Good afternoon,

 

Im new to DIY nas boxes, but i recently purchased a Jonsbo N4 case and have a i5 10500.

I like some some suggestions on a motherboard for this that will work good with unraid.

 

Im only looking for a plex server and some data storage.

I will purchase 6 14TB EXOS drives and 2 SSD for chache 

 

Thank you 

Good afternoon,

 

I recently want to move from QNAP to a DIY, I purchased a Jonsbo N4 case and i also have a i5 10500 CPU

Any recommendation on a motherboard i can use M-ATX

 

Im only going to use the server for Movies and data storage

I plan on using 6 14TB EXOS drives

1 hour ago, ggonxhi said:

I like some some suggestions on a motherboard for this that will work good with unraid

Unraid works with almost any hardware.  Any mini-ITX or mATX board that supports your CPU should work.  i would look for a board that has the needed SATA ports.  I have two ASRock boards (Main and Backup servers) that support 8 SATA devices on the motherboard; one mini-ITX and one mATX (see my signature).  Even though the Jonsbo N4 supports mini-ITX and mATX, I would personally look for a mini-ITX as there is not a lot of room in these small cases and every little bit helps.

 

The motherboard I have in my Spare/Test Unraid server (see signature) is the ASRock H510M-ITX/ac which supports both 10th generation and 11th generation Intel CPUs.  I have the i5-11600 in mine and it works great with Unraid.  You will need a SATA expansion card for four additional SATA ports as it only has four on the motherboard. It also has an M.2 slot.

 

Again, any board that meets your needs and supports your CPU should work well with Unraid.

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Hoopster

23 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

Unraid works with almost any hardware.  Any mini-ITX or mATX board that supports your CPU should work.  i would look for a board that has the needed SATA ports.  I have two ASRock boards (Main and Backup servers) that support 8 SATA devices on the motherboard; one mini-ITX and one mATX (see my signature).  Even though the Jonsbo N4 supports mini-ITX and mATX, I would personally look for a mini-ITX as there is not a lot of room in these small cases and every little bit helps.

 

The motherboard I have in my Spare/Test Unraid server (see signature) is the ASRock H510M-ITX/ac which supports both 10th generation and 11th generation Intel CPUs.  I have the i5-11600 in mine and it works great with Unraid.  You will need a SATA expansion card for four additional SATA ports as it only has four on the motherboard. It also has an M.2 slot.

 

Again, any board that meets your needs and supports your CPU should work well with Unraid.

I appreciate you input, I might actually go for the Asrock H510 ITX, Should i go NVME for Cache drive or SSD works fine?

3 minutes ago, ggonxhi said:

Should i go NVME for Cache drive or SSD works fine?

A SATA SSD will work fine, but I do have a 512GB NVMe in mine for cache purposes.  In your case, the best reason for a "cache" pool is to store appdata (Docker applications) and Plex database files.  NVMe speed is not a must in either case and a SATA SSD will work just as well.

 

One thing to keep in mind that new Unraid users sometimes don't realize is that Unraid does not support WiFi (even though the H510M-ITX/ac does).  You need to connect it to your network with an Ethernet cable.

On 2/23/2025 at 9:14 PM, Hoopster said:

A SATA SSD will work fine, but I do have a 512GB NVMe in mine for cache purposes.  In your case, the best reason for a "cache" pool is to store appdata (Docker applications) and Plex database files.  NVMe speed is not a must in either case and a SATA SSD will work just as well.

 

One thing to keep in mind that new Unraid users sometimes don't realize is that Unraid does not support WiFi (even though the H510M-ITX/ac does).  You need to connect it to your network with an Ethernet cable.

Yes i dont plan on using wifi, its being installed on my small server closet. I do have a question: im reading that one drive needs to be a parity drive. Does this mean that if the parity drive dies i lose the ability to rebuild the raid? or do the other drive can rebuild the parity drive and vice verce?

 

Another question: i hear that unraid does not sripe data, how does it chose witch disk to save the data? or that doesn't matter?

Right now i plan on using

Raid 1=4x6tb Drives + 2x4TB drives

Raid2 later on 2x4tb SSD 

1TB nvme for cache

Edited February 26, 20251 yr by ggonxhi

3 minutes ago, ggonxhi said:

Does this mean that if the parity drive dies i lose the ability to rebuild the raid? or do the other drive can rebuild the parity drive and vice verce?

