My existing setup:

 

Synology DS214 with 2x4TB drives (8TB in jbod, no parity).

8TB external USB drive connected to the NAS used for weekly backups.

Dell 9020 SFF - 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Ubuntu Server LTS. i7 4770. 

 

What I do with it:

 

NAS is almost purely a mount point and little else. I occasionally use some built-in apps such as DS Download, VPN server, and surveillance station. But otherwise, by and large, it's just used as a file share.

My Ubuntu system is on 24/7 runs Plex media server which I share with friends, Radarr, Sonarr, Deluge (seeding 40'ish at any given time), Jackett, Terraria Tshock server, PlexPy, and soon Ombi v3.

All of these are in Docker containers. I also use youtube-dl from time to time, as well as do some encoding with HandbrakeCLI, though not an extreme amount.

 

Why I am looking to change things up:

 

I want to expand my storage. Initially I was thinking about a 4-bay Synology. But after doing some digging, it appears as though moving this whole setup to a single-box solution using unraid (or something similar) may be a better long-term choice. I don't think my Synology has a wonderful throughput. Most likely due to the weak CPU. Plus I really don't utilize all the bells and whistles of it very much. So a new NAS would be about $400 with 4 drive bays which makes it seem like something I could put 4 or more in for less money would make more sense for future use.

I would shuck the external 8TB drive and make it a parity drive for unraid. 

 

What I'm unsure about and other considerations:

 

I have access to a few 1TB drives that are sitting around unused. I was hoping I could just throw them into whatever solution I build for extra 'free' storage. Plus they can tide my space needs over until a good sale comes up for more 8TB drives.  They aren't brand new drives, but should be in good shape. But with more drives comes more physical space needed. I have to make sure whatever case I buy can hold them, PSU can power them, and motherboard/controller support is sufficient to hook them all up. I've read some advice that says to just stick with larger, fewer drives if possible and piece-meal'ing a few 1TB drives isn't really worth the hassle of making space to support them and the added risk of more things that can fail. 

 

I was looking into snapraid and mergerfs as a possible solution, but one weakness in that solution is the inability to have a cache drive setup like unraid can. If possible, I'd like a solution that gives me as much throughput as I can have, and from what I've seen, having a decent sized ssd cache drive can help a lot in this respect. 

 

Do I even need to build a new computer to get this going? I've heard external enclosures may be a solution. I'd just have to buy a PCI card to connect it to my existing system. Is that a viable solution? May end up being cheaper than buying a new case, motherboard, PSU, and whatever else.

 

Is unraid pretty good about identifying drives that are acting up or failing? I don't think my Synology does a great job in this respect. It gives me a bad sector count, but I think that's only if it finds them during normal use. 

 

If I build a new system, I'm planning on moving the CPU and RAM over to save money. That means I'd have to get an LGA1150 board of some sort that makes sense. But I have no idea what sort of features I should be looking for. Does it really just come down whatever is cheapest that has enough SATA connectors? And what's this about SAS I hear about? Is that a technology worth looking into?

 

If I move away from a NAS solution, I'd like something as power efficient as reasonable. Specifically if the system isn't under load, I'd like it to be pretty light on power usage. I'm glad unraid can spin down drives if they aren't being used. Sounds helpful. 

 

Thanks for any assistance. 

Edited January 7, 20188 yr by Chad Kunsman

Hello and welcome.  The Core i7-4770 with 16GB of RAM would make a good unRAID server.

 

I'm of the opinion that fewer point of failure is a good thing.  So while an external enclosure and lots of small drives is possible, I'd recommend a new case and a smaller number of larger hard drives.  You can make those 1TB drives work, though.

 

Get a quality motherboard.  Asus, Supermicro, ASRock, MSI - your choices may be limited for 1150 motherboards at this point, though.  You probably don't want to mess with enterprise SAS drives.  But a SATA controller is a great way to add ports and you'll find that they have SAS connectors that requires SAS to SATA breakout cables.  Get an LSI based card like the 9201-8i, IBM M1015, or Dell PERC H310 (the last 2 would need to be flashed to IT mode).

Thank you for the information. 

For my use case, should I stick with Red drives or would Greens or another type be sufficient? The array will primarily be media storage/archival. 

 

 

I like the Red NAS drives - they've been very reliable for me and the extra year warranty is nice.  That said, people have had success with unRAID and all the variations - Green, Blue, Black, etc.

 

Here's something to keep in mind, though.  If you experience a disk failure, Parity isn't used to rebuild the failed disk.  Parity, *plus all the other drives in the array* are used to rebuild the failed disk.  So you want to have confidence in your drives and move them out of the array as they age or show signs of pre-failure.

WD Greens haven't been made in over 2 years, having been replaced by Blue.  There's no reason to not go for Reds (or indeed Purple) as they're both about the same price as Blues, and are designed for 24/7 use, unlike the Blues.