February 20, 201115 yr I currently have unRaid 4.4 running on a USB stick stuck into the back of a chasis that has three 1.5TB drives and one fourth one as parity. I'd like to make use of the hardware to also run Windows 7 on dual-boot. This would mainly be a PC that my 4 and 6 year olds could play with occasionally. Few questions: 1. Is it possible for me to install a fifth drive and have it completely off the array and allow a dual-boot to Windows 7 which would run off that fifth drive only? 2. If so, what are the steps I would take to do that? Would I just have to connect the sata drive to the mobo and then somehow configure dualboot in the BIOS and then install Win7 on that drive only? 3. IF this is all possible, I'm presuming that while the Win7 OS is being used that the unRaid server would be offline? Main reason for doing this is that I'm recently bought a laptop and have no use for my desktop in the house. THus, I want to sell it but still have a desktop (i.e. the unRaid machine) that would be used very occasionally by my children to play educationaly games, etc.
February 20, 201115 yr Yes, you can do all of that. You can also install Windows to the cache drive, and not have to use an "extra" drive. I do this on all my unRAID servers, since sometimes you need to flash the BIOS on the mobo or a card in the server, and guess what --- nearly every manufacturer makes you do that in Windows. You edit the syslinux config on the flash to give you a menu for dual booting. Or you can install VirtualBox, and run a Windows VM on unRAID.
February 20, 201115 yr Author Yes, you can do all of that. You can also install Windows to the cache drive, and not have to use an "extra" drive. I do this on all my unRAID servers, since sometimes you need to flash the BIOS on the mobo or a card in the server, and guess what --- nearly every manufacturer makes you do that in Windows. You edit the syslinux config on the flash to give you a menu for dual booting. Or you can install VirtualBox, and run a Windows VM on unRAID. Thanks, that's great news...few questions though: 1. By cache drive, you mean the parity drive? Or do you mean one of the other 3 drives I have in there? 2. Anywhere where I can get good instructions on how to either edit the syslinux config for dual booting and/or install VirtualBox and run VM? 3. While I'm in Windows on it, can unRaid still be serving up my files?
February 20, 201115 yr 1. By cache drive, you mean the parity drive? No... the CACHE drive, not PARITY.
February 20, 201115 yr So does that mean the cache drive can be formatted as NTFS and still be recognized by unRAID?
February 20, 201115 yr So does that mean the cache drive can be formatted as NTFS and still be recognized by unRAID? No, not at this time
February 20, 201115 yr See this thread for setting up multiple partitions for use on the CACHE drive: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3899.0
February 20, 201115 yr So does that mean the cache drive can be formatted as NTFS and still be recognized by unRAID? You partition it into multiple partitions, and you can format the other partitions to any FS you want.
February 20, 201115 yr So does that mean the cache drive can be formatted as NTFS and still be recognized by unRAID? You partition it into multiple partitions, and you can format the other partitions to any FS you want. But the first partition will be used by unRAID for the cache drive.
February 21, 201115 yr Author So does that mean the cache drive can be formatted as NTFS and still be recognized by unRAID? You partition it into multiple partitions, and you can format the other partitions to any FS you want. But the first partition will be used by unRAID for the cache drive. Sorry, new to this: So if I have 4 drives: Disk 1 = Parity Disk 2, 3, & 4 = Cache? And to set it up for Windows, what exactly would I have to do?
February 21, 201115 yr Sorry, new to this: So if I have 4 drives: Disk 1 = Parity Disk 2, 3, & 4 = Cache? And to set it up for Windows, what exactly would I have to do? No. You can only use 1 disk for a cache drive. That singular drive can have multiple partitions. The first partition can be used by unRAID if it has a reiser filesystem on it. The secondary and other partitions can be used for whatever purpose you see fit. Using unRAIDs drive/slot naming conventions (from the 5.0 beta series, might be slightly different on the 4.7 series) Disk 0 = Parity Drive Disk 1 = Data Drive Disk 2 = Data Drive ... Disk 20 = Data Drive Cache = Cache drive partition 1 To setup a cache drive for multiple partitions, see the instructions here (posted a second time): http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3899.0
February 21, 201115 yr Author So if my unRaid drives have data all throughout, do I have to take one offline to do this partitioning and then bring some of the data back? How do I actually partition it from where I'm at right now?
February 21, 201115 yr You need a drive without data on it to dedicate to the cache drive. The cache drive is not parity protected in any way. It's up to you to decide if it's right for you. You may want to have a read of this topic to make a more informed decision: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5754.0
February 21, 201115 yr Author You need a drive without data on it to dedicate to the cache drive. The cache drive is not parity protected in any way. It's up to you to decide if it's right for you. You may want to have a read of this topic to make a more informed decision: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5754.0 Thanks, I will. So I suppose I can add a new drive, and in adding it dedicate it as the cache drive and make the whole thing the partition for Windows 7?
February 21, 201115 yr You need a drive without data on it to dedicate to the cache drive. The cache drive is not parity protected in any way. It's up to you to decide if it's right for you. You may want to have a read of this topic to make a more informed decision: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5754.0 Thanks, I will. So I suppose I can add a new drive, and in adding it dedicate it as the cache drive and make the whole thing the partition for Windows 7? You can add in a new disk, partition it as two partitions, the first partition can be formatted as reiserfs by typing mkreiserfs /dev/sdX1 The second partition can have windows installed onto it. The trick will be in booting the version of windows. You might be able to make the disk bootable and choose it from the BIOS boot list. Yo might be able to boot it from an added entry in the syslinux.cfg file using chain.c32 See here: http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/Comboot/chain.c32 You'll have to download the full syslinux package and get the chain.c32 file from it and install it on the flash drive, and then add an appropriate entry for your windows "boot choice" on your cache drive partition, but then it is more of a a technical exercise than anything else.
February 26, 201115 yr Author So here is what I've done so far...can someone tell me if I'm on the right track: 1. Connected a 5th HDD (300GB) into the unRaid chassis. 2. I formatted it and installed Win 7 32-bit on it. 3. My Asus P5Q-L motherboard allows me to press F8 on startup and get a boot device selection menu: thus I can select the removable usb stick that's running unRaid to boot if I want access to unRaid; and I can select the 300GB drive I just installed if I want Win7. I guess if I don't install Win7 as a virtual machine (using Virtual box or something), then I will not be able to have unraid serving files WHILE windows 7 is booted, right?
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