After much research I'm getting ready to take the unRAID plunge.  I have a few questions I'm sure the community can help me out with.

 

1)  Whenever I had another HD to my array, does it just get added together into one big pool of HD space? Can this space be partitioned?

2) Is there a limit on the size of the pooled storage space? (ie, maximum addressable storage)

3) Is there a limit on the size of the HD's used? (ie, will it support 16TB HD's sometime in the future?)

4) If I start off with the 3 drive Basic free license, can I simply apply the license key to upgrade to Plus or Pro without having to set everything up all over again?

 

Here's the system I plan to build:

SuperMicro X7SPA-HF mobo

Lian Li PC Q08 Chassis

Begin w/ 3HD's, in the future expand to 6

 

5) What minimum size PSU would be appropriate, given I will eventually expand to 6 HD's?

 

Appreciate any advice on this.

1/2/3) There is no pooled space. There is no partitioning to be done. It's already done at the hard drive level. Each drive is added as an individual drive and shows up as /mnt/disk#/.  Under the user shares, all drives are viewed as a Single Combined drive [/mnt/user/]. The only limit currently imposed is that of ReiserFS which will work with 16TB per filesystem. This is discussed in more depth here [ http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5704.0 ] If you want to use User Shares [Top Level Directories that are Shared/Exported], then you can select which drives are in the group and which drives are not. That's about as close to 'partitioning/pooling' as unRAID gets.

 

4) Yes. That is how it works.

Thank you very much.  That clears it up.

 

Any advice on PSU size?

Well based on the budget build suggestion

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility#Recommended_Builds

 

Power Supply: CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W (will support up to 12 drives)

 

I of course do not have any intention of going that big as of yet, but I'll let you know once my hardware arrives and I start shoving things in it. I know for sure I'm looking at least

1 parity

2 media drives

1 data drive

 

Of course I might as well prepair for another drive or two as my media collection is ripped and readied.