I'm building a 'new' desktop for general use.  Surfing the net, managing my home lab, general tasks and lastly... backup.  I'd like to try out UNRAID as I've got a number of different sized SATA disks I can put into this system, which I can then use for backup of other systems in my lab.

 

I realize I can pass my video card through to a VM, which, upon startup of Unraid would allow me to use it as a 'normal' desktop, would a Ryzen 5 2600 with 16GB of memory be OK for this configuration?  I'd be passing a GTX970 through to a Linux Desktop.

 

As for the drives, I'd be staring out with the following, mostly as it's just what I have:

 

1x 3.5" 3 TB  (parity?)

1x 2.5" 3 TB

1x 3.5" 2 TB

2x 3.5" 1 TB

120GB SSD (cache?)

 

Eventually I'd like to get a SATA/SAS card and drive cage that would allow me to hot-swap.  Assuming I have a license that would allow the extra drives, would I just be able to add a drive, and eventually replace all the mismatched ones with 4 larger drives?  I mention 4 drives as that's the largest drive cage that will fit into the three 5.25" slots in my Corsair 700D case.

 

Are there any caveats to hot swapping drives with Unraid?

 

Any well known, low cost cards that could be used for hot-swap?  I know with FreeNAS, things like the H200, flashed into IT mode are popular and low cost.

 

Any other tidbits, or articles for users new to Unraid would be helpful.  Google searching doesn't always give you the best, or latest, data.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Edited February 15, 20197 yr by zxarr

Technically, you don't hot swap with Unraid. You must stop the array to assign a replacement disk.

48 minutes ago, trurl said:

Technically, you don't hot swap with Unraid. You must stop the array to assign a replacement disk.

So all I'd do is add a new disk to the new 'hot swap' cage, bring the array down, re-assign a drive, then bring the array up and let it resync?  I assume, if my plan is to increase the size of the drives, that I'd start with the parity drive?

1 hour ago, zxarr said:

So all I'd do is add a new disk to the new 'hot swap' cage, bring the array down, re-assign a drive, then bring the array up and let it resync?

That's basically it.

1 hour ago, zxarr said:

if my plan is to increase the size of the drives, that I'd start with the parity drive?

Parity must be at least as large as the largest single data disk so if you want a disk larger than your current parity then you must make parity larger first.

 

Since you mention you already have some disks, you need to be sure they are trustworthy. Every bit of every disk must be reliably read in order to rebuild a disk.

 

Also, with a cache that small, I would reserve it strictly for use with dockers and VMs and not try to cache any user shares.