Project airchive - Ghetto 1TB server in cardboard box - pics uploaded

I think you need to get a mod to merge the threads.

TOo confusing with 2 threads

 

You reckon?

It would be fine if I could somehow close the non-discussion thread when I wasn't posting in it to prevent others from doing so.

Didn't think it would be so difficult to keep them seperate...

 

Merged. This is how the forum is run now, we tried the other way and noone wanted it so im afraid its a case of suck your thumb and put up with it sorry.

 

K, no probs.
Looks like it was gonna be easier this way anyway.
Shame though, I liked the thought of a nice clean project log.

Yeah, was about £80 each for the disks.
I bought them from Scan along with the controller and the PSU.

 

you'll get a nice and clean project log once it's finished
a nice amount of storage you've got there think I want it too

connecting a terabyte of storage to a 17x17cm motherboard is just pure evil love those Epia boards

 

Yep, this little Epia is quite nice, as long as you don't need to do any serious number crunching.

Thankfully, the promise raid card seems to offload the XOR calcs from the CPU quite nicely.

Can't wait to get this thing home and start fillig it.

Gonna run tests on it first though, like simulating a drive failure...

 

Hehe, just did the drive failure test, and it passed with flying colours.

I turned off the machine, disconnected the HDD on port 1 and rebooted.
Booted right into XP no problems.
Load up the management software and there's a warning that the array is 'critical'.

So I turned off again and re-connected the disk.

I was kinda hoping it would notice it was the same disk that had just been disconnected temporarily but alas, it didn't.

So I'm rebuilding the array now.

Looks like its gonna take AGES....

Hey-ho.

 

Could get youself one of those new 8gb corsiar flash dirves - install xp to that - and leave the raid array just for data

 

Why though? Those cards cost a fortune, and he doesn't need the speed of flash for anything.

 

Speaking of speed, just ran HD Tach and got some fairly respectable results.

I get a max of about 105MB/s (due to being on the PCI bus I would suspect) and it pretty much stays consistently at that across the whole logical drive with a few small spikes downward.

I don't have anything installed on the 'server' that I can paste screenshots into right now, I'll try to get some up soon...
:

Oh, and the rebuild went well, all up and 100% functional again.

<EDIT>
HD Tach results...

 

Grossly overdue update

OK, after the parts being sat in my room collecting dust for about 4 months, as I never seemed to find the time to make the case I wanted, I finally figured it was time to go ghetto and get it working.

So rather than the initial idea I had of silicone-suspension for the HDDs with submersion fluorinert cooling for the boards, I used a cardboard box my Corsair HX620 PSU came in!
I took a spare Coolermaster drive bay thing with 120mm fan, the cardboard box and a whole heap of zip-ties and got to work.

The end result isn't quite a sexy as the case I had initially planned but at least I can start using that 1TB of space at last!

I will try to take photos of it tomorrow (well, today since it's 3am ) when its light and let you all have a god laugh!

night night for now...

 

LOL.


You better still make this crazy submerged-silicone thing you discussed earlier, it sounds too good to be given up on.

 

OK, finally got some pics of the beast.

You can see the full-size pics here.

 

Caseless PSU fixed with tape and the power of will above a nice mobo with TB of HDDs hooked to it? I wouldn't do that :/

 

hehe, that's ghetto. Nice job!

 

It looks way less secure than it is.

The PSU is actually quite light in comparison to normal PSUs (its a mATX one) and its zip-tied at each corner to the top of the box.

Even if it did fall, it'd likely just land on a bed of wires anyway rather than hitting the mobo...

Thx!
I'm thinking it goes way past ghetto.
I'd go as far as to say it was straight outta compton...

 

Hahaha.
Go, go.

EDIT: btw, this project was destined to be an epic win, due to the first post.
I say, it's all in the first post: "Posted at 13:37".