I am looking for pre-build guidance to be most effective in my new home server setup. Trying to gauge what decisions I still need to make and if there are things I havent thought about I need to know before starting with the build.

Hardware: Preordered (will be here in a month earliest) an AOOSTAR WTR MAX

Also have 2x12TB HDDs coming my way

I already have 2x4TB HDDs in my old NAS (Buffalo Linkstation, cant wait to migrate from this one!)

Planning on using UNRAID due to different drive sizes and possibility to add more drives to the pool later.

Still need to get: RAM and NVME.

Use case: Plex server with maybe 5 users at the moment, but only 2 use it often. Nextcloud/Immich/Photoprism, other degooglifying containers. Will try to use it as a game server as well.

Setup:

HDDs - set up a pool with one 12tb as a parity drive and the others making up the usable pool.

NVME - thinking of getting one or two 1TB WD Reds or Firecuda 530Rs. I see most setups use 2xNVME in a pool, is the best way for reliability? Thinking of using the NVME for vms, containers and cache for Plex etc

Memory - 2x16GB DDR5 should be enough unless I really get into running VMs, if I really want to use it for gaming server stuff maybe 2x32. Worst case scenarios make me think side band ECC but probably be fine without. Kingston Fury Impact seems to be well priced.

Now, how should I go about figuring which file system works for me in this situation? Anything about my hardware setup I should note before purchasing SSDs/Memory? Other noteworthy things I should study before building the setup? I would like to get the system up and running without having to do much back and forth, even though some downtime is definitely going to be experienced.

Thanks a lot! I have spent hours and hours researching the topic, it is a lot for a new user especially since I dont really have an environment where I could practice and prep, just have to go with a lot of forum posts to build knowledge!

that's not a bad little AMD nas system.

https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/ryzen-7-8845hs.c3400

with igpu :

Graphics Model

AMD Radeon™ 780M

16 GB may be a bit low especial if running game servers.
I would really recommend getting 32 GB of ram. As the Unraid OS system sits in ram.
(8 GB for OS) ?8 GB for linux game VM... While doable your resource limited...
--mis read 2x 16 GB so 32 GB of ram you should be fine... * for os 16 for sinlge Game Server VM, 8 GB for xyz docker and services.... using general rule of thumb...

There will be no passing the igpu to a VM.... and while possible as the NAS has thunder port egpu capabilities.... You may be better off running docker version of your game servers... Potential LXC to use the AMD Igpu...

So Onto how to setup your disks...
review:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/storage-management/

and

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/shares/user-shares/#default-shares

Since you have 2x disk and looking to mirror both e disk 1 and party for a unraid array. and 2x nvme mirror for cache (raid is not a backup, its redundancy to continue staying up and running...)

If you had 3x disk for the 12 TB I would highly recommend you go pool only ditching the unraid array and going zfs raid z1
https://forums.unraid.net/topic/177887-os-70beta4-best-practice-storagediskcache-configuration/
*At the cost of Ram get Parity and some extra Disk Space...

The Question I have is...
how are you transferring files off the 2x4TB. ? What file system are the 2x 4TB disks?

I assume you will add the 2x 4 TB to this new machine after moving data around to have another disk 2 and parity in Unraid?...

If so, I can see a setup with what you have described being...
a scratch space of disks of 12 TB, a reserved backup of 4TB and ?1TB NVME for the cache space?

You would want to make sure your VM vdisk image is located on the NVME. (use nfs/smb to conect to unraid for sever space...)
*--same with docker data, the unraid system for the docker vdisk and libvirt system image...

So depending on how you want to handle the existing 4TB. As in theroy you could add the 2x 4TB directly to the nas and run the unassigned disk to mount them and copy the data off locally...

Usually for me determine a file hierarchy. (what data will be where and how you want to interact with it. What is it goin to do and where is it stored?)

if unraid array, use default XFS file system. if nvme Cached disk use btrfs, since you only have 2 disk. Unless you plan to expand and but a third, I would recommend staying with the default unraid disk setup with Disk 1, parity etc...

review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVLrD6arSwI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXqmbYtyv9g

If yes to expanding, I would highly recommend getting the 3rd disk sooner and using ZFS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T83gqqh0D4E

Thanks for your reply, very helpful!

So the 2x1TB NVME as a cache pool, I guess I can use this as cache for Plex and other services I am running as well? This should be BTRFS unless I have 3 drives and then I could go ZFS

2x12TB + 2X4TB

Yeah, parity is not enough for a good data security setup, I plan on addressing this in my future upgrades. I currently have no backups and no parity so this is already a step forward, if not optimal.

I was thinking of maybe keeping one of the 4TB drives as a backup/mirror so I would have the highest security priority data as mirrored/backed up. I wonder if this is something I could set up in Unraid itself?

12 TB parity

12 TB data

4 TB data

4 TB mirrored with above

I am planning on first adding the 2x12TB and then copying my data over. The current file system on those is XFS. Or could I just leave them as is? Somehow I feel like copying the data to the 12TB, formatting and then copying the data back, but maybe there is no benefit from formatting if I stay with XFS unless I have to. Not sure if I should go with BTRFS. My HDDS will be mostly composed of Media library folder with a folder structure for all different types of data, then a similar media folder where all the downloads will go, with a similar structure. If I go with the 4TB <-> 4TB mirror, I will have my music collection in there separated from the rest of my media as I have spent countless hours and currency to get that where it is now! Also any personal data, photo cloud etc would be probably stored here.

Some of the links you shared might already address some of my current doubts, I will study these better during the weekend! So some of what I wrote above might be already answered or cleared up when I get through them lol, just wanted to say thanks and clarify my intentions

I am now almost ready with my plan, just one more question remains. What filesystem would you recommend for my NVME pools? My HDD array will be xfs. I have 1x1TB and 1x2TB NVME, but not sure which file system to choose for these. Two different pools

One for cache & VMs

One for Plex cache & downloads, torrents etc

I think

19 hours ago, draakko said:

I am now almost ready with my plan, just one more question remains. What filesystem would you recommend for my NVME pools? My HDD array will be xfs. I have 1x1TB and 1x2TB NVME, but not sure which file system to choose for these. Two different pools

One for cache & VMs

One for Plex cache & downloads, torrents etc

I think

In Unraiid for pool I would use btrfs.
for array xfs

for pools with 3 disks of the same size zfs

Really depends on what your plan is in the short term and long term for there use and data accessed on it as a daily driver.

given the context:

One for cache & VMs

One for Plex cache & downloads, torrents etc

btrfs is fine for both nvme...

Edited July 16, 2025Jul 16 by bmartino1