• Hi all
   
  First post and all, so be gentle    I stumbled across this site and forum from a post on AVForums in the UK, and reading so far has got me intrigued (and slightly baffled!).
   
  Currently I run 2 x Popcorn Hours (C-200s), to stream BluRays from my NAS.  I'm actually on my second NAS now, and am running a Thecus N7700 with 7 x 2TB drives, in a RAID5 array.  This gives me 10.7TB useable space, of which I have 100GB left
   
  So after two years, my second NAS is no longer sufficient and I've been looking at the Synology 1010+ with the DX510 expansion unit, which will offer me maximum 14.21TB useable space in a RAID6.
   
  The problem I seem to keep facing is that I'm buying what I think I need but it never turns out to be the case, and with consumer NAS's you have to chuck the whole lot away and start all over again.  Enter unRAID?
   
  I have done some reading but I have some basic questions (forgive me if these have been asked a dozen times before):
   
  With my Popcorn Hour C-200, I can only mount one share at a time, so it's key for me that any array can be seen as one drive - can I do this with unRAID?
   
  I know it's on the request list, but is 2-drive failure protection coming in the near future (or ever) for unRaid?  I'm a little concerned with moving to a big array that the risk of multiple drive failure is increasing rapidly.
   
  With my current NAS, I get write speeds of up to 80mbps, although this generally hovers around 50-6mbps.  I can also stream at least two uncompressed, high bitrate bluray rips to two different Popcorn Hours flawlessy (my previous Thecus N5200B NAS couldn't do this!) - can this be achieved with a suitable unRAID rig?
   
  My PC knowledge is very basic (at best).  I built a PC last year which I enjoyed doing, but in reality I know nothing about linux, about scripts etc, I even had to look up what an NIC was   Given this, how easy is it to build one of these or more precisely, how easy is it to configure and get an unRAID server working well?
   
  If I do go down this route, I'll be looking at building something from scratch so I won't be restricted by legacy hardware.  Ideally I want a 16 bay rig (or more), the big question is, can this be achieved for under a grand? (remember I'm in the UK).
   
  Any help or advice would be appreciated
  Thanks
  Matt
   
   
  
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Are your write speeds 50mb/s or 50mB/s?

 

Write speeds are irrelevant to playing media to the PCH... read speeds are what counts.

 

unRAID can have all data accessible as one share... either using user shares, or creating symbolic links on one disk share to all the others.

 

I play multiple hi-bitrate HD streams all the time from unRAID with PCH.

 

2-drive failure protection is not here.  But you don't have that with the other boxen either AFAIK.  And even with a 2-drive failure, worst case is you lose data from 2 drives... all the other data is safe -- unlike the other NAS systems using striped RAID.

With my Popcorn Hour C-200, I can only mount one share at a time, so it's key for me that any array can be seen as one drive - can I do this with unRAID?

Yes, the User Share system will allow you to set it so this can be done.  It will take a little thought on how you organize your media but it should work just fine.

 

I know it's on the request list, but is 2-drive failure protection coming in the near future (or ever) for unRaid?  I'm a little concerned with moving to a big array that the risk of multiple drive failure is increasing rapidly.

As you said it is on the list, but only limetech can answer that kind of question.  It will not be happening for the 5.X serious most likely (I could be wrong), but if may happen for unRAID 6.

 

With my current NAS, I get write speeds of up to 80mbps, although this generally hovers around 50-6mbps.  I can also stream at least two uncompressed, high bitrate bluray rips to two different Popcorn Hours flawlessy (my previous Thecus N5200B NAS couldn't do this!) - can this be achieved with a suitable unRAID rig?

Typical write speeds to a parity protected array using the 4.5.6 release are around the 30-40 mark, so get a little faster some a little slower.  For playing back the bluray rips you are looking for read speed and unRAID should be able to deliver 2 streams at the same time.

 

My PC knowledge is very basic (at best).  I built a PC last year which I enjoyed doing, but in reality I know nothing about linux, about scripts etc, I even had to look up what an NIC was   Given this, how easy is it to build one of these or more precisely, how easy is it to configure and get an unRAID server working well?

It is fairly straight forward really.  Check out the unRAID wiki (link in my signature) and look for the Recommended builds section.  I don't think limetech has been selling any machine lately, but there are others here that would be willing to build machines for you, if you are comfortable with that. There might be some unRAIDer's in the UK that would be willing to build a machine for you but I don't know of any off the top of my head.

 

If I do go down this route, I'll be looking at building something from scratch so I won't be restricted by legacy hardware.  Ideally I want a 16 bay rig (or more), the big question is, can this be achieved for under a grand? (remember I'm in the UK).

Yes, you should be able to build a server that can support 16 drives for under a grand.

 

 

 

As for parts:

Look at xcase and sharkoon for cases

you will need 2 of the supermicro PCI-e x4 SATA cards

I would got for a board like this supermicro. With this board and 2 supermicro cards you can have 22 drives in the server.

Just pic out a process and RAM that will work.  Dual-Core is not very important but it could come in handy if you want to run other things on the server later.

for what it's worth, I was sort of in the same situation as you are in (albeit with a little less storage required - for now  ), and I took the dive recently, having never put together a computer, let alone delved into linux. Lo and behold, my first rig is pre-clearing the first three disks as I write this, and a first test (without parity I must add) gave me transfer speeds of about 50MB/s over GigE and from a Mac. It's not plug and play, but it's all out-figureable, as far as I can tell. I'll be expanding the system as soon as it's all up and running, but so far, it seems good. To me, unRaid is (conceptually at least) the best protected storage array/NAS system out there (and as bubbaQ pointed out, the big advantage being you don't lose your entire array if things go wrong). The forum tells the story better than I...

I live in Germany, and it cost me about €700 for the whole thing including 3x2TB drives.

So, from newbie to prospect: go for it 

Thanks for the replies all

 

I don't want anyone to build it for me, tbh that's part of the fun   I just want to make sure the components I use are the right ones - some of the mobos/processors I've seen on here are difficult to get hold of. 

 

Is there anyone on here from the UK/Europe who can post a decent spec from UK etailers?  This should probably be in the hardware section! - oops!

 

I love the concept of unRAID and wish I'd found it before, especially as it seems to deliver what it promises.

As for parts:

Look at xcase and sharkoon for cases

you will need 2 of the supermicro PCI-e x4 SATA cards

I would got for a board like this supermicro. With this board and 2 supermicro cards you can have 22 drives in the server.

Just pic out a process and RAM that will work.  Dual-Core is not very important but it could come in handy if you want to run other things on the server later.

 

Thanks for those links, I assumed you'd posted all US links   Any processor and RAM recommendations for that board?

hmm that board is out of stock everywhere I've tried in the uk...

for what it's worth, here's what I ordered in Germany:

ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO 785G AM3 mATX mobo

AMD Athlon II X2 245 2.90GHz AM3 2MB 65W BOX

ATX Enermax EPR425AWT II 425W Pro 82+

2000GB Samsung HD203WI F3EG

2x2048MB Kingston Value DDR3-1333 CL9 Kit

ATX Midi Fractal Design Define R2-SI

4GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro USB 2.0

 

Maybe you can get these items in the UK as well? Or even try a German etailer, like mindfactory, which es where I ordered it all. Not sure if that's an option though, and I can't exactly speak from experience yet with the above components...

There are lot of people from UK but I am not sure if you will get their attention as this is the software forum and it is better to discuss your new "baby" in the appropriate forum.

 

Anyway I believe they use www.scan.co.uk and apparently there is a daily deals as in the USA.

 

I think the OP from this post http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7687.0 is UK based and may provide you with some guidance as he recently build a very powerful system.

 

Also check out this too: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7876.0

 

 

Also check out this too: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7876.0

 

Thanks, that's my thread

One other question that's been bugging me.  I understand that through user shares I can set up the unRAID so the Popcorn Hour sees one drive.  Currently, when transferring files from my PC to my NAS, I see a network drive on my PC, and it's literally a case of drag and drop.  With unRAID, is this how everything appears, or on my PC will I still see every hard drive and have to select which drive to drop the files onto?

 

Hope that makes sense 

One other question that's been bugging me.  I understand that through user shares I can set up the unRAID so the Popcorn Hour sees one drive.  Currently, when transferring files from my PC to my NAS, I see a network drive on my PC, and it's literally a case of drag and drop.  With unRAID, is this how everything appears, or on my PC will I still see every hard drive and have to select which drive to drop the files onto?

 

Hope that makes sense 

You can have it either way.  You can elect to share the disk shares, or the combined view (or neither or both or have them or specific folders in them hidden, but still accessible if you know the path)

Thanks, if I have the combined view, is it a case of drag and drop files, in which case does the file in question just get dumped on the first HDD with space free?

That depends on the settings you configure. There are policies you can choose that determines where your data goes -- high-water, most-free, fill-up. You can also control split-levels to help consolidate your data to central disks. You can also explicitly include or explicitly exclude drives from certain shares.

One thing to note. unRAID more or less takes a bunch of drives and combines the data on them. Many people are fussy and want all of movie X or music CD Y or TV series Z to be stored on one single disk. 2 Main reasons. #1 is that the single disk can then be spun-up to access that content. #2 is that it can be a little easier to sort out what was affected if the worst happens (failed drives).

 

Now the point I'm trying to make. If you use a single big share then there might not be enough versatility in the share settings to allow you to keep the data together as described above. It could require some decent thought put into the structure you use.

 

Alternatively. You could create multiple shares and then create a "Media" share with links to all the other shares.

 

Peter

I'm even more picky about my files than to allow unRAID to put them where it wants to. I'm setup like this.

 

Disk1 Movies

Disk2 TV

Disk3 Movies

Disk4 MISC, MP3

 

Disk1 has the following

480 rips

720 rips

ISO

 

Disk3

480 rips

720 rips

ISO

 

However instead of dragging and dropping to \\tower\Movies I use the following \\tower\disk1\ or \\tower\disk3 and I put the movies where I want them. Since XBMC and every other machine would see all my drives as one this enables myself to do what I want. Of course my user shares are read only it allows me to have two permission sets. One which everybody else uses is read only and I can read/write via \\tower\disk1 or \\tower\disk2

 

Also having Shares if you decided to move files from one drive to another physically they are in a different location, but logically via the network or an other device they are in the same location. For example my wife was watching some of her favorite Tv shows yesterday and I moved what she was watching. I left what she was watching in the same location and as soon as she was done I deleted it. She watched the next episode and as far as she was concerned and my player it didn't care nor even notice. On my old NAS I would have had to remap all of the folders because it did not use a User share setup.

 

Heck I've even moved 90Gig of MP3's two nights ago and from a stroke of luck when the song ended there wasn't even a skip because it must of cached the song in the player and didn't even notice it had moved from one drive to another.

 

My old Nas if I wanted to take out a 500gig drive and install a 1TB I would have to copy all the data to another drive then throw in the larger. UnRAID you just simply power down, swap out the drive and turn it back on. It will prepare the disk and rebuild the data and magically you have a larger disk to use.

Get a SeaSonic X650 or X750 PSU, won't regret and the built-in fan would stay off almost all the time.