Help with a Maximum Storage Build for $500 Canadian or less (taxes inc.)

[smather]

Hi everyone, I'm trying to piece together a replacement for a bunch of failing external hard drives (6Tbs worth) and have decided an unRAID server would be my best option.  However, I only have a limited budget of approximately $500 (taxes included) Canadian to build with, and I want to get the most storage for my buck.  I do have an aging but completely (touch wood) functioning tower with an AMD E2-1800 processor running at 1.7ghz and about 4gb of ram I can re purpose, but I'd rather start fresh with a new platform if possible. 

 

My goal for this particular system is to primarily serve media to various outputs around the house (I have at least 1 windows laptop, 1 macbook pro, several android devices, several iOS devices, and several consoles I'd like to serve, although mainly it'll be a nexus player with a KODI front end and the 2 laptops).  Down the road it would be nice to do more with it, but I'm alright if all this machine can do is serve media reliably and with a minimum of buffering.  I'd rather not use plex as I haven't enjoyed it when I've tried it.

 

What should I be looking for?  I found some good deals on AMD parts, but are they worthwhile?  What's the best way to get maximum storage while maintaining a parity drive? I'm finding lots of disparate information, but nothing that's helping me narrow things down.

 

Thank you, any help would be appreciated!

[redlaws]

have you tried the trial version on a usb on this box if it is working.

if the usb works for unraid then your cheapest shot maybe this.

you could put 4-6 2tb (or 3tb if they fit into your budget) hdd in it to get you started with a basic or plus licence.

[tdallen]

Hi, what model tower chassis and motherboard do you have now?

[bkastner]

Given your budget I agree with redlaw on checking your existing hardware. You need to determine if your existing system will boot up UnRAID and confirm it's accessible on the network. If so, I would suggest you stick with this for now and just worry about storage.

 

Since you are looking at 6TB of usable storage I would likely start with 2 6TB drives (WD Red), one for parity and one for data. However that is going to cost $420 plus taxes in Canada. If you want to reduce this you could buy 3 3TB disks, so you are using 1 for parity and 2 for data, which will come in quite a bit cheaper (3TB WD Reds are $140, so only $320 plus taxes). However I would personally avoid filling up a case with 3TB disks today (or 2TB disks as redlaw suggests) and invest in the future by starting with 6TB disks.

 

If your system boots UnRAID and can be accessed on the network, then with the above you are good to go, and can always swap out parts down the road. If you can't boot UnRAID for some reason, then this is a whole other story.

[mr-hexen]

I built my system for less than that not including hard drives. Check out my build thread. I'm in Ontario, Canada, so prices are CDN$

[smather]

OK, I may try that. Can I test it to see if its functional without actually formatting any drives? I'm still using that pc at the moment.

 

Also your build Mr Hexen is not too different than what I was thinking about.

 

I was leaning towards an A10 processor as I could get it for less than a basic i3, but is AMD any good for this?

[bkastner]

OK, I may try that. Can I test it to see if its functional without actually formatting any drives? I'm still using that pc at the moment.

 

Also your build Mr Hexen is not too different than what I was thinking about.

 

I was leaning towards an A10 processor as I could get it for less than a basic i3, but is AMD any good for this?

 

Yes, you can just format a USB drive with UnRAID and boot to it without touching any of your internal disks. You should be able to see if it boots okay, and you can try and connect to the GUI from another machine to confirm it's on the network successfully.

[SSD]

Actually, the 5TB Toshiba's are at a good pricepoint.

 

Strongly recommend a drive cage! May seem like a luxury, but if ever a drive fails and you want to swap it out, it is invaluable to be able to do it without opening the case. Otherwise, you risk knocking something loose removing the old and inserting the new, which can create havoc with trying to do the rebuild. They also do a great job keeping drives cool.

[HellDiverUK]

 

I was leaning towards an A10 processor as I could get it for less than a basic i3, but is AMD any good for this?

 

The A10 is great if you intend running VMs and passing though the GPU.  Works just fine, and not something you can do with Intel.  If you go for the A10-7800, you can set it to 65W or 45W to save power, and you don't really lose any CPU performance if you're not using the GPU cores.

 

The A88X chipset supports 8 SATAs, too. 

 

I really liked my A10-7850K/Asus A88X Gamer rig for UnRAID.  Used a little more power than Intel, but pretty good all the same.  I only stopped using it for UnRAID as I needed it for something else.

[mr-hexen]

You don't need to go high end on a CPU. A celeron would do you just fine since you plan to run Kodi which does not do any transcoding.

 

 

[mr-hexen]

Here's what I've quickly pieced together on newegg.ca

 

Celeron G1840 - 62.03

4GB HyperX DDR3 - 29.99

Fractal Design R4 Case - 139.99

Corsair CX430M - 69.99

ASUS H81M-C/CSM/C/SI-R (refurb) - 54.99

WD 3TB Red - 139.99

 

Total $496.98 + s/h + tax.

[mr-hexen]

As you can see, the costs are heavily dependent on the hard drive, and that included only a single 3TB drive.

 

I would do as suggested and determine the feasibility of using your existing system as the basis and adding 2-3 hard drives to it, since they are the largest cost of any system.

 

As suggested I'd test your existing system with an unRAID USB stick to see if it boots (remember to unplug all your hard drives before trying so you don't hose them).

 

You could then transplant the hardware into a better case if you wanted to.

[smather]

Ok, I will definitely try that and report back on how it works out.  Now, is there a way to migrate the data on my existing drives onto a new drive before I incorporate them into the system, short of pulling the drives and placing them in an external housing? 

 

Thanks everyone for answering my questions!  I had heard that the community here was really positive, and I'm glad that it was accurate!

[mr-hexen]

You'll need at least one empty drive as you need to copy the data off the existing drives first, then you can transfer those drives to the array, and continue copying over your data.

 

I HIGHLY suggest you avoid re-using the existing drives though as their reliability might be suspect since they have been well used already.

 

If your existing tower works with drives over 2TB i'd buy two new 4TB drives and use that.

[bkastner]

Ok, I will definitely try that and report back on how it works out.  Now, is there a way to migrate the data on my existing drives onto a new drive before I incorporate them into the system, short of pulling the drives and placing them in an external housing? 

 

Thanks everyone for answering my questions!  I had heard that the community here was really positive, and I'm glad that it was accurate!

 

Not really.

 

In order for the disks to be usable in UnRAID you will want to boot UnRAID up, pre-clear the disks and then format them using UnRAID. This means they can't contain any existing data on them.

 

You will likely need to get UnRAID up and running, and then from another PC move the data across the network from a Windows machine with your existing data drives (either internally mounted or using an external caddy).

 

As mr-hexen mentioned, there is an element of risk using your existing drives, but theoretically, once they are cleared of data you can add them to the UnRAID server and then run the pre-clear process on them (possibly multiple times). You can also then run a SMART report on the disks and post the results here where people can provide recommendations on whether those disks are worth adding to UnRAID, or whether you are better avoiding them.

[smather]

Ok, once I get some time to attempt this I will let everyone know how it went. Thanks again, I'm sure I will be back with more questions as I am a total noob when it comes to this aspect of computing.