Neptune-1

Hi Decto, Thank you for your reply. M-ITX is the way to go for me... but the choice of motherboards is awful! Hopefully, the motherboard should be the only 'added expense' as the case can take an ATX PSU. Good point on the HDD's. I hadn't thought of that but it makes perfect sense. I'll definitely make an adjustment there. Just another point on the Cache drive... I expect it would be better to have two as I intend to initially store information on them before transferring over to the HDD in the early morning. To prevent possible data loss I expect Unraid can essentially mirror the data on both Cache drives prior to dumping the data on the HDD? If that is the case then it might be worth buying 2 slightly cheaper SSD's as I don't know of any M-ITX motherboards that support 2x M.2 (Nvme). Sata yes, not Nvme. So, 2x HDD and 2x SSD are maxing out the 4x SATA ports on the motherboard!! Great advice on the USB. I'll stick to a solid Sandisk (2.0) 16GB. Thanks again for your time. Matt

Hello all, I just wanted to say hi (my first post) and to pick-your-brains. I'm super new to to all of this and would love to have your opinions on an Unraid project I'm considering. I currently have a Synology DS218+ NAS which I use to store general personal documents, photos, etc. I also use the NAS to access these from outside the home. Oh, and I stream music from it too. Whilst I really enjoy the Synology NAS and all its benefits, I like building PC's and now that I have a little knowledge from setting up my Synology NAS, I would like to build a custom Unraid machine. I want the Unraid machine to do everything I am doing on the Synology NAS I have right now, but with the possibility of using further functions as I gain more knowledge. I would also like to, if possible, use the Unraid machine as my main NAS and place my Synology at another address and use this as a back-up. The proposed hardware for Unraid NAS build; CASE: Fractal Design Node 304 PSU: EVGA 550W (Gold) (Fully Modular) CPU: Intel Core i3 10100 CPU cooler: (stock or Noctua low profile) Motherboard: Asus STRIX B460-i (M-ITX) RAM: Corsair LPX 8GB (2x4GB) Cache Drive: WD Blue (1TB) (M.2 Nvme) Storage Drive: 1x 3TB Ironwolf Pro (Parity) 2x 2TB Ironwolf Pro OS Storage: I'm pretty set on a 32GB Sandisk. However, I was considering a thumbnail sized USB stick but I have heard that Sandisk's can run very hot. Therefore, I was thinking of getting a larger (in physical size) USB stick and sitting this in the case using a USB2 adaptor. That way, it's out of sight. I would really love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for your time and consideration Matt