No room for more hard drives :(

Humate

Humate

Humate

Associate
Joined
23 Dec 2005
Posts
652
I have a coolermaster stacker which can take 12 hard drives. I have filled all of these. I have also filled one 5.25" bay with a hard drive, the other is taken by a cd/dvd writer. Im thinking i will have another 8 or so drives to attach, and i dont really want to buy 8 standard external drive caddys.

So perhaps i should upgrade my case. Are there any cases that can take 20 hard drives? or perhaps is there any kind of external rack thing that u can plug 8 drives into and then connect that rack to the pc? I would prefer to do one of these two options (if they exist?). If all else fails i will have to build a cheap second pc with a relatively large case and then use that as network attached storage. Performance isnt important seen as it is just data storage.
 
Lian Li 343 can take 30HDs with the right adapters (5 x 3.5" into 3 x 5.25").

V2000 could take 12 in the HD bays, + 8 with adapters + an optical drive.
 
I wouldn't describe the PC343 as ugly, more function over form. It has a couple of drawbacks though - the cost is a bit of a problem by the time you add in all the toys (it comes with nothing in the way of drive mounts, fans etc) and it can get a bit crowded if you fill it up. I've got 11 drives in the right side of mine which means a lot of cabling in a relatively small space.
 
yes it certainly isnt cheap. They do take the mick a bit with the cost of the adapters IMO. My cabling is a complete mess anyway, i adopt the strategy of if the cables all fit in the case then its a job well done :)

i think the pc343 monster is the way to go.
 
I've gotta say mate, why dya need so many harddrives, surely they aren't all high capacity drives?
I'd be looking at getting a different arrangement of harddrives long before upgrading from a Stacker to an even bigger case :eek:
 
Humate said:
I have a coolermaster stacker which can take 12 hard drives. I have filled all of these. I have also filled one 5.25" bay with a hard drive, the other is taken by a cd/dvd writer. Im thinking i will have another 8 or so drives to attach, and i dont really want to buy 8 standard external drive caddys.
Click to expand...

Mate, if you have filled your entire computer with HDDs, you might have a problem that this forum is not qualified to solve... :p
 
Humate said:
12*500GB in raid6, and a 320GB for OS. But i have more 500GB's to add. Its mainly for university data.
Click to expand...

********! the university won't even have that storage dood. About 6TB ******** man. Show us a screen shot of it.

Are you a student? or staff?

Why not sell the 500's and get single TB. There for you can have around 12TB in your system instead of 6TB?
 
I hate to burst your bubble but 6Tb is peanuts in storage terms - I've worked with machines that have 3 times that in directly attached storage and others which have access to SANs containing several hundred terabytes.

1Tb disks v 500Gb ones? 12*1Tb is about £1800, a fully loaded PC343B is about £400, 12 500Gb HDDs £700 so there's a £700 saving to be had.
 
rpstewart said:
I hate to burst your bubble but 6Tb is peanuts in storage terms - I've worked with machines that have 3 times that in directly attached storage and others which have access to SANs containing several hundred terabytes.

1Tb disks v 500Gb ones? 12*1Tb is about £1800, a fully loaded PC343B is about £400, 12 500Gb HDDs £700 so there's a £700 saving to be had.
Click to expand...

Yeh but this sort of storage is crazy man especially for home users.

If your storing that sort of data you must have money otherwise you just wouldn't do it and think of the backups.

You know this yourself with all the photographs. Can you imaging if you lost all of them?

On the other hand what happened to external storage solutions? USB? Network? e.t.c
 
Last edited by a moderator:
andr3w1984 said:
Show us a screen shot of it.
Click to expand...

Below, just for you. I didnt say i had filled the full lot. I have only filled around 2.5TB so far. I have 5 more 500GB's to add to the array (pic below). To add these i need to remove 2*320GB's from the computer completely. Then theres also another 2*500GB's that wont fit. These were never meant for the array, as i only have a 12 port amcc 3ware 9650se controller. The reason these 2*500GB's werent going into the array was because they were old and i built the array from identical drives.

NoobieOCer said:
dude what is this computer for??
Click to expand...

personal uni work. My universities idea of data storage is they buy me a new external drive when i fill one. I expressed my concerns that this wasnt good enough, but they wouldnt do anything about it. So i bought myself this raid6 array. However, i also have in a third location the data mirrored to hard drives which i transfer when i fill a complete drive. Thus when i finish my phd and no longer need all this sodding data i will have more drives than this stacker can handle.



andr3w1984 said:
Can you imaging if you lost all of them?
Click to expand...

If i lose my data i fail my PhD.





^ controller web interface and my computer



^ 5 new drives for the remaining ports on the controller



^these two 500GB drives resting on top of the case are the old ones.



^ raid controller
 
Last edited:
Humate said:
If i lose my data i fail my PhD.
Click to expand...

I feel sorry if you ever did loose that data. Why don't you ask them to change to TB disks and return the 500's then since they are buying and maybe mirror setup or something. Tell them you have no more room in your case (or tell them external storage would be good network? usb?).

Good luck on your PHD!
 
the trouble is there is no money. The department wont pay for it, they say that its up to individual groups to purchase their own IT. It was never envisaged that we would have this much data, and as such there was never any planning to purchase the equipment needed for data storage. All the grants are on the last pennies, so we are essentially running on peanuts. Im still arguing for it though. Universities suck. 99% would be sacked in a corporate environment, but then thats why they are all academics in the first place :D
 
Humate said:
the trouble is there is no money. The department wont pay for it, they say that its up to individual groups to purchase their own IT. It was never envisaged that we would have this much data, and as such there was never any planning to purchase the equipment needed for data storage. All the grants are on the last pennies, so we are essentially running on peanuts. Im still arguing for it though. Universities suck. 99% would be sacked in a corporate environment, but then thats why they are all academics in the first place :D
Click to expand...

Well use your acidemic skills to judge where to go next with this little but dangerous dilema! oh boy what would I do in your shoes. Data loss = no Phd. New case, more drives extra storage oh boy oh boy oh boy.... I think I would sit down and design a solution that would be safe for yourself and yourself only to be pretty fair I certainly would have had a mirror solution in place since your only using 2.5TB so far, which means you have space left to mirror data now before it's too late! but again I think I would opt for a soul to soul file storage media. Certainly networkable with Raid0 protection. oh boy oh boy oh boy... may the force be with you.
 
:D

I am comfortable that hard drives as a backup solution in 3 separate locations should suffice, one of those locations being a raid6 to allow two simultaneous drive failures, and the other locations just either hard drives in a box or in an external caddy. I wonder what the chance of 4 simultaneous drive failures in 3 separate locations is :P the only annoying thing is the cost to myself. Probably about £2000-3000 in the end i suppose.

One question about the lian li pc 343b, does it have room for two psu's? from the images i see on google of the inside of it it doesnt look like it does... this seems like madness for a case this size. I use 2 PSU's in my stacker atm.
 
Humate, why don't you go for a totally seperate solution? Build a new box dedicated as a file box. Doesn't have to be top end really.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom