jensiq

Sorry if this has been asked already but I couldn't find much info on this when I searched the forums. I am about to add an ssd to my unraid box as a cache drive, do I need to pre-clear it? Is there any other testing or anything else I should do to it before adding it? This is my first unraid build and my first cache drive so a bit of a beginner here. Thanks, Jens

Raj - I did edit the host file but not sure if it did much. When I initially started I only had smb turned on but then I enabled afp and now two shares show up for tower, one that's just labeld tower and the other is labeled tower smb. The smb share shows up regularly now and the other one less frequently. Hoopster- I suspect it is the 8111e on this board but nothing that came with the board says what NIC it is... Dinggus- The case has a drive bay that holds 5 3.5" drives and you can add two more 3.5" drives or 3 2.5" drives to the bottom. The number of TB depends on your drives (7x3tb = 18tb + parity). I am using it for pretty much the same thing you are planning on and it works fine so far. Hope that helps.

Raj and JohnM- Thanks for the info, I kind of figured the IDE drives would not work but thought I would check before tossing them out. Alex- Congrats on the finished build! As I was taking pictures I realized I had installed the psu backwards but it was 330am and I didn't want to do anymore work on it. I know Ill be taking it apart again at some point to install another sata cable and a pci express card so i just left it. Seems to be ok for now. Let me know if you get any noise reduction with your foam block experiment as mine is also a little loud and thanks for the tip on the bottom drives, I'll get up to 7 drives someday... Hoopster- Good luck! As I mentioned before I had a little trouble getting unraid 4.7 to work with my build but beta 5 v14 seems to work pretty well. Occasionally it won't show up in my shared devices on my mac but usually once i telnet in it shows up.

Just an update and a few more questions. I have a functioning Unraid server now! I went with the core i3 2100 cpu as it was on sale and according to what i've read not much different in terms of power usage than the 2100t. I went with the Biostar board in my original post and 4gb of kingston value ram but had a hard time getting an automatic ip address and could not set a manual one in 4.7 (i am sure i was making some noob mistake) so I loaded unraid beta 5 v14 and everything went smoothly. Plus I needed beta 5 for plex anyway. Due to the fact that I haven't won the lottery I was only able to add two 2 tb drives at this time. One hitachi and one seagate that I found on sale. Will add more after I have sold off the house, the cars and my first born (should get at least a 3 tb drive for that ) I also went with the coolermaster power supply that Raj mentioned here. Thanks again on the heads up about the power supply! It just barely fit and I had a fun night trying to install that. Here is a picture of the inside. On to my questions: 1. I have a few old ide hard drives taking up space in a drawer, would they be worth installing in my unraid? If so... 2. Would an ide drive make a decent cache drive for now or should I just wait and get something else (small ssd?) 3. If these ide drives will work can you recommend a decent ide to sata converter? Would this work? 4. Do you still recommend this pcie card for sata expansion? Would this work? I have a few external 1 tb esata drives I might want to use (if that's possible???). Thanks again! Jens

Alex- Excellent to hear from someone else interested in the q25. I am in the process of buying parts but it may take a while as money and time are a little tight right now (a 3 week old will do that) but I will update as I can. I ended up going with the cooler master silent pro m600 that raj recommended as it was on sale and had a $30 mail in rebate. Have you found the silver version of the q25 for sale anywhere? I've seen the black version on newegg(out of stock now)and a few other sites but not the silver? As far as the psu orientation i will let you know once I build it. (What Raj said makes sense to me, though) Good luck on your build, would love to hear about it. -Jens

Thanks for the input on the board and the modular psu, that was something I hadn't thought of. I knew this case was small but I really like the way it looks. When I get it finished I'll post again with the final build. Also wanted to say thanks to everyone who continually helps out all us first timers so we avoid a lot of problems (and headaches) it is very appreciated.

Thanks for the reply Johnm. For now i think I'll stick with 4.7. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself yet... Plus I'll save a few bucks too. As far as the supermicro goes your guess is better than mine I'll probably stick with what I have for now unless someone else has a better suggestion. The other question I forgot to ask was, is the psu I chose ok? I just used the one in Rajs build but I have no idea if it will work for this. Thanks again for your help.

Hello, I am looking at building my first Unraid server (and first computer I've ever built). What I am looking to build is a small, energy efficient server, starting with 3-4 drives (7 max?), that will be used to serve video to my apple tv, pc's, iPad, etc. The only add-ons I plan on using will be Plex and/or Air Video. I am thinking I will need something with a little more power than the small builds in Raj's prototype thread. The case I like is a mini itx form factor and I am thinking the cpu I want to use would be an i3 of some sort (2100 or 2100t). The problem I am having is finding a motherboard that fits this specification with more than 4 SATA ports that does not use the Realtek 8111E chipset. My build so far includes the following: Case - Lian Li PC-Q25 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339 CPU - Core i3-2100t http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116394 Motherboard - BIOSTAR TH61ITX+RCH http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138335 (cheaper but has Realtek 8111dl is this ok) or - Intel BOXDQ67EPB3 LGA 1155 Intel Q67 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121513 (more expensive with Intel 82579LM LAN chipset) - Any other suggestions... RAM - 4 gb based on motherboard selection PSU - Corsair Builder Series CX430 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026 Hard Drives - Western Digital green 2-3 tb drives Does this look ok? Would it make more sense to try and modify one of Raj's prototype builds to get what I want? If so any suggestions as far as CPU, etc.? Or would the HP micro servers work? Any suggestions/changes would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!