Setup Possible?

[mystik]

I am brand new to UnRAID.  I have been using RAID systems for many years, but have finally hit the last straw for those setups.  I had an 8-bay RAID5 system, and a second drive failed during rebuild.  Obviously, if I had it to do over, I would have gone RAID6, but moving forward...  One thing that I want to do now with the new setup is use mixed size drives.  The reason is I had all 3 TB drives in my last RAID system, but now I have an 8TB drive I had been using, trying to recover everything as much as possible before getting back setup.  I would like to use this drive in my configuration, ideally with being able to keep the content already on the drive now.  I have seen products like FlexRAID that can do all of this, but wasn't sure if it was the best solution.  Plus, they do not seem speedy to reply to support.  So, still looking.  But, here's the reason for this post:

 

When my last RAID system failed, it decided to die out too.  Unfortunately, I didn't have $1000 to replace it.  So, I bought a base 8-bay drive enclosure.  I have a Windows desktop that I am connecting it to. I also have an HTPC, but it does not have an eSATA port, which is how I will be connecting the drive enclosure.  So...  Can I use UnRAID with this setup?  That is, can it be used on top of a Windows system, or must it be its own OS only?  Thanks much in advance.  I appreciate any and all feedback. 

[trurl]

unRAID is its own OS, but it can be a virtual host, so you can run Windows on top of it.

 

You must let unRAID format any drive it will use, so you would have to move the data off that 8TB before you could make it part of the parity array. And parity must be at least as large as the largest single data disk, so you must use it as parity or buy another that large.