In the last 3 weeks ive filled a 1TB samsung F1 in my HTPC, i have another 1 but i dont think it will be long before i fill this one up as well, so i started looking into storing it elsewhere from the HTPC, i also want some kind of backup, ideally id like at least 4TB space, preferably with the option to add more later. so i figure these are my options 1) a NAS Pros: Nice and small, easy to manage Cons: Expensive 2) a storage/file server Pros: cheaper, easy to add extra storage, more versatile, have some of the parts required Cons: big and potentially loud I really like the thecus N5200 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=437049 its nice and small so could put it in the living room next to the htpc, it has 4TB capacity in raid 5, but its way more than i want to spend. So i thought id try a self build, but i cant find any cases/barebones that are of a similar size, which lead me to a full blown server. My thoughts with a server are to buy a 4 in 3 hot swap rack http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=212705 so i tried finding a case with 6 or 7 bays that filled the entire front as i figured this would be about the right size, couldnt find any good ones though, if i cant find one i have a Tt armour or a Tt tai-chi free that i could potentially use, but these have about 11 bays which is a bit over kill (plus they are massive). also free i have a server board with dual 3ghz xeons and 2GB ram (but this is a fairly noisy board) or a MSI K8N DIAMOND+ S939 PCIE with an FX-55 probably with 1GB or memory (this one is very quiet though). The server boardhas no onboard sata but 2 x pci-x and several pci slots so i could get 2 x 4 port sata controllers for it, the MSI has 6 onboard sata ports so i would probably need to get 1 extra sata controller for it. For the OS i was thinking about using unraid as it uses a parity drive so if 1 drive fails it can rebuild it and if 2 drives fail you only lose what was on those drives, not the whole array and i dont need the performance benefits striping would give me in raid 5. I did consider WHS but the backup option is nowhere near as well suited to my needs. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.
I'm having kind of the same dilemma over here: http://forums.xaprief.com/showthread.php?t=7927 That's a seriously smart hot swap rack!! I need to find some more pictures for cooling and connectivity etc Find someone with an old Cooler Master Stacker - those things had bays to spare. Your hardware config is massively overspec'd for just serving one person.
The Tt Armour is basically the same as the stacker, and i have it lying around doing nothing, i know the hardware config is overspec'd, but again its just lying around doing nothing, so my choices are to use what i have at hand or start spending money, and i can only really justify spending money if what i end up is much better suited to my needs =/
My storage box runs a Core 2 E6750, 8GB RAM and Server 2k3 x64, slight overkill (course it also runs a virtual test lab atm). If you've got those parts, it's a great idea to build a box like that. Personally, I would build the Dual Xeon box, because even though its only a file server, it gives you the room to play around with other applications without needing to format, so long as your virtualization friendly. 2GB is a bit low on RAM though for that, so you'll probably only be able to run 1 guest OS at once. The desktop board would be fine if you don't feel like playing with the extra power. Also, for your application, you might as well run software RAID, you won't be needing the bandwidth supplied by a hardware controller. That said, with the server (where you would need to buy a controller anyway, even if it's only host based) you might as well get a hardware controller. I would suggest the HighPoint Technologies RocketRAID 2220 which has 8 port hardware RAID and is only 20 dollars more expensive than a pair of 4 port host based RAID controllers. I would also suggest these drive cages, the LCD fronts can be very fun aesthetically and the multi-bay products are very well engineered (the LCD that I have is MB122SKGF and it's kindof flimsy, but if you're not hot swapping 24/7 then it's not a big deal. We also use these for data recovery at the shop, and we lose one tray about every 6 months due to constant hot swapping, mine at home has never had an issue).
