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Have you considered WD Red drives instead of greens? Nothing wrong with Greens, but the Reds are superior, have a longer warranty, and aren't that much more money. I have 2 greens in my setup, no issues with them (though I did make sure to set the firmware to not park the head as fast as greens want to). Just that IF i'm buying drives now, I am much more likely to spend my money on the nas versions going forward.

If you know you are going to have that many hdds (which you are already using) AND you are able to go to a rackmount style case, I think its an easy decision. I was trying to stay away from spending $200 on a 4u style case. I just looked for a good deal on a midtower that would hold 6 hdds in normal bays, have at least 3 5.25"s to use for one 5-in-3 down the road, and came with a bunch of 120mm fans (I found a nice lian-li that fit the bill on sale after rebate for like $37). But if I knew (or in your case, already had) 12+ hdds, i'd be strongly considering something like the norco or the cheaper rosewill. Just make sure you can get extra trays if you need them, it case any break/get damaged/etc down the road.

I think those supermicro MB's will require ECC ram, look up the specs on it. Assuming the MB is configured for dual channel ram, you'd want to use them in pairs for optimal speed (though thats probably not even noticeable for a file server) You can bond 2 nics together, and use them w/unraid. It sounds like a pain to me, and you need a network switch that supports it, and your hdd's will probably never provide enough data to saturate a 1gb nic in the first place. I'd be worried if my server were 100mb, not 1000mb. any reason you don't go with an SSD for the cache dirve? Your cache drive only needs to be as big (size wise) as the amount you might move within a day/storage for additional apps. SSD is the fastest way to go for the cache drive, though a 1TB black might be cheaper than a decent 160GB ssd these days?

Are you going to backup the unraid server (ie, all your media) onto the other server? Just thinking that if so, you'll probably need a LOT of hdd space in that WHS.

I'm just adding non specific .02 here..... When I first read about unraid, I thought the idea of being able to mix and match as many (up to 24) hdds was awesome, and I would totally do that. In practice, once I actually built one past the initial 3hdd setup, I have found that I just can't fill up the hdds as fast as I thought (I currently have 7 TB useable space, 2tb parity, 3x2tb & 1 1tb). You note that you have a bunch of storage already, so you have an idea how much you'll need moving forward. So, my .02 here is, if you are willing to buy 4TB hdds, and get 5 or 6 of them (6 hdds, less one for parity is still about 20TB of useable space), do you really think you'll need to add a lot more hdds any time soon? Keep in mind, that it might be just as easy to buy some 5/6/etc TB drives, and replace the drives you have in a few years as opposed to just adding hdds for the sake of adding hdds. If you COULD do this, have a look at some of the SFF builds in this forum (like the landfill one) and see if that is something you'd really like sitting in your living room as opposed to a full tower $340 case. The only reason I haven't already done this, is that i'm using older hardware, and it will not fit in a mITX case. If I ever buy new server hardware, I'm pretty sure i'll be going DOWN in footprint, but up in hdd space.

I got this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112354 But now I see it doesn't fit your needs (and its out of stock). I got it for like $35 after a MIR, and I got it because its clean, held 6 3.5" hdds (sideways, so easier to get in and out) as well as space for 2 2.5" hdds (cache). That left me with 3 5.25" bays that I can add some sort of caddy in, like a 5in3 if i even need one. It also came with 3 120mm fans, so i was sold. I assume you only want easy in/out hdds, hence your desire to keep using the 5in3s, but if you change your mind, there ya have it.

Newegg: Love them, but when you get used to their quick shipping, and they don't live up to it (it IS the holidays), I see how someone would get annoyed by that. Amazon: Probably the only reason I don't use them more, is that its often hard to figure out which item is coming from them, and which is coming from some random other online amazon store. And looking for something common, like 10' network cables, brings up SO MANY results I never know what i'm looking at. I'm not faulting them for having TOO much selection, it just drives me up the wall sometimes. I've also ordered items from amazon that I expected pretty quickly, and they take forever. Turns out it was someones online store, and I just didn't pay attention to it. I don't think Prime applies to everything you can buy from amazon.com, which also is why I havne't stuck with it. Anyway, I wanted to add this to perhaps make you feel a little better: I ordered an item from Macys.com. Good deal, but no free shipping since it wasn't over $100. Ok, the $10 won't kill me on shipping...oh i have to pay tax as well...ok fine, still a good deal. Three hours later (how long does it take to process an email!) I finally get my confirmation email, and it notes that it will ship out dec 16th. Ok, cool...hey wait a min, I ordered it on the 11th, and its going to take you FIVE days just to SHIP it, then its 6-9 days for delivery. I think a lot of brick & mortar stores need to go talk to some of these bigger online stores, and mirror their inventory/shipping/etc techniques. Some of them just suck at it.

