36bitter

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More specifically, you need to map a drive on the PC to your Unraid server, install Plex server on the faster PC, and then configure the Plex server to use the mapped drive. You will no longer need Plex server on the Unraid server you are just using the standard share features of Unraid. To map a drive: 1) Go to Start -> Computer -> Map Network Drive 2) Select a drive letter, e.g. M: 3) Browse to your Unraid shared network drive(s), e.g. \\tower\media 4) Check the box to reconnect at login For the Plex server: 1) Do a standard default Plex server install 2) Under My Library add sections for your media subsets, e.g. add one named Movies, browse to shared drive to M:\Movies add one named TV Shows, browse shared drive to M:\TV Shows

Concurring with other posts, I had a N40L as a Plex server and I found it would not reliably transcode even 720p mkv files. It actually would work some of the time but would periodically hang up. Currently I am using a Windows VM on an ESX server with a E3-1230 V2 cpu as a Plex server which is accessing a N40L unraid server over a wired network and have no problems transcoding. So I went the path of leaving my unraid server alone and splitting off functions onto other boxes. The N40L is a fine small unraid server and hard to beat for convenience and price when on sale, but it is not up to Plex transcoding. I also access the N40L unraid server with a WD Live TV box and with an XBMC system with no issues. If one of your existing media servers has a heftier cpu with a wired connection to the unraid server you might try splitting off the Plex server to that media server.

I have an HP N40L with 3 x WD Red 3 TB drives (1 parity and 2 data) running 5.0-rc10. I am still running the standard HP bios that came with the box. I did bump the memory to 4 GB. With some download and file transfer activity ongoing my last parity check averaged 100 MB/sec. Watching the main screen during a parity check, with no other activity going on, shows about 140 MB/sec. Larger file copies over the network from a Windows box to the unRAID run at about 25 MB/sec using FastCopy with default parameters. I don't know what to expect here but am not unhappy with that number. Are you saying that new data writes over the network hit 25 MB/sec? That is about what I see, but parity checks with no other activity ongoing should be much faster. If you see disk read speeds of 150 MB/sec on a single disk that also indicates you should see better parity checks.