CornerSage

They are back up on ebay but the price is up to $300 + $24 shipping to my location. http://cgi.ebay.com/SuperMicro-SC933T-R760-CSE-933T-R760B-3U-15-Bay-Chassis-/360318031906?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53e4a0d822 Now I am thinking again. You might check this out if you haven't seen it already. There are two different listings that have the case with guts for $500-$600. That's a tough price to beat. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8705.0

I guess I ordered mine just in time. Almost makes up for missing out on the Supermicro motherboard steal last week. Now I just need to find a great deal on another board. These look like great cases.

Looks like they already upped it to 116.99.

Not in the same case unfortunately. You would have to add a motherboard, CPU, memory, etc., and I don't think there is enough room in that case, not to mention problems with airflow, rear panel ports, and such. I don't think it is a good choice for unRAID.

Is this how everyone is ripping their DVD's? I was planning on ripping directly to the unRAID array, but I didn't realize it would tax the parity drive. Isn't demuxing just separating the audio and video? Can you please explain why ripping it locally and then moving it over is better than ripping it directly?

I haven't researched it yet, but what about all of these new TVs coming out that are DLNA certified, let you install Web apps, have Google TV built-in, etc? I tried a first-generation HP MediaSmart TV and it was horrible, but I think this new generation is much better. Has anyone tried installing Twonky or something to stream directly to your TV without another machine in the path? I currently have a couple of machines running Windows 7 Media Center and that works pretty well, but I'd like to get away from Windows. It's also a bit of a pain to watch TV episodes online because the "Internet TV" options inside of Media Center are pathetic, so you have to either go directly to the TV network websites via Web browser or use Hulu or Boxy, so break out the keyboard. There may be third-party applications that you can install to work around this somewhat, but I haven't looked into it. I'm playing with an XBMC box, but made the mistake of purchasing untested hardware to install it on and haven't worked through all of the issues yet, but the interface looks promising and it is widely used. The wife really doesn't care for the Windows Media Center setup because of its inability to easily stream online content, but I think she will like XBMC if I can ever get this box working right. Of course, I could also resolve 90% of her issues with Media Center if I just recorded or downloaded the content she wants to watch onto unRAID instead of trying to stream it live, but that's a less than ideal workaround for a significant (but understandable) deficiency. I have not tried streaming online content in XBMC yet, so I don't know if it's any better.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/10/01/10000-hard-drives-stolen-craigslist-hard-drive-market-crashes/ They're gonna need a lot of plywood.

Well then I urge you to not look at this! I almost ordered that board last night, but decided there was no rush since it was good until the first. Little did I know the Egg was going to be giving them away a few hours later and unRAID users would come out of the woodwork to take them off of their hands. Oh well. I guess I'll have to wait to catch the next one. What a steal!

Great work Raj! I really appreciate your contributions to this forum, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I have found many of your posts very helpful and I'm sure these designs will be well used. You should get a kick-back from the sellers. It would be great if we could set up some kind of group buy discount.

Dammit! Why did I go to sleep last night. This board would have been perfect. :'(

unRAID runs on a flash drive, so no spinning disk (or SSD) required there. Check out this new forum which is a great way to start and will save you a lot of time: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial Here's a great deal on a widely supported unRAID board (though it's probably not the best choice for your use unless you decide against the VMWare): http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8496.0

Great work. No doubt this will be immensely helpful for new users. Perhaps we could also provide links to other helpful resources for more details on specific steps and tools (like unmenu and preclear) - uh, like you already did.

Hey Raj, I noticed you recommended DDR2 memory for the Supermicro MBD-C2SEE-O 20-drive beast. Doesn't that board require DDR3?

well, whether it's cheap depends on what you've ordered...and I reckon you said "I don't know what to do with it yet" in jest....right? In all other respects, unRAID can be considered cheap, yes (needless to say, buying parts that are seeing no use is pretty pricey ) Yes, in all seriousness, I believe unRAID is a great value for most users. Unfortunately, I too suffer from Raj's inability to pass up a good deal on perfect unRAID hardware (which is darn near anything).

You make it sound easy and hard at the same time. I don't know if I should be scared or encouraged.

I'm not sure if I agree with unRAID being cheap... ever since I discovered this forum, I've spent hours of time reading posts and watching Newegg for the perfect unRAID parts. Then I spend a bunch of money ordering parts I don't even know what I'm going to do with yet. Worst of all, I'm still trying to justify to myself why I need to spend $300 on a Norco 20-bay hot-swappable RAID chassis (or better yet, the 24-bay) to store my current 3TB collection.

If a guy has $4500 worth of hard drives and has to resort to building a case out of plywood to save money, I can't help but wonder where did he get the hard drives and what is he doing with 96TB of space? And why is it so dang big? ...but I can't help but love the simplicity. Removable motherboard tray? Why would I need that?

I'm new to all this myself, but since nobody else has posted a response yet, I'll throw in my 2 cents. Since unraid is software RAID, it is probably not a good idea to virtualize it. I'm sure it could be done, but I don't think it would be wise. The software should sit as close to the hardware as possible, and the layer of abstraction provided by virtualization could cause some problems. That's just my opinion. I have no experience in this area, so take it for the inexperienced opinion it is, but I wouldn't want to be the first to do it. I did some quick research on the topic before I built my first unraid box and I think the experienced users also recommended against it, but hopefully one of them will tell you if that's true. I can't think of a technical reason why you couldn't do it. I have no experience with MS Exchange or running VMWare with unraid. I believe most users install tuner cards in other machines and have them record to their unraid array rather than trying to run a tuner/recording app with unraid. I haven't found experienced unraid users mixing much with their unraid install, but maybe I just haven't looked hard enough yet. It would be nice to run additional services on a 24/7 machine, especially one that is often underutilized. I'm sure other users will chime in with things they have done. If you haven't figured it out already, this forum is excellent. I think some users do have their favorite episodes downloaded automatically using additional software, but I haven't had time to look at that yet. There are some posts about it here somewhere. Good luck!

3 fans? Your hard drives would fry. It's impressive to look at, but who would buy it? For that kind of money, I would think you could get something with much better use of space. They make 4U 60 drive JBOD enclosures (granted, maybe not for $4,199). It would be fun to build though, and it would keep you warm in the winter

This is a great deal for a cheap build, but there is some question about whether the Asus M4A78LT-M-LE is fully compatible with unRAID. Rajahal wanted to make it the budget board recommendation, but it sounds like a couple of users have had problems with the onboard NIC so I think he is waiting to see how that shakes out. For the price, I'm tempted to try it anyway and hope a fix is released in the next version of unRAID. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.510589 Here is a link to a post regarding the NIC problem: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6304.0

Any updates upraider? I really want that board to work.

Does anybody have any updates on the ASUS M4A78LT-M LE? You can get it for about $73 at Newegg right now with a Sempron 140 and free shipping (combo deal) http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.510589. I really want to make that board work and I'm tempted to give it a try since it's so cheap with so many great features, but it's not worth it if it's just going to cause headaches. Has anyone gotten it to work without adding a separate NIC?