sam9s NAS Project! powered by Unraid!!

[sabarirjpm]

You can add reservations for the MAC address of the NAS in the modem or router whichever it is connected to. This will ensure that NAS receives the same address everytime. What are the issues that you faced when using UnRAID

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

 

[sam9s]

@sam

I am running with so many problems with unraid, not able to get the IP address assigned to the NAS. Hence loaded FreeNAS and it is working without any issues till now. But the problem is that whenever I reboot the NAS my Netgear router dynamically assigns a IP. Hence everytime I need to login to the NAS and see what is the current IP and use the same to get the Webgui. Not sure what I should do as I do not a static IP address, my Airtel modem is connected to the wireless router and I have hard wired the router to the NAS.
Today even with the new IP address I am not able to get the webgui on my laptop. But I am able to get the shared drive shown up in windows explorer in my laptop and htpc.

Thanks

first I am interested to know what problems are you facing with Unraid ..... you should have shared. Last I know it was just a matter of changing the Pendrive. Try unraid, you can do a lot more with unraid then FreeNAS, like running sftp, music server, web server .... etc etc

For you second query what you need is "DHCP reservation" MAC address reservation can also be done by I prefer DHCP as it easy to implement and remember.

Every router has DHCP reservation, basically what it does is, it assigns the same IP address every time router restarts. This would also be important when you will have your android xbmc remote..........control your xbmc on HTPC. In that scenario your remote should get the same IP of HTPC else it would fail. So you reserve an IP for HTPC.

For Linksys E2000, DHCP reservation looks like below ..




When you click on DHCP reservation you will be taken to a page where you can fix the IPs for your devices on your LAN

 

[sud98]

Is one better off buying this instead of a diy NAS? This one is a 6TB NAS for around 25k Rs.
Amazon.com: Western Digital My Book Live Duo 6 TB Personal Cloud Storage Drive: Electronics

 

[sam9s]

^^ By all means yes if you do not have the tenacity to built one. But personally I feel Synology product are a wee bit better, when it comes to interface and ease of access ....

With a DIY NAS you have more controll over what you wanna achieve, better customization, ....atleast with Unraid (not sure about other OD), plus lands cheaper, and its a DIY so you have a nice feeling using it ...

 

[sud98]

With a DIY NAS you have more controll over what you wanna achieve, better customization, ....atleast with Unraid (not sure about other OD), plus lands cheaper, and its a DIY so you have a nice feeling using it ...

Thanks Sam. The cost seems less than the DIY route as in the previous posts we discussed the cost for a 4TB NAS was coming to around 25k Rs. while this is a 6 TB NAS with disks coming to 25k Rs.

 

[manniraj]

Thanks Sam. The cost seems less than the DIY route as in the previous posts we discussed the cost for a 4TB NAS was coming to around 25k Rs. while this is a 6 TB NAS with disks coming to 25k Rs.

I think DIY will be cheaper than this listing in amazon. The listing in the amazon for WD is $449 which comes to around 25k without any disks. And add a 2TB disk which comes to around 7k so a total of 32k with one disk. But I think DIY you can build the NAS with minimum of 10k and add the same 2TB disk so a total of 17K.

Quoting from amazon:
What's in the box
Network drive, Ethernet cable, AC power adapter, installation and software CD, Quick Install Guide.
Edit:
Going thru the review in amazon i think this comes with drives, and I think in all probability a very good buy with disks.

Thanks

 

[esanthosh]

Thanks Sam. The cost seems less than the DIY route as in the previous posts we discussed the cost for a 4TB NAS was coming to around 25k Rs. while this is a 6 TB NAS with disks coming to 25k Rs.

Won't it cost the same as DIY NAS + 6TB once shipping and customs duty are included? Amazon says "We are not able to ship this item to your default shipping address.". So taking the Borderlinx / Aramex route will make the cost somewhat equal?

Though if the choice is due to preference for a pre-built NAS with WD's support, it still would make sense.

 

[sud98]

Thanks. I thought it said the disks are included which seemed too fantastic to be true.

esanthosh, all this is assumed to be got through friends, through borderlinx it will not make sense.

 

[manniraj]

Thanks. I thought it said the disks are included which seemed too fantastic to be true.

esanthosh, all this is assumed to be got through friends, through borderlinx it will not make sense.

