April 14, 2008
Drobo First Impressions
Ok, last week I got my Drobo. got the USB attached one. Maybe should have gotten the NAS version with the 1gb ethernet card as I think that is faster than USB, but that wasn't at NewEgg when I ordered. The thing was dead easy to set up. Just stick the drives in, plug in the power, plug in the usb and put in the CD. A bit confusing was that it asked me what format to use formatting the drives, FAT32 or NTFS. As a geek I appreciate the choice and chose FAT32 as I am using Vista. But not sure even this choice is in the purview of most of the target audience. It formatted the drives. One confusing thing is that the format offered me to make two partitions since I had 4 750Gig drives and the NT limit is a 2TB partition. Of course it said it in more user friendly manner, but I know what was behind it. So I said, ok, two partitions and gave them two different drive letters. Then after the formatting was done, I looked for two new attached drives. There was only one, H:. That was 2TB. Hummmm. Looks like it didn't format two partitions and somehow I lost 1TB. So over to the Drobo Dashboard. It said 3TB of drives, but (2.72TB actual*). I never found in the help or anywhere what the "*" refers to. Somehow I am guessing Windows overhead, I loose 280GBof storage. Then Drobo says I hve 2.03 TB "avaiable for data" and 704.2GB "used for protection" and "overhead" of 2.23GB. I am confused about all the different numbers and why it takes 25.8% for mirroring/protection. That is less than typical RAID so I am happy, but I just hope it works when a drive fails.
I am playing music off the Drobo drive, MP3s. Ok, now the fun part. Lets pull out a drive. Ok, the pulling was easy. Drobo is now flashing red and green and the music continues to play. The Drobo dashboard is flashing "data protection in progress" an dthe free space went down by 750GB. But the data is stil lthere and I am still streaming. Wow. While it is running, I just plugged in the 750GB drive again. Still flashing red to green lights, and still playing the music. In about 3 seconds, the "free space" goes back up to 1.44TB and actual back up to 2.72. Still flashing Data Protection in Progress, but still playing music. I don't care what it is doing. I pulled out a drive and put it back in without interruption to the music playing or loosing any data.
Drobo RULES!
Posted by Martin at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 7, 2008
Ordering Drobo
Finally broke down and ordered by Drobo from NewEgg today. Filled it with Samsung SATA 750gig drives instead of 1TB drives because the 750G are $.17 per gig and the 1TB are $.249 per gig. With Drobo utilizing all the storage correctly, it is not a problem to mix and match drives. Just buy the cheapest per gig driveyou can. That typically is the one just smaller than the largest on the market. Today that is the 750g. Go Drobo!
Posted by Martin at 9:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 28, 2007
Drobo is catching on
Eric is the third person to tell me to get one. I better get one soon. 1TB drives are only $249 at fry's.
Posted by Martin at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 8, 2005
Buying NAS this time instead of building
What a difference a year makes. Not so long ago, I built a 1.8TB RAID upgrade (to an existing server) for $1,712. This did not include the OS, chassis, motherboard, etc. which you had to put the raid enclosure in. Today I bought a 2TB plug and play system from LACIE: LaCie - Ethernet Disk - Gigabit Ethernet interface for $1999. Rack, chassis, OS, disks, etc. Now I don't believe it is hardware RAID, i believe you can set up software using Windows Server, but it is fully plug and play on gigE or USB 2.0. Very cool and no blood required!
Posted by Martin at 8:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 25, 2005
DIY Raid First major upgrade...
Well I got all the parts for my next 2TB upgrade and installed them last night. I have got to say that the installation of a removeable disk cage, disks and a RAID card was WAY easier than the whole box itself. Here is the blow by blow...
1:30pm opened the case (after unplugging everything of course). I have an anti-static wrist strap but didn't bother to get it. I was sitting on my rubber work-out mats in the work-out room which work great as anti-static mats. The SuperMicro case has already 7 removeable drive bays in the bottom of the tower. The top is three open 5.25 bays and one CDROM. If you count from 1-4 from top to bottom of the 5.25 slots, the CDRom was in 3. The SuperMicro case I have for 5 new drives fits in 3 5.25 slots, so I have to move the CD rom up or down to fit in the new drive cage. Removing the space savers is a dream in this case because they only need screws on the side of the case that opens, the other side is a plug rail thing. Removed the plugs, disconnected the CDROM, removed it.
1:40pm tried to fit in the new Drive Case (Supermicro (Beige) 5 Bay Hot-Swapable SATA HDD Enclosure, MODEL CSE-M35T-1). The downside of the cool one sided screws is that the case has rails that the 5.25 inch bays slide on. These rails stick in about 1/4 inch on each side. The Drive Case doesn't have slots for rails and requires the full case opening for the full three bay height. After a little inspection, it was clear that CASE MODIFICATION was needed. The rails had been simply stamped out and bent down from the overall case. I tried bending them back flat, but the metal was too strong and there was not enough room for leverage or to really swing a hammer. (did I just sayswing a hammer in case?)
