Need help to find out if unraid is right for me


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I wanted to go unraid but I was told so many horror stories about unraid corrupting drives and making people loose everything and I just don't want that happening...Is this true? I was going to use unraid at first then I was convinced to use ZFS/Raidz but now I'm looking at unraid again, here is my plan.

 

20 2TB Hard drives $100 each or $2,000 (just rounding from the cheapest priced one to the better 7k rpm hitachi verson

4 4GB sticks of corsair ram - $160

Andtec Twelve hundred case - $200

Power supply (to be determined) $50-$10o

880GMA motherboard (Free!)

24 port sas card - $400 with shipping

the 5.25 to 5 3.5" bay converters Newegg.com - SNT SNT-SAC3051TL 5 x 3.5" HDD in 3 x 5.25" Bay SAS/SATA Trayless Backplane Hot Swap RAID Cage $75 dollars each, I'll need four of them. $300

12 4 pin molex connectors for the power for the drives.

30GB SSD $?????? Might buy this new or second hand, don't know how much it will cost so far.

H50 Cooler for the heck of it :P -$70 (will get on sale for about 50)

AMD Sempron 145 Processor 2.8GHz  - $50

UPS in case of a power outage,  - $160 on sale (or I'll get a cheaper one but this could power my file server, my hdtv and my moms computer :)

2 120mm fans.

 

I also plan on hopefully using WD GREEN drives for this, I might go hitachi if need be (if there better units for raiding) This is basically going to be my home NAS server. Does unraid only have one parity drive? What if that drive fails then am I screwed? I read with raidz I can have two parity drives incase one fails me so I can rebuild it. Also does unraid tell you what HD has failed? So I don't need to run through 20 drives finding the right one. I do however like unraids GUI how simple it is. Also should I swap the sempron for a cheap quad or a dual core with chances of unlocking it? And does unraid eat a ton of ram like I hear ZFS/Raidz does? I hear raidz can take 12GB just using it as super cache and such. So yea looking forward to your guys suggestions. Thanks.

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I'll try and review your suggested parts list first:

 

20 2TB Hard drives $100 each or $2,000 - Good if you need all this storage ATM. What brand or brands are you considering? I'll let the guys will comment on what brands are the best buy ATM. Depending on your geographical location, 2TB should be good, cost wise.

4 4GB sticks of corsair ram - $160 - Do you mean 4x4GB RAM? if so, an overkill, just 4GB of RAM is plenty, but that's my opinion.

Andtec Twelve hundred case - $200 - Good.

Power supply (to be determined) $50-$10o - Get something like a 600W+, some forum members can direct you to something more specific.

880GMA motherboard (Free!) - OK, but be wary of Gigabyte mobo's copying or dumping the BIOS config locally to a disk, causing problems, so be sure to DISABLEW such options in BIOS or update to the latest firmware revision!

24 port sas card - $400 with shipping - OK, again, I let some of the guys suggest more specific models and types.

the 5.25 to 5 3.5" bay converters Newegg.com - SNT SNT-SAC3051TL 5 x 3.5" HDD in 3 x 5.25" Bay SAS/SATA Trayless Backplane Hot Swap RAID Cage $75 dollars each, I'll need four of them. $300 - OK.

12 4 pin molex connectors for the power for the drives. - Depending on the P/Supply, you might get them included.

30GB SSD $?Huh?? Might buy this new or second hand, don't know how much it will cost so far. - For cache drive, OK, though I'd wait for some feedback from the guys.

H50 Cooler for the heck of it Tongue -$70 (will get on sale for about 50) - OK.

AMD Sempron 145 Processor 2.8GHz - $50 - Good enough unRAID isn't CPU intensive.

UPS in case of a power outage,  - $160 on sale (or I'll get a cheaper one but this could power my file server, my hdtv and my moms computer Smiley - The way to go for sure, good. The guys will comment on a specific model.

2 120mm fans. - Good.

 

Regarding unRAID and data lost, like anything, if you're not certain about when something goes wrong, search and read the forums FIRST! it is certain that what your encountering, someone else has encountered the same problem. Their was a known bug with a version of unRAID (v4.5.3), which had caused some data lost to some, and was rectified by a later update, but the golden rule, if your current revision is working, stick with it and let others report on any problems before you upgrade, try not to be too bleeding edge with updates. unRAID has a unique RAID facility, meaning if multiple drive lose occurs, you can still retrieve your remaining data on the others drives, where as other RAID solutions can't offer this.

 

Well I hope the above reassures your worries. unRAID is a great product, I've used it for year and a half, hasn't given me too much issues and anything I faced, someone else I faced it too and was easily rectified. The forum is excellent and has always helped when I needed it.

