Appropriate Use Case for UN-RAID?

[CANNON-FODDER]

Hi!

  I have been interested (off and on) in UN-RAID since the early days, just never found my round toit.

 

  Honestly, most of it is paralysis over the computer case and motherboard/cpu/expansion cards (and the lowest electric power/noise I can get away with).

 

  I now need want a music server, I am ripping all my CD to FLAC.  I might start ripping my DVD to disc as well. 

 

  I have quite the eclectic collection of storage:

- 3.5" HHD: some very old, back to MB sizes, and various interfaces

- 2.5" HHD: probably at least 8-10 of various sizes out of old laptops

- 2.5" SSD: 1TB SSD new in box (not sure where that came from), a 250GB SSD from a dead laptop (might have a retail version of Windows 7/8/10), and about 5 120GB SSD from various Chromebooks and things that I ended up with and recycled.

 

  I asked in other forums where things like Navidrome were recommended - not sure I need the internet facing part - but best practices seem to have that run in a container, and it doesn't actually host the files, it wants to be mounted read only to an existing share (could be local).

 

  So, that got me thinking, I think I would also like to explore other container things like Pi-Hole, and every so often I want to use R or some other data processing thing - just not often enough to maintain an installation - getting a recent container seems to be a reasonable solution there.

 

  I have a spare Raspberry Pi 3B+ (and some more older ones around running ADS-B receivers and a Moode Audio instance). 

 

  Is that enough to determine if UN-RAID or TrueNAS (just heard of it yesterday) or something else is appropriate?

 

  Without starting a [preference war] is there a good target hardware list for this use case?

 

BTW, I used Google sign in to create the account, I am neither wide as a city, nor a maiden, although numerology could probably find an 8483 in my life somewhere.

 

[itimpi]

Unraid requires an x86 based machine so the RPi would not do as it is ARM based.   Do you have (or are intending to buy) something that is x86 based?  Not clear from your requirements.

[Lolight]

17 hours ago, citywide-maiden8483 said:

Honestly, most of it is paralysis over the computer case and motherboard/cpu/expansion cards (and the lowest electric power/noise I can get away with).

 

Welcome!

 

As @itimpi has already mentioned, you need an x86 (preferably Intel) platform to start - nothing fancy or powerful for your use case.

No need to spend much either - used, older components can be obtained on the cheap and be sufficient for your use case, e.g. even the 6th gen Intel CPU will be more than enough.

 

No need for expansion cards either - just get a motherboard with most SATA ports.

 

The case choice will depend on the main component selection, number of hard drives and desired room for expansion.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Lolight

[CANNON-FODDER]

 

On 8/15/2023 at 9:06 AM, itimpi said:

Unraid requires an x86 based machine so the RPi would not do as it is ARM based.   Do you have (or are intending to buy) something that is x86 based?  Not clear from your requirements.

 

12 hours ago, Lolight said:

 

Welcome!

 

As @itimpi has already mentioned, you need an x86 (preferably Intel) platform to start - nothing fancy or powerful for your use case.

No need to spend much either - used, older components can be obtained on the cheap and be sufficient for your use case, e.g. even the 6th gen Intel CPU will be more than enough.

 

No need for expansion cards either - just get a motherboard with most SATA ports.

 

The case choice will depend on the main component selection, number of hard drives and desired room for expansion.

 

Hi, sorry that wasn't more clear, I understand the RPi wasn't an option, I was looking for (1) is this a good use-case or is something else more appropriate and (2) hardware suggestions to see how much it would cost.

 

For UN-RAID, it would all be new (to me) procurement.  I don't have anything on hand beyond the RPi and two old computers (an AMD E-300 and an AMD Athlon 64 3800), so the only thing I could probably re-use is the case itself (the E-300 is a wall wart and the Athlon PS is probably too old for the right connectors as well).

 

I have been looking on Facebook / Craigslist, this does not seem to be a good area for that type of equipment deals (the last two locations in Northern Virginia were relative cornucopias).  

 

Funny you mention the 6th gen Intel.  My [solution creep] went:

• Moode Audio RPi happily playing for about a year.
• Well, I am retiring, I should start ripping old CD into FLAC ... so I ran out of room on the Micro SD.
• Well, I have a couple 500GB and a 1 TB USB drive ... I should try adding a USB drive to Moode Audio -- it just wasn't working out (for power, config, various reasons)
• Well, I have a spare RPi 3B+ (on-hand) I could make that just a headless share.
• Well, the RPi 4 is coming back in stock for $75 and it would fix the Ethernet bottleneck and brings USB 3.0 for the USB HHD.
• Well, for $80 I can get a refurb mini-computer with an older i3/i5 that could do more stuff.
• Well, for $90-100, I can get one with an 6th generation chip (but I wasn't sure of anything other than newer = better, I don't know which generation brought what).
• Then I found a literal bucket full of HHD (well, small moving box, type/qty listed below), so then I started looking at how many PCIe lanes the boards have.

