Need advise with new build.

[Estropelic]

Coming from a Truenas build that's over ten years old. It's served me well for the years it's been active. I'm getting disk errors and I need to move over to a new server soon as I'm getting all sorts of new errors out of nowhere. 

 

Current configuration:

1X ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard FCBGA1283 DDR3 1600 / 1333

1 x Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3L 1600 (PC3L 12800) Server Memory Model ...

6X WD Red 2TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD20EFRX

I had a two disk failover with 9tb usable space I believe. 

 

As much as I loved the small form factor of the node304, I'm ready to build something larger and that I can expand in the future without having to worry about cable management. I'd like to double my storage while I'm at it and use the box mainly for storing home documents, Plex streaming for the family 3 streams if necessary, and possibly a VM or two. Are there any guides I should use to research the build? I took a peek at pcpartspicker and many of the guides are not current or not mentioned as suggested builds for unraid.  

 

Edit:

I'm going to go with a Meshify 2 XL and would like to get my 9tb pool back online but would also like to expand out to a good amount of tb 23+. Also want to run ZFS.

 

Edited July 26 by Estropelic

[denishay]

Hi,

 

Welcome to Unraid!

 

Regarding the "many disk errors", you might want to check what's going on BEFORE you do any type of migration to a new system. If there are actual issues with one of your disks, no amount of changing the host NAS OS will clear that.

You might want to double-check your SATA cables, as old cables are known to cause "recurring" issues on otherwise good drives. don't rely on software to compensate for bad hardware

 

that said, your ZFS pools can be imported on Unraid. But you might want to have this one as a sseparate pool. You can't do the "and expand" part you were referring to. ZFS arrays can't be expanded yet. I know it's work in progress, but not available yet on Unraid afaik.

 

I'd recommend you keep a "performance" ZFS pool for the VMs and other performance applications and move your movies and other media to the main Unraid array (using your new drives with parity then I guess).

 

As for case space regarding storage, browse the forums here, you'll find plenty of examples. Also, do not underestimate how much easier it could be to replace several "small" drives (like your 6x2TB) drives with much less larger drives. Less drives means less space required in the case. Many here like the Fractal Design cases. Still fairly affordable for a high number of drives (I have right now 17 drives in my Fractal Design R5 server). I chose that over a rack or other "semi-pro" options. As much as I would like the hardware, this is still a home server and I am fine stopping the server and switching it off to replace a drive if need be.

[JorgeB]

Also note that depending on how the pool was created it may not be directly importable with Unraid, but there are workarounds, so please post if you need help with that.