1:54pm Thinking how to remove the rails without too much pain. Can't see how to remove the subcase they are in from the overall case.
2:00pm. Hammer failed (not enough clearance). Pliars bending down the rail failed (metal too strong, not enough leverage). How bout metal shears to just cut the rail off? Ah, that is the ticket. But I didn't have any metal shears, so I get out some wire cutters. Not really alot of leverage, but they work in 1/4 inch increments.
2:25pm 25 minutes later and three whacked knuckles later, the rails are gone and there is plenty of room for the new Drive CAse. There is alot quite a bit of blood in the case (oops). 
. A little spit and elbow grease got the blood off the case and a couple band-aids stopped the flow from the knuckles. A dead weight hammer gets the drive case to fit into the new hole. Screws bend the case back together. Re-installed the CDrom in bay 4. All looks peachy.
3:00 leave the project for a workout
8:30 started up again. Put in all the drives. New Egg shipps OEM drives just in the anti-static envelope. This s great because for RAID you don't need all the other crud that you get with Retail drives. I already got a set of SATA cables with the RAID controller AND with the Drive Case! Way too many extras. I have bags and bags of drive screws too. The SuperMicro removable drive bays are a dream to install and the backplane takes the drives like a snap. Easy sleazy.
9:00 start installing the 3Ware. Of course I didn't bother to read the directions. If I had I would have read the part about attaching the sata cables to the card before installing it, but doing it after was not that bad. I had to unplug the game port card from the motherboard because that cable wend across the PCI slot I was going to use for the 3Ware, but the cable had enough room to go over the card so no problem. It took a little wiggling to get the card into the slot as it can work in PCI or PCI Express, so there is an extra set of connectors hanging out.
9:25 card is in, installed all cables. Had to look at the card manual to remember which was 0, 1, 2, etc. and connect them to the right drives in the Drive case. There was not enough room in the case after the card was in to see the labels on the connectors. Power supply had plenty of power for Drive case. Plugged that in. The 3Ware had lots of warnings about installing a backup power supply onto the card (just trying to upsell me), but I didn't do that and they warn you 100 ways from sunday.
9:45 plugged in power, crossed my fingers and rebooted. During boot I get a "do you want to install 3Ware Bios" for about 5 seconds then the computer boots. Just fine into Windows. But no 3Ware. it went by too fast. Re-boot and go into install Bios. Simple set-up the BIOS comes off the card I guess. Didn't need the CDROM. Choose Raid 5. The BIOS started to initialize the drives (write zero to every register), but I stopped that since it would have taken hours.
9:50pm rebooted, goes straight into windows. In Storage manager, there is a 1.54TB drive. Wow, cool! I say format it into Drive F and mount NTFS. Starts formatting and off to bed.
7:00am Drive is formatted, initialized and healthy. I start copying music and stuff there. Runs like bob's your uncle. No problem.
This upgrade was WAY easier than I had though. The physical part was harder actually getting the drive case into the tower, but the software part was a snap. the 3Ware even supports 64bit XP so when I install that i will be able to keep it. The real test comes when I have any kind of failure. Maybe I will pull a drive just for kicks. Well, now I have over 3TB of active RAID. Now I gotta fill it up....
Posted by Martin at 10:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 12, 2005
ok I caved on the RAID
I had posted: Deep Green Crystals: My next RAID upgrade but today got shamed into buying the larger disks. What it ends up as is paying $1 per gig for the last half a TB and getting a full 2.0TB more rather than 1.5TB more.
Supermicro (Beige) 5 Bay Hot-Swapable SATA HDD Enclosure, MODEL CSE-M35T-1, New Egg, $113
3Ware 9500s-8 SATA PCI RAID controller, New Egg, $489
5 Hitachi 400GB SATA 8MB buffer 8.5 ms seek time drives, New Egg, $309 each total 1,540
total: $2,142.
Posted by Martin at 2:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 3, 2005
My next RAID upgrade
So I have a 3 full height 5.25 bays available in my case. Here is my next upgrade to add 1.8 TB:
Supermicro (Beige) 5 Bay Hot-Swapable SATA HDD Enclosure, MODEL CSE-M35T-1, New Egg, $113
3Ware 9500s-8 SATA PCI RAID controller, New Egg, $489
6 Maxtor 300GB SATA 16MB buffer drives, New Egg, $185 each (already $9 cheaper) total 1,110
total: $1,712.