See my edit comments in the above post. I think the listing is with hdd pre-installed in the item. I was able to gauge this going thru the reviews. You can cross check it and I think if it is with 6TB total HDD then I think it is superb deal as 3*2TB HDD will come close to 20k.

Thanks

 

[sam9s]

^^ mm seems correct .... then I wonder if it even is a proper NAS or just a file sharing device ...

 

[sud98]

^^ mm seems correct .... then I wonder if it even is a proper NAS or just a file sharing device ...

It says it comes with Raid 1 so effectively 3 TB of usage and the rest is used for mirroring. It also works as a personal cloud so it is definitely is a NAS. I am not sure if there is a hidden cost somewhere.

 

[arnprasad]

Very well written guide brother! I couldn't understand half of the technical things, the other half I didn't even attempt to understand but if I ever build a NAS (and I sure wanna), this would be my starting point...

:clapping: :clapping: :clapping:

I too fall in the same category and I too want a HTPC/NAS - I am not even sure if one needs both or one does the work of the other:clapping::clapping:

 

[sam9s]

^^ You would only need a NAS if you want your entire data to be centralized on to one location, organized and available 24x7 ......... also you need to actually have that much of data to make it centralized and organized .....

If its like few hundred GBs to a TB then I'd say not to take the NAS route. any windows machine can act as your file sharing machine in that case ......

 

[haisaikat]

Hi sam, when you use unraid for a DIY NAS, does unraid offer the following (even with some add on or tweak?)
1. If I connect multiple HDDs via USB than can it allow mutual copying of selected files (typically when some firneds come with his HDD for give/take), presently I do it by connecting them to my HTPC running Win 7 and do just multiple file copy operation simultaneously.
2. Can things like iTunes server, Webdav server, torrent and UPnP server be setup over there when running Unraid?
3. This is a bit weird question though, but is it possible to add my 2 disks inside DNS 323 to UnRaid NAs directly or I may need to ake backup and allow unraid to format on its own? On this is there is choice on Unraid's file system format?

 

[sam9s]

Hi sam, when you use unraid for a DIY NAS, does unraid offer the following (even with some add on or tweak?)
1. If I connect multiple HDDs via USB than can it allow mutual copying of selected files (typically when some firneds come with his HDD for give/take), presently I do it by connecting them to my HTPC running Win 7 and do just multiple file copy operation simultaneously.
2. Can things like iTunes server, Webdav server, torrent and UPnP server be setup over there when running Unraid?
3. This is a bit weird question though, but is it possible to add my 2 disks inside DNS 323 to UnRaid NAs directly or I may need to ake backup and allow unraid to format on its own? On this is there is choice on Unraid's file system format?

1. Though I do not connect USB drive directly to unraid, but yes that can be done. I prefer connecting the drive to my desktop which is conneccted to my NAS via cat6 gigabit network.

2.

itunes server :: YES
Webdav ::: NO ::: But I would love to have this, its not yet there on Unraid, but yes developers are working on it I guess. You do have a webserver though and probably can set it up to access files on HTTP.
torrent :: Yes , two clients available ...utorrent and transformation. But the best is the combination of SABnzbd and Couch Potato.

CouchPotato is an automatic NZB and torrent downloader. You can keep a "movies I want"-list and it will search for NZBs/torrents of these movies every X hours. Once a movie is found, it will send it to SABnzbd or download the .nzb or .torrent to a specified directory.

Personally I do not use torrents, so I have not tried these, so no hands down experience.

UPnP :: Yes ... I am running MEDIATOMB UPnP server on my Unraid Plus BubbleUPnP as well to enhance the whole UPnP experience......... will discuess this in detail on my UNRAID Part II thread later ..... do take a look at that thread as well for more details ....

3. Unraid will create its own file system and would do a preclear process on any drive that will be connected/added to the array of UNRAID so yes you have to take a back as all will be formatted .......


Hope I was of some help .....

Regards
Sammy

 

[haisaikat]

Thanks Sam, on the other hand what will be the disadvantage of i running Win 7 for the DIY NAS? Also I know I have bothered time and again with this question but will you be able to validate these once?

ASUS M5A88-M Motherboard | Motherboard | Flipkart.com

AMD 3.2 GHz AM3 Athlon II 260 Processor | Processor | Flipkart.com

 

[sam9s]

Thanks Sam, on the other hand what will be the disadvantage of i running Win 7 for the DIY NAS? Also I know I have bothered time and again with this question but will you be able to validate these once?

