Intro to UNRAID on the Do-it-Yourself NAS !

[@JoeAnshien]

I have been running unRaid for about 12 years, ever since Microsoft discontinued their Home Server. Never lost any data. Absolutely love the product. It's my file share NAS, Plex server, Adguard, VM machine, etc. I have been using the same 4GB thumb drive all that time. It loads the OS into memory at boot and does not access the drive until the next boot. I have mine in a USB inside the case.

[@Nimble_Bitz]

Good call I have mine on a USB dom, if you aren't constantly writing logs to the USB they can run for a while. I replaced mine 2x before the dom

[@thanos1000000fc]

How do you access your files? They didn't show that.

[@JoeAnshien]

@@thanos1000000fc You set up shares on the unRaid server and either map a drive or just find them through file explorer under network. I have ones for photos, backups, music, etc.

[@Nimble_Bitz]

3 things of note: 1 appdata backup app is your friend, Plex DB is platform agnostic so it can be moved in it's entirety, and unless you want extra wear on your parity I usually only do it quarterly for a 6 disk array. Also thanks for signing my USB dock I got from you on WN! Works great.

[@Thunder7ga]

Good stuff...been using Unraid for about 2 years now....i have 2 box, one media (Plex) and one backup/non-media dockers. Works great, love it.

[@unibrowser1]

I'm so happy you finally did a video with Unraid. I am convinced that if you play around long enough you will also fall in love and migrate everything to your own Unraid server. Would love an Unraid build live stream when that happens :)

[@samlazar574]

Yeah agreed.

[@lm4122]

I migrated everything to Unraid even my gaming rig now is a VM on Unraid with passthrough.

[@anime_reference]

I've been running unraid on my nas for years and years and I love it. I wouldn't dream of running anything different on a homebuilt nas and it's always been baffling to me that truenas is the more popular route

[@rogerjenson5689]

I recently bought a LincStation N1 that has Unraid installed. This is my first Unraid server so I am glad that you created Unraid content.

[@scarletpimpernel6813]

Thanks for the great overview and introduction to main UnRAID concepts for people new to UnRAID. Very informative!👍

[@A2-RC]

This is exactly what i've been looking for! A low power RAID enclosure I can run UNRAID on. Thanks for putting this video out.

[@Droogie128]

I've been quite happy with truenas scale. Open source, free, and easy. I'm not exactly an advanced user, though.

[@WoodUCreate]

Love the "how-to" videos over the reviews. Thanks for video, would like to see more especially the Plex addition. Thanks Lon

[@Nimble_Bitz]

Glad you made a video Lon, you'll like it but as with anything there is a learning curve. I recommend eBay for a usb-dom if you have a spare internal USB port on a standard board. It removes the need for an external USB.

[@StariusPrime]

I’m glad you made this video, Lon. I’ve been intimidated to try Unraid but I like how you walk us through it. I don’t know if there is a Steam Cache app for Unraid, but if there is, I’d love to see a guide on that.

[@poorlybuffalo555]

Space Invader One is the channel to follow for a deep dive on Unraid Lon, he really knows it inside out.

[@ajg71sg81]

I look forward to the future interview on the uncast show.

[@geofreypejsa54]

Thanks Lon. I run unraid too. Love the o/s. Your video is great!!

[@anonimuso]

UNRAID looks great visually. Definitely more user-friendly than Proxmox for setting up a server/nas. I'll probably give it a try when I set up my next nas.

[@weholmes5315]

Agreed! I'm about ready to switch from Proxmox to Unraid

[@ncohafmuta]

I've been using a simple PNY Attache 4 USB 2 16GB as my boot drive for the last 3 years without issue. You can spend more if you want, but it's un-necessary and something like a USB 3 drive will get hotter, be more prone to disconnects and just die quicker. I back-up its filesystem nightly to an external Crucial X8 and image it every 2 weeks to cloud storage

[@davidchristensen6908]

Thank you Lon always excellent videos

[@bbgarnettTotallyNotABot]

Keep up the great work

[@talktomenowxbmc]

I have been using Unraid since version 4.7 with 4 hardware rebuilds. Recently Unraid added ZFS as new file system. It still requires some work in comparison to TrueNas. However it opens up new possibilities of having different Pools with different configuration. In my opinion traditional Array set as XFS is perfect for media storage, however another ZFS pool made of 3+ vdevs (mirrored 2 drives) using preferably Sata SSDs, plus separate SLOG (Log) nvme drive and separate Cache drive (for system with insufficient RAM memory) will be super fast on local network. Perfect for video editing or any productive work. ZFS has built in snapshots. Let see how this will be integrated into upcoming Unraid 7. Forgot to mention that in order to get advantage of ZFS speed you will need 10GBe network setup

[@Angellus502]

Freenas was free and worked great back in the day. not sure now as I havent used it in years. You can set these systems up on old PC's with old drives rather than spending money on fancy looking nas boxes which was kinda the point of this kinda software. I'm checking this out as I had to downsize a media PC to a NUC due to space issues, so the old media box now has to be a movie NAS. But TBH I'm thinking Ill just leave it as a Windows box with shares so I always have a capable Windows machine on hand with all of my usual software configed if I need one in a hurry (nothing worse than having to build and config a box at 10pm or with a hangover when an important home PC fails). Also I moved away from dedicated NAS years ago as I figured why have an extra machine running when I already have 1 Windows system thats always on, So I put a RAID + a few big drives in that

[@rogershark9223]

To mitigate potential data loss from cache drive failure you can install a second one to act as a mirror for the first one.

