Hey all, first post!  Woop!

 

After doing a lot of reading about FreeNAS I've decided that unRAID is probably the way to go.  The main reason; the ability to add drives later.

 

I'm wanting to set up a small (6TB or so to begin with) NAS that can also run sab/SB/CP/Transmission to handle my media downloads (will probably also run that XMBC wotnot that updates the library).  Currently I'm just using a D-Link Sharecenter purely as a NAS, while my little Acer Revo OpenELEC box handles playback and nzb/torrent downloads but figured I might as well combine the NAS and downloading into one box so I can shut down the XBMC box when I'm not using it.

 

Just wanted to get some recommendations regarding hardware and some advice on the software.  I'll be wanting it to be fast enough to handle sab and give me fast a throughput, but also be fairly economical with its power consumption.  I'm figuring a low powered i3 would be fine for this?  8GB RAM would be more than enough, right?  Plus I'm thinking WD reds purely for the extended warranty.

 

On the software side of things I'm curios about the cache disk and wondering if something could be set up in a similar vein, acting purely as a scratchdisk for downloads?  My current XBMC box has a 64GB SSD which I use for temporary downloads (and a place to leave uploading torrents) as to not 'disturb' the NAS and wake up the drive when it's not needed.  Ideally, all downloads would be stored on this cache drive first, with SAB moving them to the correct location in the array on completion, with torrents left on there while I seed.  My only concern going forward is that this drive would take up one of the 21 available through unRAID.  Correct?

 

Also, while I'm here, has anyone got any experience with Logic Case rack mount cases?  Servercase are selling a 16 bay 3U case for £230 (£195 with free shipping if you buy from their eBay store) which seems like a pretty good price to me.  Well, in comparison to my original idea; Sharkoon case (£35) plus x3 Icy Dock 5-in-3 cages (£80 each).  Yeah, I know I don't need 3 cages to begin with, but in the long run it'd be cheaper getting a 'proper' rack mount chassis.

 

Sorry if this is all a bit rambly and/or you're sick of answering these types of questions.  Any help greatly appreciated.

;-)

M

Looks like your on the right track.  An i3 or similar AMD will do fine and 8GB is plenty.  If your only after a 6TB array and don't plan to go beyond 15TB or so within a couple years, a simple inexpensive tower chassis with 5-6 internal 3.5 slots will do well.  Can always add a 4x3 or 5x3 cage later.  If you are planning for a 24 drive array from the beginning, then by all means go for the large rack.

 

A cache drive would be recommended.  An SSD will get ate up in this app if it doesn't have good garbage collection support in the firmware.  Refurb enterprise drives are inexpensive and do well for a cache drive.  WD Red and Toshiba retail drives are pretty good.  I shy away from Seagate these days because of their aggressive power management and their short power-on life ratings.  Probably find other brands in the hard drive threads.

Hey, thanks for the reply man.  Good to know than an i3 will do the job.  I'll probably spend the extra and go for one of those low 35W rated models to keep the consumption down.  In terms of a cache drive I'm not going to be using SSD for this - I'm actually thinking a 250GB ish 5400rpm that can be spun up constantly (maybe even a WD green).  Like I said, I only want to use it as a download drive, not an actual cache.

As for the case, I'm still probably gonna go with the rack mount (unless anyone has bad words to say about Logic Case).  While I'll be only starting out with around 6TB, I'm really not sure how fast I'll end up filling it and need to expand.  My problem at the moment is that I've been very conscious about only have 3TB available and have been managing the space since I first got the NAS (deleting things after I'm done with them etc).  The beauty of having that quantity of drive bays is that I can just pop in another drive when space is running low, so I may actually end up filling it fairly quickly.