Sanity Check on First Build.

Hey all, I'm moving over from a DroboFS to UnRaid and just need a sanity check for my first build. It's pretty standard and mashed together from various popular threads I've read. Just need the final go on it.

Also if you have any comments, I could do it cheaper if.... Or you'd be better off with... etc, I'd love to hear them.

Requirements are:

Currently 3 x 3TB WD Green Drives.

I'll add 1 x 4 TB WD RED for parity.

An extra Green drive to mirror my photographs directory for extra security.

And probably an SSD cache disk in the end.

Low power consumption/heat/noise over performance.

XBMC Server, Sab, Couch, Sick, MySql etc.

NFS streaming to XBMC HTPCs.

No Plex transcoding type stuff.

Here is my list currently:

Lian Li PC-Q25B Case - £100

Silverstone SST-ST45SF-G PSU - £85

Asus H87I-Plus Motherboard - £85

Intel Pentium G3220 Dual Core CPU - £40

G-Skill 4GB Ripjaws X DDR3 1600 Dual Kit - £35

APC 330W RS LCD 550 Master Control UPS - £100

I'll probably look out for bargains/ebay stuff. The case I can get for under £80...

I'm looking forward to finally being in control of my data!

Thanks

Christian

If you're not doing any transcoding, will a Celeron G1840 be sufficient for your needs?  It gets a single-threaded Passmark that is 94% that of the Pentium G3220 at about 75% of the cost.

On the flip side, I always recommend buying more RAM than you think you need.  Looking at US Newegg prices, cheapest G Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600 runs $45 for 2x2GB and $71 for 2x4GB.  You may find a similar reduction in price per GB at your preferred sellers.  When you repurpose this machine, which you WILL do, the extra RAM will likely be a definite asset.

Excellent choices.  I'd stay with the Core-i3 (a bit of extra "headroom" is always nice); but agree that you should bump the RAM up a bit ... either get 2 x 4GB or 2 x 8GB  (2 x 4GB is probably plenty).

r.e. "... An extra Green drive to mirror my photographs directory for extra security. " ==>  Backups are certainly important; and doing this is better than not backing up.  But your backup should really NOT be on the same physical system as the data it's backing up.    If you're not going to keep a full set of backups, and just have one drive's worth of "stuff" you want to keep backed up; I'd mount that drive in your PC (or get an external drive attached to a PC); and use a sync utility [syncToy, SyncBack, etc.] to keep it in sync with the "Photos" share on your UnRAID server.

Excellent, thanks a lot. I'll start getting the parts in next week.

As for the extra drive for photos, I keep a small hard drive (500GB) at the moment off site, but I never keep it up to date. What would make this easier would be to be able to stick the drive in and (asking too much, automatically) back up whatever it doesn't have from the photo directory. Can unraid do this?

That way I can bring it home once a month and backup over the weekend. I'll need a bigger disk though

Unfortunately my current home is all on one ring main for the plugs, so I don't get any benefit having it on another device in a different room. I'm hoping this will change next year with a new house.

You can plug the external drive into a PC and use the free SyncBack or SyncToy to automatically synchronize it with your server.

... or you can plug it into the UnRAID server itself and use Linux tools to do the same -- but I'm the wrong guy to give you advice on how to do that