Intel Nuc and Unraid

[CK77]

Hi all,

 

I have a Intel NUC7i3 with a bunch of external HD's. At the moment is runs Win 10 with Emby, Sonarr, Radarr,....

 

I've been reading about Unraid and it seems like a really interesting OS to play around with, but i realize that using external USB3 HD's will not be the greatest experience.

 

Without buying a new computer and actually installing drives in the case, what would be the best option to expand my storage and run Unraid on the NUC.

 

The only ports available on the NUC are 4x USB3 and 1x USB-C port, but it looks like that one is just for DP.

 

Are there any advised 4 or 6 bay enclosures that will work well? Or should i just not bother for now and save up for a proper mini tower and build from scratch when i ever get the money and then start with Unraid?

 

Right now on Windows10 i have write speeds to these external drives from around 60MB/s to 95MB/s. I would like to make sure i stick to those speeds at least when moving to Unraid

 

Any input on best enclosures or Unraid practices would be highly appreciated

[trurl]

Where things start to fall apart with USB connections and/or multidrive enclosures that only give one port for a bunch of disks, is when you have parity. If you are willing to do without parity you could play around with the other features.

 

 

[CK77]

23 hours ago, trurl said:

Where things start to fall apart with USB connections and/or multidrive enclosures that only give one port for a bunch of disks, is when you have parity. If you are willing to do without parity you could play around with the other features.

 

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

I've had another reality check for myself and i've come to the conclusion that for where i live, it makes most sense to stick with Windows and my external hd's. I live on a tiny island of the coast of Honduras, so it always takes me at least 3 weeks to order any new parts from Amazon US. If i move all my data to an Unraid array and my NUC dies, i can't access those movies until I have a new pc with Unraid. If i stick with Windows, i can just plug the HD's into my laptop and get access that way while i wait for a new computer to arrive.

 

I assume i can't just read the drives in an Unraid array on a windows machine?

 

If i ever move back to the "real world" with 2 day delivery i might try it out for a main system.

 

Now would Unraid run well on a nuc like pc with a celeron or pentium processor if all i want to do with it is play around and run some docker containers?

 

Something like this i could afford to at least play around with it if this would do

 

https://www.amazon.com/AWOW-Desktop-Computer-Extended-Ethernet/dp/B087MB58VR/ref=sr_1_15?dchild=1&keywords=mini+pc&nav_sdd=aps&pd_rd_r=855152ca-364c-4e10-8a72-0efce814390a&pd_rd_w=lJYmY&pd_rd_wg=9ONsq&pf_rd_p=471b6cce-2150-4b2a-8944-69a1f8729b8e&pf_rd_r=ST7QE5XQBFNVCCSCFQP7&qid=1599426241&refinements=p_n_feature_four_browse-bin%3A1264444011&s=pc&sr=1-15

[CK77]

After watching some more Youtube videos I have some more questions. Clearly i'm still stuck on trying Unraid.

 

Could i possibly run this setup on the computer mentioned in the post above?

 

So that computer with 1 SSD, and a USB3 hub with 5 external HD's

 

I use 2x 4TB for the array drives and put my shares on there with movies, tv series, downloads,... I would not be using a parity drive.

The SSD is used as a cache drive, but i would not use it to speed up the transfer to the array, more for storing the other shares and my docker images. Without parity on the array i assume my transfer speeds will stay close to waht i'm used to now, about 80-90MB/s

 

The other 3 HD's (2x 2TB, 1x 4TB) i will use as unassigned devices and leave in NTFS so i can use those as a backup for my movies and tv series in the arrray. I something happens to the array i still have a backup for my movies and tv series that i can use on any Windows PC.

 

On top of that i would like to run at least the following Docker containers: Emby, Sonarr, Radarr, Jacket, PiHole and Home Assistant

Maybe some others to play around with. I have no need to run any VM's on this.

 

Would all this be possible to run smooth on this setup? Or do I need something stronger.

 

My other option, and this is completely maxing out my budget at the moment, is buy another Intel NUC8i5 with 4 cores and run the above and run Windows10 in a VM on it. I don't game. The only thing i would do on the windows machine is browsing, watching youtube, netflix, run kodi to play movies from Emby (no transcoding)

 

I would really like to get some input on this if possible. I really want to play around with Unraid, just don't have the money to build a proper server right now. So any input on how the above system setup would work would be greatly appreciated

 

 

[Guyonabuffalo]

@CK77 Im curious if you ended up trying the NUC unraid setup? I have a nuc8i7beh and am thinking about trying unraid on it. This machine has a m2 nvme slot that id used for cache and an internal 2.5 ssd slot i hope to use for parity. Then connect external usb3 drives as disks. possibly even utilize the usbc port. 

[trurl]

One reason to not use parity with USB array is because USB may not be a reliable permanent connection. If you get disconnects, the disk will be out of sync and require rebuild. Might be a frequent problem.