I still have room on my current RAID so I won't buy this for another three months or so. I expect the hard drive prices to drop another $10 or so. I am ordering 6 drives to have one hot spare (it is a 5 drive enclosure). When I get the 3Ware card, I will probably add some of the non RAID drives now in the box to it and make a larger RAID. I thought about going up to the 400 GB drives, but they are 80.5 cents/gig versus the Maxsor 300 which is now 61.7 cents/gig. The Segate 300 gig is 69.6 cents per gig and claims a 8ms seek time versus a 9.3ms (nearly 15% better), but I have not found the Maxtors to be too slow so the difference isnt' worth the extra $144 buckos to me. If I wait long enough, they may come out with the 500gig drives and drop the 400 gig drive prices. It seems like the manufacturers just keep the same price waterfall and when a new larger product comes in at the top they just bump down each other product one level. If that happens, I should expect to be paying about $185 for a 400 gig which would be about 46 cents per gig. I bet I will be able to find it at those prices by the end of the year.
Posted by Martin at 8:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 8, 2005
OK figured out the RAID driver
Well the Silicon Image RAID controller GUI software didn't have any help files, but ASUS helpfully put the PDF manual on the CD. So I actually had to RTFM. So I figure out that I don't want to format the drives just yet I just want to create the RAID group. I can do this with the GUI or with the BIOS by pressing F4 quickly. I reboot and press F4 quickly. I am not offered in the BIOS configuratin RAID 5 as an option which the manual clearly says I should have. So I go back to the manual. There is a confusing section in the beginning about what your options are if you have an different combinations of old/new BIOS and old/new RAID5 driver. I guess I have an old something, so I use the handy dandy ASUS BIOS update program to check the version. Lo and Behold I have an old BIOS. Three clicks later, I have updated the BIOS from the Internet. I reinstall the SATA RAID5 software driver for good measure and reboot. Skipping the BIOS, I go to the GUI. Select Partiy RAID as the option in a new RAID group (couldn't they just keep terms the same and call it RAID5?), select all four logical 300gig drives, choose "max" size and click create. Done in 2 seconds. ANOTHER reboot and I go int Windows Computer Management, Disk MAnagement. A new, unformatted disk 1 shows up with size 838.44GB (the difference from 1.2TB is the Parity striping). Wow, my 1.62TB RAID system is shrinking VERY fast. With RAID5 the real win is to GO BIG. Then the One Drive you dedicate to Parity will be a smaller percentage of the total. So I am down to about half my usable space. Same as Raid1 (although not an option with two different raid controllers). Somehow a 1GB and a 233 GB partition were created. I delete those two and it leaves one big 838.44 GB space that I create one primary partition on and call it Drive G. Quick format later and Bob's your uncle, Windows recognizes a BIG DISK.
So now the fun begins, moving over stuff. I unplug the two USB 2.0 (oh, gotta install a new USB 2.0 driver on Windows or it will think the ports are 1.1) 250 ATA external drives I have been using on the other PC to store stuff and plug them into the new RAID box. Plug and play plays nice and everything is roses. I do one huge Drag and drop and am off to bed. Will tell you in the morning if it worked....
Posted by Martin at 12:54 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 7, 2005
More work on the RAID system tonight
So, gave up on 64 bit for now and installing Windows XP.
worked like a charm. Took an hour to install, but Windows XP Pro picked the right drive (the 74 gig Maxtor 10,000rpm) to install the OS on. So after install Windows asks to activate the copy of Windows. I say yea, sure. It says it can't find the internet. I notice that there is red light on the LAN port out the back instead of a flashing green one. I figure there is a problem with my LAN so I fiddle with it and reboot the hub, reboot the firewall. I figure my Watchgaurd Soho only has 10 IP addresses go give out as DNS server and has maxed out so I turn off some devices and reboot it again. No luck. Only five devices connected, should have enough IP addresses. Ah, I wonder if Windows recognizes the Ethernet on the motherboard. Nope. I put in the ASUS set-up CD and install everything. Including the NVidia drivers that do little things like activate your ethernet port in the back (and the SATA controller for my other disks). Of course the ASUS installation manual says nothing about this. And the five question "troubleshooting" section says nothing about what to do if the ethernet port is not working. They do, though, helpfully suggest that if the machine won't power up, you check to see if the power cord is connected. THANKS!
So I am up and running with internet connectivity. I still only find the Boot drive in the system. I have to go into System Utilies to format the other 250Gig drive to an NTFS partition, drive E. Since it is on a different RAID controller I can't clump it with the other 300gig drives, so it lowers my effective RAID partition size to 1.2TB, but ok. If I were using a real RAID controller I could do more disks. One of the trade-offs of using motherboard RAID.
I install the Silicon Image RAID driver and of course no help files install with it. No manual at all. I guess I need to create a new RAID partition. The controller recognizes the four drives there, but they don't show up in Windows. I try to create a new RAID group (the driver installs Java JVM2 first) but keep getting an error. Probably because the drives aren't formatted yet. But They don't show up in Windows as available, so I have no idea how configure this.
Tried to install the USB 2.0 driver for the motherboard and it says I need XP SP 1. So I have to go to windowsupdate and install a BUNCH of security updates then XP SP2. 150mb and two hours and two reboots later, Windows appitite for updates is quenched. In install Firefox, Adobe Reader and Bloggar.
