Hello everyone this is my first post here so please bear with me, I'm about to start to get my feet wet with unRAID, so I have a few questions before I even start

 

My current setup for my media server and my personal use PC is as follows:

 

mobo: ASUS M4A78T-E

CPU: AMD Phenom 965

RAM: 16GB g.skill (4*4GB)

Raid Controller: RocketRaid 2680, running in Raid 5, using 4 WD 2TB drives (the EARS model), giving me 6TB of storage which is almost full

The OS (Windows 7 64) is loaded onto a Seagate 320GB

 

 

The expected setup for unRAID:

mobo: ASUS M4A78T-E (not the same motherboard in the first system, I have two of these boards)

CPU: has not been bought yet, suggestions are welcome

RAM: 4GB OCZ (2*2GB)

 

 

1) I'm not a fan of using products that are not final release so I dont think I will be using version 5 for now (should I, my understanding from reading the forum is that none of outstanding issues with v5 would affect my setup?), if I use an earlier version and buy a 3TB drive, will it detect it as a 2 TB or will it not detect it at all?

 

2) I want to expand my storage to 6 drives, the motherboard has 5 SATA II ports, and the RocketRAID (once all the data has been transferred off the current RAID 5) will give me 8 additional SATA II ports, what is the best approach to do this?

 

3) If I buy the PLUS version right now what is the upgrade path to PRO (do I pay the difference later when I go PRO or do I pay the full price?)

 

4) I couldn't find the info on how the license works, if I buy the 4.x version now, do I need to buy a new license for 5?

 

5) Does any one see any potential issues with the hardware setup suggested for unRAID? the parts listed are extra parts that I already have, but I dont want to be fiddling with it all the time, or babysitting it, so if I have to buy other hardware, I'm open to that suggestion if it means longer term stability that is headache free.

 

6) I'm currently using SABNZB to download from newsgroups, and rarely torrents, is there a way to offload this from the main PC to this pc

EDIT: i think I found the answer to this one here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2903.285

 

7) I know I'm probably going to have a lot more questions once I start, so if you have any suggestions please free to throw them my way

 

Thank for in advance for your help

Hello everyone this is my first post here so please bear with me, I'm about to start to get my feet wet with unRAID, so I have a few questions before I even start

 

My current setup for my media server and my personal use PC is as follows:

 

mobo: ASUS M4A78T-E

CPU: AMD Phenom 965

RAM: 16GB g.skill (4*4GB)

Raid Controller: RocketRaid 2680, running in Raid 5, using 4 WD 2TB drives (the EARS model), giving me 6TB of storage which is almost full

The OS (Windows 7 64) is loaded onto a Seagate 320GB

 

 

The expected setup for unRAID:

mobo: ASUS M4A78T-E (not the same motherboard in the first system, I have two of these boards)

CPU: has not been bought yet, suggestions are welcome

RAM: 4GB OCZ (2*2GB)

 

 

1) I'm not a fan of using products that are not final release so I dont think I will be using version 5 for now (should I, my understanding from reading the forum is that none of outstanding issues with v5 would affect my setup?), if I use an earlier version and buy a 3TB drive, will it detect it as a 2 TB or will it not detect it at all?

 

2) I want to expand my storage to 6 drives, the motherboard has 5 SATA II ports, and the RocketRAID (once all the data has been transferred off the current RAID 5) will give me 8 additional SATA II ports, what is the best approach to do this?

 

3) If I buy the PLUS version right now what is the upgrade path to PRO (do I pay the difference later when I go PRO or do I pay the full price?)

 

4) I couldn't find the info on how the license works, if I buy the 4.x version now, do I need to buy a new license for 5?

 

5) Does any one see any potential issues with the hardware setup suggested for unRAID? the parts listed are extra parts that I already have, but I dont want to be fiddling with it all the time, or babysitting it, so if I have to buy other hardware, I'm open to that suggestion if it means longer term stability that is headache free.

 

6) I'm currently using SABNZB to download from newsgroups, and rarely torrents, is there a way to offload this from the main PC to this pc

EDIT: i think I found the answer to this one here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2903.285

 

7) I know I'm probably going to have a lot more questions once I start, so if you have any suggestions please free to throw them my way

 

Thank for in advance for your help

 

0) As a CPU suggestion I would go with a low end AthlonII, something like an X2-245e is perfect if you can get one. A sempron will work but I tend to prefer at least a dual core.

 

1) If you want to use a 3TB HDD and don't want to go to the trouble of "tricking" unRAID into thinking it is a 2TB HDD, then you will need to run v5 (currently the latest is RC2). If you can live with drives up to 2TB then 4.7 is for you.

