Switch From Windows 10 Storage Spaces


Recommended Posts

I'm looking to build an Unraid server and move all of my data over from my Windows Storage Space. The Windows Storage Space performance isn't that great and I feel like Unraid would be better to host all of this data. The server will mainly be used for Plex and I'll probably go with a decent graphics card for transcoding. I have two concerns/questions about the hardware to get started. My Storage Space currently has 14 hard drives, each varying in capacity, for a total of 72.21 TB.  I'm using 27.9 TB of the Storage Space.  I'm curious what is the most economical way to build an Unraid server without buying a bunch of extra hard drives to temporarily host the 27.9 TB of data while I'm moving everything over?  I'm thinking I'll need a minimal amount of storage to get started and I can slowly remove one disk at a time from the Storage Space to be added to the Unraid server. Also, what would be the best motherboard and case to use for all of these drives? I'd like to have them all connected via Sata but I don't know if that's possible. They're all 3.5" drives and I don't know if there's a case that can hold that many drives or maybe there's a better way to do it?

 

I'm curious about the parity and cache drives as well. The documentation shows that you should have two large parity drives. Would two 12TB drives give me a good amount of parity for a pool of this size? How many drives could I lose without losing any data? I would like to install cache SSDs in the server. Can one of the SSDs host the OS or should I have 3 SSDs (one for the OS, two for caching)?

 

Any advantages or disadvantages for using AMD versus Intel processors? Also, any advantages or disadvantages for using NVIDIA versus AMD GPUs?  Sorry for all of the questions and thanks to anyone who takes the time to respond.

Link to comment
5 minutes ago, trurl said:

The OS is unpacked fresh from the archives on flash into RAM at each boot and runs completely in RAM. Think of it as firmware except easier to work with and no bricking. 

Thanks. I think I read that in the setup but assumed it stored something on the hard drives. That's good to know that the OS won't need its own SSD.

Link to comment
20 minutes ago, Dinglestains said:

Would two 12TB drives give me a good amount of parity for a pool of this size? How many drives could I lose without losing any data?

Parity doesn't hold any sensible data, so "amount" of parity is meaningless. The limiting factor is that no data drive can be larger than either of the two parity drives. You can lose 1 drive for each valid parity drive, currently Unraid allows 2 parity drives.

Link to comment
3 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Parity doesn't hold any sensible data, so "amount" of parity is meaningless. The limiting factor is that no data drive can be larger than either of the two parity drives. You can lose 1 drive for each valid parity drive, currently Unraid allows 2 parity drives.

I think that means the 2 12TB drives would be okay in my setup then. The largest drive size I have in the pool of data drives is 8TB. Does this also limit my ability to install larger data drives in the future? For example, if I wanted to install a 14TB data drive in the future, does that mean I would need to upgrade my parity drive to something larger? Or would Unraid simply assign the new 14TB drive to the parity drive and the old 12TB parity drive becomes the additional data drive?

 

Are you saying I could lose 2 data drives simultaneously without losing data if I have 2 parity drives?

Link to comment
12 minutes ago, Dinglestains said:

Or would Unraid simply assign the new 14TB drive to the parity drive and the old 12TB parity drive becomes the additional data drive?

 

Are you saying I could lose 2 data drives simultaneously without losing data if I have 2 parity drives?

 

Yes. Installing a data drive larger than the current parity is more complicated, but the end result is exactly what you describe. In the case of replacing a failed drive with a larger than parity model, the parity swap procedure has you covered. If you are adding a drive slot, then you would first swap the parity drive for the larger one, rebuild parity to it while keeping the old parity aside for the moment, then once that is done you would add the old parity drive to the data slot.

 

NOTE!!! Any backups of the boot USB Unraid stick that were taken before this kind of procedure become dangerous to your data, as drive slot assignments are recorded by drive serial number. The last thing you want to do is forget and restore a backup taken when a current data drive was previously assigned to a parity slot. You would likely lose any data on that drive. Any time you change drive slot assignments you need a new USB stick backup.

 

Each parity drive in combination with the rest of the good drives can emulate and rebuild a single drive. So, yes, if both parity slots are valid and in sync, you can have 2 data drives fail and the contents will be emulated.

 

Parity emulates the entire drive, filesystem, blank space, erased files, etc. That means if you delete or corrupt a file, or format the drive, those changes are synced in parity and the emulated drive will match.

 

PARITY is NOT backup.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.