Some reflection:
This is not a job for the meek. You gotta be a geek. You gotta have a get around the shit attitude.
Investment thesis so far: There is still a need for quick easy off the shelf mass storage for the SOHO and mid market. This is still TOO hard. But the solution is a hardware box and I won't make that investment being a Software guy.
Posted by Martin at 11:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
More RAID musings
OK,
so I have been in Florida for the last 9 days and away from my RAID project. Haven't really had a chance to get to it yet (tomorrow), but here are some things that I learned recently:
1. Having the Athlon64 means you really should have a 64 bit operating system.
2. I had planned to install Suse 9.1 which I duly bought and paid for. But the minute you stick in the CD, on boot it has this nice message "hey really nice computer, but do you realize you are about to install 32 bit software on a 64 bit computer?". So I need a new build.
3. so I go to the Suse site and see 9.2 has a full 64 bit port. No problem. Two download options. A DVD disk image (3.4gig) or a CD disk image (400mb) that will install the parts you choose from an FTP connection. I download both. Takes me about 10 hours while playing a 128k web radio stream. I probably should have downloaded them in serial rather than parallel.
4. I am faced with a disk image file that needs to be unpacked, so out to the internet for some software. Downloaded a couple and unpacked the .ISO file.
5. Used the Drag and Drop software included in the Sony Vaio to burn the contents of the ISO to a DVD. 45 minute burn.
6. Stuck in RAID box and hit power. Media not recognized. I figured that it was because of the DVD format not supported by the Bios.
7. Opened the ISO for the CD image, burned it to a CD, plugged in the Ethernet cable to the RAID box and rebooted. Media not recognized.
8. I opened the CD image and the SUSE 9.1 factory disk and they looked the same. I can't figure why it won't boot.
9. Gave up on Suse, went to download the 64 bit Windows XP. 3 hours. unpack the ISO image, burn to a CD.
10. reboot the RAID. Media not recognized. I give up.
11. Talked this morning to our IT guy about the OS. He said the problem was that the standard CD burning software won't make the CD bootable. IT doesn't copy the right OS stuff to the header secton. So the CD will look the same in Explorer, but not be bootable. AH. So I need Nero pro which will in fact create a bootable CD. So that is my next step. I am going to try to do this with Windows XP 64.
Posted by Martin at 2:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 22, 2005
Motherboard RAID chipsets reviewed...
Thanks to Slashdot for this link: Chipset Serial ATA and RAID performance comparison - The Tech Report - Page 1 One month testing of the four major motherboard chipsets for SATA RAID. Awesome. My Asus MB has both the NVidia Nforce3 AND the Silicon Image x2 chip set. The SIS does good in all areas with the exception of CPU Utilization where it is 10-15X worse than the other chipsets. That may be the reason that other reviewers have complained about the SIS RAID controller going hinky when you overclock the CPU (some conflict). But makes me glad that I got a powerful AMD 64 3200, maybe more powerful than a normal file server would have. Also, the Hyperthreading on the Intel chips SIGNIFIGANTLY reduced CPU utilization for chipsets on that platform versus AMD, so there is probably an advantage to using Pentium for a file server. My next box will be Pentium. Here are some snippets: Or you can go straight to Conclusions...
"With a single drive, the SiS964 is king in HD Tach's read speed tests. The SiS964 can't match the maximum read speeds of the nForce3 250Gb and ICH5R, but SiS is out ahead when it comes to minimum and average read speeds."
"The SiS964 maintains its lead as we move to mirrored RAID 1 arrays. This time around, Intel's ICH5R turns in a strong average read speed performance to distance itself from the field and secure second place."
Switching from mirroring to striping, the SiS964's average and minimum read speeds continue to lead the field. Average read speeds are considerably more varied with RAID 0, and VIA's VT8237 turns in a strong performance on both our Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 platforms.
RAID 0 burst speeds spreads the field considerably. Here, the nForce3 250Gb is way out ahead of the competition, distantly followed by the SiS964. Both VT8237 implementations are off the pace, but they're not as slow as the ICH5R, which may be constrained by limited chipset bandwidth.
With RAID 0, the VT8237 finally manages to beat the nForce3 250Gb on the AMD side of things. The SiS964's CPU utilization with striped arrays is particularly high, especially when compared with the other Athlon 64 chipsets. Wow. The SiS964 has some very real CPU utilization issues with RAID 0. Over 20% CPU utilization is simply unacceptable when the rest of the pack is under 2%. But the big story is still the SiS964's RAID 0 CPU utilization, which tops 30% with the web server test pattern.
Our single-drive web server results mirror what we saw with the file server test pattern. Again, the nForce3 250Gb has real problems with single-drive performance scaling under increasing loads.
