Thank you Unraid

[struisje]

I had an Intel SS4200-e Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo Home Server running WHS.

It ran fine for about two years. We had a power failure in our street and after power had been restored my server wouldn't start anymore.

After a quick google, I found more users that had the same experience after a powerfailure and most of them were forced to send their server back to the manufacturer to restore the WHS software.

 

I didn't want to have my server away for 3 weeks or more so I made the decision to swith to unraid. Thank god the hard drives were still OK.

 

First i had to get into the bios, which wasn't easy on a server without a videocard and only one PCI-e X1 slot.

I had to buy a PCI-e X1 flex riser and the cheapest PCI-e X1 videocard I could find.

 

I was able to setup everything without problems, added two new drives (one parity, one data) and started copying from the old drives. When the first drive was copied, I added it to my server and to the array. I copied the data from the other two old drives and I will keep them aside untill I swith to the paid version of unraid.

 

Anyway, thanks for this great piece of software. I works great and I have it running for about a month now without any glitches and it seems quite a bit faster than WHS.

 

Cheers

[Rajahal]

Welcome to the community!  Once you have your server fully configured you will likely be able to remove the video card and run the server headless as you did before.  This will save power as well.

 

Did you upgrade the RAM?  512 MB is technically the minimum requirement for unRAID, but most of us have 2 GB or more.  If you want to use the server for anything besides a basic NAS then more RAM will likely be required.

 

How is working in that small box?  Is it difficult to open and swap out parts?

 

I also noticed that the server has a Gigabit LAN port, but ships with a Cat5 cable.  Note that Cat5e or better cabling is required to achieve full Gigabit speeds.

[struisje]

I was planning to remove the video card.

 

I didn't upgrade the RAM, it came with 2Gb standard. I'm not running any plugins. I will only use it for storage. I have sickbeard, couchpotato and sabnzbd running on another PC, I like to double check everything before I move it to the server.

 

Swapping out the hard drives is pretty easy. The HD bays fold open for easy access.

 

I didn't have to do anything else yet. it seems pretty easy to access the motherboard.

I didn't change to cat5e cables yet because I stream to an XBMC HTPC which is currently connected wireless. We are currently remoddeling the living room and I will add cat5e or cat6 cables in the wall.

[Rajahal]

Nice.  Might as well do Cat6 since it isn't much more expensive.  Your HD media streams will thank you.