Will this hardware be able to run unRAID?

[Darkguy]

Hey,

 

While waiting to be able to build my shiny new unRAID server, I'm looking to re-use my current HTPC (running Windows XP and XBMC) for some unRAID experiments, as I'm getting a newer HTPC soon,. Here's what I got, will this be sufficient to run unRAID for some testing? I'll probably use it on a semi-regular basis but not to store anything important, at least not without also having a backup, mainly because I don't trust any of the old disks I have lying around.

 

CPU: AMD Sempron 3000+ (Single Core, Socket 754, 1.8 GHz) - Hardware compatibility says people are happy with 1.6 GHz CPUs, so I hope 1.8 will be sufficient?

 

Mainboard: ASUS K8V-MX (VIA K8M400, VT8237 Southbridge, 2x ATA 133/4 IDE, 2x SATA, 1x AGP, 3x PCI, Realtek RTL8201CL 10/100 MBit LAN) - probably a big question mark, is the chipset supported? Might pop in a gigabit card, but for experiments, I think 100 MBit will be OK?

 

GPU: GeForce4 MX 4000 (AGP) - at least doesn't take up a PCI slot

 

RAM: 1 GB (2x 512 MB, DDR PC2700, 166 MHz) - should be sufficient for unRaid and unMenu?

 

PSU: Would have to take the case out to look, but probably only about 300W ATX - will have to get replaced I guess

 

Case: Currently some cheap OEM midi tower, but I have an old Chieftec Dragon (I think) big tower with some silent mats in and two 2x3 drive cages standing around - never used it as there was no need, but it seems well suited for the task at hand.

 

Other/alternative stuff: In the Chieftec tower, there's some sort of VIA board with I think an Athlon XP 1800+ and at work I also have an old mainboard with an Intel P4 3.0 GHz. I guess both are older/slower than the Sempron/K8V400 combo.

 

USB Drive: 4 GB Kingston Data Traveler 2 - unRAID test install on it works

 

IDE Drives: Quite the motley crew, some as old as 10-11 years; I will run 5 pre-clear cycles (recommendations for more?) on each, to at least sort out any black sheep right away:

 

Currently in use in my HTPC:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380011A (80 GB, 2 MB Cache, 7,200 RPM, S.M.A.R.T. OK, 6837h in use)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380011A (80 GB, 2 MB Cache, 7,200 RPM, S.M.A.R.T. OK, 1905h in use)

Western Digital Caviar WD800JB (80 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, S.M.A.R.T. cautions some re-allocated sectors, 6432h in use)

 

(F)lying around:

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60 (60 GB, 2 MB Cache, 7,200 RPM - I think I got this from a family member's old PC, might be broken)

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 (300 GB, 16 MB Cache, 7,200 RPM - not the faintest idea where I got this one from, would become my parity drive if it still works)

Western Digital Caviar WD400 (40 GB, 2 MB Cache, 7,200 RPM - used this in my XBMC before replacing it with a larger drive)

Maxtor 98186H8 (80 GB, 2 MB Cache, 5,400 RPM - actually 11 years old now, used it in my then-main PC and as an external drive after)

I think two more Maxtors around 40/60/80 GB that a buddy at work gave me to play with

 

Considerations:

• I guess after pre-clearing, I'll be left with somewhere between 6-8 usable drives. I'll be getting two big SATA drives soon that I plan to use in my new HTPC - I don't want to use them on this experimental unRAID, as I don't trust any of the old IDE drives, even though one of the new drives would be the parity drive. Getting these new drives for media storage will free up one or two 1 TB WD Greens though and I might migrate these into the experimental unRAID (as the board offers two SATA ports). I might use one of the 80 GB IDEs as a cache drive to have a warm spare in case one of the other IDE drives fail.
   
  
• The onboard IDE controller can satisfy four drives and I could kick myself, as I think I recently threw away a Promise Ultra100 IDE controller at work, as I figured I'd never need it again. I guess that I'll be able to get one of these either from a colleague at work or really cheap on eBay though, or if I'm lucky, the old one isn't lost yet.
   
