[poofyhairguy]

Poofhair...

I was under the impression that Gigabyte boards did not play well with unRAID. Is that not true? I was all excited about unRAID until I heard that, though now I see you recommended one... What is up?

Thanks!

Yes, you are right. Unraid is the ONLY place I don't recommend Gigabyte.

Its not that you can't use Gigabytes with Unraid (both my Unraid servers have Gigabyte mobos), the problem is that most Gigabyet mobos by default have something called HPA which wrecks Unraid. If you go in and disable HPA (in the bios) before you install Unraid you are safe (this is what I did) but it is just easier to avoid Gigabytes in that one situation.

Hope that clears things up.

[wsume99]

^^Poofy is right about HPA causing problems with an unRAID server, however most (if not all) newer Gigabyte MBs have HPA (aka Backup BIOS Image to HDD) disabled by default. If you have a Gigabyte board that you want to use for unRAID and HPA is disabled by default in the BIOS then it's perfectly fine to use (I've used three like this with no problms at all). If you are going to buy a new board then check the manual to see if the BIOS option for Backup BIOS Image to HDD is disabled by default. If this is the case then feel free to buy the board. Just make sure that in either case (used or new board) you don't enable the Backup BIOS Image to HDD BIOS option.

[eskro]

Just make sure that in either case (used or new board) you don't enable the Backup BIOS Image to HDD BIOS option.

+1!! All new gigabyte mobos should have that capability!!

[finish.06]

Can unRAID work with NTFS formats? I currently use Windows 7, though would love to switch to unRAID for my storage needs. I have two 2TB western digital green drives, and one 1TB western digital green drive in my unit with windows 7 installed on an SSD (30GB). All 3 'green drives' are loaded with data, so purchasing another single 2TB drive for redundancy is ok, though I don't have the space to back up what I already have on those 3 drives. What do you know about unRAID?

Thanks.

[tabish121]

Can unRAID work with NTFS formats? I currently use Windows 7, though would love to switch to unRAID for my storage needs. I have two 2TB western digital green drives, and one 1TB western digital green drive in my unit with windows 7 installed on an SSD (30GB). All 3 'green drives' are loaded with data, so purchasing another single 2TB drive for redundancy is ok, though I don't have the space to back up what I already have on those 3 drives. What do you know about unRAID?

Thanks.

You can mount an NTFS drive on an UnRaid machine and copy the data off of it and onto an UnRaid formatted drive that's part of the array. See this article from the UnRaid Wiki.

So you'd need to purchase a 2TB drive and add it as a data drive to UnRaid, copy the contents from one NTFS drive over, then add the NTFS drive you copied to the array and allow UnRaid to Clear it and format it, and repeat with the other 2TB drive.

Since your parity drive needs to be as large as the largest drive you'd need to save that second 2TB drive for use as the parity disk, so you would need to be able to squeeze the contents of the 1TB drive onto the other two 2TB drive before adding it to the array and then add the 2TB as the parity drive and allow UnRaid to build parity for the new array.

[poofyhairguy]

In short, no- Unraid can't use already filled NTFS drives. It needs empty drives which it will format with a Linux file system that it uses to do its magic.

[Andro]

Is the Rana @ 2.9Ghz actually slower than the Regor @ 3.2Ghz?

If I spend the few extra $$ to get the Rana X3 2.9Ghz should I just keep going and get the Rana X3 3.2Ghz for another $8? I am not sure how this will effect my performance. At what point am I just spending $$ because there is always the "next best widget"?

I may end up adding a OD and use this machine to rip dvds, if that makes any difference.

[poofyhairguy]

3.2GHz per core = can play 1080p on the CPU

I would spend the $8 bucks just to make your system future-proof.