I currently am planning to have some kind of RAID for a little safer storing of my files.

 

As it is now the way I see it there are 2 options:

 

OPTION1:

My main/work pc is dead silent and that's the way I want it.

 

My storage/gaming pc has atm 5 disks and bunch of fans.

My goal would be to run Unraid for 4-8 harddrives and anytime when I want to game in Windows remove the USB disk and boot into windows 7

 

I haven't read much about unRaid yet but hopefuly it is possible to hide the unRaid harddrives from windows 7 so that when I boot into windows 7 only the 1 harddrive that has windows 7 installed is visible.

 

I have looked into RAID5, flexRAID and unRAID.

Seems like RAID5 is impossible due to it needs all harddrives to be empty before setting up RAID5.

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OPTION2:

 

Incase dualboot is not possible put the my graphics card into work pc.

 

Have a dedicated PC just for unRaid.

 

The negative thing about this option is:

1. One 120mm fan(GPU) is added to the work pc

2. I need to remove my CrossfireX mobo put it in the work pc.

3. I need to remove my "work" mobo put it in the unRaid pc.

4. it is possible that the CrossfireX mobo is not compatible with the fans in the "work" pc as these fans are run from 5.5v and 7v adapters connected to the mobo.

5. I need add a external eSata harddrive for occasional gaming.

 

step 1 is not a big problem as noise level is not increased alot.

step 2-4 propably take anywhere from 2hours to 7days to finish depending on all the obstacles possible.

In worst case scenario step 2-4 will prove to be so problematic that indeed it is needed to revert back to old setup.

 

Another problem with OPTION2 is that whenever I need to upgrade my gaming to Crossfire it's possible 2 GPU's will make the work pc noisy.

So OPTION1 would be preferable as storage PC will rarely be used and gaming will be rare.

 

If you are looking into having a separate disk with windows7 on it, and marked as bootable, in addition to the unRAID disks, then yes, I think it would be fairly easy to set the BIOS boot order to be the flash drive first, and then the win7 disk.

 

If the flash drive is not plugged in, you boot to windows.  Win7 has no concept of the reiserfs formatted disks, so it completely ignores them.

 

unRAID will be able to see it own disks and will ignore the NTFS formatted win7 disk as long as you do not assign it to the array. 

 

You can actually mount and read the NTFS disk from unRAID by typing a few commands at the command line.  If you install the ntfs-3g driver, you can mount, and read, and write to the NTFS win7 disk if you have the desire.

 

Details are in the unRAID wiki. 

thank you for good reply Joe L. that's nice to know.

 

well in that case I'll isolate the unRaid harddrives from the one windows 7 harddrive.

 

I really need to read more about unRaid, my understanding is that unRaid is a OS?

so does this mean I can use applications as Sabnzbd, utorrent and winrar?

 

If the above applications do not work is there any other similar applications compatible with unRaid?

If the above applications do not work are the similar applications as easy to use as in windows enviroment which I'm use to?

I am doing exactly what Joe suggests.  I have a Hdd (120G) hidden inside the unrade case with both Windows XP Pro 64 and Ubuntu on it.  They are set up to Dual boot using the Grub loader.  The bios is set to boot as follows: (1) USB (2) CD/DVD Rom Drive (3) hdd.

 

If I pull the flash card and have no disk in the cd/dvd drive the system boots to the Grub Loader. I can then choose Ubuntu or Win XP.  If I put a bootable disk in the cd/DVD rom drive then it boots from there.  If I put the flash drive back in, it always boots the unraid system.

I really need to read more about unRaid, my understanding is that unRaid is a OS?

Yes, unRAID is an OS

 

so does this mean I can use applications as Sabnzbd, utorrent and winrar?

The short answer is yes.

 

If the above applications do not work is there any other similar applications compatible with unRaid?

Yes, unRAID is Linux (Slackware) based and if there is an application that runs on linux it should be possible to run it on unRAID... with a little work.

 

If the above applications do not work are the similar applications as easy to use as in windows enviroment which I'm use to?

