Tatts4Life Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 So I have the Asus p7P55D deluxe motherboard in an old computer. Here's a link to the board. https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/P7P55D_Deluxe/specifications/ my question is how many hard drives can I use other then the 6 it mentions? I know next to nothing when it comes to computer stuff. I know you can add cards to I think PCI ports, but when it comes to what to add and where on the motherboard I have no clue. I would like to get as much use out of this before I would have to upgrade to a motherboard with more sata ports. Also an unrelated question sort of. When I upgrade the motherboard in the future switching everything over to the new board won't me I will need to format the drives right? Like I said I'm extremely new at this and know very little. Link to comment
bungee91 Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 Hello and welcome! You are correct, you will want to get an add-on card for one of your PCIe slots to expand your SATA connections. It ultimately matters how many drives you want to support in order to choose the card that can be right for you. There are cards that support up to 8 SATA ports (maybe even more, haven't looked), however most have 2 or 4 ports. Some are listed in the manual here http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility#PCI_SATA_Controllers You have plenty of PCIe slots available, so this shouldn't be an issue. Since your board does not seem to have on-board video, I would assume 1 of the 3 PCIe 16x slots is currently in use. You also have other PCIe 1x slots that can be used for 2 - 4 drives, however 4 is likely not preferred in a 1X slot. To answer your other question, unRAID for the most part is hardware agnostic, it doesn't have an issue with a replacement of your motherboard, however it does care to an extent of the order in which you assign your drives. Meaning, if you get a new board and your parity drive was in slot A, then the others followed, you should assign the drives on the new board in the same order. I believe the only real important one is the parity drive, however it is likely just preferred that you assign them the same as you have them from your previous motherboard (hopefully that makes sense). There are others that can explain this better I am sure, but the wiki is certainly your friend also, it has a wealth of information! Link to comment
trurl Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 ... To answer your other question, unRAID for the most part is hardware agnostic, it doesn't have an issue with a replacement of your motherboard, however it does care to an extent of the order in which you assign your drives. Meaning, if you get a new board and your parity drive was in slot A, then the others followed, you should assign the drives on the new board in the same order. I believe the only real important one is the parity drive, however it is likely just preferred that you assign them the same as you have them from your previous motherboard (hopefully that makes sense). There are others that can explain this better I am sure, but the wiki is certainly your friend also, it has a wealth of information! All unRAID version since v5 have kept track of the drives by serial number so the slots / ports don't really matter. As long as you boot from the same flash with the same config/super.dat file then unRAID will remember which drive is which. Link to comment
Tatts4Life Posted July 23, 2015 Author Share Posted July 23, 2015 Thanks for the help Bungee. You are correct one of the PCIe 16x slots is being used for my video card. Right now I use my computer for gaming and photo editing and have been using it more for movie watching. Now that I have tons of movies, music, and photos on the computer I'm starting to get nervous that I should back them up some how. I plan on building a gaming/movie system and then having a laptop for editing my photos. I'll use my current motherboard for my unraid system. Since it doesn't have on-board video like you mentioned do I need to have a video card for the unraid system to watch movies? If it does need a video card I'll just keep what I currently have and buy a newer one for my other system I'll use for games and movies. Thanks Trurl that's good to hear. Link to comment
mr-hexen Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 You could also use those three ports on the bottom (blue/black/grey) couldn't you? Link to comment
bungee91 Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 I plan on building a gaming/movie system and then having a laptop for editing my photos. I'll use my current motherboard for my unraid system. Since it doesn't have on-board video like you mentioned do I need to have a video card for the unraid system to watch movies? If it does need a video card I'll just keep what I currently have and buy a newer one for my other system I'll use for games and movies. If you plan to strictly use unRAID as a file server/whatever else you do with files, no you don't need a video card at all after initial BIOS setup/boot, etc... (there are some boards that will not boot without a video card, so your mileage could vary on that). However if you want the "one box to rule them all" type of setup, unRAID can be used as a file server, and a gaming/movie machine as an all in one solution. This can be problematic if you have the wrong hardware (trial/error on some of it), however could also be very plug and play as unRAID 6 really makes this easy for a "noob" to setup and understand. Plus there are some videos to help, guides to follow, and a fantastic community to help you get it right! The board you're planning to use (as mentioned above) already has a pretty high # of SATA built in (I'm counting 9 total), which for the majority of people starting out is quite a lot. If you are buying new hard drives for this, 9 usable SATA ports can be a pretty significant amount of storage, with no additional cards needed. Link to comment
Tatts4Life Posted July 23, 2015 Author Share Posted July 23, 2015 Sounds like I'm probably covered with what I want to do. Since I don't know much about unraid what I'm really looking for is something to protect all my stuff from movies to music and photos. I will be moving my movies onto it and then watching from a separate system I'll build for gaming and movie watching. What can unraid do as far as gaming? As far as games go I have a nicely modded elder scrolls oblivion, fallout 3 and new Vegas, and a few others I play from Steam. Link to comment
trurl Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 Sounds like I'm probably covered with what I want to do. Since I don't know much about unraid what I'm really looking for is something to protect all my stuff from movies to music and photos. I will be moving my movies onto it and then watching from a separate system I'll build for gaming and movie watching. ... Just be aware that the only real backup of a file is one or more additional copies of the file. unRAID is not a backup unless it is used to store a copy of something you have stored elsewhere. Link to comment
Squid Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 ...Just be aware that the only real backup of a file is one or more additional copies of the file. unRAID is not a backup unless it is used to store a copy of something you have stored elsewhere. Or any RAID system ... Link to comment
bungee91 Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 What can unraid do as far as gaming? As far as games go I have a nicely modded elder scrolls oblivion, fallout 3 and new Vegas, and a few others I play from Steam. It can be comparable to a "bare metal" (another computer not virtualized) so it will do whatever the GPU and CPU are capable of supporting. All of those games with the appropriate hardware (this would be the same for a separate machine also) wouldn't be an issue. Personally I think you will have far less issues with a separate machine for this, but it's always nice to have the option! Link to comment
Tatts4Life Posted July 25, 2015 Author Share Posted July 25, 2015 Just be aware that the only real backup of a file is one or more additional copies of the file. unRAID is not a backup unless it is used to store a copy of something you have stored elsewhere. True I guess what made me think of unraid as a backup system is the parity part where if a drive fails I can rebuild it from the parity drive. In the case of having back ups of my stuff what's the best option that is inexpensive? Still plan on building an unraid system, but I would really like a back up of my stuff since I have a ton of stuff. Link to comment
bungee91 Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 Any hard drive that is unplugged from the system would make a good back up.. Something as easy as an external drive that you unplug and backup to every so often, or an internal drive that you plug in, backup and then remove would certainly fit the bill.. I like many here do none of this.. However I understand that it is not a wise decision. Link to comment
trurl Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 Just be aware that the only real backup of a file is one or more additional copies of the file. unRAID is not a backup unless it is used to store a copy of something you have stored elsewhere. True I guess what made me think of unraid as a backup system is the parity part where if a drive fails I can rebuild it from the parity drive. In the case of having back ups of my stuff what's the best option that is inexpensive? Still plan on building an unraid system, but I would really like a back up of my stuff since I have a ton of stuff. I only backup things that I can't replace or don't want to go to the trouble to replace. This includes our photos, personal documents, and our music collection. The music collection could be replaced, but so far it still fits in my backup volumes. I don't backup movies and TV because I don't care that much about them. My backup volumes are just disks that I replaced with larger disks on my unRAID. I put them in an external enclosure and then rsync my "critical" data monthly and store them offsite. Link to comment
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