[dtrobson099]

Thanks hazeh,

I've been reading more into it, and I ended up pulling the trigger - I ordered parts to build the 6 drive machine from the unRAID sticky here on the forums and I'm looking forward to getting it set up. I'm just now hitting the 6TB mark, and I already have the drives, so this will give me another 4TB of space - plenty for now at the rate I am expanding (I think I've got most of the things I want - I'm not sure how much bigger I can make this collection - time will tell). Even 2TB and using the cache drive might be enough for the time being, but now what I'm almost regretting is the fact that I bought the small case.

From what I'm reading on the forums - when the time comes I can buy a larger box and transfer my existing array to a larger box, correct? I guess it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, as I'd only have to do it once, but I'd like to avoid buying 5 more drives to stage my data while I set up my new expanded capacity system.

Another dumb question I haven't exactly found the answer to, when I hit this array across a network (I'm assuming as a SMB share), will it be one badass 10TB behemoth? I hope so, I'm a little tired of setting up multi-directory shares in XBMC and trying to organize media across drives.

Again, thanks for all the help. I'm new to the forums - so if I'm violating protocol with my amateur questions feel free to reach through the tubes and smack me.

[aptalca]

I am in the middle of setting up mine right now. I added 4 drives already, and 2 are being precleared as we speak.

In the settings, you create "user shares", they are virtual folders that unraid system manages. For each user share, you can select settings as whether they should span multiple drives, and what directory level that should happen at, and even which specific drives should be included and excluded in that share's storage.

The end result is that, on the network, the user shares are seen as folders such as movies, tv shows, etc. And when you copy things into the movies folder (at least in my case) they all show up as being in movies, but in reality, all the movies are physically stored on different drives in the array. You don't have to manually manage anything. If you run out of space, just add another drive or replace one of the existing ones with a larger drive, and now your movies folder is automatically larger.

Just search for "user shares" on the unraid forums, there are many different ways you can set them up.

[dtrobson099]

Nice - that looks pretty slick.

Seems like I'd have one share for Videos, one for Thumbnails, one for Games, one for random file storage, etc.

Then my XBMC structure would look something like this:
/Video
----/Movies
--------/Movie (YYYY)
------------/Movie (YYYY).mkv
--------/Movie 2 (YYYY)
------------/Movie 2 (YYYY).mkv
----/TV Shows
--------/TV Show
------------/clearart.png
------------/theme.mp3
------------/Season 1
----------------/s01e01 - Episode 1.avi
----------------/s01e02 - Episode 2.avi
------------/Specials
----------------/s00e01 - Festivus Special.avi
--------/TV Show 2
------------/clearart.png
------------/theme.mp3
------------/Season 1
----------------/s01e01 - Episode 1.avi
----------------/s01e02 - Episode 2.avi

you get the point.

This is where I get slightly confused and have to bounce my thoughts off another person. If I made this all one share, I'd have to set the split level to at least 2, otherwise the thing would choke and never be able to fit the entirety of either my Movies or TV Shows library on one disk. If I set it to 2, individual movie folders would get tossed on separate drives while every drive maintained the root directory of /Video/Movies/. For TV Shows, individual shows could be tossed on separate drives, and all their subdirectories. What happens, though, if I set it to 3? Could every drive get a root folder for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where one drive would have the theme.mp3, another would have clearart.png, another would have logo.png, yet another would have Season 1, etc.? I don't really have a problem with that as I imagine I'd be browsing it from either a terminal session or in Finder on one of my Macs - and I'm thinking that it would all appear to be one folder from there. Only browsing the individual disks would reveal what sits where. The real question is, would XBMC barf with that directory structure? I'm imagining it wouldn't care because it's viewing the filesystem as a Samba share, same as I am. I think I'm right about that, I just need to clarify.

Also, is Samba the way to go? I'm hitting it via LAN with my iMac and HTPC, and wirelessly with my MBP and ATV2 (for now - I'm replacing that ATV2 with a Mac Mini - the ATV2 barfs everything I throw something remotely large at it - even x264... I digress...) I ask because it's the only thing I've been successful with - and with Lion I had to share from the Windows box - none of the clients could connect through SMB to the Mac - and the Windows box can't use AFP, etc. Is there a right way to do this, though, or will SMB be good enough?

[hazeh]

Don't worry about the file structure on the device, that's what unraid is for - You're managing folder structures through shares, unraid is doing the hard work spanning the actual data across all drives and keeping parity in case one fails.

As described in the previous post, all you need to do is set up shares for 'Videos' or whatever and it'll show as a single folder, automatically spanning all drives (and will grow without user intervention when you plug a new disk in).
Add another share such as 'Pictures' and again, it'll show as a single folder with all the available space across all disks.

Regarding samba on your box - There's no reason you can't run three services serving up your data as samba, afp and nfs, simply connecting to what you feel is best depending on your client.
I have windows clients on my network but run xbmc on openelec (linux) - Samba is meant to have a higher overhead than something like nfs, but it still maxes out my gigabit network (90+MB/s) so I never bothered setting up nfs. Enabling a service like nfs is little more than a few clicks through the unraid web interface, so experimenting to evaluate the benefits is no effort at all (and probably more worthwhile than making a judgement based on people spouting "nfs is far more efficient than samba" theory)

From what I'm reading on the forums - when the time comes I can buy a larger box and transfer my existing array to a larger box, correct? I guess it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, as I'd only have to do it once, but I'd like to avoid buying 5 more drives to stage my data while I set up my new expanded capacity system.

