Getting started on my first NAS Unraid build based on a variant of one of the 4.1 Combos. The main objective will be Plex media storage to be accessed by a HTPC and an Apple TV on the same network within my home. After a lot of reading and head scratching, I’ve decided to get started with the following:
Shoutout to @JDM_WAAAT for compiling all of these useful resources and for inspiring me to build something fun and potentially useful. I’ll keep a build log here as the parts roll in and will gladly take any advice on options as I go.
Thanks for catching that before I purchased! I guess I’ll opt for the Thermaltake Gravity i2 unless you have another suggestion. I was hoping to go with an Arctic Freezer option but they all seem to be going for north of $35 these days.
After booting up again, I was prompted to install Unraid. From there I was able to unplug the monitor and keyboard and check out the Unraid dashboard from a web browser on my desktop machine.
This thing is pretty fancy but I’m gonna have to look at it every day so I felt justified in the expense.
I feel like I’ve gone nearly full circle, starting with beige PC cases in days of yore, through the grey and black windowed RGB things of the early aughts and now to solid white. I’m excited to transfer my ebay finds to this thing.
Just as I was getting ready to transfer the media from my HTPC to the Unraid setup the source drive seemed to sense its impending irrelevance and decided to start failing. Copying files from the drive was no longer working so I gave myself a crash course in ddrescue to clone the disk and hopefully save my media library. I swapped out the Unraid thumb drive with a Knoppix Live boot usb, plugged in the failing drive alongside a brand new hdd of the same size and jumped into the not at all intimidating Linux environment. I started up the cloning process and hoped for the best. After about four days of doing its thing and making some interesting noises, I was rewarded with my media successfully rescued. Phew!
Props to this article for educating me: https://www.data-medics.com/forum/how-to-clone-a-hard-drive-with-bad-sectors-using-ddrescue-t133.html