This is what I think stopped me from setting up a home server before, I start with something small, then by the time I am done I have specified out a $5,000 server rack.

 

So I was looking for some recommended starter config given I have a bunch of storage already.

This is just a list of what I found, I doubt most are now useful (the cost of a controller likely more than just getting a new drive).

 

3.5" IDE/ATA

Quantum Fireball 1280AT FB12A474 REV 01-A A630E IDE/ ATA2 5400 1280 MB

Seagate Barracuda ATA IV ST340016A Ultra-ATA/100 7200 40 GB

Seagate Barracuda ATA IV ST360021A Ultra-ATA/100 7200 60 GB

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus ST3120026A Ultra-ATA/100 7200 120 GB

 

2.5" IDE/ATA

IBM OEM DMCA-21440 E182115 S Fast ATA-2 4000 1440 MB

Hitachi DK23CA-20 ATA-100 4200 20 GB

Fujitsu MHV2060AH Ultra-ATA/100 5400 60 GB

Western Digital WD600 Scorpio WD600VE-00HDT0 EIDE 5400 60 GB

Western Digital WD800VE Scorpio WD800VE-00HDT0 EIDE 5400 80 GB

 

2.5" SATA

Hitachi Travelstar HTS541060G9SA00 SATA/150 5400 60 GB

Fujitsu MHV2080BH SATA/150 5400 80 GB

Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD1600BEVT-75ZCT2 SATA/300 5400 160 GB

Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD3200BPVT-80JJ5T0 SATA/300 5400 320 GB

Seagate Momentus 5400.3 ST9120822AS SATA/150 5400 120 GB

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9250410AS SATA/300 7200 250 GB

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9320423AS SATA/300 7200 320 GB

Seagate Momentus Thin ST320LT020 SATA/300 5400 320 GB

 

SSD

Sandisk SDSSDA 120 GB

Kingston UV400 120 GB

Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB

Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB

Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB

Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB

 

 

[JonathanM]

10,000 ft view of what you have presented.

 

None of the IDE drives are worth fooling with, the amount of power to keep them spinning, plus the need for a handful of obsolete controllers...

 

The spinning rust SATA stuff is similar, although you could easily procure a controller with enough ports, it won't come cheap, and once again all those hungry spindle motors...

 

The SSD crop is a little more usable, albeit still a little port hoggy for the amount of total storage.

 

There has been very little usable speed increase perceptible with the last 5 years or so of CPU changes. Most of the gains are in power usage per unit of processing done. Yes, the newer stuff benchmarks much better, but hardly anyone gets their jollies watching benchmarks, and the real world gains are hard to see for most tasks. Transcoding media is a big exception. Intel 6th gen is plenty for a general use rig, if a little more power hungry than the new stuff per unit of work done.

 

The way I see it, you need to make a decision,

 

either put together a case / power supply / SATA controller ports (motherboards can have plenty, depending on your definition of plenty) to support a small menagerie of old drives,

or pony up a few hundred bucks on a pair of decent sized modern drives for mass storage and use some of the SSD's as working fast storage that will fit in just about any case.

 

A pair of refurb 16TB drives can be had for around $350 or less. Your total crop of drives comes to what looks like about 4TB, I didn't actually add them up.

On 8/15/2023 at 7:35 AM, citywide-maiden8483 said:

BTW, I used Google sign in to create the account, I am neither wide as a city, nor a maiden, although numerology could probably find an 8483 in my life somewhere.

Theoretically you should be able to change your handle to something more to your liking in your profile preferences. I haven't tested it, but the powers that be said it should be possible.

[CANNON-FODDER]

Thanks!

 

I figured most of them were unsuitable.  Although long ago I had a pipe dream vision of a little micro stack un-raid with those 2.5" HHD, that was when they were reasonably current drives and way before SSD. I kept all the drives mostly because there are probably some pictures on them that I forgot to pull off and might recover.

 

I think my storage needs are probably relatively pretty light, 16TB (assuming that specifying two 16TB drives would mean 1/2 is for capacity?) seems super huge (acknowledging the similar historical quote from Gates).

 

But I am not up to speed on the "SSD's as working fast storage" aspect, I think that has something to do with the "Use a cache pool with SSDs to enable super-fast writes, allowing your VMs and Apps to take advantage of faster storage."

 

Assuming 1 TB backed up is sufficient (I have a 1 TB USB drive and a couple smaller ones I can back-up with) for the initial start, the more immediate aspect I would want is a music share on something not tied to her Windows computer.  And that I can finally get all organized in one place.

