July 20, 201213 yr Hi, I have a 2TB and a 3TB drive. I want to buy another 3TB drive and see where i can get with unraid free. The thing is: RAID 5 would suggest that the maximal capacity of that array is 4TB, 2 TB parity and 2 TB wasted. I have heared about some companies (synology) using a more advanced system. They divide the drives in smaller partitions so that the wasted space can be minimized. If i calculate at their RAID Calculator with 2TB + 2x 3TB I get 5 TB capacity, 3 TB parity and nothing wasted... Can unRAID do something similar? Or do I have to get 2 new 3TB drives if I don't want to waste any space (although the 2TB drive would be useless in that case ) About the hardware requirements: I have an old computer with an Intel Pentium 4 with 2.35 GHz and I think 512 MB RAM. Do you think it works if i purchase - PCI Raid-controller and - PCI Gigabit Ethernet card for faster networking ? And: would the hardware be enaugh to host tvheadend + usb tv tuners, or sabnzbd or sickbeard? Thank you in advance
July 20, 201213 yr Hi, I have a 2TB and a 3TB drive. I want to buy another 3TB drive and see where i can get with unraid free. The thing is: RAID 5 would suggest that the maximal capacity of that array is 4TB, 2 TB parity and 2 TB wasted. I have heared about some companies (synology) using a more advanced system. They divide the drives in smaller partitions so that the wasted space can be minimized. If i calculate at their RAID Calculator with 2TB + 2x 3TB I get 5 TB capacity, 3 TB parity and nothing wasted... Can unRAID do something similar? Or do I have to get 2 new 3TB drives if I don't want to waste any space (although the 2TB drive would be useless in that case ) About the hardware requirements: I have an old computer with an Intel Pentium 4 with 2.35 GHz and I think 512 MB RAM. Do you think it works if i purchase - PCI Raid-controller and - PCI Gigabit Ethernet card for faster networking ? And: would the hardware be enaugh to host tvheadend + usb tv tuners, or sabnzbd or sickbeard? Thank you in advance unRAID would give you 5TB of space for data when used with a 3TB parity drive, and two data drives (3TB and 2TB) There is no need for unusual partitioning. unRAID will do its own partitioning of the drives. Anything you attempt to do will (probably) be overwritten. (unless it EXACTLY matches what unRAID would do on it own) You will end up with a single partition on each disk, with the partition using the entire space available on the disk. What MIGHT limit you is the ability of the old disk controllers to handle drives greater than 2.2TB. (some do, some do not. it has nothing to do with unRAID, it is a hardware limitation) You can run with 512 Meg of RAM, but the dreams of running many add-on processes might push the limits of that small amount of memory. (I run with 512 Meg of ram in my older server, but I do not run those add-ons that are memory hungry) I strongly suggest you monitor memory use until you get the array up with the basics. A PCI-RAID controller card will not help. unRAID does not use "raid" controller features. It just needs a bunch of individual disks. A Gigabyte ethernet card will improve the network speed from about 10-12 MB/s to 20/30MB/s. unRAID has no drivers for usb tuners. The hardware is unlikely to be enough for tvheadend, as that implies hd decoding and the need for more RAM. Joe L.
July 20, 201213 yr With a 2x3TB and 1x2TB drives you will need to use one of the 3TB for parity, so you would have 3+2TB = 5TB for data. Then as you need more you can add new drives of any size up to 3TB and get that amount. For example, you fill your 5TB up, so add another drive (requires licence now) of 3TB in size, you would then have 8TB of protected storage space. If your old machine only has PCI slots, unraid will work on it, but I wouldn't add more hard drives that there are onboard SATA connections. PCI bus can handle 1 hard drive or 1 network card (i wouldn't share the PCI buss with more than 1 high speed device). You would need more ram to run any addons like sabnzbd/sickbeard.
