First time unRAIDer with a few Qestions

[DonFale]

Hey guys , its my first time here but i need your help.

 

2016 is here and after 4 Years i want to build myself a new PC and since 2015 was a horrible year for me and my data i need to change my plans for backup. I lost 4 HDDs in a short timespan of 3 month and it really was an awfull experience.

 

i plan to Build my new PC in the Lian LI Desk Case when the new nvidia GPUs release and since there is space for a MINI ITX board i thought i would build a unraid setup in the same case and had a few ideas and was hoping you guys could help me with it.

 

For the budget im not set because i thought about expanding the needed HDD Space on the go but i would want it to be under 600€ if possible for the start. But in the End i want to aim for a System with 5 HDDs(at least 2TB per drive) and 1 SSD as fast cache.

 

Also i dont know wich Raid would be the best for my needs, everything i have can be redownloaded again so its not the end of the world if i loose data but it would take a really long time but on the other Hand i dont want to loose 50% of HDD Space for redundancy on the other hand up to 30% would be fine.

 

Case

Lian Li DK-03 LINK

 

Parts i can reuse:

Intel i7 4770 @3,4GHz /1150 LINK

120 GB Kingston SSD SH103S3120G (maybe as write cache if its not to small) LINK

2x4 GB Corsair DDR3 CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9 (really bulky and ugly RAM and i dont know yet if it will fit next to the CPU Cooler) LINK

850 Watts bequiet Gold PSU

 

Parts im interested in:

GA-H97N-WIFI Motherboard / 1150 ~ 130EUR LINK

2x WD Red 2 TB 5400RPM ~160EUR /7200 ~300EUR (if i pair the intellipower version with 5400RPM with an ssd cache do i get similar power to a 7200RPM array?)

 

One Point i need to mention is i dont want to run this machine 24/7 it will only run when the main computer is also running so its like a fancy external HDD and i dont know if thats an option for unraid so it would be great if you could tell me if its even possible.

 

i really hope you can help me.

 

Greetings from Austria

[tdallen]

Hello and welcome .

 

That's a pretty crazy case, you should post your build notes in the unRAID Compulsive Design forum  .

 

In the US the best price per TB is typically on the 3TB and 4TB drives.  I prefer to manage a small number of large drives - going with larger drives is something you might want to consider.

 

unRAID isn't "Raid", so you won't choose between RAID 5, 6, 10, etc.  The versions of unRAID available today support one parity drive.  The parity drive provides data protection for your data drives and it needs to be as big as or bigger than your largest data drive.  The next version of unRAID (6.2) will support more than one parity drive if you are interested.

 

The cache drive in unRAID serves two purposes.  First, you can use it to cache writes to the parity protected array.  Writes to the cache drive are faster than writes to the array, so this is purely about performance.  I feel that writes directly to the array are fast enough for me so I don't use the cache drive this way.  The second way to use the cache drive is as an application drive for Dockers and their associated data storage.  This is very common and a 120GB SSD is perfect for this.

 

If you pick the right components unRAID can use S3 sleep and WOL (Wake on LAN).  That might be the best way to link it with the main computer, if I understand the way you want to use it.  I think that motherboard is used pretty commonly with unRAID, but I'd recommend some searching to make sure that people are able to use S3/WOL with it.

[DonFale]

Okay thanks for mentioning that unraid isnt equal to raid.

 

i read a little bit into it and understand now how Parity works and need to readjust the parts im thinking of because i need bulk storage and the SSD would be overkill for the purpose of just backing up Data like Movies and so on.

 

One thing i cant find anywhere (or im not searching with the correct keywords) is how the NAS will be displayed von my Computer.

 

For example i start an Array with a 4TB Parity and 3x 2TB Backup drives, will the displayed as a 6TB Drive on my PC with Drive Letter E for example or will windows still detect them as seperate drives like E, F and G?

[tdallen]

unRAID supports both Disk Shares and User Shares.  A disk share is what it sounds like - it gives you the ability to mount a disk on your PC and access the contents of it.  The capacity of a disk share is the capacity of the disk.  For example, I can mount \\tower\disk1 on my PC to /mnt/disk1 on my unRAID server.

 

A user share spans across disks.  You can configure which disks are included within a user share.  Assuming I've created a user share called Movies and let it have access to 3x2TB disks, I can mount \\tower\Movies to /mnt/user/Movies and put up to 6TB of movies in it.  unRAID will automatically manage balancing and accessing the data across disks in this scenario - the user share would just look like a really big hard drive. 

 

You'll want to do a little reading on Allocation Methods, Minimum Free Space, and Split Levels before you start loading lots of data onto unRAID, they're important configuration parameters for user shares.

[DonFale]

Do you have a link on this topic with helpfull guides?

 

To be honest this forum is really big and overwhelming and i dont know where i can find those kind of informations.

 

Thanks in advance

[trurl]

Do you have a link on this topic with helpfull guides?

 

To be honest this forum is really big and overwhelming and i dont know where i can find those kind of informations.

 

Thanks in advance

There is also a wiki, but it's always a work in progress. All of the NAS functionality has changed very little though.

[DonFale]

Thanks for all the help but i have another Question i cant find an answer on.

 

I plan to use the unraid server when i power up my main machine so i will try to use wake on LAN for the start but whats the best way to shut it down?

 

ive read a few posts mention shuting down the VM part of it but not the array itself > is there a simple "Button" wich i can click on the webgui for example or is it even possible to safely turn off the array using the Button on the case?

[georgetg]

Thanks for all the help but i have another Question i cant find an answer on.

 

I plan to use the unraid server when i power up my main machine so i will try to use wake on LAN for the start but whats the best way to shut it down?

 

ive read a few posts mention shuting down the VM part of it but not the array itself > is there a simple "Button" wich i can click on the webgui for example or is it even possible to safely turn off the array using the Button on the case?

The web gui is very straight forward and just requires 2-3 clicks to powerdown/reboot.

[DonFale]

So... all parts are ordered and now i need to wait and another Question occured to me.

 

is it possible to use a program on the PC to stop and shutdown the array or can you write a .bat file wich will do it for me.

 

to be honest i will always power down the array when i shut down the PC and flip the switch on my power source and im afraid will forget to power it down correctly in the future so is there a way to safely power it down with a .bat file or script?

 

[kizer]

You can give this a looksee too

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=44959.0

[Bjonness406]

I think you can just turn unRAID off using the power button (quick press, dont hold it down), but I am not 100% sure.

I know you can do it with this plugin at least

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=31735.0

Once the powerdown plugin is installed, all power actions use the plugin:

- Power button power down (Quick press, not held down).