Poofyhairguy's HTPC Recommendation Thread

^^ unRAID will format the drives when you add them to the array. Also, the parity drive must be the same size or larger than the largest drive in the array. You cannot have content on the drives since it will be formatted once added to the array. Also, I don't know if your motherboard will play nice with unRAID. Probably best to ask that question on the unRAID forum.

htpc guy Wrote:Question (hope I'm not derailing this thread too much).

I have an old Dell XPS tower that I'm not using. I'm thinking about turning this into an unraid server. The motherboard has 4 Sata ports and a couple of IDE. I currently have 1 Hitachi Deskstar 2tb drive with content all ready on it. It has about 250 GB free. I have a second (same drive) in the mail that should be here in a few days. I also have another 500GB drive that I could wipe to use for parity.

My main question is, how can I incorporate the drive that all ready has content? Will this work for unRaid or do I have to start with all clean drives?

Two rules for unRAID ...
1) The parity drive has to be the same size or larger than the biggest drive in your array. (So if you have a 2TB and a 500GB drive in the array the 500GB drive cannot be used for parity)
2) Any content that is on a drive will be erased when it is added to the array.

You could do this ... install the new 2TB drive in unRAID. (Note: I would definitely run several preclear cycles on the new HDD to verify its a good drive before adding it to the array) Then copy all the content from your existing 2TB drive over to the new 2TB drive in unRAID. Then you can add your existing 2TB drive to your array and calculate parity. Then your data would be protected. Be aware that if either of your drives fail before the parity computation is complete that you could lose your data. (But this is the same risk you have now) Also there are ways to mount a non-array drive into unRAID and copy the data off the drive locally which would be much faster than doing it over the network. Search the unRAID forums for midnight commander (MC) or SNAP.

As far as will your MB work for unRAID I'd be willing to bet it would. If you have any doubts just try it with the free license, that's what I did. All you need to do is make a bootable USB and pop it in your PC - the forums or wiki will give plenty of detail on how to do this. You don't need any HDDs to check if unRAID will boot on your MB.

IAmNotAUser Wrote:Would you recommend making one of my WD Greens (the one that will be the parity) 7200 instead of 5400 to speed up the parity writes?

I do recommend a 7200RPM drive for parity, as it DOES increase the speed of writes.

There are three good 7200RPM drives to use, here they are in the order I like them:

1. Seagate 7200RPM Barracuda
2. WD 7200RPM Black
3. Hitachi 7200RPM

Be sure to use the newest Unraid beta if you go with the WD Black, its on sale right now at Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

^^ But with the use of a cache drive, is there really a point in having a 7200rpm parity drive? The 7200rpm 2TB drives are pretty pricey compared to a Green drive, so is it really worth the extra cash?

Superorb Wrote:^^ But with the use of a cache drive, is there really a point in having a 7200rpm parity drive? The 7200rpm 2TB drives are pretty pricey compared to a Green drive, so is it really worth the extra cash?

I still say yes, if only to insure that it will remain the fastest drive in the case (aka faster than some later and better Green drive not available yet). But MANY on the Unraid forum disagree with me, and my opinion there on the issue is considered to be akin to vooodoo. So maybe on this one subject, I wouldn't listen to me and save a little money.

poofyhairguy Wrote:I still say yes, if only to insure that it will remain the fastest drive in the case (aka faster than some later and better Green drive not available yet). But MANY on the Unraid forum disagree with me, and my opinion there on the issue is considered to be akin to vooodoo. So maybe on this one subject, I wouldn't listen to me and save a little money.

I actually hadn't read anything about it on the unRAID forums, it just makes sense to me this way. But, having a faster parity drive couldn't hurt

I'm in the UK, so newegg offers aren't going to do me good

If I was going to save money and stick with a WD Green parity drive, would there be any sense in paying extra for the 7200rpm version over the 5400rpm? If not, and the choice is between 2 drives £50 different in price, I would probably get a WD Green as a parity and get a replacement Black 7200rpm a couple of months into the future.

IAmNotAUser Wrote:I'm in the UK, so newegg offers aren't going to do me good

but you still have http://www.google.co.uk/products

Sidenote poofy: In the first post, it is not mentioned that the AMD zacate platform can bitstream hd audio.

@spartan711: all specs indicates it should!!!