My First Unraid Media PC - Upgrading from a Windows based htpc.

[Shane Israel]

Back in early 2016 I put together a relatively low cost budget media PC. I spent around $300 total on a combination of new/used parts to put together a basic Windows PC to run Plex / Sonarr and Radarr with hardware transcoding using a 1050 Ti.

Surprisingly this little computer worked great, I wrote a number of powershell scripts to automate syncing my files down from my seedbox and and then passing them to Sonarr/Radarr to organize into my media pool. For a good 6 years this setup ran great with hardly any issues. However, recently it has started to show its age. With the amount of media I have collected, and the lack of drive bays that the case can hold (had to go with a tiny cheap case) I have had to resort to using Proboxes over USB which works, but isn't ideal because they suck at staying cool. 

To keep my data safe I was running Snapraid with 2 parity drives but because of the amount of data I had on this thing, the lack of memory (RAM), and the low spec'd dual core CPU snapraid was starting to struggle. I also knew that if I was going to upgrade, it would be best to do it now rather than later when I have even more data to move.

It became such a chore to keep this PC clean that at some point I just gave up.

The Windows PC Build

• CPU - Intel i3-6100 3.7Ghz
• MOBO - ASRock H110M-ITX/ac
• RAM - 8GB DDR4
• PSU - EVGA 500W (Non Modular)
• OS Drive - 250GB SSD
• STORAGE - 36TB + (2 x 12TB) Parity Drives
• CASE - Some super cheap Cooler Master.

 

 

Yeah somehow this thing ran for 6 years and had no issues... I would just remote desktop into it whenever I needed to do anything which wasn't very often and I would access Sonarr/Radarr over the web.

Oh and before I had the Proboxes to store my drives, I just double sided taped them together into this drive sandwich since there wasn't anywhere to properly mount them. I completely forgot I did that until I opened it up and started taking it apart and cleaning it last week while building the new PC.

 

 

So after a bunch of research into solutions I came upon Unraid which is the perfect solution for my use cases.
 

1. Docker built in. Awesome.
   1. Which will allow me to host many of my own personal projects that I code on and use, before this I was hosting them in docker on my mac mini, but I don't like to leave it running for extended periods of time.
2. Data protection built in.
3. Huge community and support.
4. Great documentation.

 

The Unraid Build

• CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core @ 3700 MHz
• GPU - Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti
• PSU - Seasonic 850W
• RAM - 16 GB DDR4 3200Mhz
• MOBO - Asus ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING
• OS Drive - 32 GB Cruzer Fit Flash Drive
• CACHE Drive - 1TB M.2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus
• APPDATA Drive - 480GB Crucial SSD
• STORAGE - (1 x 12TB Parity) (1 x 12TB / 4 x 8TB)
• CASE - Fractal Define 7 XL (plus additional drive bay mounts)

 

Honestly the most expensive piece was the case, this time around I wanted a good case that is easy to work in and keep clean as well as proper space for all my potential drives. The PSU I already had and the GPU was cleaned up and still works great for hardware transcoding my Plex server. I also replaced all the case fans with Noctua fans.

 

I currently only have 1 parity drive at the moment since I took one of the 12 TB I had before and moved it into the array for data storage since I wanted to get rid of some of my older 2TB and 4TB drives. So I am currently on the lookout for an additional 12TB drive so that I can have dual parity again as soon as possible.

 

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Edited May 12, 2022 by Shane Israel
Remove an image, update windows media pc build with the PSU. Resize images.

[Shane Israel]

I have since completely cleaned up the old windows media pc. It has no GPU now and still retains the 250GB SSD main drive and a 4TB Drive... Though I have no idea what I should do with it. I don't feel like its really worth selling or even parting out but I also don't really want to throw it away.

[ChatNoir]

6 hours ago, Shane Israel said:

Though I have no idea what I should do with it

Backup destination for important data ?

[Shane Israel]

6 hours ago, ChatNoir said:

Backup destination for important data ?

In that case wouldn't it make most sense to just toss the 4TB drive that's currently in that PC into my Unraid server as an unassigned device and write backups to it more easily there? Wouldn't really be any different would it?

[JonathanM]

1 hour ago, Shane Israel said:

In that case wouldn't it make most sense to just toss the 4TB drive that's currently in that PC into my Unraid server as an unassigned device and write backups to it more easily there?

No.

 

Any physical event that effected your Unraid machine could wipe out your backup. Physical separation of your backup from your main data is good, the more separation the better. If you can manage to convince a friend to keep the machine at their house, and pay them a little bit for power and internet, that's the best backup.

 

Ideally you would remotely wake the machine, send an updated backup, then shut it down. That's rather complicated at someone else's house, but easily doable in another room of your house.

[Shane Israel]

3 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

No.

 

Any physical event that effected your Unraid machine could wipe out your backup. Physical separation of your backup from your main data is good, the more separation the better. If you can manage to convince a friend to keep the machine at their house, and pay them a little bit for power and internet, that's the best backup.

 

Ideally you would remotely wake the machine, send an updated backup, then shut it down. That's rather complicated at someone else's house, but easily doable in another room of your house.

Gotcha that makes sense.