July 20, 201213 yr Author Thank you both. Okay, the capacity problem is solved. For the hardware: The board has no sata ports thats why I would need a raid-controller card. Even if unRaid can not use the special raid features on it(why not?).I just saw that Sata Controller cards without raid features cost the same as the ones with those features... I would only run tvheadend with DVB-T so there is no HD and the driver for my card is in kernel. Does that solve the problem or do i still need to compile and install the driver myself? Are 512 MB enaugh for that if I let sabnzb and sickbeard go? @marcusone: So you say it would waste money to buy an additional ethernet card because the speed of all PCI slot together is not high enaugh for both, 3 or 4X SATA and network? Is the 10-12 MB/s enaugh to stream HD movies? (My calculations would say yes: 20GB = 20480 MB for a 90 minute film = 5400 seconds, would be 3,79 MB/s ...)
July 20, 201213 yr Thank you both. Okay, the capacity problem is solved. For the hardware: The board has no sata ports thats why I would need a raid-controller card. Even if unRaid can not use the special raid features on it(why not?).I just saw that Sata Controller cards without raid features cost the same as the ones with those features... <<Snip>>> @marcusone: So you say it would waste money to buy an additional ethernet card because the speed of all PCI slot together is not high enaugh for both, 3 or 4X SATA and network? Is the 10-12 MB/s enaugh to stream HD movies? (My calculations would say yes: 20GB = 20480 MB for a 90 minute film = 5400 seconds, would be 3,79 MB/s ...) If you are setting a server right now, stay away from LSI based SATA cards if you want to use the latest release (rc6-test). (I could not pull up the website to see the details for your card.) You can easily stream HD movies using a 100 Mbs Ethernet connection. In many cases, you will find that most of the commercially available media servers use 100 Mbs connection. The place where the 1000 Mbs connection is most useful is transferring the files to the server. The faster connection can be 5X quicker. (Your mileage may vary depending on a number of factors.) You are being wise in setting up a test bed to see if unRAID will work for you. However, I would be very careful in what I purchased for this system. If you find that unRAID works well for you, you will probably want to replace that motherboard. As I recall, that Pentium 4 is a much better room heater than a computer CPU!
July 20, 201213 yr Author If you are setting a server right now, stay away from LSI based SATA cards if you want to use the latest release (rc6-test). (I could not pull up the website to see the details for your card.) You can easily stream HD movies using a 100 Mbs Ethernet connection. In many cases, you will find that most of the commercially available media servers use 100 Mbs connection. The place where the 1000 Mbs connection is most useful is transferring the files to the server. The faster connection can be 5X quicker. (Your mileage may vary depending on a number of factors.) You are being wise in setting up a test bed to see if unRAID will work for you. However, I would be very careful in what I purchased for this system. If you find that unRAID works well for you, you will probably want to replace that motherboard. As I recall, that Pentium 4 is a much better room heater than a computer CPU! The site is back up now. The cards name is: Dawicontrol DC-3410 Raid PCI The old computer is just as a quick and cheep solution for a couple of years. I will of course try unRAID on it before I buy the controller card... As I move to another place with a sattelite dish I think i will upgrade the Mobo + CPU to take full advantage of tvheadend and PCI-E tuner cards. But for now can anyone tell me if the 512MB RAM is enaugh for SD tv signals over dvb-t? And are dvb driver that are in kernel supported or do i need to compile/install them manually? edit: If everything is set up, can i remove the video card to save some power?
July 20, 201213 yr If you are setting a server right now, stay away from LSI based SATA cards if you want to use the latest release (rc6-test). (I could not pull up the website to see the details for your card.) You can easily stream HD movies using a 100 Mbs Ethernet connection. In many cases, you will find that most of the commercially available media servers use 100 Mbs connection. The place where the 1000 Mbs connection is most useful is transferring the files to the server. The faster connection can be 5X quicker. (Your mileage may vary depending on a number of factors.) You are being wise in setting up a test bed to see if unRAID will work for you. However, I would be very careful in what I purchased for this system. If you find that unRAID works well for you, you will probably want to replace that motherboard. As I recall, that Pentium 4 is a much better room heater than a computer CPU! The site is back up now. The cards name is: Dawicontrol DC-3410 Raid PCI The old computer is just as a quick and cheep solution for a couple of years. I will of course try unRAID on it before I buy the controller card... As I move to another place with a sattelite dish I think i will upgrade the Mobo + CPU to take full advantage of tvheadend and PCI-E tuner cards. But for now can anyone tell me if the 512MB RAM is enaugh for SD tv signals over dvb-t? And are dvb driver that are in kernel supported or do i need to compile/install them manually? edit: If everything is set up, can i remove the video card to save some power? Yes, you can pull the video card as all normal administration can be handled remotely. I did a quick google on 'dvb-t' and found that is only used in Europe. Many of us are North American based and have no experience with this standard or the hardware/software needed. Hopefully, someone over there may be able to help you. You might want to broaden your search in a manner which would target those people who would have need to use this hardware. My gut feeling is that 512MB of Ram is very close to the minimum required to run unRAID. If it were I, I would plan on upgrading memory before even considering any add-ins with the exception of apcupsd.
