Vibe

Hi BRiT and PeterB - a big thank you for your replies. BRiT - I must admit, I have never looked at the power draw my monitor uses. I will definitely have to take a look into this as I can see where it will have an influence on the choice of UPS I choose. PeterB - That's a lot of hardware you have running on your UPS - I didn't realize you could place that type of load on them. That is definitely something for me to think about. The one APC unit that I was looking at doesn't have a USB interface (only the serial port). From what I have read in the forum (and like you mention), USB is the way to go. It looks like in order to get into a USB management port for APC's "Smart-UPS" products I will need to up the $$$ for purchase . However, I noticed that they have "Back-UPS" that appear to be less expensive (and include a USB port). Is there any benefit to a "Smart-UPS" vs. "Back-UPS"? Is it necessary to have a "Smart-UPS" in order to shut-down an unRAID server during a power outage (using apcupsd)? Thank you both again!

Rajahal - thank you tremendously for the great explanation - you have definitely cleared up my misunderstanding. This is very helpful for an inexperienced unRAID user such as myself. Perfect for the Wiki (say...the "Newbies guide to how unRAID works" ). With this in mind I now understand where the misconception of having a 7200 rpm parity drive may be of little consequence (unless doing multiple writes as others have mentioned). With this in mind I may have to rethink moving forward with Caviar Blacks when they come on sale - the power savings with 5400 EADS/EARS are too enticing.

Hi everyone, I have been reading the various posts in the forum regarding setting up apcupsd to shutdown unRAID in the event of a power outage - and am anxious to move in this direction. I have researched various APC models, and ran across information regarding "stepped approximation to a sinewave" vs. "sinewave" waveform types - and how one's power supply handles this/these. Several reviewers mentioned that their PC manufacturers' recommended UPS models using sinewave waveform types. Other reviewers mentioned that with some modern power supply's, the "stepped approximation to a sinewave" wave form type caused their systems to immediately shut down when power was switched to the UPS. I am using a CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W (budget box build) and was wondering if any of this might apply to my purchase. (I'm certainly no Electrical Engineer ) I have been looking at the APC Smart-UPS SC620 (http://www.amazon.com/APC-Smart-UPS-SC620-4-Outlet-System/dp/B0006HJB1G/) and wasn't certain if I would experience any issues (other than needing to purchase an add-on Serial connector for my BIOSTAR A760G M2+ motherboard) - <<< stepped approximation to a sinewave. Another that I was looking at was the APC Smart-UPS SUA750 750VA (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842101137 - currently unavailable). <<< sinewave waveform Can anyone make a suggestion for if this would suffice for my needs (e.g. one budget box unRAID server, one LCD monitor and a D-Link green gigabit switch)? A BIG thank you for your assistance!

Thank you for the clarification WeeboTech - I certainly appreciate it. With my Caviar Blacks I believe my parity check speed was in the 100 to 110 range, but has dropped to around 80. However, this was during start up and I did not monitor for any length of time. So I presume this was the result of checking the slower drives first. From what you mention, do parity checks follow the process of: parity drive works with a single data drive to perform calculations >> parity drive completes the check for that drive >> parity drive moves onto the next data drive? Another question if I may... If the above is correct, what drives does unRAID begin the parity checking process? (e.g. highest sata channel - or highest unRAID assigned drive?) PS - My apologies for my poor use of "terminology" here

Hopefully I am not changing the direction of this topic...but I am also curious about 5400 vs 7200 rpm drives. Currently I am running 2 x 1TB WD Caviar Black drives, and this weekend I added 2 x 250GB Caviar drives ("old" 7200 rpm drives). While performing a parity check I took notice that the read speed of the actual check was slower than with the Caviar Black drives alone. From my understanding, writes are only as fast as the slowest drive in the system - is this also the case during parity checks (e.g. reads are only as fast as the slowest drive)?

Rajahal - Great idea, I have updated my signature. For anyone "on the fence" about building an unRAID server ... The budget build was the EASIEST build/migration I have performed. I had everything together and drives moved from my old Dell SC440 in no time at all. To put it simply - Everything "just worked." With the budget build I am able to transcode DVD rips using PS3MediaServer without any issues. As a newbie to unRAID - I highly recommend it.