 

Cheers

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I wanted to go unraid but I was told so many horror stories about unraid corrupting drives and making people loose everything and I just don't want that happening...Is this true?

I can only remember one person who "lost everything", but even then not for good.   Somehow they decided to use a beta-version of unRAID on its first day of release on their only copy of data.

 

If you stick to the 4.7 release, or the 4.6 release before it, you'll be fine.  Beta releases, especially in the first few days, are only for those who have test arrays... cannot stress that enough.

I was going to use unraid at first then I was convinced to use ZFS/Raidz but now I'm looking at unraid again, here is my plan.

 

20 2TB Hard drives $100 each or $2,000 (just rounding from the cheapest priced one to the better 7k rpm hitachi verson

A complete waste of your money... Unless you need 40TB of space now, the prices will only decrease over time.  You are not taking advantage of one of unRAID's major selling points, the ability to grow easily over time.

4 4GB sticks of corsair ram - $160

Way more than you need unless you plan on running virtual-machines, and a lot of them at that...  My older server has 512Meg of RAM and does perfectly fine.  My newer server has 2Gig.

Andtec Twelve hundred case - $200

Power supply (to be determined) $50-$10o

Do not skimp on the power supply if you plan on expanding to 20 drives.  You need a single  12 volt rail of at least 45 Amps capacity.

880GMA motherboard (Free!)

Good price

24 port sas card - $400 with shipping

Probably not supported by unRAID.   You'll be the first to try, and unless the driver is already part of unRAID, unlikely to magically appear unless you assemble a development machine and compile it yourself.  Before you purchase the card I strongly suggest you write to lime-tech with the chipset information on the proposed sas controller to learn if there is a driver for it in the unRAID OS.

the 5.25 to 5 3.5" bay converters Newegg.com - SNT SNT-SAC3051TL 5 x 3.5" HDD in 3 x 5.25" Bay SAS/SATA Trayless Backplane Hot Swap RAID Cage $75 dollars each, I'll need four of them. $300

12 4 pin molex connectors for the power for the drives.

30GB SSD $?????? Might buy this new or second hand, don't know how much it will cost so far.

H50 Cooler for the heck of it :P -$70 (will get on sale for about 50)

AMD Sempron 145 Processor 2.8GHz  - $50

UPS in case of a power outage,  - $160 on sale (or I'll get a cheaper one but this could power my file server, my hdtv and my moms computer :)

2 120mm fans.

For 20 disks you'll probably need more than 2 fans.

I also plan on hopefully using WD GREEN drives for this, I might go hitachi if need be (if there better units for raiding) This is basically going to be my home NAS server. Does unraid only have one parity drive?

Yes.
What if that drive fails then am I screwed?
No you replace it.   You've lost nothing unless a second drive fails concurrently.
I read with raidz I can have two parity drives incase one fails me so I can rebuild it.
Wrong.  Keep reading.
Also does unraid tell you what HD has failed?
Yes.
So I don't need to run through 20 drives finding the right one. I do however like unraids GUI how simple it is. Also should I swap the sempron for a cheap quad or a dual core with chances of unlocking it?
Why would you want to risk your data to the core that was locked because it did not meet quality control.  Do you not think if it was good that they would have much rather sold the CPU for more money with all the cores enabled?
And does unraid eat a ton of ram like I hear ZFS/Raidz does? I hear raidz can take 12GB just using it as super cache and such.
All Linux OS will use as much RAM as you have installed for disk buffer cache.  More memory is good to a point.  Too much will basically just be spending money for no reason.
So yea looking forward to your guys suggestions. Thanks.

I'm sure others will comment as well.  You sound ambitious, but have not yet done your homework.

 

Joe L.

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Just a couple of thoughts on your build based on my recent experience building a new unRaid server...

Like some of the other guys said, why 20 disks to start? The great thing about unRaid is adding diskd over time... Waiting for sales, etc....

 

I can't stress this enough, esp after reading numerous posts, if you going to spend money on something, make it the power supply. I bought mine in anticipation of growing to 20 drives, powering the system and 8 fans - 750W, 62A on a single rail.

 

That H50 liquid cooler - the raidiator/fan solution was originally designed to draw cool air from outside to cool the fluid, thereby bringing more warm air into your server, where you will already be wanting to exaust all the heat generated from the drives. Besides, your CPU will barely heat up. Run a good 120mm on the rear, venting out, with a stock CPU cooler. That will help keep everything cool. Put the extra money into the PSU. :)

 

Just a few thoughts...

Shawn

 

 

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The raid card I had picked is discontinued so I need to pick another one, I found this.

http://forums.ncix.com/forums/?mode=showthread&msg_id=2218975&threadid=2218975&forum=101&product_id=37999&msgcount=3&overclockid=0#msg2218975

 

I could easily just buy two of these with two breakout cables right?