If I had to keep it down to $100-$150 (about one nice restaurant dinner), would I be better starting with a base and getting storage later?  Would that be just any i5-6th gen? Aren't the PCIe lanes fixed by processor? So would I be looking for 4-5 SATA ports or an M2 port that could use one of those M2 to multiple SATA port adapters?  Is there something specific in the CPU or motherboard chipset to look for (like 16GB vs 32GB switching fabric in a switch)?

 

 

 

 

 

At the $350 + computer cost point, I push past my "small investment" into a "planned investment".  At this point I would have to consider a Synology I think.  There is a previously unstated Wife Acceptance Factor in having a brand-name offering vs something I build. Not exactly status-symbol, more akin to is she getting frustrated with "Synology" or me.  It's unconscious, she isn't logic-ing herself into that so it's useless to try to logic her out of it.

 

[CANNON-FODDER]

Well, not sure if that means I am asking for something impossible, or if mentioning Synology as an option was offensive.

 

Reading between the lines about 16TB / $350 being low end, I probably don't have enough need for more than a Raspberry Pi with a SMB share at the moment and if I keep it to what I have on hand, there is no lost cost in getting a more robust solution later.

 

Anyway, glad to see UN-RAID still going, I've always thought it was a cool thing, I guess what I thought was attractive was to re-use whatever you had on hand.

 

Thanks again for the help.

 

[JonathanM]

You can definitely use the drives you mentioned in Unraid, I was just pointing out the cost of setting up the number of SATA ports, power supply connections, and appropriate case  for 14 SATA drives that you listed would probably exceed the cost of a pair of new drives, 16TB is currently the sweet spot in my opinion for $/GB of storage, You can probably put together something that will work for much less, but it's going to use much more electricity on an ongoing basis, and have many more points of failure than new hardware.

 

By all means, throw some used parts together and try the trial of Unraid. I'm not being sarcastic, it will probably do exactly what you want for now. I was just trying to prepare you for the inevitable feature creep.

 

If you put the three 320GB spinner drives in the parity array, and set up two pools, one with the 1TB SSD and another with the 250GB SSD  that would be a nice start, you should be able to find an old board with 6 SATA ports. That would give you an entry point to see how Unraid works.

[domrockt]

Yes i5 5/6th gen is fine 8gb of DDR3 will be fine for now.

 

Go on Ebay Look for Dell Optiplex about 100€ should be enough 

 

an fine refurb 8tb seagate HDD for Starters Sets you back about 60-80€ 

 

put a few of your ssd in that PC and you are Good to Go 

 

you can get away with unser 200€ and Start Ripping 

 

 

Unraid is easy to learn, the docker System Works fine, the Community is very helpfull.

 

once you Start using Unraid, your System will grow over time

Edited August 23, 2023 by domrockt

[CANNON-FODDER]

On 8/20/2023 at 11:18 PM, JonathanM said:

... By all means, throw some used parts together and try the trial of Unraid. I'm not being sarcastic, it will probably do exactly what you want for now. I was just trying to prepare you for the inevitable feature creep.

 

If you put the three 320GB spinner drives in the parity array, and set up two pools, one with the 1TB SSD and another with the 250GB SSD  that would be a nice start, you should be able to find an old board with 6 SATA ports. That would give you an entry point to see how Unraid works.

 

On 8/23/2023 at 6:26 AM, domrockt said:

Yes i5 5/6th gen is fine 8gb of DDR3 will be fine for now.

 

Go on Ebay Look for Dell Optiplex about 100€ should be enough ...

 

Thanks!

 

Sorry for the delay, things going on.

I have tried the Raspberry Pi booting from the Sandisk 120GB SSD on a USB-SATA attachment with just a SMB share and mini-DLNA.  So proof of concept done, and it semi-works (the WIIM mini does not see the SMB share, and while it can access albums and folders on the mini-DLNA `published?` it doesn't show genre or artist - not sure which side that's on).  I already filled that drive, so ...

 

So I am now still looking for a CPU/motherboard/case.  There are a bunch of older Optiplex here at <=$120, they just seem to top out at the 4th generation and most are the Small Form Factor so limited case and power supply.  I thought there was a pretty big step up between 5th and 6th gen, so I'll have to go looking at that again.  

 

When I get some hardware to play with, I will ask the questions about exactly what and why a parity array with the two 320GB, one 1TB pool, and one 250GB pool.

 

[domrockt]

Fujitsu Esprimo

HP Elite Desks

Lenovo M700 

 

to name a few options in the mostly barebone config 100€ ish. Happy Hunting