The SiS964 makes its mark in the Multimedia Content Creation Winstone and lays waste to the Athlon 64 field across the board. The ICH5R is out on top again on the Intel side, too, all the way from single drives to RAID 0 arrays.
My conclusions: Don't use the Silicon Image for RAID 0. I am going to test it for RAID 5 and tell ya. nForce3 looks promissing in the 4 controller configuration (if I can find a MB that uses it with its speedy interconnect). If you just want tried and true, stick with the ICH5R.
Posted by Martin at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
already thinking about my next RAID box
The 24 pin to 20 pin adapter didn't arrive today (monday), but I am already thinking about my next RAID box. I want a BIG one with hot swapable drives, 12-16 of them and that will mean having to go with hardware RAID. Tom's Hardware has a current review of 3Ware, Highpoint and Raidcore's newest offerings. Tom's Hardware Guide Mass Storage: Multi-channel RAID for SATA: 3Ware, Highpoint and Raidcore/Broadcom - Conclusion. 3Ware comes out on top due to their hardware implementation of nearly everything leaving load off the processor and allowing you to downsize those parts and make up for the higher costs.
I will design one of these next. In an extensive search today the maximum SATA controllers I found on a Motherboard was 10 (Supermicro) but that only offered RAID 0 or 1. For performance AND security/redundancy you need RAID 5 or better 6. Would be nice if someone put four of the Silicon Image 4 port SATA controllers on a motherboard. They support RAID5. But then you have the problem of spanning controllers to create a single volume. There is software to do that with the 3Ware but I haven't found such software with MB RAID. In fact I haven't found any configuration software for those things yet (but then again I haven't gotten any power in the box either).
Posted by Martin at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
RAID 5 testing
What I am really trying to do with the RAID box is to get the cheapest RAID 5 implementation possible. Lots of MBs will have RAID 0 (no redundancy) RAID 1 (very expensive overhead), so I like RAID 5, but dont' want to buy a card to get it. Tom's Hardware Guide Mass Storage: RAID 5 Scaling Tests With Up To Eight Drives - All-around Solution: RAID 5 is a good article explaining RAID 5 from a RAIDCorps card (now recalled). How it works, etc.
Posted by Martin at 10:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 21, 2005
Home 1.62TB RAID project update
Ok, so yesterday I started screwing the thing together. Here is a blow by blow:
8:00pm
- Unpacked all the stuff.
- Read all the quick start guides.
- Removed case side cover. They say to just push on the button and push to the back of the case, but forget to tell you to remove the two screws in the back. Quick fix.
- Removed port plate that came with the chassis. Installed the one from the ASUS mother board.
- Removed 2 rear slot covers for the two extra port boards that come with the ASUS. Removed the two closest to the fan since they don't have PCI ports near them and PCI are not needed.
- Installed memory onto CPU. One in slot one one in slot 3. Leave the cooling covers ON with the clips!
- Installed the CPU on the motherboard. Then heat sync. I guess it doesn't really matter which side the securing lever is on, but it may as it gets crowded. I put the fan lead on the side closest to the plug on the motherboard. It wouldn't reach if it were on the otherside.
- Took all the fans out of the chassis for more room. The two by the drives are easy slide outs and two case screws and one thumb screw to remove the mounting plate. The exhaust fan is easy slide out.
- install the stand-offs in the "D" holes in the case. The case has all the holes marked with a different letter. The "D" pattern fits my ASUS ATX motherboard. Nice touch Super Micro.
- installed the motherboard with all screws provided. It is a little trick to get the ports to line up with the port cover. A couple of the cheap tabs I have to break off because they get stuck outside rather than inside where they should be.
- installed the extra firewire card in the slot closest to the fan since it had the most clearance. The Game port and 2USB card had less clearance and was hitting a couple of diodes on the MB, so had to be installed in slot 2 away from the fan to prevent conflict.
- Plugged in the various wires from these two cards to the points on the MB. The male and female parts are color coded to match so it was dead simple to not make a mistake. Good call ASUS!
- I notice with the Game Port that this is really a game motherboard but I don't mind. Hey it has 6 free RAID controllers.
- The chassis comes with a Super SATA 7 port backplane to allow you to just plug in your SATA drives using the hot swap rails and not worry about cables. VERY nice feature if you are building primarilly a storage box and worth the extra money from a standard PC box. Thanks Super MIcro! I connect this backplane to "com 2" on motherboard for control.
- Take out 6 SATA cables and plug 0 and 1 into the NVidia RAID controller and 2-5 into the Silicon Image controllers.
- Connected power to the backplane (two standard floppy/drive power plugs)
11:30pm
- try to connect the powersupply to the Motherboard. OOPS this case has a brand spank'n new 550W STX power supply with a 24 pin power connecter. The MB has a 20 pin ATX power connector. So I have to find out the difference. For a moment I think about just craming it on there (it would fit) and try powerint it up. But I see from the web that lots of plugs have been remapped and think twice about it. I hope I can buy a back-converter at Frys tomorrow. FIRST SHOW STOPPER.