No really.  There is an "app" that JoeL has created called unmenu that makes it much easier for the beginner to get some applications installed, but they are generally not as easy to install/use as on windows.

thank you for all the helpful replies.

 

I googled sabnzbd and slackware, also did google sabnbzd and unRaid.

Looks wery much like no cake walk installing it on unRaid/slackware.

 

I came to the conclusion unRaid is not for me, as I have bad experience from linux previously.

 

The problem is that when something goes wrong with linux be it hardware or user caused I will mostlikely spend atleast 10x time on trying to figure out the problem vs windows.

 

I know Linux "blessed" ppl say that linux is easier than windows.

But for me I'll stick with the "difficult" windows 7.

The problem is that when something goes wrong with linux be it hardware or user caused I will mostlikely spend atleast 10x time on trying to figure out the problem vs windows.

 

That was my initial experience with Linux as well.  However, unRAID isn't Linux.  Sure it is based on Linux, but it is it's own OS.  This amazing support forum was what eventually sold me on unRAID compared to the other options.  I haven't had a problem yet that this forum wasn't able to solve within a matter of days, often hours.

If all you want is a solid server and you are not interested in puttering around writing add ons; then unraid requires no linux knowledge.  Think of it as an appliance with a Web based interface to control it.  Sure things can go wrong but that is true of any application under windows also.  In the windows app case many times the support is well, less than ideal. Here at this community the support is superb.

 

I am a hacker so I am puttering around trying things.  In the three weeks I have been playing with unRaid I have never crashed it (linux or unraid as I can not tell the difference when not "hacking".) I had a few panics, due to lack of understanding, but so far all is well.  I built my own server, added hard drives to the array.  I now have all my BR disks in the array, 3/4 of my DVD's and all of my music. The music system has no issues, the media player has no issues.

 

The only nuance is that drives spin down so sometimes an app trrying to access the data has to wait till the drive is spun up.  I could tell unraid not to spin down the drives, but so far I like it the way it is.

the array, 3/4 of my DVD's and all of my music. The music system has no issues, the media player has no issues.

 

The only nuance is that drives spin down so sometimes an app trrying to access the data has to wait till the drive is spun up.  I could tell unraid not to spin down the drives, but so far I like it the way it is.

You can try something like this script: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4858.msg44635#msg44635

 

It will spinup groups of drives holding files from the same user-share when the user-share is accessed.  It also has the ability to spin up drives when a given IP address (or addresses) is detected on the LAN.

 

I've actually set it up that way for the IP addresses of the older Mg-35 Media-players.  They would time-out waiting for the spinup, forcing a reset of them before they would access the share again. (They would remove the share from their directory listing if it timed out thinking it was not accessible at all.)

 

Even if you cannot use it in its existing form, you can probably get some ideas from it.

 

Joe L.

I will look at it.  Thanks Joe.

 

My situation right now is unique.  The whole purpose of the unRaid array is to serve only movies and music.  Movies to a Dune player and Music to Squeezebox server.

 

I set up the array not to use shares; I put the media material where I want it, but never spanning disks. Right now BR disks are on Disk1, DVD's on Disk2, and music on Disk3.  There is no reason why they cannot be mixed up and placed anywhere.

 

The movie librarian which is part of the Theater system scans the Tower whenever the library has changed.  It then locates each movie and records the disk number and full name as stored on that disk. As soon as the Dune players IP interface is done I will just need to send that path to the player to play a movie rather than using the Dune player GUI.

 

When the Theater is shutdown and music is not playing I am planning on putting the unRaid system into s3 sleep.  The theater system can issue a WOL to wake up the unRaid system, issue commands to the unraid system tcpip_listener script to spin up or spin down drives, etc. The music system can talk to the Theater to tell it if it wishes to play music or if it is shutting down.  

 

For the movie case the WOL will be issued when the Theater is turned on, and as soon as the movie librarian is selected it will power up all disks that have movies stored on them. The user can then browse the librarian to select a movie and that disk should already be spun up.  If not the Dune player merely says connecting until it is.

 

For the music case the music control system will tell theater that it is starting and the theater will tell the unRaid . . .