Hi all,

 

Thought I'd better introduce myself after lurking around here for the past few days, and download my thoughts on what I plan to do with unraid!

 

I'm still trying to find the time to build and use unraid (due to a baby and the run up to xmas.  In the meantime I'm trying to see if it's up to the task of replacing my QNAP TS-110 NAS which uses a single 1TB WD green drive.

 

Currently the QNAP is used for:

 

• Storage of movies, TV shows, music, photos, recorded video clips, documents
  
• Streaming of most of the above
  
• Slideshow for photos
  
• Storage of software installers, ISOs
  
• Virus scanner
  
• Torrent client
  
• Personal blog (not currently updated)
  

 

All of this is backed-up via esata to an ICYBOX disk enclosure to an identical 1TB WD green drive.

 

Planned destination Unraid server:

 

• Lian Li PC-B25B full tower case
  
• i5-4440
  
• MSI H87M-E33 micro ATX board with 4K HDMI, DVI
  
• Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB
  
• Sapphire R7 250 2GB with boost, HDMI, 2x DVI
  
• 1 1TB WD green drive, several 250GB Seagate drives, a 250GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive, OCZ Core II 60GB SSD, OCZ Agility
  
• 1 Windows 10 VM, 1 Linux MINT VM (or other Steam-capable 'nix OS)
  

 

What are everyones thoughts - can I migrate everything I use from the QNAP to the unraid, plus run 2 VMs (albeit not at the same time until I replace the board with dual PCIE x16)??

 

Thanks

Better to build it once than buy stuff, then buy more stuff. Unless you have these parts laying around, then whatever.

 

I would just buy some inexpensive 1TB drives instead of using the 250GB drives as upgrading drives can be troublesome.

Better to build it once than buy stuff, then buy more stuff. Unless you have these parts laying around, then whatever.

 

I would just buy some inexpensive 1TB drives instead of using the 250GB drives as upgrading drives can be troublesome.

 

Thanks, unfortunately I'm on a budget though due to the baby (unless I sell a kidney, hehe).  I was under the impression it's easy to add drives to unraid, is that not the case?

 

Forgot to add:

 

Current usage: Everything on the NAS and client PCs is used 'lightly', ie. it's mainly storage that's occasionally accessed - I occasionally transcode videos that won't play properly on my laptops but I need a NAS or server do this.

 

Clients:  I have a Blackberry Playbook repurposed as a photoframe, and my partner and I sometimes use a heavy HP 15" Windows 7 laptop for via wi-fi, I backup docs from this to the NAS.  Eventually I want this gone and replaced with a (chrome/android?) tablet w. keyboard & mouse for RDP'ing to a Windows VM.  I already have a Kindle and a Win10 work laptop, hence the need for a VM.

 

DLNA clients:  I use several Humax freesat boxes and a Samsung smart TV, although the Humax's can't play everything.  Will the unraid transcode videos in real-time or would it need Plex installed first?

 

My programs:  Is there any performance benefit in installing my Windows software on an Unraid share for the Win10 VM, does this data travel via a virtual switch?  I've seen other members mention they use this but I didn't find any benchmarks.

 

I noticed an SSD is preferred as a cache, but i'm not sure if my 60GB OCZ's a big enough for this..?

 

Finally, you may have noticed I haven't mentioned the i5 tower being used at all, which is correct...  I stopped using it several years ago (shortly after upgrading from the workhorse Core2Duo E8500 / nvidia 9600GT that I still have sat in their motherboard).  I USED to use it heavily and this is all why I'd like to use it for Unraid, there's lots of work lined-up for it!

 

Sorry for the long read!

adding/upgrading drives is very easy

 

adding a new drive - buy new drive, preclear it, assign it to unraid

replacing a drive - preclear it, power down, pull out the old one, install the new one, assign it.

 

thants about it

 

I haven't needed to replace a drive yet, but doesn't unRAID preclear it for you if you just try to stick it in the array?

 

So really, you just power down, replace the drive, and reassign it.

 

My experience so far has just been growing the array by adding more disks, and it's stupid easy to do.

I haven't needed to replace a drive yet, but doesn't unRAID preclear it for you if you just try to stick it in the array?

 

So really, you just power down, replace the drive, and reassign it.

 

My experience so far has just been growing the array by adding more disks, and it's stupid easy to do.

The only time unRAID requires a drive to be clear is when adding it to a new slot in an array that already has parity. This is so parity will remain valid. A clear disk is all zeroes so has no affect on parity. If you add a disk to a new slot in a parity array, and you haven't precleared it, unRAID will clear it for you and take your server offline until finished. This offline period is mainly the reason the preclear was developed, so a disk could be cleared before adding it.

 

A replacement data drive is not required to be clear since it will just be completely overwritten during the rebuild. Same for a parity drive, whether or not there is already a parity drive.

 

Most recommend preclearing all new disks anyway to test them. All bits of all disks must be reliable because all bits of all disks are needed for rebuilding a failed disk.