rollieindc

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Posts posted by rollieindc

  1. Hi,

     

    Am a newbie on unRAID, just building my first system, so am a bit confused by the path you suggest - and hoping you can help me understand.

     

    The parity drive(s) in unraid must be the largest or equal to the other drives in the system. You can't set up a parity protected system with your 2 4TB drives and add the 6TB drives later without rebuilding parity.

     

    I guess what confused me is, given the existing data is 3.5TB, my path would be...

    1) back the data up on a 4TB drive (archived offsite copy), then

    2) copy it (a working copy of all the data) to the second 4TB drive, then

    3) take the SSD to make unRAID cache,

    4) use the 4x6TB drives to make

     4a)unRAID 1x parity (6TB) and

     4b) three data drives (3x 6TB) to make the build.

    5) Then, migrate the data from the “working copy” (4TB) drive. Then once everything is conformed as “working” -

    6) reformat the 4TB “working copy” drive and add it to the unRAID array

     

    ... making for a 22TB unRAID (3x6TB+4TB), 128 GB SSD as cache, and a 4TB drive as offsite backup... 

     

    Or do I have a flawed concept of how to do it best/safely? (appreciate any direction/guidance... I’m still learning!)

     

    -Rollie in Washington DC USA (age 57)

     

  2. Yea... I am an old timer (does that make me a crummugeon?) ... (Am currently 57)

     

    I started with a 110 baud teletype and FORTRAN IV on a pdp-8 (even did punchtape, then punchcards)... then worked on a trash 80, a sinclair at home, then a color computer trs-80,  and ordered one of the first IBM/XT’s (pre 8087 add on) for my office. We went nuts with it in the engineering department. So, I got the call to build the next big system (DEC VMS based for finite element codes)... and then had to run it. 24/7 was a pain in the butt. But... yeah. 

     

    Used to program matrix inversion subroutines in pascal in college. It was an esoteric program the prof wanted, but it never worked quite right. Never understood why... but aced the exams, so he had to pass me (with an A-)

     

    The T310 is probably overkill for what I am doing... but... heck... unRAID just looks cool (and better than any RAID options on a NAS). 

  3. So, been a techie for a long time, sometimes a sysop (ran VAX/VMS 11/785 & 8800) - and so I was really interested in unRAID to replace my NAS for my home networking (mainly for semi-pro photography) and run some VMs and apps.

     

    I found a good “excessed” Dell Poweredge T310, single Xeon X3340 (4 cores) @ 2.53GHz with 8GB RAM (DDR3/1066) and 2x 600GB seagate cheetah SAS 10K drives, and dual 400 watt power supplies (for less than $100). Adjusted the boot to do a BIOS boot from the internal USB 4GB sadisk micro cruiser drive I had sitting in my pocket - and downloaded unRAID v6.5 trial. The disk controller (PERC 6i) set to was raid 1, but I booted the system the way it was. Adjusted the network ip4 address, prepped the USB drive... booted...

     

    Bang... up and running! Nice.

     

    Things I want to do:

     

    Hardware:

    Add 2x 4TB Ironwolf SATA drives

    - (have these already in a current NAS)

    Add 4TB or larger ironwolf parity SATA drive

    Add +8GB RAM for VMs.

    Add SSD cache SATA drives (2x 32 or 64GB)

    Add a GPU video card (nVidia?)

     

    Stuff/automation

    Gotta have:

    Fileserver/NAS/Personal Cloud (primary use)

    Secure Document archive (PDFs, etc)

    Mediaserver (music, home videos & movies, plex?)

     

    Like to have:

    Photo website (DruPal, maybe)

    Run VMs for Win 98, XP, 7, 10 and ubuntu studio

    Remote Desktop into vm.

    Maybe minecraft server for the daughter... 

     

    Amazing if I could do it:

    Run apps in Docker to aggrigate research (work) articles (IFTTT?)

    Scientific code runner (eg Blender 3D, Finite Element Codes,  etc)

     

    Already pleased with the speed of the system. Flexibility. Updating for it looks super simple.

     

    Questions: [pointers to other best forum threads appreciated]

     

    The six SATAs on the motherboard... will they support 4TB or larger drives?

     

    Any way to check the life use of existing SAS drives?

     

    Replace the perc 6i to H700? Wondering if I just add some 2TB SAS 7.2K enterprise drives from eBay instead of upgrading it. They look really cheap right now. (have 4 slots, 2 occupied) 

     

    Have a DVD RW drive (one sata port)... best movie transcoder pathway?

     

    System has one dell RD1000 drive slot. No drive in it. Seen many on eBay. Any real value, or sell it? Am thinking it might be a good backup at offsite location (safe deposit box)... dunno. 

     

    Oh, and I have Verizon DSL, (it beats Comcrap available here.)

     

    Thanks for reading... thoughts?

    Rollie