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If you want to virtualize your HTPC, I'd plan upfront for that, and use an external GPU to pass through. This leaves the onboard intel GPU for the server console/etc, should you ever need it (which you probably won't). Passing through intel GPU is doable, but its a lot of work. Passing through a 2nd card in a pci-e slot is much less work. Keep in mind, you'll also want to passthrough a USB controller (or port/device, i'd aim for one of the controllers though) and then add mouse/keyboard/remote/etc there. All of this is doable, but its also a lot of work, and as the info so far is noted about the intel gpus, a lot of it will require linux knowledge and specific hardware/etc. Or, you could just keep your android box (or replace it with a pi2, AFTV, chromebox, etc). I wanted to virtualize so much stuff with a new setup, but the pi (not even a 2) I have works so well for me that I just keep using it and don't worry about it. Plays 1080P, 23.9xxhz, DTS to my AVR. Done. Until I move to HD audio, no need for anything more really. If I wanted more speed, I'd just mod a $130 chromebox and use that.

Agree with most of the suggestions here. Intel mb w/ 6 sata slots, pentium or better cpu. Depending on the mb/ram slot setup, get one 4GB dimm, add another later if you need (not optimal at first, but should work for a simple server setup) Add a pci-e x1 (or better) 2 port sata card. Going intel 1150 lets you swap in a much faster CPU if needed down the road, etc. Here is a completely untested, unknown if it works together, add any other disclaimers here: ASROCK H97M Pro (6sata, 4 dimm) $80 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157512 Intel Pentium G3258 (haswell, seems to be popular around here) $70 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117374 Cosair 4GB DDR3L 1600 $29 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233789 Total: $179 + $20 for a 2 port sata card (or up from there) Little over your $150, depends on your goals (can you wait and get a few more $$$, is the server down and needs replacing now, etc)

I'll add in that I originally came to unraid with the mindset that I could just pile in drives of all shapes/sizes and have TONS of storage space. However, just like when you try too hard to future proof a pc upgrade, it turns out bigger drives keep coming along, and they keep getting cheaper/etc. Figure out how much storage you really need, then figure out how many drives you'll need to get there today, and then get a setup that supports that (onboard sata slots, 3.5" drive bays/etc). Also, if you spend big today on an oversized parity drive (say an 8TB), then when you want to add/replace/etc drives in the future, you won't be stuck with a too small parity. I'd go 4TB at least, so if you got just a 3x4Tb (and something for cache to run some dockers/etc for your media setup/needs/torrents/crashplan/etc, you'd still have 8TB of storage, a cache drive, and only need a small case and any MB with 4 sata. If you get something that can hold 6 3.5" drives, somewhere to put a 2.5" drive (assume an ssd as a cache), and then a MB with enough onboard sata slots, you can have (as gary mentioned) tons of storage in something smaller/lower power/etc. Not everyone needs (or wants) 24 hdd setups. Sometimes replacing is easier/better than adding.

Why are you upgrading/changing things? Are you out of space? Do you just want to? Did you get a $100 lotto winner? I ask because knowing that, we can give you much better answers. If its space (which I assume it is), my suggestion is to dump all your money into replacement hdds. You can add more 2/1TB hdds all day, but why bother? Get a 3+TB hdd to use as parity, as you mentioned. I wouldn't waste your time with anything less than 3 though, and I'd strongly suggest you get 4/5/6TB as possible. Then, instead of getting an addon card and another drive, i'd just add another large drive, then recycle a blue/green to be your cache. So, you have 4 sata slots. You currently have 3 of them in use. Buy a new big parity, move the green to data (+1TB of space). In a few months, buy another large drive (another 3/4/5/whatever) and replace one of your 3 1tb drives, copy the data from another one to it, and then recycle that as a cache drive. You'll lose one hdd for storage (back to 2TB), but with at least another 3Tb drive, you'll still be up by 1TB (ie, 4TB of total space). Then, a few months later do it again. Now you have a 3TB parity, and 2 3TB datas. You have 6TB of protected storage, and have recycled at least one 1TB hdd to be cache. And you still only need 4 sata slots. Buy a usb enclosure for a hdd, and turn another 1TB drive into an external proper backup of critical data/etc. If you insist on buying a hdd to use as cache, and it doesn't need to be 1tb in size (do you copy that much at once? the mover runs every night), then I'd suggest getting an SSD. I just picked up a 250GB Samsung 850 for a little more than that WD black drive. The SSD will be faster, and doesn't need to spin up/down, doesn't generate heat/etc. SSD's are also nice to run apps on since they can do all the work, and let your data drives spin down. TL;DR Buy a big parity now, then buy replacement big data drives later, recycle your current drive(s) for cache/external backups/etc.