12:00pm
- think about quitting for the night, but decide to press on to see if there are any other show stoppers that will require stuff to be bought at Frys.
- Start screwing in the drives to the handy dandy hot swapable rail system. Drive 0 will be the 10,000 RPM system drive. Drive 1 is the 250GB. I will leave these two separate drives probably. Drives 2-5 are the 300GB and will be RAID5.
- plugged in the LEDs from the case front to the appropriate MB power spots. I am left with Overheat, NMI Switch (what the hell is that?), HDD LED (the backplane has an LED led I already connected so I don't care), and two NIC LEDs left. Apparently SuperMIcro is pulling the old razor and razorblade trick. I bet if you used their motherboard you would have enough power points for all the LEDs they put on the front of their case. The only one I wish I could figure out is the Overheat one. I zip tie the extras up out of the way.
12:30
- installed the DVD ROM. LOVE the false rails on the bottom side. This means that with the case lying on it's side, open, you only have to unscrew two screws on the side that is up and slide out the plug. Remove the false rails from the bottom, put them on your DVD, slide it in and screw in the four screws on the top. You don't have to pick up the case and open the other side to complete the device install as you have to with some other cases. Very thoughtful SM guys!
12:45
- Ok, what am I missing? Well this case has two fans over by the drives and the MB has only one HD fan power port. So I need a splitter to power both the fans. Frys will have that. I pluged the exhaust fan into the plug for the "Power Supply" fan and wonder if that is wrong. There is a 4 hole female connector comming out of the Ablecomm SP5500-LP power supply that has three wires in it that looks like a fan power thing and I have no male connector on the MB for it. AFter some thought I bet it is the Over Heat or Power Supply Failure LED, and I think it should plug into an LED on the front pannel, but no luck. Oh, I just found this: SP550-RP Rev A, PWS-0046, 550W EPS12V Redundant Cooling PSU, for Supermicro SC742T-550 Chassis, +5V & +3V3 Combined 50A Max, +12V1 & +12V2 Combined 40A Max, +3.3V 30A, +5V 30A, +12V1 26A, +12V2 20A, -12V 0.8A, -5V 0.8A, 5Vsb 2A, 24-pin, 8-pin & 4-pin ATX Power Connectors, 5x HDD/CD & 2x FDD Power Connectors, Fan Fail/Over Temp LED, Buzzer Reset Switch, 100-240V AC In & Sanyo SanCooler 80 9A0812S401 Fan on Back of Case, 150mm W x 86mm H x 184mm D. Looks like it is a Fan Fail/Over Temp LED connector, but I can't find where to connect it.
- The exhaust fan doesn't reach the power port, so I have to remove it from it's plastic mounting rack and rotate it 180 degrees to get the lead on the other side so it will reach. Glad you can do this, good design!
12:50
done, go to fry's tomorrow.
clean up
1:00am bed
1:50pm next day:
- bought two 3 pin female to 2 male molex splitters to power all the fans. $3.95 Frys.
- bought a Universal CD ROM cable from Fry's (not included in the CDROM from NewEgg). Oh, by the way all the stuff from NEW EGG was OEM in bubble wrap with NO CABLES. $4.99 for DVD cable.
- Fry's didn' t have the 24/20 power converter
2:00pm
- ordered 24 pin power supply to 20 pin Motherboard connector from ExtremePCGear. $9.99 plus next day air for $38.19 total.
2:15
on hold for power cable.
So the new total for the system is:
Home 1.624TB RAID Server
| CPU | Athlon 3200+ | $199 | Frys 11x multiplier, should over clock to 2.6GHz easily |
| Memory 1GB | Corsair 4400C25 | $269 | Very fast at DDR466 |
| Motherboard | ASUS K8N-E Deluxe | $149.99 | Frys, 6 SATA RAID chips on Motherboard, 3GB memory. Anandtech complains about memory speed and the SiliconImage vs NVidia RAID controller when overclocking, but I am not going to. |
| Case | SUPERMICRO 4U Rackmount Chassis, Model "SC742T-550 Black" | $305 | New Egg. Has 7 SATA backplane built in, redundant 550W |
| DVD+-RW drive | NEC 3520A | $62.99 | newegg the newer model |
| system drive | WD740GD | $156 | NewEgg. 74GB 10000 rpm system drive |
| Data drive | Maxtor Ultra16 SATA 250GB | $149.99 | CompUSA ($.59/gig) could only buy 1 at this price |
| Data drive | Maxtor Ultra16 SATA 300GB | $194.49 | NewEgg ($.65/gig) could buy 4 at this price |
| fan power splitter | Fry's house | $3.95 | Frys bught 2 |
| Unversal DVD/CDROM cable | Fry's store | $4.99 | Fry's |
| 24Pin/20Pin power cable | XPCGear | $38.19 | XPC Gear |
total: $2121.01. Now I am at $1.31/ gig. still a bargin!
