Friends and viewers have asked me to check out Unraid, a home server operating system, for quite awhile now, and in my latest video we take it out for a spin!
Unraid allows users to flexibly combine different types and sizes of storage drives into a single system while protecting data with a parity drive, making it resilient to drive failures. Unraid supports Docker containers and virtual machines, enabling users to host applications, media servers, and other services on their system. It runs on just about any x64 based system like the Healuck NAS I reviewed a few weeks ago. After spending a few hours with Unraid, I’m beginning to appreciate its flexibility.
Setting up Unraid requires a reliable USB drive to serve as the boot device, as the external drive is primary boot drive and will also store your configuration. While this might feel like an unusual approach, it offers a form of physical failover—if your computer hardware dies, you can simply transfer your hard drives to another PC and boot from the USB to get yourself back up and running.
Unraid operates differently than a traditional RAID array. Instead of mirroring data across multiple drives, it uses a parity drive to protect against data loss. I found it relatively simple to configure; the array allows you to add drives (and capacity) gradually without the need to rebuild everything from scratch each time. As long as your parity drive is as large or larger than your largest data drive, you’re covered for potential drive failures.
Like other network attached storage solutions, the system also provides the option to create shares that can be accessed over a network. These shares can be configured with the usual security settings, such as read-only access for guests or hidden shares for more privacy. If you want to speed up access, Unraid supports setting up a cache drive to handle faster writes before moving the data to slower protected volumes.
For those looking to run self-hosted applications, Unraid’s support for Docker containers along with their “Community Applications” plugin make it a very easy solution for deploying docker-based server apps.
During my testing, I installed FreshRSS, an open-source RSS reader, and had it up and running quickly. Unraid’s ability to update Docker containers with a single click was a pleasant surprise, saving me the hassle of manual updates.
While my experience with Unraid is still in its early stages, it’s already clear how powerful and versatile the platform can be, especially for self-hosted solutions. There’s much more to explore, including using Unraid for media servers like Plex, which I plan to dive into soon. This first impression, though, leaves me optimistic that Unraid might become a staple in my home server setup.
Disclosure : The Healuck NAS was provided to the channel free of charge but they did not review or approve this content before it was uploaded.
