syrys

Awesome, thanks so much. I will look around and see if i can find a APC UPS for a decent price.

Thanks for your response. I havent started my unraid server, nor purchased it yet (i will be in a week or two after i gather all the hardware). Can you let me know what steps i would need to take after buying the hardware (APC UPS)? So i gather from your last comment, when i plug the unraid pc into the UPS, i should be able to use the unraid GUI to find some UPS settings section? Would i need to install any drivers/software other than the raw unRaid? Cheers

Hey Guys, Im about to start my first unraid server, im just trying to figure out if unraid actually supports multiple cache drives with sort of prioritising? I understand unraid like most other parity raid system, is slow on writes. So if i put a 250GB SSD as cache, it will write to the ssd first then it will write from the ssd to the drives later. But, is it recommended to put multiple cache drives (SSDs and normal spinny drives), if so, is there any way to tell it to prioritise SSDs first then the spinny drives then the actual raid? Sorry if the question is worded badly. If you are confused let me know, i can try draw a diagram or something Also, what are unraid 6.1.x with single parity write speeds like (without cache) for normal drives? what about the write speeds on the dual parity on the unraid 6.2.x? Cheers.

Hey Guys, Im trying to setup a new unraid server soon (moving from different raid system). Im curious, Does unraid have some sort of support for UPS's? Is there a recommended list OF UPS's that unraid works nicely with? So mainly, im just wondering, if i were to go buy a UPS, how do i know if it can safely shutdown the computer (and the VMs) when/if the power goes out? Cheers.

Things im storing are media, for which i have no other backups. They arnt all that important and definatly replaceable, but extra level of protection is very nice to have. Saying that though, i will be using windows VM within unRaid, so i will stick to stable for now and hopefully upgrading the array from 1 parity to 2 when 6.2.x becomes stable doesnt make me want to pull out my hair. I cannot understand why people would be un-interested in this. blows my mind. and to be fair, it would be fairly simple to implement (though they would need to search for every instance of the serial number usage and likely plugins will need to be updated to use the feature), just having a list of serial numbers against a label and instead of showing the serial number, to show the label. In my mind, this is a feature that you would simply expect not request. Ah well, i have no right to complain, im not a paid user yet.

awesome, thanks so much for everyone that helped, i will work on my upgrade hardware

Thanks heaps guys. sorry, i didnt mean to imply rushing to get 6.2.x into stable or anything (i like what limetech are doing, better to be sure than to rush). I use a different software raid (FlexRaid), and im keen to upgrade/switch to unraid. However, the features i require (dual parity) are only available in 6.2.x (i think). The reason i was asking for sort of a stable ETA or stability of the 6.2.x is because im not sure if its a wise idea for me to move to a non stable (beta) version of unraid, and im unaware about what risks i would be taking by doing so. Thus why im trying to get some information before making the decision. I will have a read of the beta release threads. Pretty much the question im trying to decide for my self is: Should i switch to unraid 6.2.x even though its in beta, or put up with the current software raid i have and wait till 6.2.x is out of beta and into stable, or upgrade to unraid 6.1.x (deal with the single parity) and wait for the 6.2.x update? One final set of questions for those of you who are familiar with unRaid. Say i install unraid 6.1.x (latest stable version), when 6.2.x becomes stable, would there be a straight forward easy upgrade from one stable to the other stable (is this automated)? And, if i have a 6.1.x raid with a single parity and somehow upgrade to the upcoming 6.2.x (stable), could then easily add a 2nd parity disk to the raid without having too much trouble (and without risking any data loss in the process)?

Hey guys, hope you dont mind me digging this up again 3 months later. I have couple of new questions. Is anyone able to give me some answers to these? Limetech staff? admins/mods? 1. i see that the 6.2.x version is now available to be downloaded on the main download page under beta. Does anyone have an ETA on when 6.2.x will be classified under "stable"? 2. is there any known bug list for 6.2.x? If i install 6.2.x beta version, i want to know what im getting my self into Obviously not good if there is any risk of losing all my data haha. 3. Is there any way to Label (give custom name) to the drives you add to unraid array? The reason i ask this is, i tested an older version of unraid about 6 months back, and on the drive array page it was listing the drives with some serial number of sorts. So, if some drive fails (and if i have a lot of drives), there is no easy way for me to tell which drive that actually failed is (i will have to unplug things one at a time to see which is which). Same goes for when you are upgrading/replacing a drive for example. With my current software raid solution, i can give each drive on the raid a custom name (say HDD_A, HDD_B, HDD_C), and i can write down the custom name on a label on the physical drive, so when i open the box, its easy to replace any given hdd. If such feature is not included, could i please request it? Thanks guys.