How do I figure out which of these units would interface with my unraid server, and automatically shut down the server (I think there is a UPS plugin?) Looks like most of them have usb ports, and some even have a spot for an interface (network) connection? I do NEED to get a UPS, and this refurb route looks like the way to go, espically some of these smaller ones in that $85 range.

So then whats an entry level UPS setup that will do the following: Support at least the server (these vary in size, so i'll assume any recommendation will have various levels/actual run time) Allow connection to Unraid so that it can send a signal to actually shut down unraid nicely? Anything else I missed?

Does it currently seem "slow" to you? Is it choking on too many streams/etc? What made you ask the question?

I just got this case to move my current unraid server into. (looks out of stock right now though) What i really liked about it (besides it being 20% off AND a $20 GC back) is that it holds six hdds, sideways (much easier to get in and out if needed) and it even has 2 more spots for 2.5" hdds (my recycled ssd that I use as cache). It also has 3 5.25" bays to add in another 5in3 caddy down the road. It also came with two big fans blowing right on my hdds, so that they stay cooler than in my old case. WIth the sale, i ended up at $35 for the case after rebates. Just thought you'd like to see another possible case option. Looks good so far, i'm still rocking my GB board with a c2d on it

How many drives would you start with in the beginning? Do you have old hardware you want to recycle? (full size atx mb, for example, like i did). The "cheap" way is to get any case that you can fit the amount of hdds you want into. Having hot swap (by which i really mean easy in/out) is nice, but not needed up front. And if you aren't going past the 6 drive limit in the plus licsence, then it really doesn't matter. In fact, there are a lot of GOOD small form factor cases available these days that make going the exact opposite way of a norco appealing, espically if you are buying new hardware, and can go with the ITX form factor. But any case you have with a few fans, few good HDD mounting spots, and a new PS (if needed) and you should be good to go. You can also get this Rosewill RSV-L4500 for $99, is that cheaper than the Norco?

I love my Asus RT-56u. Its gigabit ports were acting weird (it and my 8 port gigabit switch would talk at Gb, but the throughput was like 2MB instead, easily solved by my 24port gigabit switch) My point there was that you don't need Gb on the router, that can be solved with a cheap 8 port switch. But if you have fewer than 4 things that need hardwire, then it is a great saver. I think Linksys is the worst in the router dept, they always need rebooting, or the radios just burn out on the ones I've had. I used to recommend the WRT54G like candy, but now I always suggest something different (though its hard to argue some of those less expensive refurbed Linksys's)

i'll add my .02 If a second drive fails, your parity protection is useless, since it can no longer calculate it correctly. You WOULD lose any data either not recovered by parity at that point, as well as the 2nd drive that fails. you could unassign the parity drive, add in two new drives to replace the failed ones (or just one, since one would have SOME of your data recovered) and then reassign and calculate new parity. Just my .02, you wouldn't need to rebuild/recopy the entire thing. You should ask this question in the general forum though, to get a fully correct answer.

how much storage are you trying to make for this "box for your parents?" I think that for someone who ISN'T going to learn unraid, and not going to tinker, the plus liscence with a "smallish" case and 5/6 drives should be plenty? 5 3TB drives (+ cache, or a sixth) not enough space (make it 4TB drives and even better!). But now i'm telling you want you want, instead of trying to help answer your questions, so its your call.

