Not to take away business from Tom but why do you even want unraid with a setup like that already?  I dont think you will benefit anything unless you are planning to update to more drives soon.  I feel like we are missing something from your full story

The Dell Optiplex GX755 that I have has a built in raid controller and I've got two (2) hard drives to work with.

 

Do I...

 

      a. configure the drives for raid 1 within the dell optiplex setup (mirrored)

      b. configure the drives to be non-raid

If you use the operating system Dell supplies, then you could use the mirrored configuration.  You would not use unRAID, since it would have nothing to do with the Dell supplied OS (probably some variant of windows)

 

If you wish to use unRAID as the operating system, then you must set the bios option for non-raid (and non-mirrored) disks.  The  two disks should then be seen as two individual disk drives by the bios. 

 

And after that, do I set unRAID up for one drive parity and the other data, or both drives data?

You could do it either way... If you configure a parity drive, your data is protected against any single disk drive failure.  If you use both for data, you have the space of both available for your data, but no protection from a disk failure.  If a disk fails, you lose the data on it.

If one drive parity and the other data, what happens if one of the drives fails? Do I lose my data?

You data is still available, and once you replace the failed drive with a working one, the data it had will be re-constructed on it.  At that point you will have no failed drives and again be protected from a single disk failure.

If both drives data, how would I get one to mirror the other for a safety copy?

unRAID does not do mirrored disks.  use a different product if you want mirroring.

Not using this for major data transfer, just using it to park my RAW camera images prior to burning to DVD.  Excellent package by the way!

 

Sorry for the uninformed questions (total noob!).

 

Thank you!

 

p.s. I do have a 3rd hard drive identical to the other two, but do not have a way of hooking it up in the PC yet. Considering the 3rd drive, is there a better way of doing this? 

Probably need to find the right cable, assuming the disk controller on the motherboard has an open port.

The original plan was to run Windows Home Server on the Optiplex but I recently discovered that under certain circumstances data corruption can occur if files are edited directly from the server share (something I would be doing often with my pictures).

 

I downloaded and checked out a couple of other NAS-like systems but liked the simplicity of unRaid which is why I am here.

 

I've set up the two drives (unmirrored), one parity and the other data, and am surprised at how fast the files are copying up.

 

Now... to figure out a backup plan for the unRaid!

 

I do like the user permissions so will be upgrading to the Pro option shortly.

 

Thanks for the info Joe!

 

 

One other question...

 

Whenever I do add the 3rd drive, do I just down the server, add the drive as a data drive, and then format it?

 

All of these drives are 1TB in size. If one is parity and the other two data, will that mean I have 2TB of storage, and the parity drive is covering in the event of a failure?

 

Thank you!

One other question...

 

Whenever I do add the 3rd drive, do I just down the server, add the drive as a data drive, and then format it?

Exactly... stop the array, power down, install the new drive, power up, stop the array once more, go to the devices assignment page, assign the third drive as a data drive,

go back to the main page, check the checkbox indicating it is ok to format the drive, and then press "Start"

 

The third drive will then be cleared, then formatted, then it will become part of the array and available as additional space.

All of these drives are 1TB in size. If one is parity and the other two data, will that mean I have 2TB of storage, and the parity drive is covering in the event of a failure?

Exactly.

 

Joe L.

What a very cool solution.  Thank you Joe!