unRAID from hardware collecting dust

[ubuntuaddicted]

I just found unRAID (on accident cause its in the categories within tapatalk) and I have hardware strewn about my house. I just need a case with ample disk bays and cooling. The rest I'll use from parts are the house.

I have seen much talk about beefy CPU's and tons of memory in people's unRAID servers but I am assuming that's if someone is transcoding video or other CPU intensive programs.

So I currently have a total of almost 2 TB of various disk sizes in various locations, some in current desktop converted to server running headless Ubuntu 10.04 which has the following services: transmission-daemon (torrent server sort of), mythtv backend, ssh server, and apache2 web server and other hard drives in a USB ext enclosure. I have 2 additional 1TB WD drives I'll be removing from their enclosures and putting them in the unRAID server with the other almost 2TB total of space (300gb, 500gb, 1TB). To clarify I'll have the following disks

(1) 300gb IDE disk WITH data

(1) 1TB SATA disk WITH data

(1) 500gb IDE disk WITH data

(2) 1TB unsure of interface BLANK

 

The data that's currently scattered across the existing almost 2TB total space of drives, will that remain intact IF I add those drives to the other (2) 1TB drives?

 

The unRAID array will be used for the following

1. mythtv folders (3 tuners are in separate server and that server will mount applicable folders from unRAID server via NFS) storing mpg files which are the "recordings"

2. 10,000+ song music library streamed to Internet and internal network (via SMB)

3.transmission daemon (if a transmission type daemon exists in unRAID, IF not daemon will run on mythtv tuner box) BUT storage of running torrents will be within the array shared via NFS or SMB.

4. 1,500+ movie library consisting of iso, video_ts folders, and various av containers files shared via NFS or SMB

5. 30,000+ photos shared via SMB

6. backup dump location for windows and Linux machines

 

Phew, for MB, CPU and RAM I need to see which MB to use due to amount of IDE/SATA controllers (I do have 1 PCI card with additional IDE and SATA connection). Once I determine MB obviously I am then restricted to the CPU socket and RAM. Most likely will be a P4 or even a Celeron with PC3200 RAM.

 

I am sorry if my post is long and it only contained a couple questions But that's it in a nut shell. If anything sticks out screaming don't do it I appreciate bein told. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this long post.

 

Ubu

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[chickensoup]

Congratulations on moving to unRAID, you won't look back. Now, down to business..

 

Some WD external drives have the USB PCB soldered directly onto the back of the drive and you don't get the SATA ports so just be aware this might be the case, hopefully not.

Assuming they are both SATA (yay!), you are going to have to play the data shuffle game but you should be able to make it work:

 

1. Setup your two BLANK 1TB drives as DATA drives (no parity)

2. Pre-clear/format/setup etc. Start the array, you get 2TB worth of shares, although no parity yet.

3. Copy the data off your other 1TB drive onto the shares

4. Assign this "other" 1TB drive as the parity and let unRAID become protected

5. Once protected, you can copy the remaining data off the other two disks (300gb & 500gb) then clear & add these.

 

Every drive will need to be wiped to be an unRAID drive. There are transmission/rtorrent addons for unRAID, I think unMenu sports a torrent client although I may be wrong as I don't use it. I would recommend trying to find a motherboard running at least DDR2 (PC5300 or PC6400) as a DDR1 (PC3200) box will be quite old and probably not the fastest/most stable/coolest kid on the block. A lot of those old Pentium's run very hot and the Celeron's are just.. well, Celeron's. You could get a suitable motherboard/cpu/ram kit for <$150 if you really needed to, unless you have parts lying around. 

 

Have a read into getting a cache drive too, these can make a big difference to writes, you could even use your old 320gb drive for the time being. Just make sure to turn the cache drive off for your backup share.

 

Got pics? :-)

 

 

[ubuntuaddicted]

Awesome, thanks for feedback. As I said I am not sure about MB, CPU or RAM yet but if I am not transcoding video or using any real CPU or Memory intense services then would a P4 or Celeron D with 1gb of PC3200 be enough to get my feet wet with unRAID? Current services I had listed above like a transmission-daemon, ssh server, apache2, MySQL, php (basically a LAMP server) would all the hardware listed be alright?

 

I'm getting ready to "do this" cause I just picked up $30 Ultra full size ATX tower.

 

Again, thanks for any feedback.

 

 

Tapatalk is tha shizzle

[technojunkie]

One thing I noticed was that you have a mix of PATA and SATA drives. Most folks will recommend against mixing interface types in a server. I'm not sure if there is a performance impact or not, but I retired all of my pata drives when I migrated to unRAID.

[ubuntuaddicted]

I'll have to research this more I guess but it was my understanding that unRAID didn't care about HDD size differences or Controller interfaces like IDE, SATA, SCSI, SSD etc etc. I'll keep that in mind and read up on it. I am going to take this first build slow BUT have to admit I am anxious to get it fired up. :-)

 

 

Tapatalk is tha shizzle

[WeeboTech]

I'll have to research this more I guess but it was my understanding that unRAID didn't care about HDD size differences or Controller interfaces like IDE, SATA, SCSI, SSD etc etc. I'll keep that in mind and read up on it. I am going to take this first build slow BUT have to admit I am anxious to get it fired up. :-)

 

Tapatalk is tha shizzle

 

As long as you have reasonable expectations in that the IDE/P-ATA interface & drives will be the limiting factor for parity operations, then by all means use them.

 

Anything on the PCI bus is limited to 133MB/s

 

our esteemed member, Joe L used P-ATA drives for a long time (and may still do).

[ubuntuaddicted]

I'll have to research this more I guess but it was my understanding that unRAID didn't care about HDD size differences or Controller interfaces like IDE, SATA, SCSI, SSD etc etc. I'll keep that in mind and read up on it. I am going to take this first build slow BUT have to admit I am anxious to get it fired up. :-)

 

Tapatalk is tha shizzle

 

As long as you have reasonable expectations in that the IDE/P-ATA interface & drives will be the limiting factor for parity operations, then by all means use them.

 

Anything on the PCI bus is limited to 133MB/s

 

our esteemed member, Joe L used P-ATA drives for a long time (and may still do).

that's what I thought, thank you. Again, sorry that I have more or less jumped right in here and not really read the wiki but what is this parity drive you speak of? Is that in case the power was cut to my unRAID server and I have no UPS? It allows me to rebuild the array or something like that? Thanks again for being patient with me and being very helpful. This community is great thus far!

 

 

Tapatalk is tha shizzle

[technojunkie]

The parity drive is what makes unRAID what it is.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#How_does_parity_work.3F

 

Basically when you perform any write operation to your array, parity is calculated and the result written to the parity drive. This allows unRAID to recover a failed drive. Or continue operation in the absence of a drive. So the result of mixing interfaces is that anything involving parity will be limited to the maximum speed of the slowest interface.

[ubuntuaddicted]

The parity drive is what makes unRAID what it is.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#How_does_parity_work.3F

 

Basically when you perform any write operation to your array, parity is calculated and the result written to the parity drive. This allows unRAID to recover a failed drive. Or continue operation in the absence of a drive. So the result of mixing interfaces is that anything involving parity will be limited to the maximum speed of the slowest interface.

WOW, that makes total sense. thank you so much for answering.