I need some advice on what direction to take here. Currently, I have a Dell r510 with a h700 card running Windows server 2016. Plex runs on the base OS. When I bought this I only had one 8tb drive so I set it up in raid 0 (that card doesn’t allow you to bypass raid). Now I have three total 8tb drives and I’m ready to setup parity. Plex has been awesome so far and Windows is what I’m familiar with. I’ll have to clear the one drive I have regardless of the route I go so if I’m going to change OS now is the time.
My options are…
- Stick with Windows server and go with hardware raid 6 (will have to get another drive).
- Keep windows server and use Windows storage spaces for the parity.
- Use unraid. This would require swapping the raid controller since the h700 won’t allow me to bypass it initially. This seems easy enough, but I’m concerned about performance since I’ve never used it to have any reference.
- I’m open to other options that don’t involve a new machine.
My two musts are good performance for Plex and the ability to expand my storage down the road without wiping or moving data. I’ve read conflicting comments on unraid performance with Plex, but that may be due to their machine. It seems to be the easier way to expand later though. The r510 is overkill for anything I’m doing and I’m not familiar with raid yet. Any input is appreciated.
