I am retiring an old, still very robust Windows 10 PC that was mainly my Plex server, but still used for a lot of computing tasks, aka, Photoshop, video editing, research/web browsing, etc.  But now Windows is stopping support for Win 10, and my CPU is not compatible with Win 11. 

 

Fast forward to its time to make use of that PC for a long over due NAS.  I like what Unraid offers and it seems easy enough for a beginner like me, but when I went down the road on this quest, I was exploring other software's, one being TrueNAS (or FreeNAS as it used to be called), I was halted in my tracks when I found that TrueNAS although will work with my hardware, It's not preferred. The reason being, my motherboard FM2A88X Extreme6 with a AMD A10 7860k CPU doe not support ECC memory.  How will this effect my build if I stay with this hardware and run Unraid?

 

Thank you in advance for your support!

Edited July 21, 20241 yr by SmirkAction

You won't have memory error correction. Skimming threads leads me to believe most unraid users don't bother with ECC but I have no way to know if that's accurate. Unraid requires far less memory in the first place for a given data capacity. It's simply a risk to weigh. You haven't used it so far for your Plex server right? It's not any different continuing.

I have it in my primary server but not my backup server- though some day I'll swap hardware in the primary and upgrade the backup and it'll have ECC then. And that's the magic - it's not hard to swap in the future if you decide to.

3 hours ago, _cjd_ said:

You won't have memory error correction. Skimming threads leads me to believe most unraid users don't bother with ECC but I have no way to know if that's accurate. Unraid requires far less memory in the first place for a given data capacity. It's simply a risk to weigh. You haven't used it so far for your Plex server right? It's not any different continuing.

I have it in my primary server but not my backup server- though some day I'll swap hardware in the primary and upgrade the backup and it'll have ECC then. And that's the magic - it's not hard to swap in the future if you decide to.

Thank you for the response, this is kind of my thoughts as well. 

 

I already purchased my new storage I plan to use. I will be starting out small with two 8TB drives that I plan to run in a mirrored (Raid-1 I believe, is this right?).  My current media library is small in comparison to most currently at less than 3TB and I don't plan to get much bigger. But unless I am wrong, I will now be more than doubling that. 

 

As for my existing backup protocol, I use a program called SyncBackPro that mirrors all my data between two separate drives to an external USB 3.0 5TB drive.  One of the data sets/drives it backs up is a very old 320GB USB 2.0 external drive I have had for nearly 10 years that stores less important files/programs/exe's/etc, and the other is my current media drive from the HTPC that will eventually be my new NAS hardware. That media now, totals less than 3TB and consists of two 2TB drives in a striped configuration, totalling 4TB. Risky, I know. So now you know why a NAS is long overdue and I am no stranger to the risks as running a stripped configuration for 3 years now was just a ticking time bomb. Other than the aforementioned Windows 11 compatibility issues, a NAS was long overdue.

 

So to me, because I run that SyncBack mirror to an external drive and I have always had a backup I accepted the risk. SyncBack is simple and elegant and has worked well for at least 10 years.  Ye, I am aware that this external drive being 5TB is less than my future 8TB NAS, but until I start filling the NAS's drives, it will do. 

 

With that said, unless I stand corrected, and keeping in mind I am looking for beginner simplicity, I will have a backup, of my backup as the Raid-1 is just mirroring my 2nd 8TB NAS drive, right?  So with that, the risk IMO is small do to redundancy. 

 

I will explore a motherboard/case upgrade in the future, but with that said, will I be able to swap the drives over to a new build, or will I have to do a clean install and run from my backup?

 

Thanks again!

Edited July 21, 20241 yr by SmirkAction

Mirrored is fine for some level of redundancy but leaves no road for expansion. Does that matter? I think you have to do some trickery still to not have an array (next version changes that).

 

Either way Unraid doesn't care where the drives are plugged in. I swapped the same drives between a few different systems when I was getting started.

1 hour ago, _cjd_ said:

Mirrored is fine for some level of redundancy but leaves no road for expansion. Does that matter? I think you have to do some trickery still to not have an array (next version changes that).

 

Either way Unraid doesn't care where the drives are plugged in. I swapped the same drives between a few different systems when I was getting started.

 

I want to say it doesn't as I'm selective and suffer from options paralysis as it is with more content than I'll ever need. I also am connected to a good friends Plex and he has 1500 movies and 900 TV shows so my current 2.7(ish)TB I have now, can be more than doubled with this current setup. But I also remember 10 years ago buying a 1TB drive and saying that is plenty, then that became a 2TB then that's when I took the unknown risk of buying a 2nd 2TB and made a 4TB stripped raid.

 

But I'm sure I'll be fine for at least another 10 years. I'm just more concerned about upgrading my hardware to a system that can run ECC RAM.

 

But thanks for the heads up and assurance that this setup should be fine.

 

I started my build at 7am today (Sunday) and I'm still at 53% on moving my media, and that's just my TV shows. I don't know how these people do file transfers with mega huge several dozen/hundred TB setups.

 

Thank you!