Yes, that s one of the more popular cards for unRAID. I haven't look at your MB, for 2 cards you will need 2 PCIE x4 or better slots.
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Yes my board does have 1 16x slot and I believe 1 8x slot.

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=52047&vpn=GA-880GMA-UD2H&manufacture=Gigabyte

 

The reason I want to start with so many drives is just to be able to keep my HD movie/ TV show collection growing strong, my HTPC is going to have 12TB as well, (2TB black for games and a 60gb SSD for the OS)

 

It looks like HPA is disabled in newer gigabyte boards, but what would the option to disable it be under in the bios?

 

Also, I'm not looking to build this right now, I plan on building it when I get more cash saved up, currently have $150 but this project is going to run me about $3500. I'll probably buy a couple things like the 5.25" to 3.5" converters incase they get discontinued and the case possibly.

 

Also is my cpu good enough? Should I maybe go for something better or is that fine.

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Wow, you really need to slow your roll and read some more before you jump into things.  Please understand that unRaid is NOT a raid.  That is a major reason many of us use it, because of it's flexibility and not worry about losing everything like you would in a conventional raid.  If you haven't, please read up on how either unRaid works or how a typical raid setup works because you obviously have something very confused.  The only way to lose everything in unRaid is if you accidentally press the wrong button (nuke my array button) or you chuck your server into a trash compactor.  It's much safer than conventional arrays in that even if you lose your drives, it'll be localized to only things on that one drive.

 

You hardware list and your impression that many unRaid users have lost their array leads me to believe you are confusing unRaid with something else.  Pick the cheapest components and put them together.  unRaid is software based, not hardware so there's completely no need for 16GB of memory or SSD, etc etc.  If you're going to spend that much on a case, might I suggest a Norco rackmount.  Also check out the Supermicro SATA controller as that's fairly cheap (cheapest SATA controller I know of) and many unRaid users have fairly positive experiences with it.

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I guess I'll drop the ram down, the reason I wanted to do this was to basically make sure my data is safe no matter what. I would still like to get the antec 1200 case with the 4 5.25 to 3.5" bays just cause its smaller and it comes with a good amount of cooling to top it off.

 

I can't seem to find that super micro sata card either, mind linking me to it? (a place that ships to canada please if possible)

 

Also I might change my current4 5.25 to 3.5" to this,

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405

It has warning lights and such for it.

 

Edit: Also for this drive converter, in the pictures are there the sata ports on the far right? that look like there deep in the steel?

 

Edit 2: Is this the card you talked about?

http://www.bestdirect.ca/products/211778/SuperMicro/AOC_SAT2_MV8/

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You do not just lose all your data. You were probably reading the 5.0b6 thread and that is a beta test release. The people installing it on their main storage servers and having issues caused the issues themselves. There has been discussion since about making those beta releases harder to download just to avoid such in the future.

 

You will never need 16gig of memory unless you plan on running lots of virtual machines. 2gig is likely enough. Same with the processor, any low end to middle road processor will suffice.

 

The Supermicro SATA controller is the one you need to use. I don't think any 16 port controllers are supported yet.

 

Definately look at a good PS such as a Corsair 600W or 750W unit. Make sure it is single rail, as in the power supply only lists a single +12V current, not multiples like +12V1, +12V2 etc.

 

Definately make sure that stupid HPA BIOS protection is either turned off by default or just forget about using a Gigabyte board alltogether. IT's just not worth the hassle if you start getting HPA's on the drives.

 

Check out the Norco cases. You can get a rackmount case with 22 hot-swap bays cheaper than a tower case and those 5in3 adapters.

 

Peter

 

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^ Can you link me to the card then?

 

Also I sort of am stuck with the case idea as this is going to be put between my couch and living room computer desk, so not much room for a server rack.

 

Ah, was it this one again?

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=37999&promoid=0

 

Edit: One more question, if I set up two parity drives (is this possible with unraid?) and one drive fails, then as it's rebuilding on the new drive and the one rebuilding it goes and fails itself. Would I loose all my data then? Also how long would it take to rebuild a 2TB drive? would the RPM's make a difference in this case or no?

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^ Can you link me to the card then?

 

Also I sort of am stuck with the case idea as this is going to be put between my couch and living room computer desk, so not much room for a server rack.

 

Ah, was it this one again?

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=37999&promoid=0

 

Edit: One more question, if I set up two parity drives (is this possible with unraid?)