Posted by Martin at 10:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The ASA Server quote discected and priced at New EGG.
Basically you are paying about $1,069 for configuration, testing and a warranty. 27.4%. Not a bad premium actually if you value your time and a warranty. If I go this way, I would rather go with a local vendor so I really get support. I wouldn't buy such a thing with phone support or web support. But I like screwing the stuff together myself. I am about 4 hours into my project and am waiting for a cable to come fed ex tomorrow. If I finish in 5 hours, that will be about $200/hour. Not bad.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QTY ITEM NO. DESCRIPTION PRICE EXTENDED
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prices from NewEgg.com
1 MB -SMX5DPA-GG SUPERMICRO X5DPA-GG MOTHERBOARD. 277.00 277.00
DUAL GIG LAN AND VGA ONBOARD
2 CPU -XEN2.4-533 INTEL XEON 2.4GHZ 533 FSB 512K 229.00 458.00
2 CPUS INSTALLED
2 MMD -5M21ERLB17 DDR 512MB PC2100 ECC REG LOW PROFILE 97.00 194.00
2 X 512MB PC2100 ECC REG DDR INSTALLED Kingston
1 CS -RMAD4U16B 4U CASE/16 FRONT BAYS/HOT-SWAP POWER. 800.00 800.00
1 CS -RMAD4U16SL SLIDE RAILS FOR 4U 16 BAYS RACK MOUNT 15.00 15.00
7 HDRV-250WDSB WD 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB RE DRIVE 148.00 1,036.00
1 RAID-3W7506-8 3WARE 7506-8 ATA RAID CTRL 8 PORT 385.00 385.00
RAID 5 SET UP
1 CD -SLIMDVD SLIMLINE BLACK DVD. 50.00 50.00
2,830.00
1 OS -CUSTOM CUSTOM OS AS PER CUSTOMER NEEDS/CD 0.00 0.00
1 ASM -200 ASSEMBLY/TEST/SW INSTALL 0.00 1,069.00
3,899.00
SHIPPING AND HANDLING CHARGES WILL BE EXTRA
Posted by Martin at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
when I expand my current SM RAID, here is how
This StorCase Technology DE400 nifty little 4 SATA drive case has its own backplane and fits into 3 drive bays. I have 3 drive bays open on my SM case since I only have a DVD ROM in it. So I can buy this and add 4 more SATA drives to my existing 6. Now I just need a PCI RAID card and can't suck off the free MB RAID any more.
Posted by Martin at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Actually I would use the Super Micro Case
SuperMicro SC933T-R760 (cse-933t-r760b) Extended ATX Rack-Mountable Case - Find, Compare, and Buy at DealTime. It is $850-$1000 just for the case. But well worth it! has tripple redundant power supply, 15 HD backplane. But I digress. The idea I am persuing is not building the ULTIMATE RAID, but building CHEAP RAID out of PC parts. This is definitely NOT a PC part.
Posted by Martin at 9:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Beautiful 16 bay SATA RAID enclosure
If I were not worrying about price, I would consider this enclosure: SecurStor XRS DAS - eXtra Raid Security - RAID 6. 16 hot swappable SATA drive bays with an SATA cableless backplane. Plenty of expansion room.
Posted by Martin at 9:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Another RAID quote
Here is the configuration that vendor suggested for a RAID box for my home. The main difference is that he suggests dual Xeon, a SM chassis AND motherboard (good choice to match them) that has expansion to 16 slots, a 3Wire board for RAID instead of MB RAID (probably better), cheaper memory, hot swappable power supplies (which I don't need). But it comes in at $3,899, or $2.60 per gig. And no faster system drive (which I think is important).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DATE SHIP VIA F.O.B. TERMS
1/19/2004 PICK UP SANTA CLARA CO
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QTY ITEM NO. DESCRIPTION PRICE EXTENDED
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 MB -SMX5DPA-GG SUPERMICRO X5DPA-GG MOTHERBOARD. 3,899.00 3,899.00
DUAL GIG LAN AND VGA ONBOARD
2 CPU -XEN2.4-533 INTEL XEON 2.4GHZ 533 FSB 512K 0.00 0.00
2 CPUS INSTALLED
2 MMD -5M21ERLB17 DDR 512MB PC2100 ECC REG LOW PROFILE 0.00 0.00
2 X 512MB PC2100 ECC REG DDR INSTALLED
1 CS -RMAD4U16B 4U CASE/16 FRONT BAYS/HOT-SWAP POWER. 0.00 0.00
1 CS -RMAD4U16SL SLIDE RAILS FOR 4U 16 BAYS RACK MOUNT 0.00 0.00
7 HDRV-250WDSB WD 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB RE DRIVE 0.00 0.00
1 RAID-3W7506-8 3WARE 7506-8 ATA RAID CTRL 8 PORT 0.00 0.00
RAID 5 SET UP
1 CD -SLIMDVD SLIMLINE BLACK DVD. 0.00 0.00
1 OS -CUSTOM CUSTOM OS AS PER CUSTOMER NEEDS/CD 0.00 0.00
1 ASM -200 ASSEMBLY/TEST/SW INSTALL 0.00 0.00
SHIPPING AND HANDLING CHARGES WILL BE EXTRA
Posted by Martin at 2:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 13, 2005
Home 1.624TB RAID I am already changing a few little things
I have found a few different parts and have put in the current prices that are actuals that I paid on-line tonight. It is coming in slightly cheaper (who coulda guessed). For data drives I stuck with the Maxtor Ultra 16 SATA drives. They are having a sale on them so they are cheaper than the 8MB buffer ones. The SATA technology has some stuff in it that really takes advantage of the larger buffer so it is worth it. Ebay had some sellers who might have been slightly cheaper on the Maxtor harddrives, but the auctions were ending in a week and I was worried about getting pirated or refurbished drives. Sticking with NewEgg is solid.