  
• The largest investment for this project would probably be a new PSU - I figure I'll buy one that I can also re-use in my "production" unRAID, when I get going with it. The Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650 seems to be a good candidate, with 53A on a single 12V rail it should service me for a long time, even with 15-20 green SATA drives I plan on having eventually. I could get this one for a little under $100 right now.
   
  
• Still considering where to place the server yet, will probably depend on how noisy it is - I hope the sound-proofed Chieftec case helps a bit in that regard, so I can just place it under my secondary desk and not be bothered about noise. Bedroom is out of the question so it'll have to be in my living room/study. I'd place it in the hallway, only there's no LAN ports there.
  

 

 

[Johnm]

well.. the 100mb nic will be slow... but the IDE array wont be very fast anyways.

 

5 preclears might kill the drives 2 or 3 should be fine.

 

i would just run with 3 drives and try the free version for now..

[cpshoemake]

Since you have everything you need to build a complete "test" system already, I would hold off on the new psu, since the trial version only allows a 3 drive array. That psu money could also be spent on a drive 3-4 times the capacity of all your "spare" drives. Then you wouldn't need the psu.

[jumperalex]

Heck, for a test system I'm not even sure I would run more than a single pre-clear ... if any.  Just realize that you run the risk of data loss and don't put your only copy of data on there.  This way you are 1) up and running faster to start playing and 2) if you DO have a failure, you get to see how well unRaid recovers.

 

When I started playing with spare parts I intentionally started with all the smallest dives I had on hand so I could then simulate "failures" to see how unRaid dealt with it, to include a failed data replaced with a drive larger than parity which forces a parity swap.  This is good practice anyway ... better done on test than production systems.

 

I would suggest you buy nothing until you are ready to build production, not even the 1gbit NIC.  It might be slow at the moment, but once you go production you'll have an on-board NIC anyway. 

 

For now you can likely get away with the PSU you have but once you head towards a production build, I just wouldn' trust anything but a known good supply on a production system.  From your other thread, I am assuming that the money spent on the PSU isn't going to stop you from buying larger drives anyway.

 

Then I'd also start with a known good and LARGE parity (with the aformentioned 5x pre-clear).  Make your life easy and start your server with a 2TB (assuming you don't want to go beta for a 3TB) so you can just add drives without being forced into parity swaps.  Well except for the one time you do it when migrating your array from test to production and you install that larger parity drive.  I was sold on unRaid when that went seemlessly for me.

[Darkguy]

Thanks for your input, jumperalex, which is right to the point.

 

Actually, part of my intention to play with a test system is to see what happens when a drive fails and how rebuilding works, so I am kind of actually anticipating a drive failure. While I will probably start with only 3 of the 80 GB drives, I'd actually like to play with the features of the Plus/Pro version and use both a cache drive and user-level security shares so I can iron out any kinks before going productive. So I guess I'll become restless and buy the Pro version a few days into setting my test machine up.

 

Maximum capacity is not an issue in this case, as I don't want to buy any new drives for that test rig and only want to put in what I have already laying around anyway, drive-wise. I'll probably just use it to mirror some portion of my media archive for testing, so if I actually lose data, it will not be an issue at all.

 

I'll hold off on buying anything new (well, I might still go with the PSU at some point and re-use that, if I start to need the power), but I have started asking around for donations of old hardware, such as a Gigabit NIC or IDE controller cards - as I work in IT, I hope some people from my workplace can unearth a few components that might come in handy, that they'd otherwise have thrown or stored away. I'm actually dreaming of the day where I can loot an old 19" drive mount rack off our server hardware group, if they start replacing stuff.

[jumperalex]

  good luck and have fun.  I'm still technically fairly new to unRaid but that also means I remember what it was like when I built my first test system.  It is a fun little project.  But be careful, it is addictive too 

[Darkguy]

I'm afraid it will be addicitve.

 

I've now got a Promise Ultra100 TX2 (which fortunately still was in our hardware-disposal-box at work) as well as an ITE 8212F ATA-133 RAID Controller. Is the latter one supported in unRAID?