Hissey

Hi all, I'm building my first Unraid server and would appreciate some feedback on my planned hardware, drive layout etc, before I start moving data and installing OS etc. Hardware     Case: Jonsbo N6     Motherboard: MSI PRO B760M-A WIFI DDR4     CPU: Intel i5-14400     RAM: 32GB DDR4     HBA: Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8i (IT Mode)     Cache Drives: 2 x Crucial T500 1TB NVMe (mirror)     OS Drive: Sandisk Mobile mate reader with 32GB High endurance SD The server will mainly run: Plex, Sonarr, Radarr etc Home file storage Possibly a few lightweight VMs in the future, and maybe add a camera or 2 My current NAS HP Microserver Gen8 running Windows 10: Media storage     2 x 18TB WD NAS drives in RAID1     Approximately 17TB used Personal storage and backups     2 x 6TB drives in RAID1     Approximately 3TB used I also have 2 cold drives that I'll use to copy the data off the old setup and onto the new Unraid setup     1 x 14TB WD NAS drive     1 x 6TB WD NAS drive My proposed Unraid layout Main array - XFS     1 x 18TB Parity     1 x 18TB Data     Initially this only gives me 18TB usable, but I will add more later Backup pool - BTRFS     2 x 6TB drives     RAID1 mirror     Used for: Appdata backups, Important documents/photos Cache pool – BTRFS mirror     2 x Crucial T500 1TB NVMe     Used for: Appdata, Dockers, Downloads, Plex metadata, Any future VMs Questions Array layout Would you: Option A Keep the 2 x 6TB drives as a separate mirrored backup pool or Option B Add them to the main array immediately and gain an extra 12TB of storage? My thinking is that a dedicated backup pool may be more valuable than the additional capacity. Cache pool Are the 2 x 1TB T500s in a BTRFS Mirror a sensible choice for: Appdata Docker Plex metadata Download cache Or would you recommend a different setup? File Systems Current plan: Array - XFS Cache Pool - BTRFS mirror Backup Pool - BTRFS mirror Does that sound reasonable? 4. drive for OS install I've read that a good idea is to use the Sandisk Mobilemate and a decent SD card to install the OS on to. Also I'll be putting it inside on a USB2.0 header. 5. Any first time Unraid mistakes to avoid? This is my first Unraid system after many years using Windows NAS setups. Anything you would do differently with this hardware or storage layout before I start building? Apologies if this is a little long, been trying to read up as much as I can in the last few weeks. I have all the hardware ready to go, i just want to make sure I'm going in the right direction before I copy my data off the HP server and move the drives into the new build. then install Unraid. Thanks in advance