I have a 1.2 TB RAID 5 and looking at replacing with an unRAID but don't understand how it maps and looks on the network.  I have my current RAID mapped as Z on Main (E:) to all my computers  (this is how it shows up in Windows Explorer and how I read/write it).  I have all my music and videos on this drive so iTunes, TT, and WMP must be able to see it all as one drive. How does the unRAID map?  Is it one drive like a RAID or would it be 6 deferent drives (which is unacceptable to iTunes)?

It can have shares for each drive, and/or one combined share (called a user share).  It will basically aggregate all top level directories in each of the drives.

So you have a choice of either mapping as one drive like E on Main or having each drive mapped separately?  If mapped as one drive does it just put the files on any disk in the array or do you have a choice of which ones to write to?

(I'm not 100% on unRaid yet, so take this with a grain of salt).

 

Writing new files to User Shares is not something that's 100% supported yet.  I'd recommend against it.  Something that's been slated for a 4.x (maybe 4.1) is an algorithym for determining where to write the files to (or a couple and letting you choose).

 

Personally, I recommend writing them to the drive shares and then sharing them out with user shares.

 

If you just want one big butt share, you might look at FreeNas, but it's RAID capabilities are somewhat "sketchy" and you don't have anywhere near the flexibility that you have with unRaid as far as adding new drives or having different drive sizes.