Is Unraid for me?

[garycase]

An alternative you may want to consider to the Norco is the Lian-Li PC-A70B with ONE 5-in-3 backplane.  Total is just a bit over the cost of a Norco.  The PC-A70B holds 7 drives in internal drive bays in front; 3 in a rear drive-bay; and with 5 more in a 5-in-3 backplane there's still room for two spare 5.25" bays, where you could mount two more -- a total of 17.  The chassis has excellent ventilation (6 120mm fans).

 

I just put one together with 17 1.5TB Seagates, and it's outstanding [i used an IcyDock 5-in-3 unit].  When I need another UnRAID server, I'll use the same chassis.

 

By the way, the Play/Retrieve add-in for DVD Profiler works perfectly with the user shares.  I've mapped my DVD's (~ 2500 at the moment) to \\Media1\DVDs\<name of DVD>\Video_TS\Video_TS.IFO with the "play" feature and they work perfectly.  Just find the DVD you want to play; and click on the "Play/Retrieve" icon and it plays 

 

As you can see, I changed "Tower" to "Media1"  -- in anticipation of additional servers in the future 

 

[dstoe]

An alternative you may want to consider to the Norco is the Lian-Li PC-A70B with ONE 5-in-3 backplane.   Total is just a bit over the cost of a Norco.   The PC-A70B holds 7 drives in internal drive bays in front; 3 in a rear drive-bay; and with 5 more in a 5-in-3 backplane there's still room for two spare 5.25" bays, where you could mount two more -- a total of 17.   The chassis has excellent ventilation (6 120mm fans).

 

For my office setup I already decided on the Norco. In fact, I am waiting for the shipment from the US. Although I will keep this case in mind, when it comes to my media server.

 

By the way, the Play/Retrieve add-in for DVD Profiler works perfectly with the user shares.   I've mapped my DVD's (~ 2500 at the moment) to \\Media1\DVDs\<name of DVD>\Video_TS\Video_TS.IFO with the "play" feature and they work perfectly.   Just find the DVD you want to play; and click on the "Play/Retrieve" icon and it plays 

 

As I only collect HD stuff, there unfortunately is not a one key solution. I need different software to playback my stuff. All my BD rips are easily played with either Arcsoft TMT or PowerDVD, but I also have older TV-Caps, which I use directshow players for.

 

 

[henris]

I've been using Meedio (nowadays MeediOS) for playing DVD, Blu-Ray and TS-material. I use XML2Mee plugin to import DVD and Blu-ray information from DVD Profiler (cover scans and meta data) and then PlayMee plugin to launch the proper player (handless also mounting images etc.); TheaterTek for DVD, PowerDVD for Blu-ray and MPC Hometheater for others. Below is a link to a screenshot of the UI for our kids. You can simply click a cover to start playing it. All the dirty details like image mounting and refresh rate settings are handled in the background. I guess there are similar features in other media center software but I've been very satisfied with Meedio once I got it all setup back in 2005 (only minor tweaks in 2008 when I moved to Blu-Rays).

http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/1123/Meedio_screenshot.jpg

 

 

[dstoe]

a little update.

I finally received all the bits and pieces for my office system. Getting the mainboard locally was taking more time, than shipping the Norco 4020 from the US to germany. Anyway, I build the system consisting of this hardware:

 

• Supermicro MB775 I-3210 X7SBE
   
  
• 2x Supermicro Cont SATA2 AOC-SAT2-MV8 PCI-X
   
  
• Intel Core 2 Duo E5200
   
  
• 4gb ddr2 800
   
  
• Corsair TX750W
   
  
• Norco 4020
   
  

 

Running Unraid 4.4.2

For the start I use a 1,5TB Seagate as parity drive and 3x 500G Samsungs. While filling up, I will add more disks, but I wanted to try out the system first and get used to it. So far the only software addition has been Unmenu. Although I have not figured out how to start it automatically on boot.

 

Yesterday I copied some 400GB to the array and right now I do a parity check. Unmenu shows 70,000KB/s as speed after the first 15%.

 

Some observations:

Had to change the NTP server, as it would not show the correct time.

The Norco is far too loud. I would have to swap the divider plate with a custom one and go for slow 120mm fans, if I wanted a similar system at home.

Copying to the array is slow, I will think about a cache drive.

Unmenu is very useful and should be a part of the original package.

 

I want to thank everybody who has given me advice. Thanks!

 

regards

Dominik

[prostuff1]

a little update...

 

To get unMenu to boot on startup you need to add a line to your go script that reads:

/boot/unmenu/uu

 

To speed up transfers to the system you could also disable the parity drive.  That will allow you to transfer the files and then you can reassign the parity drive.

[dstoe]

a little update...

 

To get unMenu to boot on startup you need to add a line to your go script that reads:

/boot/unmenu/uu

 

To speed up transfers to the system you could also disable the parity drive.  That will allow you to transfer the files and then you can reassign the parity drive.

 

Ok, but how do I disable the parity drive?

[prostuff1]

Ok, but how do I disable the parity drive?

 

Just unassign it on the Devices Page.

[SSD]

First let me say I don't recommend removing parity UNLESS you have all of the data that you are planning to copy to the array backed up onto another sources.

 

Before you destroy any of the backups, reinstall / rebuild parity.

 

With 1.5T of disk space, it would take about 27 hours to fill up the disks with parity enabled, and about 9 with it disables.  Of course you'd have to rebuild parity after which could take 6-8 hours or so.  All in all, I think I'd just leave parity turned on if it is already built.  But up to you.

 

To disable parity, just stop the arrray, go to the devices tab, remove the drive from the parity slot (leave unassigned), go back to the main page, and start the array.  You may have to press the "restore" button (normally a very bad idea, but in this case not a problem).

[Joe L.]

a little update...

 

To get unMenu to boot on startup you need to add a line to your go script that reads:

/boot/unmenu/uu

 

To speed up transfers to the system you could also disable the parity drive.  That will allow you to transfer the files and then you can reassign the parity drive.

You might want to preceed that line with one that will pause for enough time to unRAID to come on-line.

 

Something like this:

sleep 30

/boot/unmenu/uu

 

 

[dstoe]

Ok, thanks for the input. Unmenu starts without me doing anything. The Go Script line works nice (remember I am a linux newb).

I also installed a cache disk. This will speedup things a bit.

 

But there is still something I can not figure out. Lets say I mount a disk full of data, that I want to copy to the array. Now I want to select some, but not all of the data on the disk to copy that to the array. How can I batch copy several files with midnight commander? If I select all, only files, but no folders are marked. I would really like a tool like total commander on the Unraid machine. Any ideas?

 

regards

Dominik

[RobJ]

But there is still something I can not figure out. Lets say I mount a disk full of data, that I want to copy to the array. Now I want to select some, but not all of the data on the disk to copy that to the array. How can I batch copy several files with midnight commander? If I select all, only files, but no folders are marked. I would really like a tool like total commander on the Unraid machine. Any ideas?

 

I don't think most of us want to touch that one.  It would inevitably start a Windows tools vs Linux tools debate.

[dstoe]

Ok, nevermind. I took a different approach and setup a separate XP system in the office. On that one I just run Total Commander, which so far works flawless.

regards

Dominik

[SSD]

Did you look at AjaXplorer?  It is bundled as part of the unRAID Web GUI project.