Parity (single or dual parity) is not required.  However, it does protect against the loss of one or two data drives.  It is not a backup, just a protection against drive failure.  The parity drive contains a calculation derived by examining all the data drives. If the parity drive dies, it can be replaced and rebuilt as long as all the data drives are in good working order.  If a data drive dies, it can  be replaced and rebuilt from the parity drive and all the other data drives.

 

6 minutes ago, ggonxhi said:

i hear that unraid does not sripe data, how does it chose witch disk to save the data?

This is correct. Unraid stores a file completely on one drive, it does not stripe data across multiple drives.  How it determines where to store the drive is a combination of the chosen allocation method, split level and minimum free space for each user share.

4 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

Parity (single or dual parity) is not required.  However, it does protect against the loss of one or two data drives.  It is not a backup, just a protection against drive failure.  The parity drive contains a calculation derived by examining all the data drives. If the parity drive dies, it can be replaced and rebuilt as long as all the data drives are in good working order.  If a data drive dies, it can  be replaced and rebuilt from the parity drive and all the other data drives.

 

This is correct. Unraid stores a file completely on one drive, it does not stripe data across multiple drives.  How it determines where to store the drive is a combination of the chosen allocation method, split level and minimum free space for each user share.

Awesome thank you for your clarification

I ended up purchasing MSI MAG B460M MORTAR/WIFI B460 Motherboard as it was pretty cheap

I also purchased 32gb 3200mhz 

Hoping this works well.

 

Now I'm trying to figure out how to move 10tb of date

By the way, Unraid (as its name suggests) does not support traditional RAID levels like 0, 1, 2, 5, etc.

 

From the manual:

 

Does Unraid support various RAID types such as RAID1/5/6/10?

 

Unraid manages storage in two separate buckets: the array and the cache. The array itself uses dedicated parity device(s) similar to a MAID.

The array cannot be configured into traditional RAID methods such as RAID 1/5/6/10.

 

The cache is created using btrfs. When more than one disk is present, the cache is called a "pool" and is by default configured to use btrfs RAID1, which is a slightly different take than a traditional RAID1. The cache can optionally be configured to use btrfs RAID 5/6/10, but RAID 5/6 on btrfs is still considered unstable, so it isn't recommended for production use.

Edited February 26, 20251 yr by Hoopster

4 minutes ago, ggonxhi said:

Now I'm trying to figure out how to move 10tb of date

It is recommended for initial data transfer to not have parity drives configured in the array as this will slow down data transfer as it must simultaneously do parity calculation.  Move the data first, then add parity to the array and let the system do the parity calculation after data transfer.

5 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

It is recommended for initial data transfer to not have parity drives configured in the array as this will slow down data transfer as it must simultaneously do parity calculation.  Move the data first, then add parity to the array and let the system do the parity calculation after data transfer.

So i can actually make an array without the parity, move the data and assign the parity drive

Cool

4 hours ago, ggonxhi said:

So i can actually make an array without the parity, move the data and assign the parity drive

Cool

Yes.  Building parity will still take some time (depends on size of parity drive), but with the parity tuning plugin, you can have it run in segments during the night when the array is not used much over multiple days.  For example, my 12TB parity drive takes a little over 24 hours to do a parity check.  I split this up over three midnight to ~8am sessions.  Before that I had an 8TB drive that took about 16-17 hours for a parity build done in two nightly sessions.

 

A 6TB drive (parity drives must be as larger or larger than largest data drive in array) will probably take around 12-13 hours for a full parity build.

10 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Yes.  Building parity will still take some time (depends on size of parity drive), but with the parity tuning plugin, you can have it run in segments during the night when the array is not used much over multiple days.  For example, my 12TB parity drive takes a little over 24 hours to do a parity check.  I split this up over three midnight to ~8am sessions.  Before that I had an 8TB drive that took about 16-17 hours for a parity build done in two nightly sessions.

 

A 6TB drive (parity drives must be as larger or larger than largest data drive in array) will probably take around 12-13 hours for a full parity build.

Cool so im actually building 2 NAS. 

First one witch should be done today is being done on a HP Prodesk 600 G1

Im doing

3x14TB Segate Exos drives

1x512Gb SSD for cache

 

So i will set up this and only use the 2x14 drives to set an array

Than move all the 10 TB of movies to it, Do i do this by drop and copy from a different computer 

Or can i somehow mount this on the Qnap or Unraid

Than after everything is completed, i can that add the parity drive and the cache

 

That seems about right?