I've been looking through the How-To articles in the wiki, thinking along the lines of what articles I would have found useful as a new user. The Hardware Compatibility page is quite an intimidating entry point, with lots of detail, and I had to do a lot of reading around the forum to find out what certain terms meant.

 

So, I've had a go at my first article for the wiki:

 

Designing an unRAID server

This is intended as a general overview to the ingredients/components of a server, and the issues that need to be considered when selecting these ingredients. Issues that I've seen come up quite a number of times in the forum. It doesn't refer to specific brands or parts, these are covered in Hardware Compatibility.

Quite a lot of the text is harvested from forum comments - I've only been through a few months of posts in Hardware, so it may not be representative.

 

And there are lots of gaps/placeholders. I've raised a few queries in the discussion page. Haven't linked to it from other wiki pages as yet, as its still draft.

 

Next, I might take a crack at another general article on 'Constructing an unRAID server', synthesising some of the forum posts I've come across on how to put things together. When I was putting my system together, advice on what to do with cables was particularly useful, for example.

 

An existing page that could do with some attention is Building an unRAID server. It gives a good introduction to the process, but in places is quite specific to one build and as it was written in 2008, may have dated. Depersonalising, making it more general, and adding more links to other, more detailed pages could make it very useful indeed for new users.

 

Well done!  I'm reading through it now, seems great so far.  I'm making a few changes as I go regarding terminology, mainly replacing 'disc' with 'disk' or 'drive' where applicable.  'Disc' generally refers to optical media, like a CD or DVD.  'Disk' refers to a logical disk, such as the parity disk or data disk in unRAID.  'Drive' or 'Hard Drive' refers to the physical component.

 

I like your mention of location, since that is something not often discussed here.

 

OK, well I did a bit more than just change terminology.  I fleshed out a few sections that were thin...hopefully I didn't step on any toes in the process.  Please look it over and see if you agree with the additions.

 

I'm sure this will be very helpful to new users.

Superb stuff

 

One thing to watch is that it is preferable to use a full subpage in most instances than a section.

 

For example you have a section "Drive cages and backplanes" but there is also a section like this here http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility#Drive_Racks and a full page of them here http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=SATA_Hard_Disk_Stackers

 

this is where wikis can fall apart. Expand, tidy, recraft existing pages rather than create new ones.

 

nice work

I also went through the Building an unRAID Server page and made quite a few edits, generally removing personalization and updating hardware references.

I fleshed out a few sections that were thin...hopefully I didn't step on any toes in the process.  Please look it over and see if you agree with the additions.

 

Lots of the sections were thin! Additions really helping. No toes at risk

Made a modification to the "onboard video" and "monitor and keyboard" sections, as these are not requirements for IPMI based boards.

I've updated the Building an unRAID server wiki page.

 

In the previous version, assembly was covered by 'slap it all in your case'. To describe the process, I've derived text from several thread comments that I found v useful when constructing for the first time.

Have then added more structure to the following sections, and expanded the configuring and starting the array section, again from v useful threads. And added some more links

 

Please review, add/delete and correct errors!

 

 

Well done, I approve!  I recognize a bit of my text in there, glad to see it was helpful to you.  I didn't make any changes to your section, but you reminded me about the potential pitfall of using a 4 pin PSU power cable on a motherboard that requires an 8 pin cable.  I therefore added a quick note about it in the 'hardware' section above (in the PSU section).