jaybee

The downstairs cupboard could be a candidate then. Thing is, how do you measure whether it will be ok in there. A temp guage is just going to show it being same as room temp really. as you say airflow is the issue. I will have to suck it and see I guess I think you guys have talked me out of the loft idea.

Perfect post at a perfect time OP as I need to buy some for my build. One thing I notice is that people do love to use the hot swappable drive bays like from Supermicro and Icy Dock etc, but I can't really think why to be honest. I mean, honestly why would you need them to hot swap a drive if it fails? Assuming a drive fails once a year, I'd rather spend an extra 5 minutes pulling the drive cage/cables and installing a new drive, than spending hundreds of pounds more to save 3 minutes. Or am I missing something? Yes they look pretty, they can give HDD activity LED and power status LED, but for me, I'd rather just use the unraid status reports to get any drive issues reported rather than have to physically look at the server as mine will be out of the way when complete. I will probably use those coolermaster drive bays. Nice one. EDIT: Of course one advantage to using the expensive stuff is you can use 5 in 3s which maximises drives that can be used Forgot about that.

Thanks for all your help. Really excited about getting my build going. I have come onto these forums and within a day or two have found out everything I wanted/needed to know, and then some extra stuff as well! The wiki is very useful and the forums are great. Literally everything I wanted to know or understand has been answered. I'm sure more will come as I install it all and think of more questions though! I will certainly look into a UPS, I know it's been on my lift of things to buy for a while. Do the batteries eventually die? What is the lifetime on them? Anyway, I am off to order some 2TB drives and a case I think.

Here in the UK I would say the loft can peak in summer at maybe 30c. In winter it can get very cold and slightly damp right down to maybe only a few degrees C. Now my instinct tells me no, don't do this on a server with multiple HDDs especially in summer time, but I know people who do run them up there. The thing is, I don't have a better place in my house to put a whopping great noisy server, and if it's in the loft out of the way I can run the fans speed much higher as noise would be a non issue, so this could aid cooling. I was also thinking of venting fresh air to it. On the other hand, maybe it would be easier to just run it more quietly in my lounge cupboard or in my kitchen on top of the fridge freezer. I certainly do not want it audible in any room I would watch TV in. Thoughts?

Whenever I have read on forums people talking of backup/transfer speeds on their home lan, more often than not the most popular recommendation is to reduce the bottleneck of realtek or other onboard ethernet, and switch to an Intel pro dedicated card. Whether or not this is effective I cannot say from first hand experience, but there seems to be a fair following for using them as they have better throughput. i.e. Yes gigabit ethernet in theory is capable of 125 MB/s, but you will never get this in reality. Intel Pro can make it be nearer to that number. However, I will personally be seeing what I get out oy my realtek before potentially buying an Intel. Every little helps I guess.

Brilliants stuff. So, if I so wish, I can shut the server down and bring it online as and when I like with no issues? I mean each time I turn it on it won't require hours to reinitialize or anything like that? i.e. It responds as a normal OS in terms of shutdown and startup routines and will not cause problems by NOT running it 24/7? How far away is the much talked about version 5 release? I mean roughly...are we talking this year? Thanks for the help!

Interesting thread. I am sure my proposed motherboard for myunraid server uses a similar NIC. I will check the model and post back. Is it not recommended to run an Intel Pro anyway for best speeds with unraid boxes? Are they pricey? I take it they are PCI-e now? EDIT: Just had a quick look on scan.co.uk and they have an Intel Pro PCI for £20 and a PCI-e dual port for £120. I take it the PCI gigabit intel pro is still ok to use and no reason to get the PCI-e dual port one for a lot more money? (unless you need dual port which i don't)

OK fantastic. Few more..... 1: What about cost of licence. Does the cost/licence cover me for upgrades in the future for life? 2: How does unraid box react to power outage/power cut without a UPS. i.e. shutdown unexpectedly? 3: How fast do people find their servers boot? Does anyone use it as an "as and when" server or schedule it to only be online during certain hours to save power? I mean sometimes I maybe will only need it on once every few days and I am all for saving power where possible.

