Setting up Home media server again, suggestions?

[BigT]

So install to A usb and go no need for SSh, copy and past code, like OMV or anything like that.

It not important but why just a USB.
I May have A 32gb USB, would I have issues with anything larger ?

You don’t need to ssh into anything to set it up. Download UnRaid image onto your windows machine, use the installer to copy to your USB drive, stick it in your server and fire it up. You need to work out what IP address your router has given your server intitially, tap it into a browser and away you go.

Just USB because it’s a nice easy way to tie your license to something while being able to reuse the stick in any combination of hardware and reuse your license easily. Plus once loaded into memory it doesn’t ever access it so why waste a “real” drive. UnRaid only cares about two things - your usb stick (for the license) and the serial numbers of your hard drives (so that it can fire up your array without issue even if you change mobo , cpu, hba card or anything else really)

shouldnt be issues with larger but people recommend smaller I think because smaller sticks are less dense with chips and so maybe more reliable.

 

[2013]

You don’t need to ssh into anything to set it up. Download UnRaid image onto your windows machine, use the installer to copy to your USB drive, stick it in your server and fire it up. You need to work out what IP address your router has given your server intitially, tap it into a browser and away you go.

Just USB because it’s a nice easy way to tie your license to something while being able to reuse the stick in any combination of hardware and reuse your license easily. Plus once loaded into memory it doesn’t ever access it so why waste a “real” drive. UnRaid only cares about two things - your usb stick (for the license) and the serial numbers of your hard drives (so that it can fire up your array without issue even if you change mobo , cpu, hba card or anything else really)

shouldnt be issues with larger but people recommend smaller I think because smaller sticks are less dense with chips and so maybe more reliable.

Thanks, I have a 64gb one but I'm going to try and see if I can find a smaller one, or buy one.

How quick is it to setup, it took me a while with OMV.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

First time? Perhaps 20-30 mins to get a basic array going with a few shares set up if you are following a guide.

 

[sad099]

Thanks to 2013 for asking all these questions, and thanks to everyone answering them re UnRaid. Perfect timing
I was thinking of moving from windows server 2012 anyway and as it happens my N36L that was being used just died last night - I think its PSU went
Was trying to decide on a NAS (Qnap etc) or build something small - may give UnRaid a try before investing in a NAS etc.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

If it is just the psu , then not too expensive to replace and back up and running with Unraid - a decent option to keep you going.

To comment on the ssd aspects … you can use them in the main array but it’s strongly not recommended for a few reasons. Unraid’s resilience to data is based on storing parity information on a dedicated parity drive for each physical location on the drives. When it scans the array it rewrites the whole parity drive across all its space. Over time this potentially could chew through the write capacity of an ssd depending on how often parity needs checked and updated.

When you write a new file to a data drive, Unraid will check and update the parity information at the same time.

But

Then ssds them selves prefer to do tidy up and garbage collection and tasks in their own time at idle. This means that they will shuffle and re arrange data into different physical locations from where it was originally written… but without telling the operating system.

In a normal oS this is fine … the os asks the drive for a file and the drive will return it regardless of where it physically was in the drive.

In Unraid, this isn’t so good as the parity drive will have not tracked the changes the ssd made to the physical locations of data, so it loses the resilience until a full parity check is redone.

There are some alternative methods with Unraid that may be better suited to ssds(zfs pools) but that’s a whole topic beyond the basic of installing Unraid.

 

[sad099]

Yes, thanks, I did see that the psu's were readily available, may go down that route, but I seem to have the itch to upgrade and do some tinkering/learning with VM's etc too.
My current N36L holds 5 HD's and an SSD ( I did the bios mod), I will probably need more storage soon, so either upgrade to bigger disks or build something that allows more disks. Decisions, decisions...

 

[Conan257]

Yes, thanks, I did see that the psu's were readily available, may go down that route, but I seem to have the itch to upgrade and do some tinkering/learning with VM's etc too.
My current N36L holds 5 HD's and an SSD ( I did the bios mod), I will probably need more storage soon, so either upgrade to bigger disks or build something that allows more disks. Decisions, decisions...

The more expensive option is to iteratively build a new server... You'll end up buying something a bit better, and a new case, then realise you need a better case with more hdd mounts, then a new PSU as you cheaped out on it and you're getting random errors, then your motherboard needs more sata sockets so you look into a SAS card etc etc...

Id suggest taking stock of your requirements, and make sure you get a case with more capacity than you think you'll need.... I'm the guy with 2-3 old server cases in the garage because I didn't take that advice.

 

[sad099]

The more expensive option is to iteratively build a new server... You'll end up buying something a bit better, and a new case, then realise you need a better case with more hdd mounts, then a new PSU as you cheaped out on it and you're getting random errors, then your motherboard needs more sata sockets so you look into a SAS card etc etc...

Id suggest taking stock of your requirements, and make sure you get a case with more capacity than you think you'll need.... I'm the guy with 2-3 old server cases in the garage because I didn't take that advice.

Hi, Thanks for the advice, yes I need to actually sit down and narrow down what I actually need vs what I want / would like. Getting all the new toys is one thing but then finding time to play with them is another, want to avoid going down the rabbit hole again.

 

[Gimpymoo]

I have been using Freenas/Truenas for about four years now, runnng Plex media server from the Truenas box and using to store important family content, pictures/videos/mobile backups etc.

I run RAID 10.

Had a couple of single drive errors over the years, replaced drives and resilvering completed with zero issues.

For data redundancy and a complete media solution, Truenas/Plex gets a big thumbs up from me.

 

[darkblade]

The only limitation with Unraid is that because each drive is independent, you are only ever reading/writing to a single drive and so are limited to the speed of that drive (unlike Raid5 which will read a stipe across 3 or more drives, potentially trebling read speed) - this can however be offset with an SSD cache if needed (but for things like media storage it's a none issue)

Another point to consider - the intial transfer of large amounts of data media onto the Unraid server can be (painfully) slow and you won't be able to stream from the server until the initial transfers are complete (great when it's taking more than 1 day to transfer 20TB). I'm hoping it's not so much an issue once the initial transfer is done from the backup server and a cache pool is added, then day to day stuff should be better.

My previous (XP)Synology server didn't care what was thrown at it, the speed was never an issue.
I'm beginning to wonder if I should switch from the standard Unraid XPS approach.