 

2) I'm not sure what the question actually is here but I'll give it a shot; You have 5x SATA ports at your disposal, so this means you would likely end up with one of the following setups: 1x Parity Drive, 4x Data Drives, No Cache Drive or 1x Parity Drive, 3x Data Drives, 1x Cache Drive before you need to add the controller card. All drives need to be formatted before they can be used in an unRAID server so this means you will likely be data shuffling or buying a new drive or two to save the headaches.

 

3) License information: http://lime-technology.com/products/registration-keys Plus is $69, Pro is $119, upgrade from Plus to Pro is $59. This means you save $9 if you get Pro straight away.

 

4) unRAID is currently a one-off purchase with free upgrades as newer versions are released.

 

5) The parts you have there look fine 

 

6) Yes and yes

 

7) Read the unRAID wiki and sticky threads in the forums, there is a lot of documentation out there. Also, the search function is your friend; just make sure you are on the top level if you want to search the entire forum otherwise it only searches the thread you have open.

 

You're welcome 

Thank you for your help, I have marked the thread [solved], but if anyone has any further input I will continue to check the thread

hello everyone, Okay, things didn't get off to a good start, the motherboard I was planning on using seem to have died. When i booted the system for the first time from the unraid thumb drive I ran the memtest86+ program, and it ran for 12 hours without any issues, so i decided to reboot so i can start setting up unraid, and the motherboard would not post, and amount of trouble shooting would get it to post again. So I went and bought a new motherboard ASUS M5A99X EVO which has 8 SATA ports onboard and three PCI-Express slots that can do 8x. This board does not have on board video, so I borrowed the video card from my HTPC and plugged it in there until i could finish the setup, it is currently still preclearing 4 drives, so here are my questions:

 

1) Once the setup is done can i remove the video card all together, and run with out a video card, keyboard or mouse?

 

2) I will be using 8 2TB Western Digital green drives, I'm preclearing 4 of those drives right now, once they are done I will transfer my media library from the old server with Raid 5 to the new one, and then add the 4 currently in use by the old server to the unraid server. When I start preclearing the 4 drives currently in use in the old server, can my library on unraid still be accessible?

 

3) the 8 drives are as follows: 5 WD20EARS and 3 WD20EARX, is it normal for them to take 34+ hours to finish the preclearing? the older WD20EARS are running a bit faster than the newer WD20EARX model for some reason

 

4) the CPU is a dual core Athlon II X2 260, its has a 65w power draw, and runs at 3.2GHz, I replaced the ram mentioned in the original post with the G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL, so the server now has 8GB of ram, is this enough to be running the server, SABnzbd, Sickbeard, Couch Potato, Transmission bit torrent client, and MAYBE a PS3 Media Server

 

5) I have GB ethernet on board, but I also have a spare GB Intel network card, is there any benefit to having two GB network cards?

hello everyone, Okay, things didn't get off to a good start, the motherboard I was planning on using seem to have died. When i booted the system for the first time from the unraid thumb drive I ran the memtest86+ program, and it ran for 12 hours without any issues, so i decided to reboot so i can start setting up unraid, and the motherboard would not post, and amount of trouble shooting would get it to post again. So I went and bought a new motherboard ASUS M5A99X EVO which has 8 SATA ports onboard and three PCI-Express slots that can do 8x. This board does not have on board video, so I borrowed the video card from my HTPC and plugged it in there until i could finish the setup, it is currently still preclearing 4 drives, so here are my questions:

 

1) Once the setup is done can i remove the video card all together, and run with out a video card, keyboard or mouse?

depends entirely on the motherboard.  Some will work headless, others will not.

 

2) I will be using 8 2TB Western Digital green drives, I'm preclearing 4 of those drives right now, once they are done I will transfer my media library from the old server with Raid 5 to the new one, and then add the 4 currently in use by the old server to the unraid server. When I start preclearing the 4 drives currently in use in the old server, can my library on unraid still be accessible?

Yes.

3) the 8 drives are as follows: 5 WD20EARS and 3 WD20EARX, is it normal for them to take 34+ hours to finish the preclearing? the older WD20EARS are running a bit faster than the newer WD20EARX model for some reason

Yes, especially with multiple and with other activity on the same server

4) the CPU is a dual core Athlon II X2 260, its has a 65w power draw, and runs at 3.2GHz, I replaced the ram mentioned in the original post with the G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL, so the server now has 8GB of ram, is this enough to be running the server, SABnzbd, Sickbeard, Couch Potato, Transmission bit torrent client, and MAYBE a PS3 Media Server

 

5) I have GB ethernet on board, but I also have a spare GB Intel network card, is there any benefit to having two GB network cards?