Thanks for your suggestions Rajahal. After doing some further research I learned that the AV drives don't perform quite as well as the EARS or EADS. I also don't know a thing about the 100000CSRTL drives - haven't heard a thing about them. As a result I will definitely stick with the EADS or EARS - it's nice to have a "stable" recipe. Talking about stable...today I finally got my Corsair 400CX power supply in the mail. Tonight I will be able to upgrade my unRAID goodness to full "Budget Build" specs (case, power supply, CPU, motherboard) - wild party at my house . Thanks again for the insight!

I'm not certain if these have been posted in the forum - figured it might be worth sharing as far as reviews/comparisons: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/15-2tb-hdd-roundup.html http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/1tb-2tb-roundup-2.html

Hi Everyone! I have been working on upgrading my unRAID server (motherboard/cpu) and have received some great advice in another thread (Thanks everyone!). Today I was researching Western Digital hard drives and was planning on going with a couple WD10EARS (1TB) - Which I have found at Amazon for $64.99 shipped (http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Intellipower-Desktop-WD10EARS/dp/B002U1N95K/). I am currently using a WD 1TB Caviar Black as my parity disk, and want to replace another (data drive) with a low power drive. On NewEgg and the Western Digital site I am seeing a couple alternatives and was wondering if anyone had any experience with these: Possible *Alternatives* for unRAID?: Western Digital AV-GP WD10EVDS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s (Popular with TiVo users - recommended for video streaming) Western Digital Caviar Green WD10000CSRTL 1TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s (Not familiar with this one ) *Standard* for unRAID: Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s (Popular for unRAID users) Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS 1TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s (Popular for unRAID users) The AV-GP WD10EVDS looks very interesting as Western Digital suggests it is a "Cool, quiet, reliable AV drive with WD GreenPower Technology - Designed for PVR/DVR, Media servers, Video surveillance." From what I have read, TiVo users prefer this drive to the other "Green" options. I see that Tom is listing these drives (well, 2TB variant) as for sale on this site - in addition to the EADS drives. Would these be a solid option over the standard EADS/EARS drives? I don't know much about the Caviar Green WD10000CSRTL drives - any experience in the forum? PS - I have searched the forum and haven't found much regarding the WD10EVDS or WD10000CSRTL drives but couldn't find much information. I figured I would start a new thread to hopefully shed light on these for myself and other users. Thanks for your comments!

Rajahal is correct - I meant that I am surprised at the difference in quality of the actual DVDs. I have some from several years back that are pretty poor. I rip the full DVD (main movie) using DVDFab (no compression). LOL @ neilt0! I agree - I would greatly enjoy ripping some blu-ray disks. I just need a blu-ray player that can do this . Ahhh well...off to spend more $$$.

My apologies for my confusing post! I misunderstood and thought your HTPC had a blu-ray drive and could playback from disc. I am thinking about building an HTPC with a blu-ray drive but am not certain how the quality will compare to my Sony PS3. Your system sounds great - I look forward to the photos when you post them. Thanks again! poofyhairguy - thanks for the links! These will be a great help for sure!

Metapad as a replacement for Windows Notepad and Notepad++ for PHP - great combination.

BRiT - you are right on the mark - I have been tinkering with PS3MediaServer and am really liking it. I have to work on the customizations that are available, but for now I have DVD rips working well. One thing that I must say, after learning how to backup DVD's, it is amazing the variances in quality! Some DVD rips look fantastic, close to Blu-Ray quality. However, others look pretty shabby overall. I guess it is like having a decent audio turntable - you can hear the quality differences between albums. queeg - I know what you mean about the enclosures - they are wonderful. I use them on web servers and they are a life saver for sure. I figure with my new case I will be able to upgrade over time and purchase the hot-swap cages.

barrygordon - your home theater sounds wonderful! I am very envious indeed - a 10 foot screen would be tremendous! I do have a question for you (if I read your post correctly) - Can your HTPC handle Blu-Ray playback as well? The reason I ask is because I am just starting off on my home theater journey. I purchased a Sony PS3 for Blu-Ray playback (and games for my son) and it does a fine job. However, I am planning on building an HTPC for XBMC and was wondering if the video quality is comparable to a standalone/PS3 Blu-Ray setup? I currently run PS3Media server which works great for DVD rips, but am thinking a setup may be the direction I want to go. Thank you - any chance on seeing some photos of your setup?

queeg - Awesome deal that you found! The cheapest that I found yesterday was $55.00 (shipped). Oh well...live and learn. However, these boards must be getting fairly scarce, so I'm happy with my purchase. I haven't even begun looking into the accessories (e.g. the Icy Dock enclosures). I can see I am going to have to start budgeting for this new addiction! I was also looking at some of the new low power AMD CPU's that were on Amazon. If memory serves me correctly there were dual and triple core (45W versions) but shipping was listed as "typically ships in two weeks."

BRiT - That Zotac HTPC looks awesome (thanks for the link!) The price is very reasonable and the size is very alluring. I will definitely look into these. I was originally thinking that I would go the Intel i3 route for the HTPC, but now may hold off. I have a SonyPS3 that can handle Blu-Ray disks, so maybe the "logical" thing would be going this route. Rajahal - in one of my first posts in this forum you mentioned XBMC. Being a true "noobster" I had no clue that something like this was available - WOW - blew my mind. Since then I have been bitten my the "home theater" bug (in conjunction with the "unRAID" bug of course). I was also thinking about going with the Acer Aspire Revo (maybe the dual-core). With the success of the unit I'm sure we are going to see a big wave of new products coming to market that can support XBMC and the off-shoots. While the Antec p180 is a great case (I don't have one myself but have seen them up close), it just doesn't have the same MUCHISIMO as the Norco 4220. If I had one I would probably take guests to my basement server room (aka creepy basement closet) just for a private viewing - before movie watching time. A friend of mine recently purchased one of the garden variety NAS boxes (whopping 1TB of space 2x500GB) and was pretty vocal about how cool it/he was with the new "Network backup system" he implemented. I told him what I was doing with unRAID (potential for 15TB space using inexpensive 1TB drives) and he pretty much hasn't breached the subject since. Ahhh...not only are we taking up space - we're having fun in the process.

YES that is it - the second photo is what sold me. Beautiful, wide-open space - the system can breathe. I have always wanted to use the Centurion 590 case, but the miniscule size of the Biostar motherboard really sold me. I also started thinking about the low power usage as well - especially by way of the thread at silentpcreview (http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=54409). Your personal server is definitely a winner - the capacity is tremendous (I wish I had the space for a 4U rackmount!). What I would REALLY like to do (too $$$ at this point), would be to use 2.5" Western Digital Scorpio laptop drives in an unRAID server. Can you imagine how "cute" 16 of these little things stacked up would be? (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136545)

After using Paak's suggestion I decided to use the format for my movie directories - "Title.of.Movie.(199x)" - using periods as the delimiter. As a "web guy" I have hard time using spaces in file/folder names. Using Paak's suggestion #2 - I simply visit imdb.com, search for the movie, and copy their initial <h1> title line, and name the folder. I am using DVDFab to back-up my DVDs directly to my unRAID server. While working in my home office I have a default directory to save the VOBs in my "Movies" directory, and feed DVDs to DVDFab. After figuring out how all this works, it is quite surprising how fast one can backup DVDs. In the past two days I am almost at 100 movies. Now to sit back and enjoy them!

queeg - thanks for posting the link to the Asus board - it looks great for sure. However, after spending "way too much time" reviewing the overwhelming number of hardware options available today (GEEZE! I remember when the choice was "PII - what speed?") - I couldn't pass up a good deal from Amazon. As per Rajahal's build(s) (your post in the "Pimp your rig" forum sold me!) I purchased the BIOSTAR A760G M2+, AMD Sempron 140 and Cooler Master Centurion 590 - all for $150.00 (shipped). My thinking is that I will first go the Intel i3/i5 route for my HTTPC build (XBMC for sure) - and may go with the board queeg mentioned. Then as $$$ permits, I can upgrade my unRAID server to Intel i3 specs, and use the Biostar/Sempron for an interested family member's 1st unRAID server. Now I sit at my workstation, dribbling as I continuously refresh FedEx's delivery tracking page. Thanks again for all the insight everyone, as always it is GREATLY appreciated!

I remember just a "few" years back...upgrading my mighty 6 GB hard drive to a HUGE 15 GB hard drive for something like $150.00. $99.99 for 2 TB is simply amazing to me

Thank you for your input BRiT - after reviewing all of the CPU/Motherboard options I am really contemplating going this direction (Intel i3 530). Having the ability to render during off-time would be great. I have been rendering with an "old" Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) laptop and it is somewhat painful . I didn't know about the SAMBA configuration that you mention - I will have research this to learn more. I haven't even begun "tinkering" with the many unRAID add-ons that are available, but I'm sure the Intel i3 530 would be beneficial.

Hi queeg - Thank you for the information. I completely forgot that unRAID will only use a single core - but other applications can utilize multiple cores. I just noticed in your signature that you are using an Asus M4A78L-M - and I read your post in the forum about compatibility with unRAID. I have mostly used ASUS boards in the past, and have never tried Biostar products. How do you like Asus board so far? Have you had any instability issues? Do you know if the PCIe slot is compatible with the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 add-on Card? I was also contemplating moving to an Intel i3-530 CPU with an H55 chipset motherboard. While the initial price would be higher, the rendering capability would be great with Handbrake. I also understand that the power usage is rather low at idle. This is the route I want to take with my HTPC build - would this be "overkill" for an unRAID server (considering H.264 rendering with Handbrake)? Thanks again!

Hi everyone, I am just starting the process of upgrading my current unRAID server - moving up from a Dell SC440. I am planning on following the Recommended "Budget Box" Build http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility#Recommended_Builds, but am thinking about upgrading the processor to a multi-core. I would like to try running Handbrake on my server allowing me to encode various videos that I have. I plan on using the same motherboard (BIOSTAR A760G M2+) but was looking at a different AMD processor (AMD Athlon II X2 235E Energy Efficient Regor 2.7 GHz 2x1MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 45W Triple-Core Processor) - http://www.amazon.com/AMD-Athlon-Efficient-Triple-Core-Processor/dp/B002PA7U8I/. Does anyone by chance have experience with this processor? This CPU looks pretty interesting - 45W like the AMD Sempron 140 - but multiple cores for a bump in "horsepower." Please excuse my inexperience, but will unRAID be able to fully utilize the multiple cores when encoding video? Is there an alternative that would be better suited for encoding? (short of a core i7 - which would sure be nice to have! ) Thank you for any help and/or suggestions!

Thank you Paak and kizer for the suggestions and detailed description - this is a great help! I took an extended weekend and am just getting back to the forum. During my weekend I spent some time organizing my movies as you have mentioned (Great idea adding the dates - it didn't even dawn on me to do this !). I only have a few seasons of various TV shows, and the light bulb just turned on after seeing your naming convention - this is awesome. I was wondering what the best format was use when naming TV shows, and now I understand (I am just learning about scraping, one of the benefits of XBMC over PS3MediaServer). I am also working on my laptop installation of XBMC, setting up the various sources etc. - man am I loving this. Thank you both again - your assistance is GREATLY appreciated!

Hi Everyone, I am absolutely "lovin" my unRAID box - Best thing I could have done for a storage solution! I am currently working on backing-up my DVD's, photos and music (e.g. all multimedia) and am experiencing a "conundrum" - what directory/folder structure would be the most "logical" for my needs. To back up a bit - last week I followed the PS3MediaServer post and now have my PS3 handling everything on my unRAID server (very nice indeed). However, after reading Rajahal's many helpful posts about XBMC (thanks Rajahal!) - I decided to try it out. Needless to say after running the portable version I am absolutely hooked. I REALLY like PS3MediaServer - but I must admit that XBMC is some great "eye candy." To get to the point...I have searched the forum here for suggestions regarding optimal directory/folder structure & organization and am coming up short. I have found numerous posts on user shares, split levels etc - but not a lot covering how the Pros on the forum organize their media. My sincere apologies if this has been covered before! Right now I have the following media "types" - DVD Movies, Home Movies, TV Shows, Misc Videos, Cartoons, Music & Photos. Music and Photos are easy to organize - I have an unRAID share for each. However, with the rest is where I am stumbling (I want to keep compatible with the PS3MediaServer with the intent on moving to XBMC). This is what I currently have: Movies (unRAID share) ..Genre/Movie.Name.(Year) Television (unRAID share) Cartoons (unRAID share) Videos (unRAID share) ..Music.Videos ..Home.Movies ..Misc ..Etc Photos (unRAID share) Music (unRAID share) ..Genre/Artist/Artist.Year.Album/Artist.Track.Title I have not moved to XBMC but am wondering if I will experience any issues with this structure (?) Does anyone with Kids organize their Cartoons/Home Movies in a similar/different fashion? Any better to put the Cartoons in with Television? I know this varies according to everyone's own needs - however, any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. (I spent a while researching my "own" Music naming scheme - and feel like I've conquered Mt. Everest since I'm satisfied - can you say "Anal?") Thanks so much!