As a newbie, I have summarized the advantages of Unraid that make it superior to other NAS systems.

[RayRyu]

(The below is translated by ChatGPT from Korean into English)

 

The development of the NAS market is not surprising. I personally think that it was also influenced by the recent rapid development of the cloud market. Many users who have used Dropbox, Microsoft's One Drive, or Google Drive have often switched to NAS because they are concerned about issues such as capacity, cost, and speed.

 

The advantages of Unraid can be listed as follows:

(1) It can form an array that protects data regardless of the size, brand, or method of storage.

(2) Unlike RAID, which requires the same capacity storage devices to be combined at once, various storage devices can be added to the array.

(3) When using a combination of different-sized storage devices, there is less waste compared to RAID, which allows for more efficient use of capacity and cost savings.

(4) If you have eight HDDs in a RAID, all eight HDDs will be running during read/write access. However, with unRAID, only one HDD is running during reads and only two HDDs are running during writes, providing advantages in terms of noise, power consumption, and HDD lifespan.

(5) When using SSD cache, HDDs do not run during writes and data transfer is done at a predetermined time with only two HDDs running. This minimizes HDD noise during low-traffic periods.

(6) Unlike other RAID NAS systems, Unraid can be set up to use only SSDs for VM or Docker usage to avoid running HDDs.

(7) When replacing hardware, including CPU, GPU, and RAM, the storage devices and Unraid boot USB can be easily moved to upgrade the hardware.

(8) While other NAS systems also have VM and Docker management functions, Unraid provides easy hardware pass-through settings, making it possible to even build a gaming PC that can hardly be distinguished from a bare-metal environment.

(9) With the hardware pass-through function, it is possible to configure a multi-user system in which several users simultaneously use a single high-performance workstation.

 

In summary, the advantages of Unraid are efficiency, flexibility, and scalability.

 

P.S.

unRAID has the advantage of not accessing all HDDs at the same time, but it also has the disadvantage of being slow.

 

First, most users use a gigabit (1Gbps) network environment at home and work. Although there are ways to overcome the issue in a 10Gbps environment, Unraid's write speed is not a problem without using an SSD cache in a gigabit environment.

 

When utilizing an SSD cache, in most usage environments, the read and write transfer speeds can utilize the maximum speed of a gigabit network.

 

(Terminology) Unraid is used to refer to the NAS OS created by Lime Technology at uraid.net. unRAID is used to refer to a technology that is contrasted with RAID technology. This is my personal usage habit.

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by RayRyu