January 26, 201313 yr Hi am thinking of an unRAID system for my HTPC. Event though the data is not spanned across disks, does it appear as one volume to the OS (W7)? It will go in my lounge room. I'd like the disks to be in a separate expandable set of boxes connected by eSATA via port multipliers in those boxes to the unRAID server box, which need only be and would preferably be a very small form factor, and possibly hidden. Is this possible? Thanks Zeno
January 26, 201313 yr It can appear as one contiguous share, but eSATA port multipliers will make it very slow to do any parity build or check or data recovery functions. It would be better to house the server in a normal server case somewhere else than to compromise speed and cooling by trying to keep it in the normal living area.
January 26, 201313 yr Connecting a maximum of two 2T drives per eSATA port will make a slow but serviceable system. Parity checks will take up to 12 hours but streaming an uncompressed blu-ray rip will work. Drives larger the 2T will increase check times proportionality.
January 27, 201313 yr Author Thanks. So sounds like I need a system with the HDDs connected internally by SATA. So now looking for a server case that is pretty enough to sit with hifi separates, or that can sit in a closet without a monitor. Q Does it need a monitor connected? Or can I remote in say from an iPad or another networked PC? Q Is it possible to combine the redundancy of unRAID with back up on the same set of disks? Ie can I have one of my unRAID disks as my usage disk and another as my backup disk? This would seem to be a very useful feature, but I'm just getting my head around the whole configuration. Cheers
January 27, 201313 yr A monitor is not required. Multiple shares can be configured as desired. You will likely need a monitor connected initially to set the BIOS options to boot from the flash drive, etc. Once you can boot unRAID, it may be disconnected IF your motherboard will run headless. Many will, some will not. Joe L.
January 29, 201313 yr A monitor is not required. Multiple shares can be configured as desired. You will likely need a monitor connected initially to set the BIOS options to boot from the flash drive, etc. Once you can boot unRAID, it may be disconnected IF your motherboard will run headless. Many will, some will not. Joe L. If it will not, a cheap PCI video card may fix that. Like an old Matrox Millennium for $11 shipped: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Matrox-MGA-MIL-4-590-05-RevB-IS-MGA-2064-R2-PCI-Video-/321040260490?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4abf7d9d8a
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