I  would like to upgrade my unraid to the fastest thing I can build.   Right now I have 5 750gig drives but would like to be able to go to the Full 14 with the new machine..   Please let me know what you all think would be the fastest PCIe board and controllers to get that would allow 14 drives..

 

edit was thinking this board atm

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2563503&Sku=I69-2145

 

 

On a side note. will I be able to use my flashusb I have now or will it have to be redone somehow. I did upgrade to 4.0 already also does the speed of the flash make any differnce

 

 

 

Thanks in advance

  Richard

  well no one gave me any input   But after reading everything I could find on here I got this board  ASUS P5B-E  Hope it fits the bill. should have it up in a few days.

 

  Richard

Your upgrade should go smoothly.

Before you shut down your current server write down which disks (by make/serial number) are assigned to which (logical) slot in your array.  Stop the array and shut it down cleanly.

 

After you start up your new array with your new motherboard it is likely that the Linux devices (disk controllers/channels) will have changed.  The most important drive to get assigned correctly is the parity drive.  It is not more important than your data, but if you assign one of your data drives as parity as a result of getting the drives mixed up, it might result in your data drive being overwritten when a parity write occurs.

 

Oh yes, the speed of the flash drive makes little difference.  It is read when initially booted, but has very little read/write activity otherwise.  If you use a USB 1.0 drive it will take much longer to intially boot, but once up and running you would not notice any difference.

 

Joe L.

 

 

  Thanks for the tip on the drives.. I bet I would have forgot that.

 

 

  Richard

Yes, exactly correct Joe (thanks!).

Joe, I'd like to encourage you to move your 2 answers (moving to new motherboard and controllers, and 'speed of the flash') to a FAQ and/or the wiki.  Come to think of it, you have had a number of responses that would be very helpful in FAQ's and the wiki.  Any free time???  Your answers to others have been helpful to me personally, and probably to most others here.