March 23, 201313 yr I'm currently using FlexRAID for Windows, and running into issues with it not finding drives out of no where. unRAID has a huge user following, and I think I may try it. I could setup an extra laptop to run unRAID on, but I have a desktop that I'd rather use instead. However, my desktop must also run Windows for things such as SabNZBD, Sickbeard, and a few other server programs. So, my plan is this - please let me know if the hardware/setup will work fine: -Core i3 processor -8GB RAM -250GB 7200rpm OS drive -(1) USB 1TB drive for random storage -(4) 3TB 5400RPM drives in one USB 3.0 4-bay enclosure. This will store almost all of my media. I want to take 3 of the 3TB drives and make them into a 12TB storage pool, with a 3TB drive as parity in case one of the drives go bad so I can swap it out and not lose data (at least that's what was suggested for me to do at FlexRAID). Since I want to run Windows as well, I was thinking of doing this: -ESXi 5.1 setup with 1GB RAM -Windows 7 x64 with 4GB RAM -unRAID with 3GB RAM Will that work? Will I see performance issues? I don't plan on buying any RAID controllers, so I'm hoping to do the whole "software" RAID setup with just my USB enclosure. --ALSO, will my drives (currently NTFS) lose their data? I still have about 2TB worth of movies on one drive that I don't want to lose if I need to format the drives differently.
March 23, 201313 yr unRAID will completely erase and re-format any drive assigned to it to use a reiserfs file system. You cannot use NTFS file systems as part of the protected array. If you even "assign" the drive for a moment unRAID will re-partition the drive if it does not already have a unRAID compatible partition, so be very careful. It will make accessing the NTFS file-system impossible without data recovery tools. Running under ESXi, you may see performance issues. (I've no experience, so cannot give guidance) FlexiRAID is a completely different animal than unRAID. unRAID is RAID4 without striping of data, with a single dedicated parity disk. As mentioned, unRAID does not accept USB connected data or parity drives. You must use SATA or IDE connected drives.
March 23, 201313 yr However, my desktop must also run Windows for things such as SabNZBD, Sickbeard, and a few other server programs. Unraid can do that, considering all three programs are coded in python, which, unraid (and pretty much very other OS out there that's not chromeOS) supports. --ALSO, will my drives (currently NTFS) lose their data? I still have about 2TB worth of movies on one drive that I don't want to lose if I need to format the drives differently. Copy all 2TB worth of data over to one drive, set up the array with all the other drives, copy the 2TB over, install the last drive into the array. I had to do something along those lines with 9TB worth of data, not very fun.
March 25, 201313 yr You could also install Virtual Box on a bare metal unRAID system and then use that to install a Windows VM. I went the ESXi route but I started out with Virtual Box. I needed to pass through a tuner card for my Windows VMs so had to switch because of that or run separate PCs. But if you don't need pass through for a Windows VM - Virtual Box on unRAID might be another option for you to try.
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