I am new to Unraid so these may be silly questions - if so forgive me.  ;-)

 

I'm interested in building a raid 5 type media server for movies and music.  I have another machine that is running the front end (Xlobby running on Win XP Pro) and I'm pretty happy with that.  I'm looking to add a large network attached storage drive(s) that have some form of protection (hence RAID/Unraid) and I would ideally like to break through the 2TB limitations in Win XP.

 

So I would like to know if you think this will work:

I would like to use a Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R with 6 500 GB SATA drives for 2.5TB of storage.  I don't know anything about Unraid but I assume that you are not limited to the 2TB like Windows is.  Also I can upgrade at a later date to 750 GB drives when they drop in price to increase it to 3.75 GB total.

 

Am I on the right track?  Is anyone using that motherboard with Unraid?  I understand I would have to buy Unraid server plus, which is fine.  If there is a more appropriate motherboard that is fine too - I just would like to have at least 6 sata ports. 

 

Also one final question since I don't know anything about Unraid/Linux.  I will still be ripping my movies and cd's on my media machine running XP but I will just map the Unraid server as a network drive.  That way I shouldn't have to manually be transferring ripped files back and forth.  Is that the way it works?  I assume it doesn't matter to Windows if the mapped network drive is windows or linux but I wanted to check.  As long as the ripped directory (from iTunes for example) can be on the Unraid server I'm all set.  Thanks for your help.

Actually the ASUS P5B-VM DO looks like a good board too and is a little cheaper - will this one work too?

I was thinking this one too. But I finally brought a abit lg-95, I am a bit regert what I have brought, since it only got 4 sata ports. I need to buy a sata controller card now.

 

How about GA-G33-DS3R? It got 8xsata ports, but it's atx.