alxnet

I also had similar errors when upgrading to the latest unraid release. One of my parity drives started stalling so I ran a preclear on the drive on a separate machine and it produced pending sector errors. I replaced the drive only to have large CRC errors on multiple drives. After many hours of hair pulling, I figured it out! My LSI 9211-8i had the dreaded P20.00.00 firmware and for some reason, the latest unraid build didn't get along. Upgrading to P20.00.07 fixed everything. No more CRC errors & faster speed in general.

Centurion 590 is a great mid tower case. It'll easily fit three of these: http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Module-Device-STB-3T4-E3-GP/dp/B00129CDGC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1292188704&sr=8-2 giving you twelve 3.5" slots in a good looking and nicely cooling design.

That's my thinking too. I've got some Coolermaster 4 in 3 drive cages which are basically just 3.5" rails, not removable enclosures. I figure these will not only keep the drives cooler, but I don't have to worry about failures in the backplanes of the fancier swappable drive bays. Just one less piece of hardware to worry about.

Welcome to the club. I did a ton of research before jumping in and from everything I've read, Unraid was clearly the superior option in terms of ease of use and the fact that even with multi drive failures, the data on the other drives remain intact. It's also very easy to add drives of different sizes. I'm completely new to Linux, still don't know much about it, but Unraid hasn't given me a single problem since first using it a year and a half ago. I have an Intel brand board (G35 or G41 can't remember which) with a cheap SATA add in card for a total of 9 SATA ports. I'm planning on a MV8 SAS board in the near future. The WD Green drives are great. I've got eight of them now and not one problem. They're quiet and don't generate much heat. I've got a Coolermaster case with three of their 4 in 3 drive cages (for a total of 12 slots) in a pretty compact mid-tower format. As for power supplies, I've had great luck with Corsair. They usually have single rail setups.