I've been using a Drobo for a few years and it is connected to Mac. The solution is fairly uncomplicated and running nicely. However, the number of drives is restricted and my collection of movies keeps growing. So I was browsing around and found unRAID. I have a few questions and would appreciate help from the community:

 

1) I have a 64GB SSD sitting- would this be a good option for using as a Cache drive? Does unRAID support SSDs?

2) My primary purpose is to use unRAID as my Plex Server, my DLNA server and my Downloading server (Bit Torrents). Has anyone used it for the above config? Care to share your experience?

3) Is it possible to connect unRAID to multiple networks? I currently have two networks in my home.

4) Is it relatively trouble-free? How are power outages handled with regards to corruptions etc.? Does it repair itself?

 

 

I'm sure more questions will pop along the way but that's what I have for now.

I doubt the 64gig SSD would be large enough to be a very useful cache drive.

I don't run Plex or DLNA on my server so I can't say. The Transmission package seems to work OK though.

I don't have much trouble. I boot it up and leave it running sometimes for months at a time. I've had one cache disk issue which just happened out of the blue. It does not repair itself. You should use a UPS if you are really concerned about power outages. Generally speaking, it will usually recover fine but outages have the possibility to cause data issues.

 

Peter

1) I have a 64GB SSD sitting- would this be a good option for using as a Cache drive? Does unRAID support SSDs?

It could be, depending on how much data you write to the cache on a regular basis.  I have considerably more than 64GB of data on my cache drive at this moment, so that small of a drive (SSD or otherwise) would not work well for me.

 

2) My primary purpose is to use unRAID as my Plex Server, my DLNA server and my Downloading server (Bit Torrents). Has anyone used it for the above config? Care to share your experience?

Yes, I run Transmission on my unRAID machine and there are plugins for Plex and DLNA.

 

3) Is it possible to connect unRAID to multiple networks? I currently have two networks in my home.

Yes, but you will have to configure a second NIC manually.

 

4) Is it relatively trouble-free? How are power outages handled with regards to corruptions etc.? Does it repair itself?

It is recommended to get an APC UPS unit and plug the server into that.  unRAID does really well when power is just pulled from it but there is always the chance that something could go wrong.

Thanks for the responses.

 

From my understanding, the Cache drive is off loaded every night correct? So unless I am putting more than 64GB worth of data on it, it will serve me well. The only scenario I can see is using the cache drive to download torrents with transmission and storing them on there until I move them to their correct folders.

 

Also, am I correct in assuming that you need a 3 drive setup to start- one for cache, one for parity and one for your data. What happens if I add a storage drive with a higher capacity than the one that is used for parity? Do I set that new drive as parity and then use the older parity drive as storage? Is this a fairly easy/automatic procedure?

Thanks for the responses.

 

From my understanding, the Cache drive is off loaded every night correct? So unless I am putting more than 64GB worth of data on it, it will serve me well. The only scenario I can see is using the cache drive to download torrents with transmission and storing them on there until I move them to their correct folders.

 

Also, am I correct in assuming that you need a 3 drive setup to start- one for cache, one for parity and one for your data. What happens if I add a storage drive with a higher capacity than the one that is used for parity? Do I set that new drive as parity and then use the older parity drive as storage? Is this a fairly easy/automatic procedure?

You only need 1 drive to start.  A single drive for data.  There is no need for a parity drive unless you want parity protection.

 

You cannot assign a "cache" drive in the free version.  The free version is limited to three drives total in the assigned array.  (two data drives and a parity drive)

 

Yes, there is a procedure to swap in a new parity drive.  see the wiki for more details.

Thanks-

 

One more question. Does UNRAID support booting from USB3.0? I have a USB 3.0 thumb drive and my motherboard (ECS H61) also has a USB 3.0 port. Will I see any speed advantages using USB 3?

Thanks-

 

One more question. Does UNRAID support booting from USB3.0?

Honestly not sure

 

Will I see any speed advantages using USB 3?

Not that you will be able to notice