As it says above, mounting a new drive to be my parity drive. This is my first time setting up a server but I am pretty sure 6.5 days for initial set up is longer than it should be!

Both are new Toshiba NAS 300 CMR SATA 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM

52 minutes ago, tylercbirk said:

mounting a new drive to be my parity drive

Installing, and assigning the drive as parity, is not the same thing as "mounting". Parity has no filesystem to mount.

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

Thank you for that clarification. Here is the ZIP file!homebirk-diagnostics-20251130-2023.zip

USB not recommended for assigned disks for many reasons.

Ahh that makes sense, sorry for being dumb! I am new to all of this and have been trying to read/understand as much as possible. I struggled to find ideal hardware set ups. After speaking to a friend/reading posts here I ended up with the Beelink Mini PC, Mini S13 PRO Intel 13th N150 and the TERRAMASTER D4-320. I guess I should return these and look for something else that supports proper expansion via SATA. Thank you.

9 hours ago, trurl said:

USB not recommended for assigned disks for many reasons.

Any advice for hardware would be greatly appreciated. I am more than happy to start from scratch if it means doing things properly. Thank you!

Have a look around here:

https://forums.unraid.net/forum/35-unraid-compulsive-design/

Edit link

Edited December 1, 2025Dec 1 by Veah