July 20, 201213 yr edit: If everything is set up, can i remove the video card to save some power? This depends on the MB. Some will not boot without a video card.
July 20, 201213 yr Re: tvheadend...might want to look through this thread and plugin http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=20782.0
July 20, 201213 yr Instead of buying PCI equipment (that may not even work). I would just use that money to invest that money into a modern low cost solution.
July 20, 201213 yr Are you in the UK? If so look at the HP N40L server, great price and great piece of kit and with some small mods and 3Tb drives you can get to 12TB storage no problem (but can use what you have for now no problem). No issues with drivers, connections - i now have 2 and they are great
July 20, 201213 yr Author Thankis to all of you. Why shouldn't the PCI card work? I always thought linux was very compatible with older hardware... I was thinking to get this work with minimum effort, so the PCI card would be the only thing (except fo the new hdd) I need to buy, which cost me 60€. When I buy a new motherboard I need a new CPU, new RAM and most likely a new PSU, even if I take the HP N40L server(thanks for the advice hilly, but I live in Germany) it would cost me 200 bucks. I guess I could find some old ram in other pcs to get it up to 1GB if that helps to run tvheadend.
July 20, 201213 yr The PCI card that you linked to uses the SIL-3124 chip which is SATA II capable. That chip is OK with unRAID, but, 60 euros is expensive for such a card (I have one - I paid about half that much for a new card). A much cheaper four port card using the SIL-3114 will also work but is only SATA I but it would run at about the same speed with unRAID. The PCI bus is the limiting factor here - you would get much better performance if you have a PCI-e slot (PCI Express) and find a cheap card that will work with that.
July 20, 201213 yr The N40L is on offer in the UK, i paid £140 for each of them, for server level components, internal USB to boot from, gig LAN and a small footprint they are ideal - aber jahr, das ist ein bissien teuer fur Sie uber was Sie hat jetze !
July 20, 201213 yr Author The PCI card that you linked to uses the SIL-3124 chip which is SATA II capable. That chip is OK with unRAID, but, 60 euros is expensive for such a card (I have one - I paid about half that much for a new card). A much cheaper four port card using the SIL-3114 will also work but is only SATA I but it would run at about the same speed with unRAID. The PCI bus is the limiting factor here - you would get much better performance if you have a PCI-e slot (PCI Express) and find a cheap card that will work with that. So what you are saying is that this one here will also work? Is the SIL-3114 capable of running 3TB drives?
July 20, 201213 yr The PCI card that you linked to uses the SIL-3124 chip which is SATA II capable. That chip is OK with unRAID, but, 60 euros is expensive for such a card (I have one - I paid about half that much for a new card). A much cheaper four port card using the SIL-3114 will also work but is only SATA I but it would run at about the same speed with unRAID. The PCI bus is the limiting factor here - you would get much better performance if you have a PCI-e slot (PCI Express) and find a cheap card that will work with that. So what you are saying is that this one here will also work? Is the SIL-3114 capable of running 3TB drives? See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12404.msg119327;topicseen#msg119327 I almost questioned you as to why you were spending 60+ euros on a PCI card when a new motherboard could be purchased for less than that...
July 20, 201213 yr Author I almost questioned you as to why you were spending 60+ euros on a PCI card when a new motherboard could be purchased for less than that... Thank you for that I somehow thought SATA 1 wouldn't be enaugh for HD content... but 150 MB/s should do the trick
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