Keep my WD Mycloud or go with Unraid?

[Danimal86]

With this extra time on my hands, i've been thinking about the possibility of upgrading my storage at home.  I could use some advice

 

My current setup is a WD Mycloud DL4100 with 4-3tb WD Red's in RAID 5. I'm not really using it for much other than just as network storage (no apps are running on it). I dont really hoard a lot of data, but would be nice to not have to do spring cleaning on the nas. I've got about 2.5tb free space right now (should last me another year). The main use is storing all the files for plex (only 4 streams max), and having radarr/sonarr place everything on the nas

 

I just upgraded my desktop and have my old setup (z270 Prime Mobo, i5 7600k, 16bg ddr4) just sitting there and am thinking about turning it into a storage server. I've got a bunch of older drives sitting in a box that i could put to use (8-2tb & 4-1tb....plus i could use the 4-3tb from the nas box).

 

I've been looking at unraid and dont mind paying for the software for it to be a set-it-and-forget-it. I played around with freenas a few years back and didn't like it so much.

I see two options;

1. Build a unraid server and sell the empty WD DL4100. I would need to buy a pcie sata card for $40 (the mobo only has 6 sata ports) plus the unraid license $130 for the pro or $90 if i only use 12 drives

2. Keep the DL4100 and sell the old desktop and save some money for upgrading the hard drives in my DL4100 (probably look to shuck some 12tb drives $180x4 +tax=$775).

Thoughts? Would i see a performance loss using unraid over raid 5? not sure about power usage?

[Electronics Wizardy]

HOw much performance do you want? From my testing unraid normally gets about 50-80MBs writes, and the speed of one drive in its default config.

 

You can also use other nas oses if you don't want to pay for unraid, but unraid is a nice easy to use solution.

 

Powerusage wise a nas box is probalby better, you would have less drives, and they use low power cpus that idle much lower.

 

 

[Danimal86]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

HOw much performance do you want? From my testing unraid normally gets about 50-80MBs writes, and the speed of one drive in its default config.

 

You can also use other nas oses if you don't want to pay for unraid, but unraid is a nice easy to use solution.

 

Powerusage wise a nas box is probalby better, you would have less drives, and they use low power cpus that idle much lower.

 

 

Not too overly concerned with performance.  I'm on a gigabit down and 40 up internet, and just try to have everything automated as much as i can.  I've got sabnzbd downloading to a temp samsung 830 ssd, and then transfers over to the nas. Then plex pulls from the nas.  Outside of that, i'm not transferring a ton of data around.  

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Danimal86 said:

Not too overly concerned with performance.  I'm on a gigabit down and 40 up internet, and just try to have everything automated as much as i can.  I've got sabnzbd downloading to a temp samsung 830 ssd, and then transfers over to the nas. Then plex pulls from the nas.  Outside of that, i'm not transferring a ton of data around.  

 

then unraid should be plenty speed wise for you. Id probalby go with that then and use the old pc.

[Danimal86]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

then unraid should be plenty speed wise for you. Id probalby go with that then and use the old pc.

Thanks for the info.  I 3d printed a caddy that holds 6 drives, and they look nice.  I may need to figure out a cheap case because the old computer is sitting in a SilverStone GD0B and it has no real spots for hard drives.  

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KHO0MRK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

With unraid, i'll only get the speed of one drive, right?  

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Danimal86 said:

Thanks for the info.  I 3d printed a caddy that holds 6 drives, and they look nice.  I may need to figure out a cheap case because the old computer is sitting in a SilverStone GD0B and it has no real spots for hard drives.  

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KHO0MRK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

With unraid, i'll only get the speed of one drive, right?  

 

Unraid gives you the speed of one drive for reads, for writes, normally its a bit lower than one drives due to parity overhead, but there is a turbo write model that writes to all drives at once so parity is faster. You can also add a ssd to improve write speeds.  But with a gigabit network, you will probably spend a good amount of time network limited.

[Danimal86]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Unraid gives you the speed of one drive for reads, for writes, normally its a bit lower than one drives due to parity overhead, but there is a turbo write model that writes to all drives at once so parity is faster. You can also add a ssd to improve write speeds.  But with a gigabit network, you will probably spend a good amount of time network limited.

Thanks!.  I'm going to give unraid the 30 day try and see how it goes.