Indeed I will reactivate my usenet account and use something like SABnzbd. So, yes, I would say that there will be aggressive downloading 24/7. Apart from that it's normal internet usage, maybe streaming something every once in a while, and serving media rips to the devices, of course. That in mind, is the router they're offering me not good enough? My issue with my ISP provided router was the amount of connections. Running torrents 24/7, i would have LOTS of little connections to my router, often many connections from multiple IPs. You will be using newsgroups (which i'm only familiar with from reading about them), but I don't think that needs a lot of cpu overhead to handle thousands of little connections to YOUR router. Most of the connections will be out to the usenet provider, and you'll probably just be maxing out your download speed. I'd say go for it, and if it proves to be problematic BECAUSE you are overtaxing it (the router), then look into an upgrade. If you need more GB ports locally (GB ports to the internet do nothing when your internet is no where near that fast) then get a 5/8 port GB switch (US$30 at the most?) I agree with Fireball3, it looks fine for everything you listed. Unless you have some advanced things you want to do, like VPN tunneling, providing a guest wifi network, providing DHCP reservations to your unraid box/HTPC machines, I think you'll be fine.

I think we need more info: MB model, PCI-X model, and hdd models. Which drive is that one listed in your SS, "third IDE"? Is that how it lists you sata drives? Is your 7200rpm cache drive that 250gb hdd? Is it Sata I/II/III ?? Also, you said you get 83mb on the network via your GB ethernet card on the Unraid machine (I'm assuming here, that you mean you can read FROM your unraid via GB ethernet at about 83MB/sec). Thats pretty good, you can get a little faster, but then you are factoring in EVERYTHING else in your system, etc.

Do you have a seperate switch to use? I would take that router they are offering you, then connect a nice 5/8 port switch behind it, then plug all your wired devices into that. That device has 4 lan ports, but only 2 are GB. So i'd get a GB switch and connect everythign to that, then it to the router. Use the built in wifi on the router. If you start to have issue with wifi/ethernet/etc, then you might look at a more powerful router/etc. What do you do with your internet, do you use anything aggressive, like torrents/newsgroups/etc or is it just your run of the mill usage with lots of media rips stored on UNRAID instead?

I think you can only really compare drives that are exactly the same, or to themselves in old/new setup. You have a BIG mix of drives, older 500gb 7200rpm, newer 2TB 5400rpms, and even a 4TB 5900rpm NAS drive. I expect them to all have different operating temps, even those two WD drives ARE slightly different models. Regarding your fans directions, just use a piece of paper, if it sticks to the fan, its sucking air, if it trys to move away, its blowing air.

Sounds like all you need is an extra internal drive cage? Surely most case manufacturers surely sell? http://www.silverpcs.com/lian-li-internal-floppy-cage/ You might want to look at different case makers to find one that fits the way you want. Just Velcro it down, as previously mentioned.

Can you connect via telnet session to the ip address? I assume you mean you cannot get to the webgui and the shares are also not working? If you can telnet in, i'd shut it down, restart, see if that fixes it. If it runs another 2 weeks and becomes unaccessible, then you need to start disabling addons/etc to test further. You have v5 now, what did you have 2 weeks ago?

Make sure the names of the shares are all right, such as Movies vs movies vs Movie, etc? Is it named differently on the cache drive? Disable the cache drive for that share, copy some files (verify the work), then turn it back on again and try again, manually invoking the mover at the end if needed? Sounds like chcking that /mnt/user0 might be helpful as well, since if "Movies" doesn't show up you have an issue. Also, does the share "Movies" have any special settings for drives, only drive 3, or its trying to copy to an already full drive, etc, etc. I assume the items stuck in the cache drive ARE listed and available on your Movies share along with everything else (they just aren't protected by parity since they never move)?

Could you try a new flash drive with the 3disk version just to see if it boots and responds to the keyboard/etc? That would eliminate the flash drive & addons/etc if it also doesn't work. I have no idea if that would affect your current array though (i imagine not unless you then try mounting hdds). Someone correct me here if i'm totally wrong.

Just because your internet goes down, doesn't mean your server should stop "working". Whats the ips of your unraid server and your win7 machines (I actually don't need the exact ones, i just want to make sure they are 192.168.xxx.xxx or similar). I haven't "verified" that mine still works if my internet is down, but i guess i could try. Do you have a modem, then a router, then all your devices, or is your router also your modem?

I'll upgrade to 1.6 when I get home, as a new user i thought the "links" in the unMENU were kinda meh looking, good timing on a visual upgrade! Question though, is there a general unMENU help thread that someone can link? I don't want to polute this thread if I don't need to. **My issue is that i'm running unraid 5, and i started installing addons/pkgs from unMENU and then realized there was all these new .pkg installs for v5 i should be using. So I just want to be clear as to HOW i remove those (and if i even need to). Thanks!