September 10, 20187 yr First here is the current hardware in the system. - https://pcpartpicker.com/user/suessz/saved/fzzFdC Most of my plex data is actually stored on an external usb3 drive. I plan on installing the latest version of unraid to use on this system (via usb 8gb drive) which I have made already. System will run headless after it is setup. I plan to condense the system to a more up to date chassis soon with room to grow for drives. The 2 - 250 gb drive are currently in (raid 0) - I do plan to break these apart for the initial use of them. I have another drive not listed in the parts - 500gb sata. And last the SSD OC vertex to use as Cache drive. *** thought about shelling the external after backing the data up first, and installing it as the first drive (since it is the biggest). Order of drives Boot - USB 8gb **shelled 3-4tb drive 250gb SSD CACHE 500gb - SATA 250gb - SATA 250gb - SATA I have read a good amount regarding setting up the system etc... I feel comfortable in this process but I wanted some thoughts on things to consider. Objective is to get my PLEX server in more of a NAS setup (ie Docker etc..) and use storage for photo's, system backups, and general usage. I know the 250/500gb drives are junk and eventually I will get some larger drives to either replace them or add to the system for more storage.. -- which is better? replace? or simply add? Performance: Current system can stream very well to two tv's and external and rarely has issues. After looking at the hardware would this system support a VM in its current hardware state? The idea is to get this system (near my desk) off the floor and condensed with better air flow, then moved to a closet. I apologize if this is not the correct area to post this but it seemed appropriate at the time. I want to get some use from this machine/cpu.
September 10, 20187 yr Community Expert 6 minutes ago, suessz said: I know the 250/500gb drives are junk and eventually I will get some larger drives to either replace them or add to the system for more storage.. -- which is better? replace? or simply add? Replace. Fewer disks means fewer opportunities for problems. Since you are talking about starting with old disks, do you have a good idea about their current health? And you don't really mention any plans for parity. If you have single parity, unRAID can tolerate a single disk failure, but in order for unRAID to recover/rebuild the data of a missing or disabled disk, every bit of parity plus every bit of ALL other disks must be reliably read.
September 10, 20187 yr Author 2 minutes ago, trurl said: Replace. Fewer disks means fewer opportunities for problems. Since you are talking about starting with old disks, do you have a good idea about their current health? And you don't really mention any plans for parity. If you have single parity, unRAID can tolerate a single disk failure, but in order for unRAID to recover/rebuild the data of a missing or disabled disk, every bit of parity plus every bit of ALL other disks must be reliably read. Ok, so hold off for now and acquire new disk/disks then start install etc.. no reason to start until then I presume.
September 10, 20187 yr Community Expert It could still be a good learning opportunity to start with old disks. And when I said replace, what I really had in mind is using them, then replacing and rebuilding their content to new larger drives using the parity calculation. So you really need to be thinking about a parity disk. Parity must be at least as large as the largest single data disk in your array. Also, parity isn't a substitute for backups. You must always keep another copy of any important and irreplaceable files.
September 10, 20187 yr Author i plan on getting a few either 2tb or up to 4tb drives eventually. so hopefully I can get a 8tb to use for the parity disk. can you add more parity disks as needed? ie.. add a second 8tb later if needed?
September 10, 20187 yr Community Expert unRAID supports 2 parity disks. They can be added at any time. Each parity must be at least as large as the largest single data disk. 12 minutes ago, suessz said: up to 4tb drives eventually It can be good to have a parity larger than any of your data disks to make it easier to use larger data disks later, but if you never plan to have a data disk larger than 4TB there would be no point in having parity larger than 4TB.
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