hey CHBMB, TY for the response. 2a: yup, ill try find a way to contact them and explain my situation 2b: yup, im aware. I would definitely need one of the 2 bigger tiers for the media server, but all other machines could do with 3-4 drives at max (they are just common every day gaming/work pcs, so free or bottom tire will do). 2c: ah, i think we are talking about 2 different things. When i was asking about license expiring, i meant about the "free" license. as itimpi claimed, free license needs to be renewed every 30 days?. Im just not sure if this is true, and if so, what this involves. 3a: i see, yeah i will look more into that. I was just looking for a bit of flexibility here, off the top of my head i cant come up with reasons to need it, but having such feature obviously means that its more future proof if your requirements change right? because settling with a file storage system is a big deal, and for home users, its a great deal of money/investment. Just to give you an idea, due to unRaid not having multi parity, few months back, i have chosen to go with flexraid. I have always loved the idea of unRaid, but it just didn't meet my requirements (still dont, but 6.2 sounds like it will). But just to give you an idea, to swap from flexraid to unRaid (without any data loss), i would like to spend another $500-1000 or so of hardware (new drive to migrate to, probably even a new pc, + licenses), and thats not a small cost for a home user, so i need to be really sure i want to do this, thus the huge wall of questions haha 3b: Yeah understand. im in no way saying unRaid is not worth the money. I just mean the payment structure is targeted for more advanced users rather than the average joe home user (probably for good reason, as they arnt the target users). Saying that though, in my scenario, if i were to use unRaid on all my machines, my media server will use a dual parity array of 5+ drives + windows VM, and all other machines will simply use an array with 1 or 2 ssd + HDD and a Windows VM (nothing else). As you can tell, the extra computers arnt really using unRaid, its just so the 2-3 drives can be combined as well as the benefits of running the OS in a VM (maybe im being silly for installing unRaid on those computers huh?). But saying that though, i can see the concern with pricing. But i still feel that passing a drive to the VM (windows) shouldnt be counted towards the unRaid license (but by all means, count the ones used for the array), as it does not make use of any unraid features (as opposed to installing windows directly instead of through unRaid), as well as create extra trouble for home users as they need to keep a track of the drive counts and license details when buying/adding drives to the pc. All the above comments are from my perspective anyway. Im by no means trying to devalue unRaid nor offend anyone (sorry if i do). Its just another perspective (from a potential client base) for maybe LT staff to read and consider

Hey There, Thanks for the response, and sorry for my late response. First of all, i should clarify, are you actually associated with limetech or just a community member aiding support to me? Just checking Fair enough. In related to this. 1a. is there any way i can get in on this beta? 1b. I i install 6.1.x now, would i seemlessly (without too much effort and no risk of loosing any data on the drives etc) be able to upgrade to 6.2 later when it comes out? 1c. If 1b is yes, then can i effortlessly add 1 more drive to my existing 1 parity disk array as a 2nd parity (since 6.1.x does not have 2 parity and 6.2.x will) without too much effort and not risk loosing data from the array? 1d. is theer any other information that we have in regurds to release time (for 6.2)? Reason im asking is, i dont want to regrest moving to an alternative (and investing too much in it, already have amd prefer not going too far down the path), and at the same time dont want to regret waiting around for ages in hopes for the 6.2 launch and potentially risking my data in the meantime. 2a. Great, i might do that. Im guessing you are not part of limetech, and i probably should be approaching you with this question? 2b. for couple of my machines, the 3 attached device limit should be alright, but atleast 1 of them would need quite a bit more (small home file/media server). 2c. Do you know what the process of "renewing" the license is? If it expires, what does that do? Disable the entire system? 3a. So, good use case 1: if your machine has multiple SSDs (lets say performance ssd like samsung 850 pro and cheap ssds like samsung 850 evo), and you want certain folders/virtual-drives attached to certain SSD (ie. OS installs on the performance SSD). Use case 2: You might want 1 array for performance (SSD + 1 or 2 performance HDDs like WD Blacks) for game/app installations, and another array for long term storage with 1 or 2 parities. Heck, im my case, i prefer to have a 1 parity array and a 2 parity array if possible (and use them for different reasons like media storage vs backups). 3b. hmm, that second part is annoying. I really wish that the limitation only applies to the drives in the array and not the drives passed through to the VM. I mean, i can understand that is limetech's business model, but some of us (me) wants to use unRaid for consistency between all my machines (use unraid on all rather than just 1) and not use most of its features, but having to pay extra for simply passing my drives through to the VM kind of annoys me a bit. I really wish limetech would reconsider this. Cheers.

Hey There, Im interested in using unraid, but I have few questions before committing to the time/money investment. Hopefully someone here might be able to help me make the decision easier 1. Does unraid support multiple parity disks? (multi disk failure without loosing data). 2. I tested unraid couple of months back, but at the time, i didnt see any multi parity option (maybe i was mistaken), but one of the latest Linus videos, i saw some options on his screen indicating multi parity. Im assuming he was using a beta version. So assuming the current version of unRaid does not support multi parity, can i have a rough ETA on when this will be available? 3. I would like to upgrade most of my PCs to use unraid, not to use unraid functionality, but mainly because of consistency and the benefits of running the OS in a VM (backups, remote control etc). So, from a cost perspective, would i then need to buy individual keys for every box? or, is there some multi key package i can buy? As you can tell, the price is not cheap if you install it on all your machines, however, i do not argue the price vs value (if you use unraid for all its features, its very much worth the price, but in my scenario, i will hardly be using its features). 4. How many different unraid disk arrays can you have at one point? Im assuming its only 1, but is there any plans on the future of adding multi array support? If so, do you have an ETA? 5. Can you use a drive that is not in the unraid array? Lets say i want to install VM into a completely seperate drive (not one that is on the array), some super special SSD maybe. Or, what if, i want to have one of my VMs have access to a drive that is plugged into the computer but not part of the unraid array (some drive pass through option?)? Is any of these possible? That is all for now, i may have few more later TY in advance.

Hey Guys, I had a look at a new unRAID installation and saw that there wasent an obvious functionality to allow usb devices being plugged into the machine and automatically detected by the (windows 10) VM. I saw the msg saying "USB hotplug support is not yet implemented", which im guessing is the feature im looking for? So my question is, is there any work around for this? Im using unRAID mainly to run multiple windows VMs on the same machine, but i want to be able allow windows (atleast one of the VMs) to be able to automatically detect any USB devices that gets plugged in. If there is no work around, is there atleast an ETA on this feature? Cheers.