Hi,

 

I'm looking to install an unRAID server soon for use of Plex Media Server and a few docker plugins for automating downloads of linux isos.

 

I've just purchased 2x 8TB WD Red drives as the MyBook Duo had a ~£100 price drop on amazon. I'd wish to use these in a RAID 0 configuration in order to get the most out of my space.

 

Does a parity drive have to be the same size as the largest disk size in the data drive pool?

 

Another quick question, would 8GB of RAM be suitable to run a 16TB RAID 0 configuration with a few dockers running?

 

Thanks

The parity drive has to be either the largest drive or the same size as the largest drive. You can't use hardware RAID with unRAID, except with the cache pool. So you can't use the 8TB drives in RAID 0 with unRAID. 8GB should be fine.

Cool,

 

Thanks for the quick response.

 

Another quick one, is it possible to have multiple data pools and map them to different SMB shares so each individual pool shows up as a different network drive?

 

Thanks

Its possible to have different shares that contain different data and have them show up as network drives, yes.

But to clarify, a user share is not a pool.  The "pool" concept doesn't exist in unRAID.

Hi,

 

I'm looking to install an unRAID server soon for use of Plex Media Server and a few docker plugins for automating downloads of linux isos.

 

I've just purchased 2x 8TB WD Red drives as the MyBook Duo had a ~£100 price drop on amazon. I'd wish to use these in a RAID 0 configuration in order to get the most out of my space.

 

Does a parity drive have to be the same size as the largest disk size in the data drive pool?

 

Another quick question, would 8GB of RAM be suitable to run a 16TB RAID 0 configuration with a few dockers running?

 

Thanks

 

You are confusing unRAID with RAID. They are not the same. RAID0 is an unprotected striped volume that gives high performance. If you put 2 8T drives into an unRAID array, you either have 2 individual 8T drives that are unprotected, or 1 8T drive that is protected by a second 8T drive (kindof RAID1, or better thought of as RAID5 with only two disks). If you go the unprotected route, although the 2 disks are individual, there are features that make like-named root folders appear as one merged space. But each file is wholly stored on one disk or the other.

 

You can create a single 16T volume using the cache disk, using BTRFS. I would not recommend that as the best solution, but I think it is feasible. (Normally 2 cache disks form a protected RAID1-like structure). Although I think unRAID would insist on at least one data dive it its array to allow you to start the array (needed to mount the cache disk).

 

Here is a useful trick to combine RAID0 and unRAID that I use. I have a RAID controller, and created a 6T RAID0 drive from 2 3T drives. To unRAID it looks like a single 6T disk. I used that as parity for a long time, and it worked great. Recently I checked and the 7 year old disks are starting to get some SMART issues, and I wanted to go to 8T drives. So I took 2 4T drives already in my array, copied their data to other disks, and used them to form an 8T RAID0, and used that as parity, which I am now using. I like this feature! My 8T parity is quite fast as its made from 2 7200 RPM drives with all the striping benefits. And I don't have to use my first real 8T drive as parity, wasting part of its capacity until such time as I buy a second (or if I used dual parity until I bought a third), of the larger size. There are drawbacks - RAID0 is only half as reliable as an individual disk - so I am sacrificing a there. But these are HGST so 2x as reliable as other disks IMO. So I'm even with those WD RED crowd.  (I just know gc is going to chime in here).

 

But go back and re-read the wiki section on unRAID. It will explain the diff between unRAID and RAID. This is very basic.