Yes, it's all very easy to migrate - even if you're changing the hardware.

Another dumb question I haven't exactly found the answer to, when I hit this array across a network (I'm assuming as a SMB share), will it be one badass 10TB behemoth? I hope so, I'm a little tired of setting up multi-directory shares in XBMC and trying to organize media across drives.

Yes, as mentioned - it'll be one big share.
Although xbmc will happily accept multiple data paths for a single source - It's much neater and easier to manage (especially from desktop clients) from one share.

[dtrobson099]

Regarding samba on your box - There's no reason you can't run three services serving up your data as samba, afp and nfs, simply connecting to what you feel is best depending on your client.
I have windows clients on my network but run xbmc on openelec (linux) - Samba is meant to have a higher overhead than something like nfs, but it still maxes out my gigabit network (90+MB/s) so I never bothered setting up nfs. Enabling a service like nfs is little more than a few clicks through the unraid web interface, so experimenting to evaluate the benefits is no effort at all (and probably more worthwhile than making a judgement based on people spouting "nfs is far more efficient than samba" theory)

Sounds like Samba is fine for my purposes. I had trouble trying to connect with different protocols from different boxes, since I'm using a MySQL backend and it seems like that requires all servers to reference the same shares in the same way. Maybe I'm missing something there - but from what you're saying it doesn't sound like it matters. My HTPC has a sweet power line network keeping the data transfer speeds just under 4MB/s, my ATV2 is set up on WiFi, and the same goes for my MacBook Pro. It seems to me I'd be a fool to think that share type actually matters. I'd love to run me some CAT6 everywhere, but it's not really an option. Things have been a little slow for me on remote clients, but I think because the shares currently reside on my HTPC, there's room for improvement just by keeping my new NAS a short CAT6 cable away from the main router - it'll slow down the HTPC, but the others should improve a bit.

Yes, as mentioned - it'll be one big share.
Although xbmc will happily accept multiple data paths for a single source - It's much neater and easier to manage (especially from desktop clients) from one share.

Yeah - I'm doing it that way right now - I cringe when I have to think about typing in more IP addresses/share names with the Apple Remote.

I think I've got a handle on this thing now. I should already know WTF I'm doing when this stuff finally gets here. I'm stoked. Now I just have to try to not act like a little kid while I wait for all my stuff to get here. Maybe do some actual work during the day instead of Googling my hardware all day long looking for other cool shit to build afterward. I guess anything's possible.

[Meatfeast]

Not sure if you are aware but, the video guides now link to a motorway camera site!

Guess I better prepare for a whole lot of reading!

[Dignam]

Yea I was looking into maybe doing this instead of buying a NAS but dont know anything about this and the links are all dead.

[VerumSeeker]

Any chance that the correct videos will be re-linked for us total noobs?

[mccarneychris]

bump that, i would love to check out the videos

[MorituriMax]

Yeah, all the video links are 404'd.

[Janzzze]

BUMP, links are dead

EDIT: i believe i have found the videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkpicwX1t6U

[conkrastil]

found the links

103.05 - Overview
103.06 - Feature Introduction - unRAID
103.07 - Feature - Step1-The unRAID boot device
103.08 - Feature - Step2-Choosing hardware for your unRAID s
103.09 - Feature - Step3n4-unRaid hardware installation
103.10 - Feature - Step5n6-Boot and initialize your unRAID s
103.11 - Feature - Step7-Expand the unRAID array
103.13 - Feature - Step8-Setting up user shares on unRAID
103.14 - Feature - Step9n10-Final settings and enjoy unRAID
103.12 - Tips - Expanding upon expanding your unRAID array
103.16 - Viewer Question - unRAID crash recovery
104.16 - Viewer Question - unRAID transfer speed
097.07 - Viewer Question - Raid5 or unRAID with 3 drives

[Beer40oz]

Hope eskro updates with this new links.....thanx conkrastil.....

[BrainSlugs83]

The links appear to be broken -- they all take me to Motorway Traffic Cameras.

Edit: Ahh, looks like two posts up, conkrastil has provided good links -- Thanks! -- hope the OP updates soon!

[ellisr63]

Hi guys!
I know this might not be new for some of you,
but for those who don't know what unRAID is and how it works,
i'm sharing with you a set of videos that explains it all very clearly!!

Overview
Introduction
Step1 - The unRAID boot device
Step2 - Choosing hardware
Step3+4 - hardware installation
Step5+6 - Boot and initialize your unRAID
Step7 - Expand the array
Tips - Expanding your array
Step8 - Setting up user shares
Step9+10 - Final settings and enjoy
Tips - Show directory sizes
Viewer Question - unRAID crash recovery
Viewer Question - unRAID transfer speed
Viewer Question - Raid5 or unRAID with 3 drives

Hope this answers most questions about unRAID
and help your realize how unrivaled it is as storage solution!!!

When I click on the links it takes me to... http://www.motorwaycameras.co.uk/ . Am I doing something wrong?