Hi - I'm planning on building an unraid server to replace my increasingly unmanageable pile of external drives; reasonably computer literate, comfortable with the command line, and I've replaced/installed assorted cards/drives before but never attempted actual construction from scratch, so I'm a bit overwhelmed by choice :-)

 

Basic idea is for a simple fileserver, connected by wired ethernet to a router for wireless serving to media players (currently a WD box looking for network shares; if this build worked out then likely an HTPC of some kind to follow), and wired (via router) to the pc, for video files from 700mb to 10gb or so.

 

I've looked at the recommended builds section (I'm in the UK); but it's all a bit out of date, and I don't know enough to easily pick out like-for-like replacements, so any advice or pointers (or links that I've missed) would be greatly appreciated, even a simple list of components that would suit (and work)...

 

In terms of the questions from the sticky :

 

Budget - a few hundred pounds excl. drives, but paying a bit more entirely possible if needed/worth it

 

Capacity - I've got around 25TB on assorted drives that I'd like to be consolidating, + with goodly amounts of room for future expansion, so I would have thought 12 or 15 drives, I tend to think I would like 2 parity drives so probably 15 to give 36TB with 3TB drives - I'm quite happy buying 4 in 3 or  (?) 5 in 3's, assuming that cooling wouldn't be a problem/too noisy. I'm guessing that means I need at least 1 expansion card for the drive connections as well...

 

Expandability - I'd initially probably get 6 or 7 drives in the first place, but eventually I'd plan on filling it up.

 

Addons - nothing specific, I imagine I would like to run some of the interface ones like unmenu or the firefox addon, things like email notification seem sensible, but not plans for usenet or torrent or mediaplayer addons. potentially some kind of external fileserving at a later date (now I'm connected by fibre), but not intially.

 

7200 rpm drives - no particular need so far as I can tell?

 

Spare parts - plausibly I could start taking apart external drives, but to be honest I'd rather just buy new, otherwise nothing really (few cables etc.)

 

parts in mind - like I said, overwhelmed by choice; I like the idea of something relatively quiet (my current main pc has the noise reduction foam in the walls and quiet fans, and i definitely like that, I would certainly like the same for this box, even if it costs a bit more), but looking down great long lists of cases and etc.etc. on span just leaves me feeling a bit helpless :-)

 

 

And then finally - I'm assuming the building is relatively straightforward (multitudinous videos and step-by-step's online), but anything that would make that easier ('these cables cost a bit more but make connection a breeze') would be a plus as well

 

Thanks,

 

TC

 

A good place to compare prices and check parts compatibility is pcpartpicker. It doesn't really address unRAID compatibility but it will help make sure your processor, mobo, memory, etc. work together. I've only used the site from US but I see it supports UK also.

 

Also, unRAID only supports one parity drive currently.

 

Check out the U.C.D. subforum for other builds.

My thanks Trurl, on looking it's a good site but probably makes my confusion as to endless choice worse :-), I'm more just looking for recommendations as to components to use (that are currently readily sourceable in the UK)

 

I thought unRAID had straightforward variants that would allow 2-drive failure before data was lost, but I may well have misundertstood :-).

 

I hadn't really looked at the U.C.D forum as I assumed it was more advanced than my simple needs, but I shall see what there is to see, thanks :-)

 

TC