je82 Posted October 15, 2019 Share Posted October 15, 2019 Hello, I have a PC with 2 sas cards with support up to 16 hhds combined, then the regular controller on the motherboard has 6 sata ports. All are configured to do standard "single jbod" configuration, like all motherboards come with as standard where each port represent one drive. What i wonder about UnRaid is, can i configure more then one array of drives? Lets say i have 8 drives in one array, with 1 cache ssd and one parity drive, then i have another array with 4 drives and another cache ssd + parity drive, is this possible? What can i do if unraid somehow fails, what kind of failsafes are there? I do not trust raid at all because so many things can go wrong, especially dangerous is controller card corruption starting to write corrupt data to an entire array causing corruption and mass loss of data. I prefer having my drives as single installs and then just mirror all the data of each drive to another drive based on a schedule, obviously having double the amount of drives is very expensive. What kind of encryption is offered? Obviously some of my data is private, what kind of encryption is offered by unraid, or is unraid simply just the underlaying layer and i'll have to create containers with something like truecrypt/veracrypt on top of that? Can i use different size drives in a raid array using unraid? One of the biggest reasons i haven't purchased a expensive nas is because i cannot utilize all the mixes drives i already own, i have drives spanning from 12tb to 4tb and anywhere inbetween, being able to utilize these drives would be a plus. Perhaps i can create an array for all my 4tb, then an array for all my 8tb, then one for my 12tb etc, or is it even possible to use mixed drives in an array? Thanks in advance, looking forward to testing out unraid. 1 Quote Link to comment
SpencerJ Posted October 15, 2019 Share Posted October 15, 2019 1 minute ago, je82 said: Can i use different size drives in a raid array using unraid? One of the biggest reasons i haven't purchased a expensive nas is because i cannot utilize all the mixes drives i already own, i have drives spanning from 12tb to 4tb and anywhere inbetween, being able to utilize these drives would be a plus. Perhaps i can create an array for all my 4tb, then an array for all my 8tb, then one for my 12tb etc, or is it even possible to use mixed drives in an array? Thanks in advance, looking forward to testing out unraid. Yes, this is one of the main selling points of Unraid. You can mix and match at will-- your parity drive(s) must match the largest drive on the array however. Ex: If you have 12 TB drives, you'll have to use 1 or 2 of those as parity drives depending on your preference. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted October 15, 2019 Share Posted October 15, 2019 Unraid is not RAID. Each data disk is an independent filesystem. Redundancy for the array is provided by 1 or 2 parity drives. There is currently no provision for multiple arrays, but in addition to the array you can have multiple disks in the cache pool. And different sized disks can be used in the parity array. See this Overview from the Wiki for a better idea how it all works: https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Overview Each disk (independent filesytem as noted) in the parity array can be encrypted or not. Quote Link to comment
je82 Posted October 15, 2019 Author Share Posted October 15, 2019 (edited) 21 minutes ago, trurl said: Unraid is not RAID. Each data disk is an independent filesystem. Redundancy for the array is provided by 1 or 2 parity drives. There is currently no provision for multiple arrays, but in addition to the array you can have multiple disks in the cache pool. And different sized disks can be used in the parity array. See this Overview from the Wiki for a better idea how it all works: https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Overview Each disk (independent filesytem as noted) in the parity array can be encrypted or not. So technically if each file written to the array is actually written on one specific hdd and not spread out over the array if i would take one drive out of the unraid and mount it in a system that supports that kind of filesystem would i be able to access the files on that particular drive? 32 minutes ago, SpencerJ said: Yes, this is one of the main selling points of Unraid. You can mix and match at will-- your parity drive(s) must match the largest drive on the array however. Ex: If you have 12 TB drives, you'll have to use 1 or 2 of those as parity drives depending on your preference. Great to hear, it's a good selling point. Also the fact that it is software gives some kind of calm too, i hate being bound to a specific raid controller and once the raid fails no controllers of this type is available to buy anymore and everything is a hell to get to work again. One more question, if i use unraid and setup SMB shares, is there anyway to have a network trash bin? So if i use an admin account (user that has delete access over the network) and delete a file, can it be restored or is it gone forever? Thanks for the quick replies! Edited October 15, 2019 by je82 1 Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted October 15, 2019 Share Posted October 15, 2019 3 hours ago, je82 said: So technically if each file written to the array is actually written on one specific hdd and not spread out over the array if i would take one drive out of the unraid and mount it in a system that supports that kind of filesystem would i be able to access the files on that particular drive? Yes. On the other hand, unlike striping in RAID, I/O is only at the speed of the single disk. In fact, writes are somewhat slower due to parity updating concurrently. Caching can help with this since cache can be SSDs and raid. 3 hours ago, je82 said: One more question, if i use unraid and setup SMB shares, is there anyway to have a network trash bin? Recycle Bin plugin: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/41044-recycle-bin-vfs-recycle-for-64-and-later-versions/ Quote Link to comment
je82 Posted October 16, 2019 Author Share Posted October 16, 2019 (edited) 5 hours ago, trurl said: Yes. On the other hand, unlike striping in RAID, I/O is only at the speed of the single disk. In fact, writes are somewhat slower due to parity updating concurrently. Caching can help with this since cache can be SSDs and raid. Recycle Bin plugin: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/41044-recycle-bin-vfs-recycle-for-64-and-later-versions/ That's awesome, for me speed is the least of my concerns! I can't believe i didn't discover unraid earlier, very excited to try this out! Thanks! Edited October 16, 2019 by je82 Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.