Lolight

Hmm, Beta 9 😀

There are certain risks associated with those sites selling at low prices (uncertain warranty, unknown stock history etc) But the savings might be well worth the risk as long as the buyer understands exactly what he/she is dealing with.

Other things than RAM are more likely to ruin your data, starting with a user error, followed by damage from floods, lightning strikes, fires and unrelated to RAM hardware failures. Please don't get a false sense of security from having ECC RAM in your system. Make sure you have proper backups (multiple) of your family treasures, regardless of the type of RAM.

Blackblaze publishes interesting reports but don't make their graphs influence your purchase decisions. Unfortunately it looks like they're using their statistical data reports to attract publicity. Their methodologies are sketchy: worthless data lead to misleading conclusions. I used to respect their findings until they decided to publish this gem: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-temperature-does-it-matter/ "As long as you run drives well within their allowed range of operating temperatures, keeping them cooler doesn’t matter." Here's a good article on Backblaze's HDD Reliability Myth: https://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling-backblaze-s-hdd-reliability-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html

OK, on beta 3 already. Are the devs moving on the more frequent update release schedule?

Absolutely.

New means never used and without a history of a prior (whole) sale. Some smallish vendors resell the previously unused drives which were originally sold to a corporate customer but have never been used. They re-sell those drives as new. It's impossible for a retail customer to be aware of the prior sale since that info is not being disclosed and hard to track - there's no physical evidence. Those drives almost always being re-sold at discounted to the truly new drive prices. Why is it a big deal? Cause they might have their factory warranties voided. Even If the warranty is still intact there's always a risk (high probability) of those drives having a history of being exposed to a prolong storage time. Even worse if stored for a long time in some unheated warehouse under uncontrolled environmental conditions (big daily temperature swings in winter).

The thing is that internet contains horror stories on just about every subject you can think of. Have two, or better three copies of all of your important data and try not to stress much over bit rot. There are other, much more probable problems than can potentially affect your data.

Are your clients on the same network? You could make them all 4K direct play capable, no transcoding on Unraid machine required, by attaching them to simple media boxes, running a Kodi based client software e.g. https://coreelec.org/ In that case your Unraid system could be build as cheaply as you want, since the only work it would need to handle is data streaming.

You're still missing the point. I've posted my response trying to point it out for you that there is no short, one fit all answer! That being the reason for your struggle to find a definitive response. Sorry I wasn't clear enough. There are numerous discussions on the internet with many passionate, but often misleading opinions regarding the "must have" ECC. Spend some time reading around and see for yourself. Don't just go over one thread (linked above) that throws many things together by the highly experienced users just to make your head spin. Try to make an informed decision based on your priorities. I understand your desire to get a simple one sentence answer but it's not one of those subjects. Besides, if you're not particularly well versed in the computer hardware I'd suggest to spare yourself of the headache and go cheaper and simpler (for Unraid). That would mean Intel and no ECC. That would also mean that you must have a good back up for all of your important data, regardless of ECC

What is important is the context of the question. The OP has asked it in the way similar to if asking in the car world if the roadside assistance helps while driving without auto insurance.

Have you tried a new SATA cable?

Warning: very technical...😉

Are you sure?

High failure rates is a highly abnormal condition for HD's sold as "new". Even if the drives come with full warranty. There's something wrong with the source of their inventory. Chances are that the product might have experienced adverse environmental conditions while in storage, leading to high failure rates. There's a reason why the drives are sold at discount.

I don't think that there's a good chance that a large volume seller would find it worth the risk exposing themselves in such a way. Still I don't think that their discounts are all that attractive considering the shady history of the inventory.

It's even worse than that. The seller's listing clearly shows that the product doesn't match the description.

Dune runs a very old version of Kodi that was made into its own proprietary player. It's expensive, and its primary function is to be a file player only, without streaming capabilities like Roku, Firestick and others. For a modern Kodi player take a look at media boxes (huge variety of price and quality) capable of running Coreelec https://coreelec.org/ https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/best-device-for-coreelec-in-2022/14348

How many TB's of space do you plan to have in your server? Are you really sure that you need to go the rackmount chassis and server grade parts? Asking since it's not really clear from your posts if that's what you really want and need. It's also not clear if you're aware of simpler and cheaper alternatives that might work for your use case (consumer grade hardware except maybe harddrives).

There's a huge variety of media boxes currently on the market that won't have a problem playing such files.

May I ask why to even bother with 8-10TB disks in the era of 20TB drives?

According to the MB's manual you won't loose any of the SATA ports when running a NVMe SSD in the m.2 socket

Welcome! 👍

Steve mentions competitor's cases at 25:50 (don't know based on what criteria though)