2012-09-05, 04:41
Hey all, new to the XBMC forums and looking to hit the ground running. I have been using an aTV (1st gen with XBMC installed) and a Boxee Box for too long and its time for me to upgrade my setup. The first thing I plan to do is build an unRAID Server, so I started by checking here.
I was looking at the thread by eskro:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?pid...post886478
Awesome information by the way, especially in the 10HDD version. I am looking at the 12HDD Version. The being said, below is the what I am looking to do and was hoping someone could help me out with components for it (since a) it differs with my use case a bit and b) all parts don't exist anymore).
I am looking to keep this under $400 with a start of 6 HDDs, expending as I need too. I am looking to ideally run SABnzbd, SickBeard and Couch Potato directly on this, not sure if possible but would also like my back-end XBMC DB stored here so all parts of my house can pick up where ever I want. Everything in my house is gigabit connections, and everything except one room would be wired (bedroom wireless). Not that it matters in the build, but I have 75/35 FiOS.
Build Questions:
Case: AZZA Helios 910 SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ($79.99 + $30 mail-in)
Mobo: ASRock 880GM-LE FX AM3+ AMD 880G Micro ATX ($54.99)
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 260 Regor 3.2GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core ($59.99)
PSU: Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply ($54.99 + $10 off with CollegeSave10 promo code)
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) ($19.99)
Hot Swap: SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B Black 5x 3.5" Hot-swap SATA Hard Disk Drive Trays ($99.99)
TOTAL: $392.14 (after shipping)
TOTAL after rebates: $362.14
unRAID Questions:
1. Available I have: 2x2TB WD Green drives, 2x1.5TB WD Green Drives, 2x1TB Drives. How does unRAID handle me swapping them out for bigger drives some day? I know one 2TB would be a parity drive. But my question is, when I hit 12 drives and want to replace a 1TB with a 2 or 3TB drive will I have any issue with data loss?
You can swap the drives out later, very easy, no loss of data. You can only do one drive at a time. At this stage stick with <2Tb drives, as they are supported on unRAID 4.7 (new version v5 to support >2Tb)
2. Can you replace a parity drive? Lets say I hit my 12 HDD limit, could I replace a parity drive with a 3TB drive and move forward?
Yes you can replace the parity drive, you would then need to re-calculate parity (one click). The Parity drive MUST be the largest, so this would be your first drive to upgrade to 3Tb (once running v5)
3. With what I am looking to do, do I want a cache drive? If so, should that be a max size drive or can it be a smaller drive, say 500GB?
50/50 choice on the cache drive. If you write a lot to the array and it is time critical, then get a cache drive. EG. I download on my Win7 box, then transfer to unRAID. It is a pain to write 20+gigs at 13Mb/sec. I use a cache drive and get 60Mb/sec.
4. Assuming it can be smaller, could it also be swapped in and out or no? I assume no.
The parity drive MUST be bigger than what you would ever expect to write to your array in ONE day* so as long as you dont plan on writing more than 500GB a day to your array it will be fine.
5. I plan to play games (maybe highest quality being Dreamcast) off of my HTPC once it is made (another topic, another day), can the games be stored on this or would it be to slow to transfer/play them? What do most people do. My order of importance is: TV Shows (SD/HD), Movies (SD/HD/3D possible), Games, anything else).
Reading off unRAID should be around 30-60Mb/sec, typically if you run a 100mb network or WiFi it will be the bottleneck. Do yourself a massive favour, get a cheap 1000mb switch use some Cat6 cable and it will be almost as good as if the drives were in your HTPC.
6. Does switching from version 4.x to 5.x mean anything difficult or can I just update the flash drive and it will be good to go?
Sorry if pretty much everything has been answered before, I spent the better part of the last two days scouring these and the unRAID forums just learning about everything.
Thanks everyone for the help, I will let everyone know who is interested in how setup goes. I am starting off with:
2x2TB WD Green Drives (one of them parity)
2x1.5TB WD Green Drives
1x1TB WD Drive
1x320GB WD Drive (Cache)
Since I am running everything off of this NAS (CPotato, SickB, SAB, MySQL), do I want to use a cache drive, or is it a waste of a HDD spot.
