4 newbie Unraid questions

[reboot47]

Hello unraid community, I have 4 questions before I start installing unraid, I am a light user for now using unraid for just basic file server access few times a week, no apps, plugins or vms etc, although if I love it I'd still like the option to use its features more in future ie plex etc

 

1. Can someone confirm if I enable dockers and vms plugins the hard drives will NOT spin down (energy saving mode) ?

-my main worry is cost of electricity will be higher since I won't be fully using the files all the time or am I worrying about nothing here?

 

 

2. Is an SSD cache really worth it with my limited low usage ?  does it really stabilize and improve read/write speeds to the array as seen in space invaders YT vids ?

-If its something really worth it I can add an SSD from what I read on here and on other threads it's mainly for dockers and vms which I won't use off the start.

 

 

3. Does unraid actively monitor my hard drives in case its failing and notify me ?

 

 

4. Do you think unraid is for me?

  I was intrigued with unraid since I had 2 NAS hdd failures this

year and its taken me lots of time to recover and move data around and I lost some data (not important just media files), but unraid and parity drive would have helped with this.

 

I also hate the noisy hard drives so figured if I go unraid I could move the build to cupboard or area in home that is cool and adding some more powerful fans to cool it properly, right now my main PC is 2 metres away from where I sleep and its almost silent but the hdds noise come through

(wd reds) so I was going to just leave SSDS in it and have an almost silent pc.

 

I don't game, but watch film, tv shows and music in 4K/HD quality, so maybe down the road I may get into plex and using unraid dockers/vms but not just for the beginning.

 

Appreciate any feed back and response to the questions, thanks.

 

[Squid]

2 minutes ago, reboot47 said:

1. Can someone confirm if I enable dockers and vms plugins the hard drives will NOT spin down (energy saving mode) ?

 

If docker and/or VMs are enabled, but not actually utilized, the drives will still spin down.   But in your case, if you're not using them, then don't even enable them.

 

3 minutes ago, reboot47 said:

does it really stabilize and improve read/write speeds to the array as seen in space invaders YT vids

It does improve write speed.  But, for many users (myself included), I only use the cache drive for applications (ie: VMs / docker apps), and all writes for media go straight to the array.  For me, the write speed is good enough, and most of the writes are all automated (new downloads etc), so I don't even notice if it's slower than if I wrote directly to the cache drive.

 

4 minutes ago, reboot47 said:

3. Does unraid actively monitor my hard drives in case its failing and notify me ?

 

Yes.  Just enter in the appropriate info in Notification settings

[Hoopster]

13 minutes ago, reboot47 said:

1. Can someone confirm if I enable dockers and vms plugins the hard drives will NOT spin down (energy saving mode) ?

If you store your docker appdata share and the VM ISO and System shares on an SSD (highly recommended) your array drives will not spin up just because dockers/VMs are in use unless they are configured to use array drives in some way.  When accessing media with Plex for example, the necessary drives will be spun up, but, they can be configured to spin down when not in use while Plex still runs as a docker container on an SSD.

 

13 minutes ago, reboot47 said:

2. Is an SSD cache really worth it with my limited low usage ?  does it really stabilize and improve read/write speeds to the array as seen in space invaders YT vids ?

See above as these shares could be cache only shares using the cache drive.  Also, you could put them on an unassigned devices SSD.

If you intend to use the cache drive for write caching of share data (configurable by share), how much benefit you would get from that depends on how often and how much data you write the array.

 

13 minutes ago, reboot47 said:

3. Does unraid actively monitor my hard drives in case its failing and notify me ?

Yes, if so configured. It will run periodic checks and let you know of problems through the notification system and GUI.

 

13 minutes ago, reboot47 said:

4. Do you think unraid is for me?

Only you can fully answer that question, but, media storage, management and playback is a primary unRAID use case.  Parity protection is a nice safeguard against disk drive failure, but, it is not a backup solution.  You should also make plans to keep important data backed up.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Hoopster

[reboot47]

Thank you very much for the answers, good to hear unraid is green and energy efficient even with docker+shared hdd access, sounds like I will then use an SSD for appdata, system shares and vms on the SSD.

 

I will need to do much more reading, research on this community especially space invader vids, maybe I am under using my current hardware (AMD 8 core cpu and 16gig might make a good unraid box) maybe I can ditch noisy bulky desktop PCs and use a VM on a monitor in another room somehow ?

 

And also look at backblaze and cloud storage for better off site backup solutions, I see a great post showing how some on this community have ditched expensive noisy hard drives and just use the cloud storage for their entire storage and media streaming, never even considered these things till I read it.