Hi all,

 

My first post after reading a bit on these forums, lots of good info here

 

I want to build an unRAID server, and have hardware lying around. But I'm not sure if this hardware would be overkill, can anyone please advise?

 

CPU -> Intel Core i7 930

CPU cooler -> Arctic Cooling – Freezer 7 Pro Rev .2

RAM -> 12 GB (6x2) Corsair Dominator GT DDR3

Motherboard -> Asus P6X58D-E

Case -> Antec P193

Graphics -> Will find an old passive PCI-express or PCI.

PSU -> Cooler Master Silent Pro 500W

 

This should do me for 6-8 harddrives, depending if the Marvell® 9128 PCIe SATA 6Gb/s controller will work under unRAID.

 

Problem is with hardware now a days, is that selling the above would give me approx half its worth in cash. Those cash would then be used to buy more energy efficient, but slower hardware to build an unRAID server with. I DONT need this server to be online 24/7, but merely at the evenings for some hours. Of course I will buy energy efficient drives for it. I have no other use for this hardware at the moment. Please share your thoughts with me on this one?!

 

I also have a couple additional questions I'm hoping you GURU's can answer here goes:

 

1) Will the Marvell® 9128 PCIe SATA 6Gb/s controller work with unRAID?

2) I have currently 4 x 2TB external USB drives with media on. Can they be used without problems in unRAID even though they're external? Will they act as main part of the filesystem or just as single non parity drives?

3) My plans are to ONLY power up the server when needed(video streaming mostly). Will this be a problem? Is unRAID ages to boot up and be ready?

 

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Best regards

Jim

lol - wish I had the sort of hardware lying around

I guess if you have the hardware laying around, might as well use it.   You are right, for what you might sell, you probably take a bigger hit...

 

One thing, save the RAM. Anything more then 2GB is a lot. But it is a tripple channel board, so maybe 3x2GB for 6 total. Use the rest somewhere else...

 

unRaid boots up pretty fast. Just make sure if you are shutting down frequently, to always stop the array first, then power off. That way you can have a clean boot up. And at least once a month, leave the system powered up and do a parity check.

 

That controller should work fine... You will never really use the full capacity of Sata 6Gbps.

 

The external drives, you will need to look into that more. unRaid should be able to use them, but you would need to get all the data off first, as unRaid will format them with riserfs file system. I think there may be a way to mount them, maybe with SNAP, and use that way, depending on what file system is currently on them.

 

As unRaid will power down drives when not in use, and if not doing much else, power draw should be a minumum when not in use...

 

Shawn

 

Re: USB drives

 

Link

 

They cannot act as part of the array, but can be mounted via SNAP...

 

Shawn

 

Thanks a million Whaler, answered all my questions

 

I'll just build a server with enough drives to move all the data off the USB disks to start with. Afterwards I'll just attach them as single drives.

 

 

BR

Jim

I say throw it on eBay for a price that you would be ok with (30 day relister), but in the meantime use it. That is some very power hungry hardware and you'd be wasting a lot of electrical costs running it 24/7 not to mention it probably generates a lot of heat too. The way I see it getting back ANY money for something is better than getting back nothing. Throw it up there and forget about it until it sells... in the meantime start planning out a proper 24/7 build.

I say throw it on eBay for a price that you would be ok with (30 day relister), but in the meantime use it. That is some very power hungry hardware and you'd be wasting a lot of electrical costs running it 24/7 not to mention it probably generates a lot of heat too. The way I see it getting back ANY money for something is better than getting back nothing. Throw it up there and forget about it until it sells... in the meantime start planning out a proper 24/7 build.

 

Thanks, definatly an option I'm considering at the moment as well. Since I have a ATI 4870 X2 graphics card also lying around, I could build a very nice gaming machine and sell it. Maybe not for a profit, but should cover most of an energy eff. unRAID build and make me money on the electrical bill every month

 

Thanks for your input.

BR

Jim

Also, given that external USB drives are generally just standard internal drives shoved into a chassis with a PCB to handle power and USB connectivity, I see no reason (aside from warranty issues, naturally) why you couldn't pop them open and use the drives themselves.

 

But the rest of the machine I'd sell.  As others mentioned, it'll be power hungry for 24/7 use (though one of my desktops is very similar in specs, and I often run it 24/7...thank god my rent includes utilities), and it's still a solid enough rig that it'll fetch some cash for you, which you can then use to build a more reasonable purpose-built unRAID build.