ajaffarali

Did my research and thought UNRAID was what I wanted. I was running a Mac Mini for Plex with Drobo connected as a storage pool and using my iMac for downloading torrents etc. Finally the Dynamic DNS client on the iMac allowed me to remotely access my downloads and add to them if need be. I figured I would just build one UNRAID tower that could server Plex, download torrents that I could remotely access through DynDNS and have a bigger storage capacity than Drobo's 16GB. Along with that, I thought I'd probably be able to get better speed out of it as well. Starting with speed, I'm getting pretty much a similar performance from UNRAID. Using my WD Raptor as Cache, I get about 45MB write speeds and about the same for reading. Speed wasn't really a concern for me in the first place but UNRAID didn't offer any improvement. With the latest firmware, Drobo now supports unto 24TB so storage issue is also sorted as I move to 3TB drives in the coming months. Haven't really had issues with protection either on the Drobo and it provides tolerance against two drive failures vs one on the UNRAID. Applications is where I thought it would make a difference but it really hasn't. Plex works but it took a bit of configuration and with the latest update, I realized that you'll probably always get a newer version on Mac and PC before Linux. Also I'm uncomfortable upgrading Plex as my initial config took a while to sort out. Transmission on the Mac provides me with a script to unrar files automatically for convenience. Also, after a reboot, Transmission wouldn't start automatically on UNRAID. And finally DynDNS sent me a warning over and froze my free account saying I have started making too many requests and my alternative is to either pay $20 a year or switch to an official client- which obviously doesn't exist on UNRAID. So I think I'll be heading back to Drobo. UNRAID is a pretty awesome solution but not for me. I travel for work once or twice every month and the wife and kids get very vocal when things don't work. While things can work on UNRAID, getting them to work without me being there is a lot harder than just telling them to reset the Mac

Thanks- Did you have any applications like Plex or Transmission set up that use the Cache drive?

I have UNRAID setup using Gigabiyte H55 motherboard that has six SATA ports. On that, I have 1 x 3TB drive for parity, 1 x 300GB Raptop for cache and 4 drives for the array. I was wondering what the effects of removing the cache drive would be? I'm running a bit out of space and want to use the port for an array drive instead. I already have Transmission and Plex installed on the server. Would that create issues? Can I safely remove the cache drive? I'm using 5.0 b14

Ahh- I thought selecting yes to the cache drive in share would basically allocate the cache drive's empty space to that share as well. My bad. I have done this now to the share but don't see an immediate improvement. Maybe a restart of the server or raid is required? Also, where can I set the min-free-space for the cache drive? Don't see that option. Using 5.0b14. Thanks for your help.

Not sure if cache drive is actually caching or not. I have created a share and moved about 50GB of data to it, yet, the cache drive shows that it's almost completely empty! The drive is 300GB is size and it's showing 299.9GB free. Shouldn't the drive show 50GB full and then at night, when the files are automatically moved from cache to the array, come back to its full capacity?

Hello. Just built my first UNRAID Tower with Core i3 3.06GHz and Gigabyte H55 Motherboard. For my drives, I have used a Seagate 3TB for Parity and a WD Raptop 300GB for cache. However, I've notice that speeds of writing data to the tower are very erratic and range between 50MB/s to 10MB/s. Keeps going up and down all the time. A 10GB file is taking about 5 minutes to transfer.

New to UNRAID and a lot of guides seem to be for older versions. Had a quick question that I would appreciate some understanding of. Right now, I have two drives, a parity drive and the flash drive. Using my Mac, I can browse the Tower and I get disk0, disk1 and flash listed as browsable drives. Now, other than the flash drive, I don't want anything else listed here. So am I right to assume that I go to each of the two drives properties and select Export to "No." What I would like to see is a folder called Media that spans across all drives (except the flash drive). So am I correct to assume that I go to Settings->Share and set "Enable User Shares" to Yes and then from the Shares Tab, Add a share with Name "Media" and Excluded disks "flash"? What exactly is Allocation method and split level? If I don't put anything in "Included disks" I am assuming it will include all disks, correct?

Let me know if you would be interested in selling one of them

Thanks- One more question. Does UNRAID support booting from USB3.0? I have a USB 3.0 thumb drive and my motherboard (ECS H61) also has a USB 3.0 port. Will I see any speed advantages using USB 3?

I cant seem to download syslinux from Lime-tree's website in the tools section. Is there a mirror for it? Thanks

Thanks for the responses. From my understanding, the Cache drive is off loaded every night correct? So unless I am putting more than 64GB worth of data on it, it will serve me well. The only scenario I can see is using the cache drive to download torrents with transmission and storing them on there until I move them to their correct folders. Also, am I correct in assuming that you need a 3 drive setup to start- one for cache, one for parity and one for your data. What happens if I add a storage drive with a higher capacity than the one that is used for parity? Do I set that new drive as parity and then use the older parity drive as storage? Is this a fairly easy/automatic procedure?

I've been using a Drobo for a few years and it is connected to Mac. The solution is fairly uncomplicated and running nicely. However, the number of drives is restricted and my collection of movies keeps growing. So I was browsing around and found unRAID. I have a few questions and would appreciate help from the community: 1) I have a 64GB SSD sitting- would this be a good option for using as a Cache drive? Does unRAID support SSDs? 2) My primary purpose is to use unRAID as my Plex Server, my DLNA server and my Downloading server (Bit Torrents). Has anyone used it for the above config? Care to share your experience? 3) Is it possible to connect unRAID to multiple networks? I currently have two networks in my home. 4) Is it relatively trouble-free? How are power outages handled with regards to corruptions etc.? Does it repair itself? I'm sure more questions will pop along the way but that's what I have for now.