Hey Guys! First post so here goes,

 

I downloaded unRAID onto a USB and made sure that my hardware was compatible and now that I know that it is, I am ready to start using it fulltime!

 

In my current rig, I have 4 HDDs (3TB, 1.5TB, 1TB, 750GB), 2 SSDs (128GB,250GB) and I have a drobo with 3x 2TB disks.

 

Firstly, I was wondering if I should create an array with the with all the HDDs and use the 3TB as Parity? or should I keep the 3TB as a separate drive off the array and use the 2TB drive as parity? Reason being I think that the 3x2TB drives would run more efficient as they are all the same.

 

Second, I was wondering if I should keep the two SSDs off the array and use them for OSes, or if I should combine 1 for main OSes (gaming, server) and use the other for cache.

 

Glad I found this powerful piece of software and I cant wait to get started with it!

 

 

Nothing significant to be gained by keeping drive sizes the same. I would use the 3TB as parity. You should preclear all disks to test them or at least be aware of their SMART status. You will have to let unRAID format any disk it will use. What did you have in mind for the drobo drives?

 

I would just go with one of the SSDs as cache disk since for cache pool it does make some sense to have similar sized drives.

 

Simpler to not get involved with having drives outside of unRAID management; i.e., parity, array data disks, and cache disk(s). It is possible to access drives not managed by unRAID but a little more complicated. You can save that for later after you have things working and you determine if you really need to do that. I mostly just use other drives for copying files to/from and not as part of my normal operations.

 

For gaming you will probably want a VM with its own video card. You may not really need VMs for other functions since there are a lot of dockers to do the sorts of things you normally want a media server to do.

 

Take things a little at a time and get one thing working before you try the next. There is already a lot of information on the forum (and wiki). See search tips in my sig.

Thanks for the great info!

 

I now plan to add the Drobo drives to the Array and sell the drobo hardware itself. I think it would be best to have a huge NAS for all of my files. The Drobo I have is the mini, so I'm looking for a 4 drive bay to put into a 5.25" slot. All of the drives have smart status of ok, so I think I am good to go! For my last question, I know that you probably can, but If I leave two of the 2TB drives out of the array, transfer all my files to them, Create an array, restore the files back to the array. I can then format the other two drives, and add them to the Array correct? Will I need more than one parity disk as my amount of drives go up?

Will I need more than one parity disk as my amount of drives go up?

Dual parity is expected to be available in v6.2.

Will I need more than one parity disk as my amount of drives go up?

Dual parity is expected to be available in v6.2.

 

I believe tayshun12 was more asking if for example you need 1 parity drive if you have 3 drives and 2 parity drives if you have 6 drives instead. To my knowledge, no you do not, at the moment the single parity drive protects the whole array which is why it can only tolerate a single disk failure. The only requirement I have read is that the parity drive has to be as large as the largest disk in the array otherwise it will not have space to store the parity data. Also in the disk management menu there is no option that I can see to change the number of parity drives and it only shows 1.

Please correct me if I am wrong as I am a new user myself.

Will I need more than one parity disk as my amount of drives go up?

Dual parity is expected to be available in v6.2.

 

I believe tayshun12 was more asking if for example you need 1 parity drive if you have 3 drives and 2 parity drives if you have 6 drives instead. To my knowledge, no you do not, at the moment the single parity drive protects the whole array which is why it can only tolerate a single disk failure. The only requirement I have read is that the parity drive has to be as large as the largest disk in the array otherwise it will not have space to store the parity data. Also in the disk management menu there is no option that I can see to change the number of parity drives and it only shows 1.

Please correct me if I am wrong as I am a new user myself.

 

Nope you're spot on...

 

There's no ability to change the number of parity drives at the moment as the dual parity is planned for V6.2 which will be coming soon™.

 

As the number of disks in your array increases. so does the chance of having a disk failure.  Single parity protects from one disk failure, dual parity protects from two disk failures.  So whilst there's no requirement as your number of drives increases to use dual parity, it may indeed be prudent to do so in my opinion..

 

Of course, before someone else states it, you should always keep backups of important data rather than purely rely on Unraid as with any form of NAS...

Will I need more than one parity disk as my amount of drives go up?

Dual parity is expected to be available in v6.2.

 

I believe tayshun12 was more asking if for example you need 1 parity drive if you have 3 drives and 2 parity drives if you have 6 drives instead. To my knowledge, no you do not, at the moment the single parity drive protects the whole array which is why it can only tolerate a single disk failure. The only requirement I have read is that the parity drive has to be as large as the largest disk in the array otherwise it will not have space to store the parity data. Also in the disk management menu there is no option that I can see to change the number of parity drives and it only shows 1.

Please correct me if I am wrong as I am a new user myself.

 

Yes that was my question! Thanks for clearing that up. Now that I'm more confident in the process I will be doing the setup on my next day off!

 

Thanks again,

Tay