unRAID Server For Linux

unRAID Server is an embedded Network Attached Storage server operating system designed to boot from a USB Flash device and specifically designed for digital media storage:

- Digital Video - Digital Music - Digital Images/Photos

unRAID Server employs a unique RAID technology which provides for great configuration flexibility:

- Any combination of IDE and SATA hard drives may be used. - All the hard drives do not need to be the same size or speed. - Hard drives not being accessed may be spun down. - Can rebuild any single failed hard drive.

Unlike other RAID systems, unRAID Server supports true incremental storage expansion. You can add capacity by adding more hard drives or by upgrading existing hard drives. This is a great way to make use of older, smaller hard drives you might have laying around.

For example, you might start out by installing one or two new high capacity hard drives along with some number of smaller hard drives you already own. Later, you might decide to replace one of the smaller drives, and unRAID Server will restore the data of the smaller drive onto the new drive, and then expand the file system to incorporate the full size of the new drive.

Similar to other RAID systems, unRAID Server permits reconstruction of a single failed hard drive. However in the unlikely event of multiple hard drive failures, data loss would be isloated to only those hard drives which failed. In traditional RAID systems, multiple simultaneous hard drive failure results in complete data loss.

unRAID Server is compatible with Windows Networking. Individual data disks appear as disk shares under My Network Places. UnRAID Server provides a composite view of all your storage through the use of User shares.

User shares permit you to view your storage as if it were one large file system, even though each data disk has it’s own file system. This lets you define share names such as Movies, Video, Photos, etc. whose actual contents are spread out among multiple hard drives.

unRAID server is designed to be installed on, and boot from, a USB Flash Storage device. All configuration data is also kept on the Flash; the hard drives are only used to store user data.

unRAID Server is largely hardware independent. System builders: please visit the Hardware Compatibility page on the unRAID Wiki for the latest list of supported hardware.