Format required before creating new array?


toasty

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So I'm looking into building an unRAID NAS sometime in the near future but I don't quite have the funds to buy the full system yet. Since I want to use my NAS to collect all my parents DVDs and Blu-rays though (If you're with the FBI: I'm totally not going to do this), I thought I could already start ripping some disks. However, I don't have the capacity to do so until I buy the HDDs for my NAS (WD Red 3TB, if you're interested), so my plan was to buy the drives beforehand, then format them into the correct file system for unRAID (can Windows even detect that?), copy some of my media onto it, then add those and a few other drives to an array once I can afford to build the actual NAS. Would this be possible? Or do the drives have to be formatted to be added to a new array even when they're in the correct file system.

 

TLDR: Do drives have to be formatted before being added to a new array, even if they're in the correct file system? Also, what file system does unRAID use?

 

Bonus question: Is the Intel Atom (formerly Avoton) C2550 with 8GB DDR3 suitable for a NAS with a Plex Server?

Edited by toasty
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It is very difficult to get drives formatted (and partitioned) correctly for unRAID on an external system.    It is better to get them formatted on unRAID in the first place, and then move them to an external system.

 

Having said that the file system types supported by unRAID are BTRFS, XFS and reiserfs, none of which Windows can handle sensibly so it may not be that easy to do what you want?

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4 minutes ago, itimpi said:

It is very difficult to get drives formatted (and partitioned) correctly for unRAID on an external system.    It is better to get them formatted on unRAID in the first place, and then move them to an external system.

 

Having said that the file system types supported by unRAID are BTRFS, XFS and reiserfs, none of which Windows can handle sensibly so it may not be that easy to do what you want?

That's what I had feared. Backup idea: Buy 1 or 2 drives now, format them to NTFS and put the first bit of media on there, then buy more drives when the machine gets built. Then create an array with the untouched disks, copy all the stuff from the first 2 disks on there, then format those and add them to the array. That should work, right?

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On 10/15/2017 at 3:24 PM, toasty said:

Backup idea: Buy 1 or 2 drives now, format them to NTFS and put the first bit of media on there, then buy more drives when the machine gets built. Then create an array with the untouched disks, copy all the stuff from the first 2 disks on there, then format those and add them to the array. That should work, right?

That should work, you can mount the NTFS drives via Unassigned Devices and copy the data off them onto the new array disks.

 

On 10/15/2017 at 3:05 PM, toasty said:

Bonus question: Is the Intel Atom (formerly Avoton) C2550 with 8GB DDR3 suitable for a NAS with a Plex Server?

Yes, so long as you are realistic about transcoding - it might be able to transcode a single 1080p stream, but it also might struggle.  It should be fine for basic NAS duties and Plex, if no transcoding is required.

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7 minutes ago, tdallen said:

Yes, so long as you are realistic about transcoding - it might be able to transcode a single 1080p stream, but it also might struggle.  It should be fine for basic NAS duties and Plex, if no transcoding is required.

That does sound familiar. Would the C2750 (8 core variant of the C2550) be a better choice if I wanted to transcode 2-3 1080p streams at a time or should I look into something that isn't passively cooled (I really like the mobos from ASRock Rack for these CPUs, even though they're quite expensive)

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10 minutes ago, toasty said:

That does sound familiar. Would the C2750 (8 core variant of the C2550) be a better choice if I wanted to transcode 2-3 1080p streams at a time or should I look into something that isn't passively cooled (I really like the mobos from ASRock Rack for these CPUs, even though they're quite expensive)

Go over to passmark and look up the cpu your interested in and check the score plex suggests 1500-2000 points per stream

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