So Im putting a network storage pc together today and I realize i have a heck of a lot hard drives -- as in 7. So I figure later this week I will put some pictures up of the case and whatever and put together a how to on creating your own network attached storage box. Just a little sneak peek - - 1x WD 136BA - 13.6 GB Caviar HD. 1x WD 313600 - 13.6 GB Expert HD. 1x WD 36400 - 6.4 GB Caviar HD. 1x WD ?????? - 40 GB Caviar HD. 1x Maxtor 52049H4 - 20 GB HD. 1x Maxtor d740X-6L 40 GB HD. 1x Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 - 30 GB HD. If I can add - thats 163.6 GB of network attached storage... Lets just say cooling those suckers is a bitch!
many newer motherboards are indeed coming with 4 channels. I haven't tested their capabilities, but I haven't seen one that would allow you to RAID 0 or 0+1 8 drives together (4 at most). I went with the 3Ware 7500-8 for my file server (fine line between file server and NAS) with 27 GB RAID 1 for OS (testing Win2k3)and 493 GB RAID 5 for the data storage.
The answer to all your questions is yes.... Seriously all it is is my Asus A7V133 with onboard Raid 0. I'm turning off the RAID so it is just another IDE controller and am putting 6 or 7 hard drives in... Not sure which one i want to keep out. Its also got a cheapo creative sblaster and a geforce 2 mx something or other in there and 512 mb pc 133 ram, and 10/100 ethernet @ 100 not 10 Basically what I am going to do is make virtual drives out of some folders and Share all hard drives except for the OS hd which wont be touched. Im thinking about win NT 4 server.
Instead of doing that, I sold all my extra hds( about 5 or so) and bought 2 80 gigers that Im putting into a rackmount system I got for cheap. Other than that Im also doing exactly what your doing. Good Luck.
Don't know if anyone answered this yet (I'm too lazy to read, too tired actually), however a lot of motherboards now come with IDE RAID and you can put 8 devices off them. They work REAL well (I use one at work) and are able to so anything that a SCSI RAID will do. The bonus is that it uses cheaper IDE drives! Heck of an idea you've got there beta. What OS will you be using?
Ok - well here is the deal. I am going to answer as many of the questions as I can. First off is that I am using this machine strictly as storage and the easiest way I can think to do this is to use Windows 2000 or XP and have it set so it doesn't need keyboard or mouse, logs in automatically, and has all but one of the drives shared (the one extra is OS). The system will be hooked up to a KVM Switch for now, along with my regular use computer, and I will be doing all of the configuring. The motherboard is a Asus a7133 i believe (im not at home right now, taking my last finals today then going home tomorrow) and has onboard raid0. You can turn off the raid function and use it as a normal IDE controller which means I can add up to 4 more than the original 4 drives supported by IDE spec. 8 drives total - 7 hard drives, one cdrom drive (56x). Heat is going to be a huge issue so the case that I am going to use (which my friend told me he was going to bring back to me TODAY, but didnt) has space for 4 80mm fans in the front, and one in the back. 4x80mm fans... Yeah i think it will be cool enough once i get those in there. Im thinking about using a permeable matereal for the sides so that the extra air on the inside will just blow through to the outside, because all i have is a chassis, no sides or anything. I am thinking of using white canvas... it should look good and has just about the thermodynamic properties acrylic has.. (almost none). DeLorean5000 - Pictures are on the way... Its nothing spectacualar I promise, and is more of an exercise of creating the system exactly like YOU want it than anything. I will take pictures of the case, once I get it back (Hopefully Thursday), The motherboard, Video Card (Geforce 2 MX), The Drives, 4 EIDE 80 wire cables, power supply WHATEVER as soon as I can. This is definately going to be some work with the configuration, I'm sure, but I hope I can share my lack of wealth of information on setting up a storage appliance ASAP.
By the way - my use of the term appliance happens to show my belief that one can use a computer for solely one purpose... like my car's media pc, and my htpc (soon to be completed), my routing and webserver computer, my new network storage computer. Yeah I have way too many computers... Lets just say that this summer by the end of my plans I should have 12 computers on my network at home... I am going to have some trash parts once im done... I'll put them up here if anyone wants them... once i sort through it all lol.
Sounds good and I will be following this thread closely. One thought, about the canvas side. Keep in mind that cloth will collect dust much faster than a hard (metal, plastic) material and cannot just be wiped off. If you use cloth, may I recommend you mount it in such a way to make it easily removed to be thrown in the wash. Oh, and be sure you wash it before mounting it, as it will shrink.
Just to let you know, KVM swithes seriously degrade your video quality on the monitor. You'd very likely to see ghosting or faded colours.
I can't agree with you wywywywy, I'm using a KVM switch with my plexycase and I have no problems at all: running Win98 @ 1024x768x32bit on one PC and WinXP @ 1280x1024x32bit on the other. My monitor is an Acer 77e (17 inches), nothing special but works really fine. GeeK!
Can be affected by many things. The most importantly being display card. The "fast" cards usually have crap output filter (especially 99% of GF!!! and 50% of Radeons...). And the higher the refresh rate, the more the degradation you will see. Simply do a "hot-plugging" test and you will see. But anyway, if you don't notice the degradation, chances are you do not need to care EDIT: You got one nice plexi case
One question ? Gigabit or Firewire and if firewire what OS. If 100 base T then I admire your patience And a decent KVM is fine - only the older/manual KVMs give trouble thesedays - wife runs a £25 ebuyer 2 port KVM @ 1600*1200*32bit and not easy to tell difference (I can't tell and have 20/20 vision)..
