[SlaveUnit]

With unraid even if all your hardware dies and the software dies...everything, you just attach your drives to any system that reads reiserFS. This includes linux natively and windows with a driver install. Very simple. Unraid is sorta a raid 4 without striping. The key here is no striping.

[LaTropa64]

With unraid even if all your hardware dies and the software dies...everything, you just attach your drives to any system that reads reiserFS. This includes linux natively and windows with a driver install. Very simple. Unraid is sorta a raid 4 without striping. The key here is no striping.

I'll have to look into that. The only thing is now I'm actually having my HTPC pull double duty as my file server. I wonder if their is any UnRaid like software that runs on Vista.

[BadMuts]

I built quite a cheap raid fileserver a few weeks ago. Bought a cheap CPU & mainboard (with integrated video), 2 gig RAM and 3 TB of storage. Using linux software raid-5 to protect my data. I'll expand this whenever I'm running out of space

Advantage of havind a central fileserver is that you can access your music and movies from any pc, which for me is a great advantage. I didn't want to have my HTPC running all the time, so therefore I chose to build a separate fileserver. The extra security of RAID 5 is a bonus as well, although backups are still needed for 100% security.

[xexe]

i would contest that RAID 5 is not the best solution for a media server.

RAID 5 rocks dont get me wrong but the time needed to add new disk, which is something that happens alot on a media server, is long and risk prone. Also since it is striped scenarios exists where you can lose ALL data.

unRAID is IMO better for a media server since it offers parity but not striped. Each disk is alone a standalone file system meaning that all the scenario that can cause a complete array failure with traditional raid dont apply.

unRAID also does not care about disk sizes whereas traditional RAID does. As time passes you buy the best GB vs cost disk and forget about traditional RAID disk size criteria and dont have to artificailly jump through RAID hoops

[Dougie Fresh]

This is a decent read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

Sounds like here software RAID or similar is King.

[Adam B.]

I thought about unraid for my file server, but I had a few issues with it:

• Cost: If I'm buying the hardware, I want free software
  
• Versatility: I can't run hellanzb or a torrent client on it
  
• File Striping Across the Disks: After reading the wiki, this just doesn't make sense. You have to setup different levels for different folders? I want it to act like a normal file system
  

In the end I ended up going with a software RAID5 solution under Ubuntu. I couldn't be happier. I have 8 1.5 TB drives shared to my Windows and Linux PC's with NFS. It works great!

[xexe]

Tell Dell you want free windows with a server

You can run torrent on unRAID

You never read the docs enough. You can make it a normal filesystem as you call it by changing one setting in the GUI.

Theres no right and wrong solution here I think you just sufered from the terible unRAID marketing and explanation sydrome. Its sounds way harder than it really is.

I personally cant live with the RAID 5 lose everything risk. If you have 8 disks and lose 2 you lose all 8. Not for me

[badmoviesnbeer]

saw the link and read through a bunch of stuff about unraid at their site yesterday. Have never heard of it before and it looks pretty nifty. I think I understand all the upsides. The only downside that I could gather is you don't get the increased write/read performance you would get with more convential raid schemes.

Is this correct? And would this ever effect it's use as a media server? Does it just essentially mean it is the same read write performance as a single disk, since files aren't split up between the disks in the cluster?

[xexe]

it is absolutely slower than a multidisk RAID setup for write. Theres a feature where you can add a cache disk which is esse4ntially a stand alone disk that can write at full speed. During the night a script automatically moves this data into the array.

I dont use this feature.

What i can say for sure is that its fast enough for full data rate 1080p on my network even via a crappy 100mbit switch at TV end.

It important when looking for the right option for yourself you realise that a media server is not the same as a corporate file server. You wont have loads of users. You wont care that it takes 5 time longer to download a file from it. All you want is a huge, easily expaned, simple to implement reliable dump that goes faster than you need to play HD content.

There are many other solutions and i tried most of them. Most were good (with the exception of WHS) but they all were far too much like hard work. I dont want to spend hours pouring over obscure text to work out how to do this or recover from that.

[cascius]

Hi guys, this is quite an interesting thread!

I'm looking into making something very similar, but more basic: I use wifi at home and due to speed limitation, I'd rather have a 2nd PC in the same cabinet as my Antec Fusion HTPC. I want to build something with the following properties:

- case with similar form factor as Antec Fusion (need advice for a cheap box to be modded)
- hard drives would be mounted with silicon grommets or suspended to remove vibration (already have some, will buy more as needed, could slow them down for noise...)
- use silent 4x 120mm 500rpm fans (already have them, 7.5db each)
- use an old motherboard with P4 3Ghz (already have it, down clock for heat) + Ninja mini or something of the sort. (~$40)
- connect the two computers using 1Gb/s crossover Ethernet cable
- sata controller (~$50)

Here's a quick diagram (not to scale) of what i have in mind:

Legend: green: HDDs, gray: psu/ninja mini/sata controller, orange: 120mm fans

I thought this could be useful to add this to this thread and also wanted to double check if this could be silent enough. What do you think? Do you know of case that could accomodate this?

Thanks,

- Cas

[BadMuts]

I personally cant live with the RAID 5 lose everything risk. If you have 8 disks and lose 2 you lose all 8. Not for me

RAID-5 can deal with 2 broken disk when you have a disk array with at least 5 disks. But chances of that happening when you buy different brands are quite small.

unRAID also does not care about disk sizes whereas traditional RAID does. As time passes you buy the best GB vs cost disk and forget about traditional RAID disk size criteria and dont have to artificailly jump through RAID hoops

This can be quite easily solved by using LVM (although I don't use it myself).

But in any case, you made me very curious about unRaid and I'll read the info on that. Maybe I'll even change if I like it enough

Cheers for the info!

[xexe]

Hi guys, this is quite an interesting thread!

I'm looking into making something very similar, but more basic: I use wifi at home and due to speed limitation, I'd rather have a 2nd PC in the same cabinet as my Antec Fusion HTPC. I want to build something with the following properties:

- case with similar form factor as Antec Fusion (need advice for a cheap box to be modded)
- hard drives would be mounted with silicon grommets or suspended to remove vibration (already have some, will buy more as needed, could slow them down for noise...)
- use silent 4x 120mm 500rpm fans (already have them, 7.5db each)
- use an old motherboard with P4 3Ghz (already have it, down clock for heat) + Ninja mini or something of the sort. (~$40)
- connect the two computers using 1Gb/s crossover Ethernet cable
- sata controller (~$50)

Here's a quick diagram (not to scale) of what i have in mind:

Legend: green: HDDs, gray: psu/ninja mini/sata controller, orange: 120mm fans

I thought this could be useful to add this to this thread and also wanted to double check if this could be silent enough. What do you think? Do you know of case that could accomodate this?

Thanks,

- Cas

You should really looks at the Norco 4020 case (rebranded in different geo locations). Its needs some small modding to make it cooler but the per disc cost of it is very small. If you do look at it do it quickly the new version is due out and IMHO it sucks bad bad bad.

Edit: you probably want to ignore this post. I essentially answered a different question.