buying a used unraid server

Originally Posted by Catalytic 

Mobo, CPU, RAM, and PSU would cost roughly $166 (most are obsolete, so you would have to use newer parts at roughly the same price) to build. Not sure what is an equivalent case for price comparison.

If it has three 2TB hard drives, I would say it might be a decent deal, even if all you reused was the case and HDDs. (PSU doesn't seem to be 80+ but might be)

Currently on NewEgg, Western Digital WD Green WD20EARX 2TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive is $110, so if you bought it, and gutted the case for new mobo/cpu/RAM/PSU, you would still save some money.

Originally Posted by captain_video 

It's not a bad deal for the overall hardware package. Too bad it doesn't come with a valid unRAID license because it would be a real bargain then.

The beauty of unRAID is that you don't need powerful hardware to run it. The only thing I'd be wary of is if the Gigabyte motherboard has the HPA issue. I had a Gigabyte board in my unRAID setup and it worked great until I tried to upgrade it to the latest 5.0-rc version. The HPA masked part of the drive and wouldn't let me use the drive with 5.0-rc until I found a way to clear it off the drive. I eventually ended up replacing the motherboard, CPU, and memory. It boots much faster now, but I see no difference in how the server works except for the updated UI with 5.0-rc.

Originally Posted by captain_video 

You might want to check and see if your Gigabyte board actually has the HPA issue. Most newer models aren't afflicted with it anymore AFAIK. You could easily check and see by upgrading the unRAID software to the latest 5.0-rc version and then check the drive status. If the HPA is present on any drive it will show an error indicating that the reported size and the actual size of the affected drive don't match. If you don;t have the error you're home free. If you do, there are fixes available to correct it. Of course, you should definitely check the BIOS to see if there's an option listed to disable it. Mine didn't have such an option yet the HPA issue kept reoccurring, which is what prompted me to upgrade my hardware.

FYI - upgrading the unRAID software is just a matter of copying a couple of files over to the flash drive from another PC. Just map the flash drive like any other drive in Windows Explorer and copy the files. You can revert to any version of unRAID at any time using ther same method. Just reboot the server once you've copied the files over and it will boot to whatever version you just installed on the flash drive. I highly recommend checking out the latest 5.0-rc release as it has far more features than the released version (currently 4.7, I believe).

Originally Posted by captain_video 

UnRAID installs on a bootable USB flash drive. You simply copy the files over to the drive and make it the first boot device in your BIOS. If you're starting with a new flash drive I believe you have to make it bootable first using a utility downloaded from the HP website called the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool (google it). There should be instructions for configuring the flash drive either on the Lime Technology website, the unRAID forums, or the documentation in the wiki. There used to be instructions for upgrading to a newer version included with the file downloads but I think they stopped including them in the newer versions. Check one of the older versions for the instructions if you can't find them.

Originally Posted by duff99 

Just be careful with that power supply if you choose to add more drives. I've got a couple of them and they're an older design that doesn't supply a lot of 12v power. If you compared it to a modern Corsair 430 watt PSU the corsair would be able to power more drives since it supplies most of it's rated wattage at 12V vs. the Thermaltake that is rated much lower at 12V.