Evening everyone, i would sugest you build a cheep fileserver with the new version of OpenSolaris. It's got the new ZFS filesystem with which you can configure drivearrays as you wish (also Raid 5 and 6). I think ZFS is THE optimal solution for very flexible storage servers. Now up up and awway for party
There must be a lot of people in the same situation, as I am looking to something similar although I only need Raid 1. I think I will be going the atom 330 route with 2 x hot swap caddies (£4 each at ebuyer) with 500/750GB drives, as the running costs are a consideration to me. SoftRaid is the choice for me as I only have 100m/bit connection so I doubt I will oversaturate the drives. I'm tempted to go for something similar this case. I can't see the point of running large systems i.e quad cores, powerful motherboards with gfx cards that pull alot of power on a 500 watt psu if you are going to serve 4/5 people. The electricity savings are the main issue for me, I did look at alot of the soho nas boxes but they seem to have alot of issues and slower speeds for similar price as an atom pc (if i use a spare case). I free admit that the atom route will use approx 20 watts more but that is less than a standard light bulb cost and with wake on lan it should be a good alternative for me.
I'm currently doing the same thing. I have an old P3 system that I've just bought a PCI SATA2 storage card for (XFX Revo). My plan is build a quiet, small and energy efficient server that will only need to serve my HTPC and ocassionally my main desktop PC. It's going to go into a cupboard in my study. My plan is to use FreeNAS as the server operating system from a USB flash drive. I got the motherboard and RAM free from people throwing away old PCs and I upgraded the installed celeron to a P3 by purchasing off ebay (£1.99). Currently with one old IDE drive installed it draws ~22W from the mains at idle. The other upgrade I have planned is a Gigabit LAN card.
For a second I had to do a double take, it's like this thread teleported over here. I just got home from working on a GCLF2 slimline tower and boy oh boy it beat my expectations 10x over. Our older slimlines used the GCLF, and the 1.6GHz single core, 10/100, lack of 2nd USB header all were kindof "cost cutting" measures that made it barely fit the minimum. The GCLF2 has dual USB headers, gigabit, S-Video out, and Dual-Core... I was severely impressed considering all I knew was that it had the dual core before hand. I would recommend this for the mentioned scenario, for anyone building a NAS (that doesn't have old hardware doing nothing at their disposal) from 1-6 drives and software RAID. That case is damn expensive for a NAS though, especially for a POS chenbro, the board will fit in any tower (from ITX to eATX) so why not get something a bit bigger/cheaper. Like this hot-swap tray and this case. Sorry about the American site, it's just the first place I get to when I need to show a link to the web.
It's too bad that more embedded stuff doesn't make it into consumer land. Something based on the Intel 3100 chipset would fit the bill pretty well for stuff like this. It runs a mobile CPU, and is a single chip chipset support 6 SATA ports and a reasonable amount of PCIe. You can find industrial PC boards with based on it, but they are rather pricey. Some mobile on the desktop boards would be good too, but are not terribly common. And, because they are aimed at the mobile market, storage ports can be limited. My biggest beef with the Atom boards is the limited number of SATA ports (I can't think of a board with more than 2 ports). I don't remember if the ICH7 could handle port multipliers, so that would leave you with an add in card. But this may not be that big a deal. The dual xeon board is probably overkill unless you want to use it to encode media too. It shouldn't have to be noisy, some improved HSFs could quiet it if you wanted to use it. What socket is it, and who makes the board? As for using a PC, what about an external case for the drives? I don't have anything in mind to suggest though.
http://http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/acatalog/SQA-5H.html New 5 bay nas from tranquil....Any chance bit-tech getting a review...
That's all I've seen, bu0t I figured I wouldn't say that's all there is and play it safe There really isn't much of a reason someone couldn't pair the NB with a different ICH outside of Intel saying they won't support it. Intel's embedded group has some cool stuff, but what my group usually gets at work are the reference boards like this That's the 3100 chipset CRB for a Pentium M CPU. There is also a mobile Core 2 and mobile Core 2 Duo version. The only product I can find for the board is this Tyan board. But it's a bit pricey for this case. But if you ever had the opportunity to check out one of the embedded Intel products, I would suggest they are worth a look.
