Unraid Community Rockstars: kizer

One of, if not the main reasons why the Unraid community is so great is due to our many Community Rockstars who go above and beyond to help others out. 🤘

In this blog series, we want to spotlight key community members to get to know them a little better and recognize them for all that they've done for the Unraid community over the years.

This next blog features kizer, an outstanding Unraid community member and moderator who has helped out countless Unraid users since 2010:

• Lives in Tualip Washington and works as a Document and Records Specialist.
• Posts: 3,500+
• Days Won (most liked content): 2

How did you discover Unraid originally?

I believe it was 2009 or just a bit before I was using some Nas Toasters like a Dns-323 from Dlink. They worked well, but once you hit 2TB in each bay you couldn't expand anymore. I knew this would be a problem so I started tinkering with a few various Linux OS's. Redhat, Slackware, and FreeBSD because I've had experience with them and knew configuring them wouldn't be too difficult. While on XBMC.org, which is now Kodi.tv somebody posted a question up about Unraid and I followed the rabbit hole and landed here.

I decided let’s give this a go. I had an old PC and a couple of drives laying around and thought "what could possibly go wrong?" I threw in the 500GB Parity Drive, 8GB and 6GB Data drives which are from upgrading old Xboxes days *snicker* and let things build. I put a couple of video files on it and was pretty impressed with how simple everything was to set up.

Ok Test time:
- Started up a Video.
- Hit Pause and walked into my office and yanked out the power cable on the drive the video was on. 
- Resumed play and noticed the message indicating my drive was down. 
- Did I mention I was excited because even though the drive was down it still played?!?!?
- Decided to shut the system down and plug in another drive to replace the down one.
- When my system asked me if I wanted to rebuild the missing drive, of course I said yes. 
- Pressed play on my TV and the file played flawlessly. My wife had zero clue what I was doing and to this date, she still doesn't really care as long as it works.

So after that test, I was sold and I think the only thing that has survived from that initial test is the same USB Thumb drive.

What is your most liked feature of Unraid?

Favorite features of Unraid: I can honestly say the Parity protection, but Squid's Community App has to be one of my favorites. When I started using Unraid I don't think there was a single app or docker. I recall trying to figure out how to install a few packages, but back then they weren't very common at all. Now it's the gold standard.

What do you like most about being a part of this community?

What I like most about this Community and I mean this very sincerely: The Community makes up Unraid!!!! Sure, it all started with a guy who wanted to share his idea and it blow up into a great polished Operating System which takes care of my data, but the community......... You can come here pretty much any time, any day, and ask a question and get a respectful response. On a lot of sites, you see people YELLING "Read the Manual" or "Use Google it’s your friend". Let’s face it I'm not the brightest when it comes to every ins and outs of Unraid and a lot of our new members are not either. They all want the same thing... a little respect and reassurance that they are doing things right and I know they get that feeling they are being here. 

What feature would you most like to see added to Unraid?

As far as new feature requests. I know a lot of people want ZFS and multiple arrays, but I think honestly they are things I probably wouldn’t' use much myself. I'll still mention them because they are requested all the time.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with the community?

I was in the NAVY on a Submarine for 6years when I was younger. I've seen a lot of old/new tech, but I'm just here to help out when I can. I'm not as tech Savvy as some of the guys here, but I do pitch in now and then to at least engage with somebody who's looking for help. I've been in those situations where you need help and feel like nobody is giving you the time of day.

Do you have a donation link you’d like to share?

I think you could literally list every person's Donation link here and say please give it to them they are way more deserving than I am.