Not possible
and one drive fails, then as it's rebuilding on the new drive and the one rebuilding it goes and fails itself. Would I loose all my data then?
Only the data on the two failed drives would be lost.  If one of those was the parity drive, only one drive's data will be lost as the parity disk holds no "data." It only holds parity calculations.
Also how long would it take to rebuild a 2TB drive?
Somewhere around 9-10 hours.
would the RPM's make a difference in this case or no?
No.
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I would honestly recommend you check out http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?board=39.0 and see what everybody else is building. I think you have the correct mindset to over build your system, but I think you are "way over building" ;)

 

For example check out my build or many others. Cheap, Simple and Easy to upgrade. Of course mine is modeled after several others that have built proven working systems. I can't even really hear my machine when I'm sitting next to it. Of course thats the way I wanted it because I want to hear the action of the movie not my drives or fans spinning.

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Yes, that is the card. 2 of those plus 6 onboard SATA ports will get you to 22 ports.

 

I couldn't stand having my server in the living room beside the couch. My HTPC has a 800rpm 120mm Scythe fan and a 2.5" laptop HDD and I can still hear it but it's quiet and unobtrusive. I don't know how people with 3 or 4 120mm fans, a CPU fan, a PS fan and 3 or 4 3.5" HDDs stand the noise.

 

One other comment just due to your initial parts specifications. An unRAID server isn't the fastest server and it's difficult to run other applications on. The main purpose of an unRAID server is to serve media to your home theater. It does that VERY well. Just to make sure you understand. If you're looking for fast transfer speeds and to run other processor intensive applications then maybe another OS with a RAID6 setup is what you'd really want.

 

Peter

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^ Can you link me to the card then?

 

Also I sort of am stuck with the case idea as this is going to be put between my couch and living room computer desk, so not much room for a server rack.

 

Ah, was it this one again?

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=37999&promoid=0

 

 

Yes that's the card.  I got mine from BestDirect (along with the two breakout cables):

 

http://www.bestdirect.ca/products/?sku=215237&kw=super

 

Stephen

 

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Arrgg!! They had 4 in stock last night and now -1. They look to be about the only spot in Canada where you can still get them... I wanted to pick up one of those as well.

I saw a couple posted on Ebay for about $120 US, but still need cables and have to pay like $35 shipping...

 

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Arrgg!! They had 4 in stock last night and now -1. They look to be about the only spot in Canada where you can still get them... I wanted to pick up one of those as well.

I saw a couple posted on Ebay for about $120 US, but still need cables and have to pay like $35 shipping...

 

I ordered 2 from ncix last week and they just arrived. They showed in stock at the time, and now they show as available in 1-2 weeks, but you might get lucky...

 

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=37999&vpn=AOC-SASLP-MV8&manufacture=SuperMicro

 

PS: I price matched with bestdirect...

 

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Arrgg!! They had 4 in stock last night and now -1. They look to be about the only spot in Canada where you can still get them... I wanted to pick up one of those as well.

I saw a couple posted on Ebay for about $120 US, but still need cables and have to pay like $35 shipping...

 

Hey, you can still order them from ncix. I contacted them last night regarding this and just got a reply back,

 

"Mike,

 

That item would be a special order. Unfortunately you would be looking at about a 2-4 week wait to get that in stock.

 

Regards,"

So it's still possible to get it, I think I'm going to order up a couple soon. The big thing I'm liking about unraid is it seems to rebuild faster, with ZFS/Raidz I've been told it can take days to rebuild a failed drive and it's pretty much fingers crossed during that time cause if another drive decides to kick the bucket it's game over, which doesn't seem to be the case with unraid, seems to rebuild quick and in the chance two drives fail pretty much at the same time you only loose the data on the one drive. Also raidz doesn't seem to like the marvel chipset on those sata cards from what I've been told.

 

dgaschk - I sort of just want to build the thing in bulk, I currently have about 15-20TB of media and that number will probably grow quite a bit soon.

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You never "rebuild" with unRAID. It is not a RAID array. unRAID has 2 main key functions, the parity drive and the user shares.

 

It is a bunch of individual disks and you have protection against a single disk failure by the parity drive. The parity drive and all other disks can be used to recreate a single failed disk. Otherwise, the array operates as a bunch of individual data disks. The parity drive can be used to protect an array with a mix of data drive sizes and still allow the full capacity of each data drive to be used. The data drives can work individually and don't all have to be spinning together the way a RAID set of disks must spin.

 

The user shares can be used to pool both the data and the free available space on all the disks into one network location. This can be used if you have a "Movies" directory on each disk to make a single "Movies" network share which will include the movies from every disk.

 

There is more complexity to unRAID but the above are 2 main features which make unRAID very suitable for use as a media server.

 

Now, if you already have the requirement to store 15T to 20T of data then you may want to hold out and see how the 3T drive support develops, which is one of the scheduled tasks for the 5.0 release. That way, you end up with 30T of storage space instead of 20T.

 

Peter

 

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