Greetings fellow gamers! I‘ve been building high-performance gaming rigs for over a decade, and today I‘m thrilled to share my comprehensive guide to one of the most crucial yet underappreciated components – disk arrays.
Let‘s crack open the concepts around RAID and UnRAID so you can leverage blazing fast solid state drives with complete peace of mind!
Why Gamers Should Care About Disk Arrays
As gamers, we need speed! Waiting through sloggy load screens kills the excitement. I still remember booting up Final Fantasy 7 on the PlayStation back in 1997… those agonizingly long loads between battles quickly had me equipping magazines.
Thankfully, today‘s lightening quick M.2 SSDs can bring near instantaneous level loads. But as our game libraries grow larger and larger, so does the potential heartache of losing hundreds of hours of save data to a crashed drive. No one should suffer the gut punch of a corrupted Elden Ring file or a Far Cry 6 replay!
This is where the data redundancy of RAID saves the day. By striping drives in clever configurations, RAID delivers breakneck speeds through parallelization while enabling recovery from dead disks.
Now let‘s explore how this works, then I‘ll share why I personally choose UnRAID arrays for all my gaming rigs!
Achieving High Speed Game Loads with RAID 0 Striping
The most basic form of RAID is the aptly named RAID 0, as it offers zero fault tolerance. Instead, RAID 0 splits and spreads data evenly across member disks. So a 500GB game would have 250GB on Disk 1 and the other 250GB on Disk 2 simultaneously.
This massively multiplies read and write performance through concurrent access! Benchmarks show RAID 0 delivers up to double the throughput compared to a single disk.
| Operation | 1TB HDD | 2x 1TB HDDs in RAID 0 |
|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 210 MB/s | 440 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 205 MB/s | 410 MB/s |
Installing games on a RAID 0 array cuts load times drastically. But if either disk fails, all data is lost! For speed alone, RAID 0 rocks – just don‘t trust it as your only game drive.
Introducing Parity and Striping for Reliability – RAID 5 Arrays
Unlike RAID 0, RAID 5 arrays enable recovery from a dead disk while still delivering impressive read/write speeds. They accomplish this brilliant balancing act through striping and distributed parity.
Data gets split and striped across drives like RAID 0. But additionally, parity bits recalculated from the data blocks are scattered and stored. So each drive holds both data and portions of the parity.
If any single disk crashes, the parity can rebuild the lost data! But if unrecoverable read errors appear during rebuild attempts, game over… RAID 5 fails. Also know that you cannot mix drive sizes without wasting space.
While better than RAID 0, RAID 5 has limitations around flexibility and recovery failure scenarios. This brings us to the wondrous world of UnRAID!
Why UnRAID is My Game Disk Array of Choice
Fellow gamers, for over 5 years across multiple personal gaming rigs, I have utilized UnRAID for all my game storage. Here‘s why UnRAID wins for flexibility, performance, and data protection:
Dedicated Parity Drives – Rather than spreading parity bits across disks like RAID 5, UnRAID dedicates 1-2 drives solely for parity recalculations. This permits mixing drives of any size without issues!
Staggering Rebuild Survival Rates – With RAID 5, if an unrecoverable read error halts a rebuild, you lose everything. But UnRAID can skip bad sectors and continue rebuilding unaffected data. This has saved me twice!
SSD Cache Pools for Lightening Speed Writes – While sequential read speeds match RAID 5, UnRAID writes were bottle-necked since fewer drives participate. But enabling SSD cache pools massively accelerates save file writes!
Simple Storage Expansion – Growing arrays is wonderfully easy with UnRAID. Just add a disk and it automatically assimilates! No parity initialization drama like with RAID 5. I‘ve expanded from 4TB to 44TB over 5 years with zero effort!
And incredibly, the UnRAID OS enables running game servers, hosting virtual gaming rigs, automated downloading tools and more! I could gush for hours about how UnRAID empowers my gaming lifestyle with versatility and data protection.
Let‘s now dive deeper on configuring blazing fast UnRAID rigs!
Choosing Disks and Controllers for Optimal UnRAID Gaming Rigs
To build properly performant UnRAID gaming rigs, let‘s explore drive types, cache allocation, controller considerations, and more!
Balancing Speed and Value with M.2 SSD vs HDD Parity Drives
While some use cheap old HDDs for parity, I prefer fast M.2 SSDs to enable quicker rebuilds. Consumer 250GB models around $40 work great! More parity drives equals more protection, but updating parity does marginally slow writes.
For data drives, high capacity HDDs still rule for affordability. My latest 8TB NAS drives were only $130 each! For write caching, a budget 500GB SATA SSD runs under $50. Later we‘ll optimize cache allocate rates.
Considering SSD Slot Availability with RAID Cards
Many motherboards only support a single M.2 SSD without sacrificing SATA ports. But RAID controller cards boast multiple M.2 slots and deliver hardware acceleration too! My 8 port Areca model adds both 10GbE networking and NVMe SSD caching.
Just ensure your RAID card supports JBOD "Just a Bunch Of Disks" mode rather than forcing proprietary RAID formats. HighPoint and LSI Host Adapters also work great for UnRAID.
Tuning RAM Cache Rates for Snappy Game Launches
By default, UnRAID limits RAM cache to 3GB, but increasing this can significantly accelerate read performance. I allocate 16GB so commonly accessed game files reside in lightning fast memory rather than waiting on disk retrieval.
This makes reloading saved games and recent levels radically faster – perfect for repetitive playtesting! Tweak this to your RAM capacity‘s budget. For 64GB+ rigs, try 32GB cache.
Keeping Drives Chill for Stability
Excessive heat degrades HDD lifespan and risks data errors under load. So all my drives stay nested in hot swappable caddies behind big Noctua 140mm cooling fans. Keep temps under 55°C!
And pro tip – allow 1 drive slot gap between each HDD for optimal airflow. I also angle case fans to pull air across drive PCBs directly. Keep those precious game bits nice and frosty!
Final Thoughts – Game On with UnRAID!
I hope this guide – born from years of real world UnRAID gaming rig building – offers heaps of practical advice. When you combine the unprecedented flexibility, fault tolerance, and write speed boosting cache pools of UnRAID with some optimizing tweaks, you get a perfect storage platform for demanding gaming needs.
If anything remains unclear or you still have some lingering questions, join us on the forums at unRAID.net for active discussions! I‘m always happy to help fellow gamers build their ultimate rigs.
Now shut down that external backup drive and game on with confidence, knowing your precious save files rest securely on fast, redundant UnRAID arrays! Let‘s connect for co-op after you finish your new build.
Happy gaming my friends!