New User looking for advice on setup


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Looking to set up a server and after looking through all the operating systems available I have decided on unraid mainly because of freenas using ZFS and therefore not being able to add in extra drives at will. However, I wanted to check that everything I want to do is possible with unraid.

 

I was looking to have transmission setup to go through private internet access VPN and for transmission to be fed with sonarr and radarr and for plex to running on a separate vm/docker to allow plex to be seen.

 

Is this kind of setup possible and easy to do?

 

Further, I wanted to be able to add new drives in the future with a plan to start off with 2 2tb drives is this just a plug new drives in and add to the pool?

 

Thanks

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Everything you stated will work.

 

Keep in mind that your parity drive(s) must be equal or larger than any other drive in the parity protected array, so if you have your 2ea 2TB drives, then if you add a 4TB to the array it will have to be a parity drive. You could then add the old 2TB parity drive as a data drive. Data drives can be any size equal to or smaller than your parity drive(s).

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While I do not recommend you run without parity, technically this is also possible.  If I hadn't used parity, I can recall at least 6 times I would have lost multiple TB of data in the past, if that helps you make the decision on parity use.

 

You may be surprised how short a time period your initial array size will last (given your intended use), so I'd say save some cash for a couple 5-year-warranted 8TB drives as your next upgrade, then you can just add such "large" drives to your array as needed. 

 

Going from 2TB to 4, then 6, then 8 for your parity drive as an example, means you've purchased at least two too many hard drives in a short (maybe 2 year) time period.  By buying 5-year-warranted drives (WD Gold or Black or Red Pro as examples) you can rest assured the drives won't fail anytime soon, and by buying large it takes much longer to fill your chassis with hard drives.  (I experienced some regret as had to remove perfectly functional, not-very-old 2TB drives in favour of larger ones just because I hadn't any more physical space for more drives.)

 

 

 

 

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Put better, 5-year warranty means you won't have to shell out more money to replace the drive any time soon :)

 

Drives fail whenever they want to based upon lots of factors, but in general those warranted for five years have passed more stringent tests at the factory and can be expected to last longer, else the manufacturer wouldn't put a longer warranty on them in the first place.

 

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27 minutes ago, bman said:

in general those warranted for five years have passed more stringent tests at the factory

Citation needed.

I submit that the warranty period is equally a marketing tool and a financial insurance type transaction, where the premium price you pay is expected to be partially absorbed as drive return cost, partially used as added profit over lower margin drives.

In my experience drive longevity is much more a product of the entire shipping and handling chain combined with usage environment, with very few exceptions of engineering failures like the infamous IBM deskstar model and seagates ST3000DM001as a couple examples.

 

Trouble is, you don't know or can't control many of the most important factors in drive failures, so thorough testing when you first receive the drive and diligent monitoring are much more important than buying a long warranty drive.

 

37 minutes ago, bman said:

Put better, 5-year warranty means you won't have to shell out more money to replace the drive any time soon :)

This is truth, but sometimes in limited cases it makes financial sense to buy a short warranty drive if the discount is great enough.  I'll take the 2 year warranty and possible hassle of shucking a WD 8TB external for less than $150 USD on sale over a $320+ Red Pro with a 5 year warranty any day.

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1 hour ago, bman said:

While I do not recommend you run without parity, technically this is also possible.  If I hadn't used parity, I can recall at least 6 times I would have lost multiple TB of data in the past, if that helps you make the decision on parity use.

 

You may be surprised how short a time period your initial array size will last (given your intended use), so I'd say save some cash for a couple 5-year-warranted 8TB drives as your next upgrade, then you can just add such "large" drives to your array as needed. 

 

Going from 2TB to 4, then 6, then 8 for your parity drive as an example, means you've purchased at least two too many hard drives in a short (maybe 2 year) time period.  By buying 5-year-warranted drives (WD Gold or Black or Red Pro as examples) you can rest assured the drives won't fail anytime soon, and by buying large it takes much longer to fill your chassis with hard drives.  (I experienced some regret as had to remove perfectly functional, not-very-old 2TB drives in favour of larger ones just because I hadn't any more physical space for more drives.)

 

 

 

 

So say I got 2 2tb for my data then a third sau 6 or 8tb drive for parity would this be sufficient as I just had a read of the parity section in the wiki and the way I read it was that the parity just has to be larger or equal to the largest drive ?

 

So for example say I have a 8tb parity then I could fill every drive slot with anything up to and including 8tb without a problem even if in total I had 24tb(three 8tb) of storage but just one 8tb parity ?

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48 minutes ago, james.page6978 said:

So say I got 2 2tb for my data then a third sau 6 or 8tb drive for parity would this be sufficient as I just had a read of the parity section in the wiki and the way I read it was that the parity just has to be larger or equal to the largest drive ?

 

So for example say I have a 8tb parity then I could fill every drive slot with anything up to and including 8tb without a problem even if in total I had 24tb(three 8tb) of storage but just one 8tb parity ?

 

Yes, you can mix multiple data disks of varying sizes up to 8TB together with that 8TB parity disk.

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20 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Citation needed.

 

There are exceptions to every rule.  I have a 320GB cache drive that's running great and is 11 years old.  Most of my IDE drives from 2004 still worked fine when I tossed them out in 2015.  I have SCSI drives from the 1980's that are running fine today.  Today I want drives that last 7 years or more and I am hoping the better 'ratings' of the higher-priced drives will prove to be of value in terms of longevity and total cost of ownership.

 

I get the insurance thing, law of averages, conspiracy theory and share some of the same thoughts.  Taking WD's lineup for example, purple for... surveillance?  Give me a break. That's different than NAS how? 

 

I used to have dozens of WD green drives spinning, but I can count on one hand how many lasted longer than 5 years, and over 70% of them failed before 4 years.  I have (so far) had much better luck with WD Red, Black and Gold drives, though few of them are older than 4 years at this point.

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21 hours ago, james.page6978 said:

So for example say I have a 8tb parity then I could fill every drive slot with anything up to and including 8tb without a problem even if in total I had 24tb(three 8tb) of storage but just one 8tb parity ?

 

The total capacity of your data array is irrelevant to parity, so long as you follow the rule of parity being at least as large as your largest data drive.  You can have twenty-eight 8TB drives (for a capacity of 224TB) all protected by your single 8TB parity drive, if you so choose. 28 data disks is the current unRAID limit.

 

 

 

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