Greetings,

 

First, let me say that this forum is fantastic. I've spent a few days reading through the unRAID manuals (official and unofficial), selecting and ordering components (using Raj's build as a starting point), and laying out a share/split structure that I believe will work well for my needs. My goal is to use unRAID for two very common scenarios: media storage + PVR (Sickbeard, Couch Potato, etc) and computer backup storage. I'm a software developer with zero Linux experience, but I've found everything here very easy to follow and I can't wait to get started.

 

Here's the Big Question: 4.7 or the latest 5.x beta?

 

My considerations:

• I was planning on 4.7, until I started reading about Time Machine issues. We've already had to restore my wife's MacBook from backup once after a hard drive failure (via the WD USB drive we're using today), and from what I can tell, backing up to SMB is tricky but doable, but I'm not convinced that restoring from SMB is going to work.
  
• All of my "must have" data (documents, pictures, etc) is already backed up to The Cloud, so while it would be a major pain to lose everything to a beta software failure, it wouldn't be the end of the world
  
• I only have 3 drives available right now, and with prices what they are, I don't plan on buying more until I can get a good 2TB drive for under $100. I'm not sure how the AFP implementation in 5.x works, but if it requires a dedicated drive, I'll take my chances with SMB and stick with 4.7.
  

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

Rick

 

Oh, and if anyone cares:

• ZOTAC GF6100-E-E w/ Sempron 145, 2GB Kingston, CORSAIR CX500 ($110 after rebates for everything!)
  
• (2) 1TB + (1) 500GB drives - Unsure about models, etc. Once prices come down, they'll be replaced with shiny new ones.
  
• Random spare PC case
  

if you don't have any 2TB+ drives 4.7 is the latest stable Production version

any 5.xx are beta versions

 

I personally just build my first unRaid with 5.0B13 and it is working ok.

but in my case I need to use beta  as my NIC is one of the 81111E chipsets which is not supported by 4.7

 

your choice  :-)

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

Anyone else have advice with regard to AFP & Time Machine? The more I look into it, the more I'm leaning towards the 5 beta 14 route, but I want to be sure that having an AFP share won't require dedicating an entire hard drive.

 

Thanks!

Rick

I just started using unraid about a month ago, and I went for the beta right away because of the package system in the 5.xx

 

So far I've only had a few problems, all of which where related to my linux "noob'ness" 

I just started using unraid about a month ago, and I went for the beta right away because of the package system in the 5.xx

 

So far I've only had a few problems, all of which where related to my linux "noob'ness" 

 

here , here  :-)

 

:'(

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

Anyone else have advice with regard to AFP & Time Machine? The more I look into it, the more I'm leaning towards the 5 beta 14 route, but I want to be sure that having an AFP share won't require dedicating an entire hard drive.

 

Thanks!

Rick

 

An AFP share does not require a dedicated drive. Any share can use any combination of AFP, SMB, and NFS.

Thanks all for the help! My new 5b14 box is up and running, and the TimeMachine backups are working without any issues.

 

-Rick