I was looking at the thread by eskro:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?pid...post886478
Awesome information by the way, especially in the 10HDD version. I am looking at the 12HDD Version. The being said, below is the what I am looking to do and was hoping someone could help me out with components for it (since a) it differs with my use case a bit and b) all parts don't exist anymore).
I am looking to keep this under $400 with a start of 6 HDDs, expending as I need too. I am looking to ideally run SABnzbd, SickBeard and Couch Potato directly on this, not sure if possible but would also like my back-end XBMC DB stored here so all parts of my house can pick up where ever I want. Everything in my house is gigabit connections, and everything except one room would be wired (bedroom wireless). Not that it matters in the build, but I have 75/35 FiOS.
Build Questions:
Case: AZZA Helios 910 SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ($79.99 + $30 mail-in)
Mobo: ASRock 880GM-LE FX AM3+ AMD 880G Micro ATX ($54.99)
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 260 Regor 3.2GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core ($59.99)
PSU: Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply ($54.99 + $10 off with CollegeSave10 promo code)
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) ($19.99)
Hot Swap: SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B Black 5x 3.5" Hot-swap SATA Hard Disk Drive Trays ($99.99)
TOTAL: $392.14 (after shipping)
TOTAL after rebates: $362.14
unRAID Questions:
1. Available I have: 2x2TB WD Green drives, 2x1.5TB WD Green Drives, 2x1TB Drives. How does unRAID handle me swapping them out for bigger drives some day? I know one 2TB would be a parity drive. But my question is, when I hit 12 drives and want to replace a 1TB with a 2 or 3TB drive will I have any issue with data loss?
You can swap the drives out later, very easy, no loss of data. You can only do one drive at a time. At this stage stick with <2Tb drives, as they are supported on unRAID 4.7 (new version v5 to support >2Tb)
2. Can you replace a parity drive? Lets say I hit my 12 HDD limit, could I replace a parity drive with a 3TB drive and move forward?
Yes you can replace the parity drive, you would then need to re-calculate parity (one click). The Parity drive MUST be the largest, so this would be your first drive to upgrade to 3Tb (once running v5)
3. With what I am looking to do, do I want a cache drive? If so, should that be a max size drive or can it be a smaller drive, say 500GB?
50/50 choice on the cache drive. If you write a lot to the array and it is time critical, then get a cache drive. EG. I download on my Win7 box, then transfer to unRAID. It is a pain to write 20+gigs at 13Mb/sec. I use a cache drive and get 60Mb/sec.
4. Assuming it can be smaller, could it also be swapped in and out or no? I assume no.
The parity drive MUST be bigger than what you would ever expect to write to your array in ONE day* so as long as you dont plan on writing more than 500GB a day to your array it will be fine.
5. I plan to play games (maybe highest quality being Dreamcast) off of my HTPC once it is made (another topic, another day), can the games be stored on this or would it be to slow to transfer/play them? What do most people do. My order of importance is: TV Shows (SD/HD), Movies (SD/HD/3D possible), Games, anything else).
Reading off unRAID should be around 30-60Mb/sec, typically if you run a 100mb network or WiFi it will be the bottleneck. Do yourself a massive favour, get a cheap 1000mb switch use some Cat6 cable and it will be almost as good as if the drives were in your HTPC.
6. Does switching from version 4.x to 5.x mean anything difficult or can I just update the flash drive and it will be good to go?
Sorry if pretty much everything has been answered before, I spent the better part of the last two days scouring these and the unRAID forums just learning about everything.
Thanks everyone for the help, I will let everyone know who is interested in how setup goes. I am starting off with:
2x2TB WD Green Drives (one of them parity)
2x1.5TB WD Green Drives
1x1TB WD Drive
1x320GB WD Drive (Cache)
Since I am running everything off of this NAS (CPotato, SickB, SAB, MySQL), do I want to use a cache drive, or is it a waste of a HDD spot.
). Any PC company that has a website that isn't functioning is a bit scary in my eyes. But regardless, I want the fun of building 
