1st unraid build

I am looking at moving my current windows home server hardware over to unraid and was hoping that some one here could let me know if there is any trouble with my existing hardware. I have the following:

Gigabyte EP45-UD3P

Intel core2Duo e7500

Norco 4220

I also have a supermicro sata expansion card and can add a second when I need.

Anyone see any issues with this hardware? How well does WAL work under unraid with this motherboard? Does unraid support dual nics? any other gotchas I should be aware of?

Here is a link to the board at newegg.  unRAID supports the first nic it finds.

Please search the forum for HPA, which is a feature of many Gigabyte boards.  If it is not disabled by default in bios then the board should not be used.

HPA means essentially the bios will create a partition on the first storage device and back up the bios to it.  This is a serious data coruption problem.

After reading up on HPA I think that it something that I would rather avoid altogether. Is there a currently recommended lga 775 motherboard for around 100$?

Thanks for moving the thread to the proper section.

I just put together a client build that used this Intel board.  I quite liked it and it was a solid board while I had it.

The board you had picked out has more expandability options so if you want that another one will need to be picked out.

You can look through the Hardware Compatibility Page fore boards that have been tested.

Yeah, with that intel board I don't think I would be able to get to twenty sata for the norco case. How crucial is a video card? There are plenty of motherboards with two pcie slots but I don't see any with that and inboard video.

Yeah, with that intel board I don't think I would be able to get to twenty sata for the norco case. How crucial is a video card? There are plenty of motherboards with two pcie slots but I don't see any with that and inboard video.

Just install an old PCI video card.  It is all you need in a server and it is what I have installed in my production server.

I finally have some time to get back to this and I am looking at going with this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182205

Supermicro atom board. My only two concerns are

1. Will the atom have enough juice to run a twenty drive array. I will still have whs running so there will be no need for add ons.

2. Are the realtek nics reallythat bad? If so will a pci based intel nic suffice?

3. Is anyone able to comment on how well this board sleeps and wol's?

Thanks for the help

That board will work fine.  Definitely enough 'juice' for a large array.  There's nothing wrong with realtek nics, only Atheros nics are finicky.  I can't comment on WOL and S3.

I saw that board refurbed at newegg a couple of weeks ago, in fact unless you are in a huge hurry, I highly recommend refurbed Supermicro boards from Newegg. I've bought two and they both came with all of the accessories and worked fine. If you are in a hurry, ewiz usually has better prices on Supermicro motherboards, especially if you use a 15% off coupon.

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-X7SLAH&title=Supermicro-X7SLA-H-O-Atom-330-Intel-945GC-RAID-V-2GbE-Flex-ATX-Motherboard-Retail

Once last component to pick out.

What are people recommending for A power supply? Needs to be able to run an atom board and twenty hard drives in a norco 4020 case.

Corsair 650W

I am leaning towards this guy.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139012&cm_re=corsair_power_supply-_-17-139-012-_-Product

A fine choice.  You pay extra for the modular design, but it does help keep your cables nice and neat.  I personally just buy the non-modular models and use zip ties copiously.

After much research, I concluded that this is the finest psu for an unRAID server ... at least I hope so - I have one on its way to me right now.  The Thermaltake and Corsair offerings were the runners up in my comparison.

The Seasonic may be $20 more than the Corsair but it is rather more efficient and it should have adequate power for even the biggest unRAID arrays.  Up to 20% load, the fan on the Seasonic will be off - I expect that this will be the majority of the time with unRAID.  Only parity sync/check on a large array is likely to cause the psu fan to start spinning.

I should be able to report more next week.

One slight difficulty is that the X650 is now discontinued and stocks are dwindling.  Its replacement, the X660, comes with fewer molex connectors (as used in IDE drives and most multi-drive backplanes) as standard.

If you're still interested in the Corsair 650HX Newegg has a promo code to bring it down to $89 after rebate (EMCKGHH22) good for another 14 hours or so

Just ordered these parts, hopefully I will have it up and running this weekend.

I got this build set up and am working on moving my data over. I have a couple questions but am going to move them over to the general support section. Thanks for the help.

I am only getting about 10 MB/s on a gigabit switch. I have been trying to solve it over here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12286.0 any help appreciated.