ASUS M5A88-M Motherboard | Motherboard | Flipkart.com

AMD 3.2 GHz AM3 Athlon II 260 Processor | Processor | Flipkart.com

There are no disabvantages of win 7 as such, its just its not a NAS OS. YOu would not have NAS dependent features on a Win 7 machine as against a NAS OS. If a file sharing is all your need stick to win 7 yes. But as you must have realized the kind of things I have created on my NAS, is not possible on win7 machine.
I cant iterate much except its not exactly headless, its can work on proper RAID so storage becomes a concern, though security no doubt gets better, given the fact that HDD do not fail that often these days, I like the parity based backup more ......these are the few I can think off right now, but you can google and will get loads of info on this.....

But seriously if you at all want to go windows way ..... I'd recommend Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 over win 7 or even WHS. Though its new and I have virtually no idea about it. I am still collecting info on this, as I type .....but seems to be way better than WHS

Plus linux based system are always considered way better than windows. They are just stable as a rock. The very first few lines I have mentioned on my PART II thread is the stability of Unraid I have experiences over a year of usage ....


Your hardware looks good, there is not much to look for a NAS hardware, except for couple of facts, like good number of SATA ports, and less power resource hungry (as I assume NAS is somethign that runs almost 24x7). Gigabit LAN, A free PCI slot (incase you want to expand via SATA PCI card) ...... thats it ......Apart from this nothing is imp,............ HDMI, on board GPU, HD audio ...blah blah all are practically wast .....

 

[haisaikat]

Thank you sam for your valuable inputs. Is it also the case that Unraid being not having a GUI will consume lesser power due to non usage of GPU engine? something which may be a con on windows side?

I too was worried about power and was looking for mini ITX board with 6 SATA 6gbps ports but is there any such within 8K INR? Also this ASUS board claims that it supports true SATA 6gbps speed which in many boards is limited to 250 Mbps due to bus speed constraint.

 

[sam9s]

Unraid does have a GUI, but its accessed via web interface over LAN/WAN ..., but yes you are right that since its headless it does not need GPU engine which will save certain amount of power ....

The one you have mentioned ASUS M5A88-M Motherboard has 6 , 6gbps satas and is around 5.5K, seems decent ...... about the speed what ever is the theoretical speeds of HDD, max what you will ever achieve is 100-110 MBps, unless you are on SSD ................... also there is no bus constraint the SATA cables can easily handle theoretical 6Gbps. Older mobos might have that constraint, but current gen mobos are all fine ......

 

[haisaikat]

Hi sam, one suggestion and a couple of questions

Suggestion : You should take relevant posts of your NAS thread and make on comprehensive blog so that all is in one place, so that everything is very easily acccessible. I will tell you why, since I read the very first post long back so could not retain all of that in memory. Now for last 2 to 3 days I was trying to compare flexraid, unraid all together when today I found that its all there in your first post (while searching using google search), just that it slipped out of my mind initially, could have saved a lot of time

Now coming back to questions

1. The motherboard that I posted in the previous thread, will it support AHCI for hot swap (as per your first post)? I could not find the AHCI mention as per its specs.

2. As per your initial post (last yr august) flexraid supported only snapshot based parity, but if I am going for a media only server where individual files will be like store and forget types, can I still go for flexraid and have all the safety of data protection that I require?

3. As per the current article on Flexraid website it seems that apart from expert mode, they do support realtime parity. Can you please recheck for me once? It might be possible that they started supported it within the last 1 year. Why is Real-Time RAID in Expert mode not supported? | FlexRAID Wiki

4. In your last post you said that Windows Server 2008 Data Center edition would be better than Win7 or WHS2011 if I run flexraid. Is there any specific showstopper thing in WHS2011 or Win7 that I should consider? I think I found on some sites saying that software compatibility issues can happen on WHS since majority of user utility softwares do not some in Server edition. Will 2008 R2 not also suffer from the same disadvantage over Win7?

5. Does flexraid or unraid take care of parity drive failure?

Overall I plan to stick to Win platform with NTFS drives and hence considering Flexraid on Win7 (or Win 2008 / WHS2011 if Win7 is not recommended), but again need your endorsement.

EDIT:
Found this article http://arstechnica.com/information-...home-server-is-dead-but-we-shouldnt-mourn-it/ indicates Windows 8 might be worth waiting for, although I am not going to wait that long