Wow thanks for such a quick and informative reply. I think your response highlights why unraid is where it's at for community support which is a big part of my choice for what to go for. Let me reply to the ...errr...replies on a quote by quote basis as below in bold. Thanks again Appreciate it. Only Limetech might know the real answer to this, but why does any software company limit what its software can do. Why do some companies offer multiple version of the same thing (MS Windows, MS Office, Apple FinalCut Express/Pro). I can only see the limit as a decision based on not allowing enterprise/business use exploiting a cheap method to get vast storage arrays. However, any serious business would use a RAID/server setup with completely different storage and OS requirments so I can't see it myself. Just seems a bit limiting for no reason really, unless there is a software/hardware issue when using more than the limit. Of course you can upgrade drive sizes over time. 3TB drives are currently not supported but you can add 22 drives to a current unRAID machine. Sorry what I mean is....say in 3 years time, I decide my 22 x 2TB drive unraid box (i.e. I am on the limit) becomes not enough (heaven forbid! but just trying to plan ahead for long term) what if I then want to make it a 22 x 3TB array. Is this possible? I thought one of the issues with unraid was that it couldn't create a new array without re doing everything....hmmm....Maybe I am thinking of zfs/zpool limitations actually. So to confirm, it can respan/expand in real time so I could have: 10 x 1TB and then could add 2 x 1TB drives to make: 12 x 1TB and/or could expand it also by adding 2 TB drives if I so wished like: 12 x 1TB + 2 x 2TB = 16TB and could just as easily replace them all with 2TB drives making: 12 x 2TB? Right? Check the Customization forum, and the wiki. I have created a Transmission package that can be installed via a community created addon called unMenu. You can also install Crashplan on your unRAID server to do backups. I run both of these applications on my unRAID machine. I will check it out, thanks! No, not that this time. If you ask me this is not what you want to do anyway. Use unRAID as a server OS, like it is designed for and get yourself a small ION based nettop to use for XBMC. I agree, two different tasks. I was trying to save money! But you are right, should use a separate box for the XBMC. There is a thread in the Applications forum discussing the installation of PS3MS and getting it to do transcoding. I see it! Awesome, looks very promising I will check it out also. ummmmm, parity does update in real time... there is not a lapse or interval of any sort... any link where you might have read this??? I mean, flex raid (sorry to keep bringing it up but looks like the main competitor) used to operate parity by only every calculating on a scheduled basis like say overnight, but now has brought out flex raid LIVE where it does it in real time. Has unraid always been able to calculate and protect instantly in real time then? I was not aware of this. LimeTech has always been good about replacing failed flash drives. They go based on the honor system for the most part. Though if you start requesting a lot of replacement keys you probably will not get any new ones, and your previous ones might get banned. OK that's good to hear....but it does put a lot of faith in an individual I do not really know replacing it in the future as a good will gesture. i.e. Just an online entity for specialist storage requirments only contactable via email/web. That's my concern, what if he is not around? 20-40 for writes is about right when writing directly to the parity protected array. If you use a cache drive the writes could/should be faster. Reads are typically as fast as your network and hardware can support. I understand, sound's somewhat slow to me to be honest, mainly thinking of backup routines, but I guess for media use it's ok as even with HD streams you are not going to need more than 10 or so MB/s? Correct? One final question...is there any attempt in the future to make it protect for a 2 drive failure, as at the moment I think I am correct in saying that flex raid CAN do this, and can use a cache drive at the same time.

Hi, I am currently reading up massively on this using the wiki etc. I have looked into this before but really need to build a server now. I have been looking at flexraid as a competitor but do not like the lack of support it gets. Can someone fill me in on the below questions please? 1: There is a limit with unraid as to the amount of drives that can be used. Why? What possible benefit does this have for the creators of unraid to limit users in this way? 2: Can one upgrade the storage inside an unraid array so that if an array was using 10 x 2TB drives, they could swap to using 10 x 3TB drives? i.e. Can you expand the array on the fly without rebuilding from scratch then getting rid of the older smaller disks? If so, then question 1 above isn't so much of an issue. If not, is this going to become a feature? 3: How difficult is it to bundle on extra duties to the OS like torrent and backup clients? 4: Is it possible to run XBMC client on an unraid box in addition to the main OS? 5: Is it possible to run PS3MS (PS3 media server) or a media server that can do on the fly transcoding of full 1080p streams on an unraid box as an add on feature? 6: Is it possible to have real time sync, rather than the parity updating at an interval in the future like overnight updating? 7: What if my USB drive fails with the GUID on it tying it to the licence? 8: What performance are people typically getting for reads and writes? The wiki pages mention 20-40mb/s reads, is this not a bit low? Many thanks, if I find out the answers to the above as I keep reading I will tick them off.