djglenn

Thanks both! I will give it a try, update the BIOS and see how it performs. Will need to figure out the least disruptive way to trail it, as if it's boarderline the the VM not be best as a daily Windows 10 platform.

Hi, so my setup has an old i7 2600 CPU, and an Asus P8Z77-V board. The CPU is good, as can find it supports both VT-X &VT-D. I cannot find anything online definitively to suggest the board supports VT-D, just comments that most ASUS Z77's dont. In the BIOS there is nothing definitely mentioned beyond the typical Intel Virtualisation, however when I enable it and check my Unraid system info it says both HVM & IOMMU are enabled... What I would like to achieve is to bring both systems into 1, with unraid the primary operating system (using onboard video), but a dedicated Windows 10 VM using a GPU and booting to a monitor. All advice is welcome, as would prefer to validate if it will work before pulling both systems apart...

Thanks. Disabling the onboard + enabling some Intel options has done the trick. Hopefully now the issues go away as everything pointing to the Realtek controller. Thanks

Hi, I am a bit of a n00b with unRaid / Linux still. I have had intermittent issues with video dropping in Kodi & Plex and a few posts suggested that it could be caused by the onboard Realtek LAN controller. I have just bought and installed a PCI-E Intel Gigabit NIC and it doesn't seem to work straight out of the box. Do I need to install drivers somewhere? Not sure how to do that on unRaid ... D

Thanks for all the advise! After weighing it all up, I am going to attempt to hardwire the ground floor and first floor, using WiFi for the 3rd floor (Unifi unit). I think I can do it with some creative routing and won't cause that much damage overall.. will be about 35m of Flat Cat.7 cable (20+15)...at least "non destructive" is how I have sold it to the wife...shall see I figure this should give me the best mix of streaming and best WiFi performance. Also 8GB of RAM on route, and a 6/8TB drive needed now to act as the parity. Really appreciate all the help and advice, gave allot to consider and makes a weighted decision. Daniel

Wow! I am really blown away by the quality advise being given and areas in which I have never considered when looking at a home network setup. Sorry for the delay my side but was traveling extensively with work and only coming back into "the real world" now. I couple more questions based on the above.. Looking at a Unifi setup... The modem/router I have is the latest from the ISP (Sky) however they are very difficult about allowing 3rd party Ives being used in their place. Appreciate Unifi would just plug straight into it and provide WiFi but it's the quality jeapordised because of the non enterprise router (within the home network)? Also on a receiving end, for my to be unraid board does not have WiFi, so what is the best solution to receive the data as someone mentioned that a usb dongle is not good. PCIE adapter?

Hi, I have the "TP-Link TL-PA9020P KIT 2000 Mbps 2-Port Gigabit Passthrough Powerline Starter Kit" of which have in 4 locations: 1. Router (front hall) 2. Living room / TV & Nvidia shield 3. Main PC (first floor) 4. Bedroom / TV & Nvidia shield

And I am quickly reminded as to how non technical I am, despite having an engineering degree, ability to build and repair PC's and having a career with technical products... What is the difference between Unifi AP's and just a standard wireless connection? Having a quick scan at the logic, it just looks to extend the wireless coverage? I have a wireless signal all through my house, but I found when trying to stream a 1080p video from a central source (Main PC) to a TV via an Android box etc, then it kept buffering every 5s. Also when transfering files... with wifi I was getting 5-10MBs moving a file from one physical location to another, where as with EoP am getting around 21MBs. Complete network novice..however if I should do something better it would massively help as if I have the flexibility as to where I can locate a unRAID box would massively help as can avoid having to locate near my main TV!

The reason why I was looking to the card controller was due to the recommendation within the system builders section in which it's to avoid a "bottleneck for parity sync/check". If I am honest I don't really understand what it does...just that I don't like bottlenecks. Yes, Ethernet over Power..makes more sense that way around :-) How would I go about verifying my bandwidth? I have never come across a MoCA 2 system, but looks really really interesting. Seems not readily available in the UK, but could get imported from the US...thanks! D

Hi, My first post, and it comes after 2 weeks of researching Synology / Qnap / NAS / FreeNAS / unRAID, etc... Long story short, I currently store media in my home (ripped Blu-ray's, DVD's and Music) of which like to be able to access it via NVIDIA Sheild TV's and also my Sonus system (music). Unfortunately I live in a 3 story house, and full hard cabled Ethernet is not an option (wife will kill me), so have ended up going with Power over Ethernet sockets as found wifi unable to stream 1080p+ content reliably. Now the part you need to make sure your sitting down for if your a full server convert..... I currently store data in 2 locations, 1 is my main PC (1st floor) and 2 is my old HTPC (ground floor livingroom, which was replaced by a NVidia Shield). Neither location has any form of redundancy or backup, apart from my photo's which I have on an external USB as well.... The reason why I am using the HTPC to store as well as main PC, is because I have found streaming 4k movies unreliable via Kodi / SMB, and needed to keep them locally to the Shield TV. Both PC's are running Windows (7 for the HTPC, and 10 on Main PC). In general I am finding Widows SMB shares temperamental, am annoyed I have 2 different locations for media, and concerned that I have zero backup (as some of my original disks are now damaged, I would lose the data forever if a HDD packed in). To cut to the chase, I am considering modifying my HTPC build, or building a fresh machine to be dedicated to unRAID. My current HTPC build is: Intel G840 (2.8GHz, 2 core, 64bit) Asus P8ZZ7-M (micro atx motherboard) 120GB Samsung EVO SSD 6GB WD Red HDD 2GB Ram Scythe Big Shurken LP Cooler Seasonic 400W PSU, etc Having lost a weekend reading the FreeNAS forums, it appears in most of their humble opinions that to have a NAS I require a £200 Server Motherboard, + 16GB of ECC RAM, etc. This would result in me binning all of my current HTPC (with exception to the PSU) and spending £500 on new kit. When I read the unRAID forums, it appears to be less onerous (albeit a preference to the above), but believe I should be ok with the above by increasing the RAM, and by adding something like the LSI 9211-8i HBA? Would this be a fair assessment? I dont mind spending the money if its needed, but dont want to waste money going for something overkill for my needs. All I need is a central source to store data, have some redundacy and be more reliable than windows SMB shares. I believe NFS is generally better for Kodi and unRAID supports it.. Also I use Plex for my daughter (to seperate libraries) so would be helpful to have the ability to run a plex server. PS. I assume I could set a scheduler within unRAID to shutdown at night and reboot in the morning to save electricity? Open to opinions, and am fine to invest in new hardware if there is a benefit to doing so! Edit: Its worth explaining the reason why I am looking to unRAID is due to how the file system works, as I have mixed size HDD's and prefer not to lose TB's to a RAID array + like the ability to spin down drives not being used Thanks! Daniel