Home 1.624TB RAID Server
| CPU | Athlon 3200+ | $199 | Frys 11x multiplier, should over clock to 2.6GHz easily |
| Memory 1GB | Corsair 4400C25 | $269 | Very fast at DDR466 |
| Motherboard | ASUS K8N-E Deluxe | $149.99 | Frys, 6 SATA RAID chips on Motherboard, 3GB memory. Anandtech complains about memory speed and the SiliconImage vs NVidia RAID controller when overclocking, but I am not going to. |
| Case | SUPERMICRO 4U Rackmount Chassis, Model "SC742T-550 Black" | $305 | New Egg. Has 7 SATA backplane built in, redundant 550W |
| DVD+-RW drive | NEC 3520A | $62.99 | newegg the newer model |
| system drive | WD740GD | $156 | NewEgg. 74GB 10000 rpm system drive |
| Data drive | Maxtor Ultra16 SATA 250GB | $149.99 | CompUSA ($.59/gig) could only buy 1 at this price |
| Data drive | Maxtor Ultra16 SATA 300GB | $194.49 | NewEgg ($.65/gig) could buy 4 at this price |
total: $2069.93. Price went up from this afternoon by $136 but capacity went up to 1.624. Now I am at $1.27/ gig for RAID!!! Can't beat this!!! Let's hope it all works.
Posted by Martin at 10:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Building 1TB RAID at home, first whack
Thanks Rich for your latest recommendations for High end PCs. While I toyed around with buying RAID from an existing vendor like Iomega, Snap Disk, or a white box guy (look for those reviews soon), I have decided that it would be more fun to screw the thing together myself. Also cheaper. No support, but what else do I have to do with my weekends. Also I decided that I only need Raid 0. I can build two Raid 0 boxes for the price of one professional Raid 5 hot swapable box. For home media I don't need the hot swap. I can write my own mirroring script and get the same level of redundancy. So I decided to buy a PC chassis and all PC parts and just run it as a big file server. Here are the parts I am buying. The only real concession I have from a traditional PC form factor is the 4U rack mounted case just for convenience. Going to install a copy of Suse 9 that I already have.
Home 1TB RAID Server
| CPU | Athlon 3200+ | $199 | Frys 11x multiplier, should over clock to 2.6GHz easily |
| Memory 1GB | Corsair 4400C25 | $275 | Very fast at DDR466 |
| Motherboard | ASUS K8N-E Deluxe | $149.99 | Frys, 6 SATA RAID chips on Motherboard, 3GB memory |
| Case | SUPERMICRO Beige 4U Rackmount Chassis, Model "SC742T-550 Beige" | $307.50 | New Egg. Has 7 SATA backplane built in |
| CD drive | NEC 3500A | $67 | newegg or zipzoomfly |
| system drive | WD740GD | $185 | 10000 rpm system drive |
| Data drive | Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB | $149.99 | ($.59/gig vs $.68/gig for 300GB) 5 of these bad boyz |
total: $1933.48 or less than $2 per gig for RAID. Half the cost of white boxes and 1/3 the cost of anything from the channel.
Posted by Martin at 5:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 12, 2005
Thinking NAS again
I am again thinking about building a 1TB NAS for my home. Ran across this PC Upgrade kit called ReByte that looks interesting: reByte Network Attached Storage, NAS and Backup Solutions.
The IOMEGA, Mirra and Snap Server are all too expensive. They are between $2.50 and $6.00 per gig. With the base 7500RPM ATA drives running at less than $0.50 per gig, I can't swallow the premium for integration and a case. The cute thing about the reByte solution is that it is an upgrade kit for an existing PC case. RAID cases are expensive. PC cases are cheap.
I will keep looking.
Posted by Martin at 9:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack