Parity drive and space questions

[GazCBG]

Hi,

 

I am looking at trying out Unraid for my Plex Server and would like to know how the HDD and Parity works

 

I have 8 Hard Drivers which are 4x 2TB 2x 3TB and 2x 5TB

 

1. Can I use the 4x 2TB = 8TB for the Parity while the rest is for Media (16 TB) or does the Parity need to be bigger?

 

2. Can the Parity can be added at a later date, once I upgrade the hard drive size?
 

3. Will all available disk space (exlcuding OS and Parity) drives work like one big hard drive?

 

Regards,

Gaz

 

[trurl]

9 minutes ago, GazCBG said:

Can I use the 4x 2TB = 8TB for the Parity while the rest is for Media (16 TB) or does the Parity need to be bigger?

No. Parity must be a single disk at least as large as the largest single data disk. If you use dual parity, each parity disk must be at least as large as the largest single data disk. With those disks you could use one 5TB as parity and all the others as data for a total array capacity of

4x2 + 2x3 + 5 = 19TB

 

9 minutes ago, GazCBG said:

Can the Parity can be added at a later date, once I upgrade the hard drive size?

You can add parity later, or you can replace parity later. But as noted above, parity must be at least as large as the largest single data disk.

 

9 minutes ago, GazCBG said:

Will all available disk space (exlcuding OS and Parity) drives work like one big hard drive?

Unraid IS NOT RAID. There is no striping.

 

Each data disk in the parity array is an independent filesystem. Each file is stored completely on a single disk.

 

But, Unraid allows top level folders to span disks. This is known as user shares. Normally people created multiple user shares for different purposes, and each user share has its own settings. Each user share can span as many disks as you want.

[GazCBG]

Thanks you for the quick reply and for all the info

The above will work for me