[@ikkuranus]

That's one expensive boot drive considering approximately 1GB of that 500 will be used.

[@na1du]

Unraid or truenas + Zfs = ultimate setup.

[@abowers]

unRaid is pretty awesome!

[@Doktati]

TrueNAS next ❤

[@Nimble_Bitz]

@@Doktati Especially with ZFS expansion in the beta channel releases.

[@DlxyRekt]

I just wish it was fully open source. I hate the idea of having to transfer tons of data down the road if the company shuts down

[@Nimble_Bitz]

The OS itself won't die, it's slackware. Even if there are issues it would likely be forked somehow as you can compile your own builds currently for it if you really want. It's how people have been using ARC transcoding for AV1 for over a year.

[@KameraShy]

What is the installed user base of Unraid? How does that compare to the others?

[@bigchew3149]

I stumbled into UnRaid several Years ago an i have 2 Servers with Dual xeon's running it (also have a TrueNas server to & more) It is addicting.lol. wanted to ask are you still doing the Radio Thing and still liking that 991 or have you already gave it up? hope to hear ya on the air & Thanks for sharing & 73

[@LonSeidman]

I am! Love the 991a. As a matter of fact I did a stream last night and will have a portion of tomorrow's video devoted to it.

[@stokley121]

What is the Hyper Backup equivalent for backing up data on an unRAID server?

[@ruforeyes1062]

You need to try CasaOS

[@frankwong9486]

Wait you can install unraid on the samsung ssd ? Currently using a usb flash drive ans the lifespan doesnt looks good honestly . Have their unraid comnect to helped backup os drive anyway

[@damienretro4416]

What can I do with UnRaid that I can't do with TrueNAS Scale?

[@zoiks6631]

Use drives of different capacities

[@damienretro4416]

@@zoiks6631 Yeah, that's useful I guess. You don't get the super fast transfer speeds that you get with TrueNAS though.

[@brandtharen]

Perhaps I misunderstood, but it seems like, since there's only 1 drive that has parity data, if that disc fails your array is broken.

[@mushtang2]

If either drive fails you replace it and the data is rebuilt on the new drive. Having only 2 drives really doesn't give you any benefit over just having a backup drive.

[@madthijsgames]

Parity data can be reconstructed from the array of disks. So a failure of the parity drive is no problem. Unless of course another drive fails are the same time 😉 there is only so much you can do

[@Treeburnify]

Surely using cache is unsafe and risks data loss unless you have the NAS connected to a suitable UPS?

[@deanburnett4595]

No, the cache is just a 'normal' ssd drive. If you lose power, the data should still be on it when you power it back up and then it can be copied to the array by invoking the mover (or just let it do its thing and it'll move according to schedule). It's not like RAM where you lose it in a power cut.

[@aa-xn5hc]

With SSDs, please

[@MyTechGuyTim]

I have done the moving from 1 desktop to another with TrueNas and that is free, so why do unraid?

[@revengec]

If I buy unraid lifetime license can I move the same license to another computer over and over again if my hardware fails?

[@triplerinse]

the license is assigned to the usb drive so any computer you switch to you. Just plug all your drives and your usb stick and boot up and your done switching out systems. If your usb drive dives and you have a back up just reflash the usb and when you boot up it will say your usb is not licensed and ask you to transfer the license to the new usb drive.

[@Nimble_Bitz]

If your USB fails there is a process to get the key reassigned to a new USB. Be sure to do backups every so often. 1 key move per year without having to contact support. Get good quality ones as cheap ones (fakes) could have blacklisted GUID because they reuse the number in the fakes.

[@carlosdominguez3108]

Lon, your statement at 3:27 makes zero sense, can you please clarify that? "If you ever have a hardware failure, but all of your drive still work. You can take the internal drives, put them in a new piece of hardware and then boot off of this" (external drive) you're referring to. Nothing is broken then. What did you mean, broken HDD or external SSD?

[@madthijsgames]

I think he meant CPU/motherboard/power supply failure for example. Plug all your drives into a new box and you are good to go.

[@LonSeidman]

The computer hardware, not the disks

[@garylydement5020]

That mug near the nas was distracting, Or was it product placement😀

[@LonSeidman]

😇

[@aijokker]

Do it on proxmox

[@chrismv102]

What is the point?

[@Nimble_Bitz]

To review other options for NAS, in the case of this build it was to test how the install works and general settings. Lon is new to the OS and wanted to share his experience.

[@jjones2582]

Such a bizarre decision to not support SSD/HDD booting. That is the only reason why I refuse to use Unraid for anything important.

[@johntankard]

@@jjones2582 I've had unRaid running on a usb for nearly 4 years now, never had an issue. Once it boots it runs from ram so the writes to the usb drive are minimal. The plus side is you free up a drive bay or nvme slot for data or caching.

[@hornetbad]

CasaOS far better than UNRAID for home user and it's FREE

[@ruwn561]

Unraid. Yuk.