Unraid 6

[mattydean211]

I just watched linus' unraid video, I have pc running Windows 8.1 as a server box for plex and it's also hooked up to my TV as we don't watch cable, just stream and download, my question is would unraid be OK to use for my server? So I could use it as a normal desktop pc but also utilise unraid to run applications such as plex and also use as a NAS in the background? 

 

Thanks in advance

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just use windows 8. Unraid doesn't have a gui to watch videos on.

[mattydean211]

Ahh ok I thought it had the ability to use a vm for Windows 8

[mattydean211]

Or is there a better alternative to use than Windows 8?

[Mikensan]

Is there something Winodws 8/10 isn't doing you wish it were?

[beavo451]

35 minutes ago, mattydean211 said:

Ahh ok I thought it had the ability to use a vm for Windows 8

It does, but why add complexity when you don't have to? What do you need Unraid for?

[Jarsky]

unRAID is essentially a NAS software that also incorperates hypervisor (VM) functionality & support.

 

From what I gather, you run your plex server, etc...on Windows....theres no point having 2 Windows environments in parallel  - as beavo451 pointed out, you're just adding comlexity.

 

The point of the build linus demonstrated, is for running multiple, independant sessions - which isn't what you need for this setup. 

Those apps/functions can just run in the background.

 

[mattydean211]

10 minutes ago, beavo451 said:

It does, but why add complexity when you don't have to? What do you need Unraid for?

Safety of my data, I have 6 x 3tb drives and about 6tb of movies to shows and other files, and want to add more, I liked the idea of adding additional drives and the ability to swap dead drives and it loose data

[Jarsky]

You could use Storage Spaces or SoftwareRAID 5 from within Windows for that purpose.

But if you're going to raid them into any sort of parity setup, regardless of OS, you're going to have to wipe the drives clean...so you need somewhere to move all that data too before this is even an option.

[beavo451]

3 minutes ago, mattydean211 said:

Safety of my data, I have 6 x 3tb drives and about 6tb of movies to shows and other files, and want to add more, I liked the idea of adding additional drives and the ability to swap dead drives and it loose data

Okay. Does you motherboard support RAID? If so, then you have that ability. If not, Windows is capable of the same thing with storage spaces.

[mattydean211]

2 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

You could use Storage Spaces or SoftwareRAID 5 from within Windows for that purpose.

But if you're going to raid them into any sort of parity setup, regardless of OS, you're going to have to wipe the drives clean...so you need somewhere to move all that data too before this is even an option.

I have another pc with plenty of space to transfer the data to yes

[mattydean211]

6 minutes ago, beavo451 said:

Okay. Does you motherboard support RAID? If so, then you have that ability. If not, Windows is capable of the same thing with storage spaces.

The mobo I have does not support raid no, I have never used storage space before, but I will look into it

[beavo451]

2 minutes ago, mattydean211 said:

The mobo I have does not support raid no, I have never used storage space before, but I will look into it

What motherboard is it? Do you have a pre-built computer? Motherboards for DIY PCs without RAID support are uncommon.

[Jarsky]

4 minutes ago, mattydean211 said:

I have another pc with plenty of space to transfer the data to yes

 

So you specifically want to use unRAID's "JBOD Parity" feature to RAID your drives?

 

Personally, i'd trust Storage Spaces with ReFS more than UnRAID but thats my personal preference.

Also if you wanted Linux, you could run Ubuntu with ZFS or MDADM and run Linux versions of the software like Plex Server, Kodi, etc...if it's just for media.

A third option if you have some spare coin, is you could use a RAID card to build a hardware RAID (about US$350 for a decent 8 port RAID card).

[mattydean211]

Ok ok ok, saw linus' video from a while back about storage spaces, seems a good idea and I can also keep using Windows 8 too, though I would still need to format my drives to use storage spaces and beavo it's a asrock p45xe

[Blake]

8 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Personally, i'd trust Storage Spaces with ReFS more than UnRAID but thats my personal preference.

I know it's better then when server 2012 release, but NTFS is still the File system of choice on windows, it's just so mature.

 

Hopefully it's implementation in server 2016 is better so we get more people actually using it.