Not unless you are feeding two different subnets.  unRAID only allows you to configure one. (The first one it detects) the other you need to configure manually with commands you add to the config/go script.

hello everyone, Okay, things didn't get off to a good start, the motherboard I was planning on using seem to have died. When i booted the system for the first time from the unraid thumb drive I ran the memtest86+ program, and it ran for 12 hours without any issues, so i decided to reboot so i can start setting up unraid, and the motherboard would not post, and amount of trouble shooting would get it to post again. So I went and bought a new motherboard ASUS M5A99X EVO which has 8 SATA ports onboard and three PCI-Express slots that can do 8x. This board does not have on board video, so I borrowed the video card from my HTPC and plugged it in there until i could finish the setup, it is currently still preclearing 4 drives, so here are my questions:

 

1) Once the setup is done can i remove the video card all together, and run with out a video card, keyboard or mouse?

 

2) I will be using 8 2TB Western Digital green drives, I'm preclearing 4 of those drives right now, once they are done I will transfer my media library from the old server with Raid 5 to the new one, and then add the 4 currently in use by the old server to the unraid server. When I start preclearing the 4 drives currently in use in the old server, can my library on unraid still be accessible?

 

3) the 8 drives are as follows: 5 WD20EARS and 3 WD20EARX, is it normal for them to take 34+ hours to finish the preclearing? the older WD20EARS are running a bit faster than the newer WD20EARX model for some reason

 

4) the CPU is a dual core Athlon II X2 260, its has a 65w power draw, and runs at 3.2GHz, I replaced the ram mentioned in the original post with the G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL, so the server now has 8GB of ram, is this enough to be running the server, SABnzbd, Sickbeard, Couch Potato, Transmission bit torrent client, and MAYBE a PS3 Media Server

 

5) I have GB ethernet on board, but I also have a spare GB Intel network card, is there any benefit to having two GB network cards?

 

1) You won't be able to run it without a video card but you will be able to run it without a screen or keyboard & mouse connected.

 

2) As far as I know your unRAID should still be accessible although it may be quite slow.

 

3) I usually run a full manufacturer test on all my drives before adding them into the array, you could try running WDDiag after they have finished preclearing but I wouldn't be too concerned, preclearing does generally take a long time, particularly if you are doing 4 at once.

 

4) 8GB RAM is plenty.

 

5) Some Intel cards perform better than the Realtek o/b counterparts but you would probably have to be a bit more model# specific. Is it a PCI-E or PCI card? There isn't any benefit to having two NICs as unRAID only supports a single eth device (excluding VMs).

4) 8GB RAM is plenty.

What about the CPU? is that good enough?

 

5) Some Intel cards perform better than the Realtek o/b counterparts but you would probably have to be a bit more model# specific. Is it a PCI-E or PCI card? There isn't any benefit to having two NICs as unRAID only supports a single eth device (excluding VMs).

The card is EXPI9301CT, it is a pci-express cardthat plugs into the 1x pci-express slot, would I be better of disbaling the onboard and running with this one?

 

thank you for all of your help, I have to admit that besides the features of unraid, this forum is the main reason i went with unraid, I have seen many great technologies over the years that were great, but they fell flat on their faces because at the slightest hick up help was no where to be found, in this forum, you guys are responding with amazing speed with easy to understand responses, again thank you for all that respond

 

4) 8GB RAM is plenty.

What about the CPU? is that good enough?

 

5) Some Intel cards perform better than the Realtek o/b counterparts but you would probably have to be a bit more model# specific. Is it a PCI-E or PCI card? There isn't any benefit to having two NICs as unRAID only supports a single eth device (excluding VMs).

The card is EXPI9301CT, it is a pci-express cardthat plugs into the 1x pci-express slot, would I be better of disbaling the onboard and running with this one?

 

thank you for all of your help, I have to admit that besides the features of unraid, this forum is the main reason i went with unraid, I have seen many great technologies over the years that were great, but they fell flat on their faces because at the slightest hick up help was no where to be found, in this forum, you guys are responding with amazing speed with easy to understand responses, again thank you for all that respond

 

X2-260 is fine, you could underclock/undervolt it if you wanted to save power but I probably wouldn't bother. Other users on this forum have used that same network card and from what I read quickly they seem to work just fine. The Intel would probably be the slightly better choice although onboard is fine if you want to save the PCI-E slot for a controller card.

OK thank you, I'm not worried about the slot, the motherboard comes with 3 pci-express 8x slots and 2 pci-express 1x slots, plus 8 onboard sata ports, if there isn't much of a noticeable improvement I'll probably just stick with the on-board one

 

on a side note, if anyone is looking for a great case for a build, I ended up buying the Corsair Carbide 500R, it is amazing for cable routing, and the hard drives mounted sideways are much better cooled since none of the cables are in the way of air flow, here is a link so you can see pics of the case on newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139009 I didnt pay $140 for it though, it was on special at Canadacomputers.com for $99.

 

Everything in the case is very well thought out in my opinion, the only thing I could wish for is if it had more than 6 slots for hard drives that are mounted sideways to improve the looks and the air flow, above 6 drives you will need to mount your drives in one of the 4 available 5.25 bays, cheers