all the work over again to get it back onto a drive from either BR or DVD. With Unraid, if I lose that drive then I pull it from the server, drop a new one in and it will rebuild the failed drive. While the rebuild of the failed drive isn't quick, it is certainly simple and quicker than repopulated the drive by ripping the data again. The reason I chose to go with Unraid over a traditional raid array was the way it writes data to the drives. There is no stripe set across all the drives, so if I lose 2 drives I can still read the data off the remaining drives. If I went with a RAID 5 setup and lost 2 drives, then all the data is gone.

Raid is not a backup, you need a duplicate copy off site in order to achieve a full on backup solution, but it does add a big layer of security for your data where using drives on a windows 7 setup with no RAID offers no redundancy at all.

I thought UnRaid can only recover from a single drive loss which it then rebuilds using the Parity drive.?

It can only recover "ALL" data from a single drive failure but you don't lose all data if more than one goes down...you only lose the data from the multiple drives that failed....your data on the other drives are still intact

(2012-05-02 02:04)ivseenbetter Wrote:  

(2012-05-01 03:51)Diggs Wrote:  The advantage of Unraid or any RAID setup is redundancy. I have a lot of time invested in my media library and if a drive fails, then I get to do all the work over again to get it back onto a drive from either BR or DVD. With Unraid, if I lose that drive then I pull it from the server, drop a new one in and it will rebuild the failed drive. While the rebuild of the failed drive isn't quick, it is certainly simple and quicker than repopulated the drive by ripping the data again. The reason I chose to go with Unraid over a traditional raid array was the way it writes data to the drives. There is no stripe set across all the drives, so if I lose 2 drives I can still read the data off the remaining drives. If I went with a RAID 5 setup and lost 2 drives, then all the data is gone.

Raid is not a backup, you need a duplicate copy off site in order to achieve a full on backup solution, but it does add a big layer of security for your data where using drives on a windows 7 setup with no RAID offers no redundancy at all.

I see. Good info. Thanks.

I keep hoping I can find info that proves unraid is a "green" solution but assume it would use the same amount of wattage as the win 7 box if I am using the same hardware.

While up and running I don't see a way it could use less energy.....but you setup in the software an idle time that the hard drives would spin down....and only the drive that is needed would spin up if you were to watch a movie or something
although another issue is when you access your library in xbmc your media is spread across many hard drives so you could spin up your drives by browsing through your collection....but this can also be worked around by using "cache dirs" i believe....which basically you tell cache dirs which directories you want stored in cache and if you have enough ram then you could browse through your whole collection without the need to spin up any drives

A couple questions -

If I'm using the unRaid box as more than just a file server, (couchpotato, sabnzbd+, etc) what should I bump that Sempron 145 up to?

With the unRaid plugins for those apps, are they kept current? Does it pull off github or whatever or do I have to wait for somebody to update the addon?

If there's another web app I wanted to use, like maraschino (http://www.maraschinoproject.com/) can I install that?

What do you think about this motherboard?

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=A74GA

$37.99

Realtek RTL811D

6 Serial ATA ports

(2012-05-07 05:02)joe_sun Wrote:  What do you think about this motherboard?
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=A74GA
$37.99
Realtek RTL811D
6 Serial ATA ports

Seems like a great price, plus 6 SATA ports looks like it would be an awesome board for an unRAID server. I actually have a spare processor that will work in that board, I'm going to order one and see if there are any problems with it. Since it's an older board, I'm hoping there aren't any issues with larger drives like my 3TB drives.

Yes it does, wondering if this chip will be OK with the above board?

AMD Athlon II X2 260 3.2GHz 2x1MB Socket AM3 Dual-Core CPU for $59 shipped with a free dvd burner

Im wanting to run sab/sb also so Im looking for dual cores. I think I need to read more before I 'dive-in'

It is on the official CPU support list for that board here:

http://www.foxconnsupport.com/cpusupport...A&cputype=

and on the CPU support list at cpu upgrade:

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Foxconn/A74GA.html

Making sure this is the SuperMicro 8 port card.... and if it is the cheapest around?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-SuperMicro-A...2363wt_751

Also this cables look great for it!

http://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-Internal...d_sxp_f_pt

Hey everyone! I recently built a G4 HTPC, however I have just been accessing all of my media via external hard drives plugged in via USB 2.0. I have decided it is finally time to take the plunge and build a dedicated server, but I have some questions.

1. There are definite advantages to unRAID, however I don't have plans to add a parity drive right now so I am leaning towards a different OS. Ubuntu Server or WHS 2011? Or a different option?

2. Are all of these builds strong enough to run SAB, CP, and SB while streaming to the HTPC?

3. Is 8GB RAM overkill for SAB, CP, SB, media streaming, and possibly a web server in the future?

Thanks!

Ok, stupid question...Does anyone know if the 880GM-LE FX will support 3TB drives using UnRaid? I see there is an unlock utility but it's windows based and not sure how one would get it to work with UnRaid.
If not I think I have some returns to send back to Amazon.