opentoe

Most of them will be streamed to a media player like a Popcorn Hour or Dune. And sometimes being streamed right to a computer on the network using VLC as the player.

I agree. It is very easy to make a boot flash and just try it out. That's what I've been doing for a few days now. The hard part for me is trying to move 3TB of data to empty space somewhere so I can free up those drives to use. What a pain in the neck! When you end up with let us say 15TB of movies, pictures and data how the heck does anyone back that up entirely? I guess that is when you really need RAID+stripe for even a less fault tolerance. Would you trust that 2 hard drives will never go bad at the same time? I've never experienced that myself but would believe it could happen.

What is the largest drive unRAID can support?

Do you suggest making a usershare for each of my folders (movies, photos, docs, etc...) or just make one usershare and then create sub-folders in there?

I'm probably going to setup an array tonight or tomorrow. Using 3 data drives, one parity and maybe one cache. I will be using the array as one large drive, using a share. My first question is this, and these are all examples. I want a basic setup. I would like to have MOVIES, MUSIC, PHOTOS, etc...now would I actually create each one of those as a USERSHARE or create them in a USERSHARE? What would be for better performance? So I can either have multiple USERSHARES or have one USERSHARE and then create folders in that share. Then I would be accessing that data via NFS, SMB, etc.... Then of course the split level. I think the problem is there are too many areas/examples scattered all over the place it is hard to nail down the best method. I'll be using the latest stable release. I want the best performance and just want to the array to fill up normally. I will NOT be accessing the drives independently unless for emergency purposes. Again, I'd like to select for what would be for best performance. I just purchased a Plus license and I'm almost ready to go! I'm also still reading about preclear. Again, there's multiple entries and areas where that information is stored so trying to figure out which way is the best method is difficult. The drives I will be using are fairly new. They were already in a RAID system with no problems. I trust them, since I have been using them. Can anyone give some feedback on this stuff? Thanks a million! Michael

This should be part of a list that has tips/tricks.

Thanks for that info. Makes me want to stick with the recommended Super Micro card that everyone suggests. I just want to best card I can get, to maximize throughput.

Wait a minute, unRAID doesn't support 3TB drives? This entire time I have been thinking it does. I actually just bought a Plus license for $69. Is this confirmed?

Just need it for storage and to stream videos/music from. Includes all formats, speeds and types. Bluray too. No torrent, no email, nothing else needed.

That's exactly what I'm going to do. I have two raid mirrors using 4 1TB drives. I'm copying off all that data and will setup a small array with three of those drives and try it out. Of course later on I will upgrade the drives/case/mainboard for better performance. Good suggestions and tips here! I also only use high speed drives like WD Black series. I know they are power hungry, but I just want that extra performance. I do always wonder what the difference would be by using all 5400 drives, since they are much less expensive. I know when I use a computer that has a 5400 drive, it is slower than a machine with a 7200 drive. Very noticeable and maybe unRAID will present the same type results.

Anyone have good/bad things to say about the High Point Rocket Raid cards? They make just about every configuration and price point. Here are a couple examples. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115027&cm_re=highpoint-_-16-115-027-_-Product http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115060&cm_re=highpoint-_-16-115-060-_-Product Also, do any of the experts know what the difference between SAS/SATA and just SATA cards are?

Thanks. Since the SATA card is a very important piece of the system I'll most likely buy a very good one. Makes sense. I'm looking forward to getting up at least a three drive config to test out some speeds and such. That Supermicro card is only $100. That's not too bad considering how important it is. I heard RocketRaid cards are good. Anyone use any of them here, and do they perform better than this SuperMicro card? I basically want to buy the best SATA card I can. Well, I appreciate all your answers...and I've just tapped the top of reading ALL the information that is out there. Eventually I'll have to buy a 10 bay case, which will be a fun thing to do.

Boy o boy...my brain is overloading with too much information! After seeing Raj's proto builds it really gets me thinking why spend $850 is a 5 bay Synology box? I have a question though...I see he uses the AMD 140 chip in most of the systems. Is that chip robust and fast enough to handle as a good high end video server type machine?

My main board only has 6 onboard SATA connections. I'm going to end up with a 9 bay case. I'll eventually maybe add more than 6 drives. I have a couple of questions regarding the PCI-E SATA cards. Which are of a good quality and fast? Are they slower than the onboard connections? And which drives do you hook up the onboard connections and/or the PCI-E card? I'm struggling to find the "sweet" setup for this. Thanks!

I already have an Intel board that has 6 SATA ports on it. It has a dual core 1.6 processor on it already with 8GB of ram. Would this kind of board work well with Unraid? I may at least give Unraid a try first before I dump $900 into a Synology box. I already have all the hardware, the only problem I have is there is data already written on my array and I have no where to put it! Anyway, anyone recommend a good mainboard with built on video that has an INTEL NIC onboard??? I'm not %100 sure if my current board is supported, but I'll have to check. ** I just found out my board is an Intel DQ35MP series board. I wonder if it will work.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm at a stand still right now with my media player. I've used up all my 4TB of space and need more. Several people keep telling me to check out the new Synology 1511+ 5 bay NAS box. This box just itself cost around $650. Then have to fill it with hard drives. The read/write speeds of this box are incredible. Over 100MB/sec for both. That's what I need and want since I'll be transferring large files across my LAN all the time. I have a 1000Mbit home network. I know Unraid can't read/write that fast, but since the cost of building a box is much more less expensive than the Synology was wondering how would Unraid actually be in a media file playing environment? If Unraid can't perform across the network to play high bit rate movies, then well that settles it. Anyone using this as a media server type box and gets good speeds and no problems with high bit rate files? I guess I'm just looking to hear information as to why I should at least try Unraid for this type use. Thanks!