So how does it work for Plex? I run some dockers on my setup, and recently one of them is plex (the rest are SickRage/CP/BtSync/kodi headless). I only really use it to stream to my iphone while i'm on the train, I have pi's otherwise around the house. How many streams/transcoding/etc do you think you can get with that J1900? I like the setup of that board (6 sata + msata, and intel nic, and a pci-e slot) and with a super low power draw. I'd love to replace my c2q9650 setup. I'm almost scared to figure out how much i'm currently using at idle, but surely its WAY more than even 40w while idle.

Not true. You would buy 2 6TB drives; and use one of them for parity; then add the other one to the array AND the old parity drive to the array => gaining 9TB of space in the array. The only time you'd only gain 3TB of net space if you completely populated the array with 3TB drives and didn't have any additional SATA ports to add additional drives. This would be poor planning => as you near the max drive count you should do any parity size upgrade you might want to do BEFORE you hit that point. Same as above ... as long as you have a couple spare SATA ports, you can buy 2 4TB drives and gain 6TB of space in your array. Cept I'm already maxed out on sata ports, since I used a MB with 6 ports (1 for cache, 4 2tb and 1tb) so i'm already maxed out Regardless, our points are similar, buy few larger drives now, and it gives you a lot more freedom down the road. Using a MB with only 4 sata ports, using 3tb instead of 4/6/8tb hdds, getting a smaller case, etc are all things that seem great now, but can really hold you back down the road from now. People just need to think forward, and its not always ideal/easy/best to ADD more drives. Sometimes its best to flat out replace them (they are old, small, dying, etc). Just adding more info to cover all the angles. I think you covered it best in another post here about someone getting 4 6Tb hdds instead of 6 3Tb hdds. The 6tb drives will probably cost more, but you have way more options down the road (assuming you have a hard 6 hdd limit, both in sata ports and hdd bays.)

yes, this. Today, 3tb & 4tb are the sweet spots. But, 3 years from now, you'll easily be able to get 6tb or 8tb drives. IF at any point, you want to replace a drive with a much larger drive, your parity will also need to be as large. If, a few years from now, you are ok with having to buy TWO 6tb drives just to increase one of your 3tb drives to a 6tb (do the math, thats 2 6tb drives just to gain 3tb of space) then no worries. This is where I am now. I have all 2tb drives, and I'd love to double my space with some 4tb drives, but to start doing that I need to buy 2 4tb hdds, and then I only net a 2tb gain. Every drive after that is much easier, but that initial upgrade kinda sucks. I had some spares, got some extra used 2tbs in the first place, so I'm still ahead of the game actually. Not everyone wants to just ADD hdds. Sometimes you don't have enough sata ports, or slots to hold hdds, or power. Sometimes you don't WANT to add more hdds. I'm also a fan of the smaller mitx style builds, with a max of 6hdds. In that case, you need to swap in larger hdds, not keep adding them forever. Anyway, go with the advice of getting the largest drive you can swing for parity now, as it'll last you a while before you need to replace it. Making it 4TB now means that every extra drive you add gains 4TB of useable space, instead of 3, or 2, etc. Its also worth considering getting a nice fast hdd for your parity, though these days the nas style drives seem to cover all the bases.

did you start the preclear in a screen via the physical terminal? If so, i think you can just attach to that screen. But if you didn't I don't think there is a way to hijack the physical terminal, though surely google would answer this for you. And don't sweat it, preclears are annoying the first few times you do them (and take forever), but everyone learns after the first one they accidentally terminate at 88%/etc. Then you make sure to start them in a screen and let them go

SCSI and Sata/SAS aren't the same. Those trays won't work, and i assume the trays probably connect to SCSI backplanes, those won't work either. How many hdds to you plan on having? Many people think they want to have a case to support 24hdds, but never get anywhere close to that. Fewer big hdds > many smaller hdds. Less power, less heat, less space, etc. I went with unRAID in the beginning because I all sorts of IDE drives laying around, and a few 500GB/etc satas that I could mix and match into a system. In the end, the 4 2tb and 1 1tb was all I ended up using. And now I don't really want to ADD more, just want to replace the ones I have with 4tb drives instead.

Thanks! I went ahead and added a /mnt/media to /mnt/cache/Data and it works as expected. That would update the code to: docker run -d --name="Syncthing" \ --net="bridge" \ -p 8080:8080/tcp \ -p 22000:22000/tcp \ -p 21025:21025/udp \ -v "/mnt/user/appdata/syncthing":"/config":rw -v "/path/to/syncfolders":"/mnt/media":rw gfjardim/syncthing You could use a lot of options instead of /mnt/media, but i knew that existed inside the container already, so i just did that.

I easily got this docker installed, thanks to the templates and repos being available. I started it, and can get to its GUI (i have nothing running on 8080). My issue is that i cannot figure out how to add local folders to be synced. I don't see a volume being passed that I setup for my unRAID shares. I tried /mnt/cache/Data/.... (which is a cache only share) and that doesn't seem to work. Here is what the docker runs with: docker run -d --name="Syncthing" \ --net="bridge" \ -p 8080:8080/tcp \ -p 22000:22000/tcp \ -p 21025:21025/udp \ -v "/mnt/user/appdata/syncthing":"/config":rw gfjardim/syncthing Anyone else have this setup? Have I just been spoiled with dockers what work another way that I'm making this more difficult than its worth? I have tried to put /mnt/cache/Data/... but that generates an error upon restart with a "could not mkdir /mnt/cache, access denied"

I'm going to bite your head off, but not for security reasons. I just bothered to set these up separately (well, xbmc headless, not kodi yet) and now you go an combine them into one. WTF.... Good idea, and hopefully it pans out and works well for new users wanting to setup mysql for multiple setups. Not sure if i'll bother to do it from my dual setup now, but its always feasible.

This program confused the hell out of me, so i went with installing it in win7 and trying to get it "working", then recycling the files over to the docker. I never got it working in win7, since the choices for OTA in the USA either don't work, or require a subscription. It looks like one (tvguide) does in fact work, but unless you are in the thick of following all the sites forums posts, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be editing/etc. On the bright side, this ver of tvheadend (3.9+) automatically figures out channel names/numbers, which made getting it working (without EPG) in xbmc/kodi 10x easier (once you figure out where you tell it to map channels that is). I also am using a hdhomerun. I get most of the channels listed, but they often freeze up/etc, so I'm not really sure why its not working "as well", but it could easily be the fact its the unstable version. I'll redo it again once the stable one is released.

Did you try setting EDGE to 1 ? Maybe it'll get it from the correct repository? Otherwise, someone should add an entry to his github docker file to suggest he update it. (I don't use github, but i think you can suggest an update). Or PM him? Not sure. Worked for me last week.

This is the issue I had. Restart your docker but make the data folder mapping much smaller, like just the movies/etc. I can do that, but if I use all of /mnt/user, it never finishes. I think the issue is with my "misc" folder, which has lots of smaller files, pictures, backups of those pictures, etc. Does all my movies/tv shows (seperately) which is a lot more DATA quickly. I haven't looked any further into it, to see if there is a log or anything to tell me whats going on.

You should probably drop all the tables in the mariadb as well and start over, if sparkly's suggestions don't do it. Since you don't have any data (sql data) to loose, just start over. Purge the DB, then restart it (or trash the entire DB folder/etc) and make a new one, then log into it and make a user xbmc/xbmc and give it global rights. Then restart/remake your headless kodi install. Also got a laptop/desktop/etc with kodi? Use it to check that your DB is up and working before the headless one, then we know its not a sql error.

This operation can take minutes on large paths, please be patient. The indexing should continue even if this window is closed, however there will be no notification. Indexed 21005 files and 1752 directories, (265.8GB total) in 01 minutes, and 31.77 seconds. Hmm, I guess I need more cpu power/faster hdds?

I mapped /data to /mnt/user to get all my user shares, is that the basic way? It loads, but just sits at /data with 0 0 0 listed (after hitting reindex). Otherwise, maybe i'm not waiting long enough, whats the "time to index" something like 6TB ? Like 10 mins, or 2 hours or what? Looking forward to looking it over, and really want to hit up the duplicates feature, see if my "dumping ground" folder has gone crazy or not.

yes, provide a better screenshot of your docker config, and a screenshot of the sickbeard config (espically the part about WHERE its moving your files TO) I assume you have NEVER had this working, and that it fails currently for ALL downloaded shows?

Because unRAID is a NAS, first and foremost, so adding in unneeded drivers just mucks things up. But at least you have the ability to edit/change/add things like that, so its not all bad. In other words, 90% of unraid users don't want/need DVB drivers, so no need to add them. Its not a full linux distro install, its specialized for the way unRAID works. My .02

I'm going to try this docker later, as I'd like to have tvheadend running, and right now its a little too much to have it on a Pi AND have that Pi watch tv at the same time, etc. But I have a logistical question: Where/how/etc are you all storing your recordings/live tv/time shifting/etc storage for tvheadend? Are you directing it all to your cache drive, or are you dumping it right onto a user share/array drive/etc? I'd like to have scratch space to store stuff, but I also like letting my drives spin down when not in use. I'll be using a hdhomerun, so having a usb device/etc isn't an issue, so running this docker would be great.

Do you have permissions on your unraid shares? I'd guess that the user the docker is running as doesn't have permission to write to the shares. I don't put password on my media shares, so I never have to deal with those issues.

you want to start with just a few hdds, but how much space do you really need? Everyone starts here thinking "I can use 24hdds, thats great, i'm going to do that!" and very few people ever do. Its great to buy a bunch of 4TB hdds, now, and just keep adding them as they get cheaper and you want to add space, etc, but will you really do that? Your need for space might not grow as fast as hdd sizes increase. You may find that it is much more useful to replace your 3 or 4 4TB hdds with 8TB hdds in 3 years, than to add a handful more. Plus, more hdds equals more heat, more power requirements, more sata connections, more noise, etc. Right now I have a 2TB parity, 3 2TB storage drives, and a 1TB storage (for 7TB total). I've been running just over/under 1Tb free overall, and its starting to go consistently under. However cheap 2TB hdds are, I am not going to add a bunch more. I'd much rather get some 4TB drives, and swap all the drives out instead. Depends on storage needs. Assuming this is a media server, and you are all about quality, and you only plan to store 50GB blu ray isos (as opposed to 16GB 1080p mkvs/etc), then maybe you really need the option to have 10/12/24 drives. But if not, consider if you'd be ok with a smaller case that fits 6/7 hdds total, a MB with 6 sata slots, and a fast CPU for plex. Plenty of examples of this in the forum as well, just look for all the super small builds. 6 (5 data) 4TB hdds is still 20GB of space, and that is can go up 50% by using 6TB drives today.

No to liquid cooling. I'd get a MB with enough sata ports for you going forward (so if 5 hdds + cache is enough, get one with 6 sata ports now, don't need a card later). I'd also try to get a MB with an intel network card, they tend to have more stable throughput overall. Since you run plex, i'm pretty sure it supports multi threads (might need to verify this) so feel free to get a dual/quad/octa core processor. I think you'll get more value for your $$$ with intel (and lower heat and power) but it may not be the "cheapest" option that will work for you. What is your budget? I'd also look around this forum, lots of examples of people using $300 cpus and others using a $300 combo cpu/mb/ram, so there are options. Also, what kind of case do you want to use, a giant full tower to hold 18 hdds, or you want something super small/quiet/6 hdds?

They warrant some of my time to look at. Clearly these small boxes have come along a long way since the Pivos Xios. As for using the spare parts in the backup server, they are not the right FF for the case I want. The Celeron CPU does not support ECC Memory and the Memory itself is not ECC Registered either. However, maybe there is better use for those parts - as a test box - which is always a nice to have. Then get another NUC or one of those suggested boxes and stick that in the living room with OE on it. Ill give it some thought and some research. Thank you. I'd reuse your current parts for the backup server. If you are short on sata ports, just get bigger drives Also, you can tweak your backup case choice (OR just reuse your current case, GASP!) and not even bother with ECC on your backup server. ECC has its benefits, but if you could just recycle your current unraid box (with more hdds) to a backup as is, that would save you some $$$ and lots of time, since its all set and ready to go. Who cares if its huge, doesn't have ECC, etc? Just stick it off in a different closet in the house (or something) and forget about it. Unless its super over the top power hungry, that is what i would do. That opens up a wide area for you to choose a htpc device (w/kodi). Android box, AFTV/stick, pi, nuc, etc. You are getting saddled with that huge HTPC case (unless you are going to fill it with hdds/tv tuners/blu ray player/etc). I use 3 rPIs with flirc's for remote access. The only issue I have is one uses a usb extentsion and the remote acts weird, i'm trying to narrow that down now. The other two are plugged directly in, and work great. I also just started to move my apps from the VM to docker apps, so next up is redoing the mysql db setup (i can't find any good way to move it). But all 3 pis share the DB (and my laptop, as needed) and it works great!