Operation 'Tons of Hard Drives'

thewanted said:
I've not made a firm choice yet, but was leaning towards the Supermicro Supermicro X8SIL-F motherboard, Intel Core i3-530 CPU and 4GB of RAM. The i3-530 has an idle wattage value very, very close to a dual-core Atom but lots of extra grunt so it's a better choice. As the machine will be mostly storing HD-video and music, I don't think deduplication will be any good to me unless it can miraculously de-dupe x264 which would be slightly awesome.

My only issue with ZFS is that you have to add disks in groups which means you lose 1-2 disks to parity (RAID-Z or RAID-Z2) every time you expand the pool. Whereas with Linux you can add 1 disk at a time.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the pool expansion thing is an issue, but I wouldn't really want to have 20+ drives and only a single parity anyway. When I finally get round to building my next NAS i'll probably use zpools of 6 drives (5+1parity). If i've got a nice big case I might even just use a pool made up of mirrored pairs, It's more expensive but makes it easy to keep up with HDD capacity advancements as I'd only need to buy two drives at a time and could upgrade the old mirrors by swapping out one drive at a time and letting it rebuild the mirror.
 
Zarf said:
Yeah, the pool expansion thing is an issue, but I wouldn't really want to have 20+ drives and only a single parity anyway. When I finally get round to building my next NAS i'll probably use zpools of 6 drives (5+1parity). If i've got a nice big case I might even just use a pool made up of mirrored pairs, It's more expensive but makes it easy to keep up with HDD capacity advancements as I'd only need to buy two drives at a time and could upgrade the old mirrors by swapping out one drive at a time and letting it rebuild the mirror.
Click to expand...

If you add more disks in a RAID-Z2 you'd end with more capacity overall. Obviously that's very wallet-permitting :) I'm still trying to work out what a vdev is with regards to ZFS.

I was going to do a RAID6 in Linux. RAID5 with that many disks is just asking for trouble.
 
oh, one thing I forgot to ask, Lian-Li are releasing an updated version of the V2000 called the V2120, might be worth checking out although it only has 10 3.5" slots and 5 5.25" slots making 10+5+2=17 hdds... Looks the **** though :)
 
just buy two of THESE and stand them on top of each other. A nice hole in the bottom of one and the top of the other to pass the cables through, setup the pc in the bottom case and your good to go.
 
If you suspended the drives on shock cord inside the bottom case (or top, whichever way...) you could probably get about 60 drives in there if it was dedicated to HDDs lol

Epic idea!
 
I Know this might be a bit late but i am thinking about something similar and found these:

X-Case 5 Drive Storage Kit - fits in 3 x 5.25 Bay

58.74

may help with you budget?

All you need to do is find a case with 12 5.25 bays
 
Get one of the modders/crazy project people on here to build you something. I'm sure a heavily modded case and a bit of extra aluminium and shock cord could make something quite... unique.
 
tjm21 said:
I Know this might be a bit late but i am thinking about something similar and found these:

X-Case 5 Drive Storage Kit - fits in 3 x 5.25 Bay

58.74

may help with you budget?

All you need to do is find a case with 12 5.25 bays
Click to expand...

Very nice price! That's quite a bit cheaper than the Supermicro or Icydock versions.

I decided to go with the Fractal Design XL case in the end. I know it's not the biggest but I just really disliked the Antec 1200. The XL can hold 10 x 3.5" disks + 2 x 3in2s for a further 6 disks. Using RAID6 that still gives me 28TB raw capacity using 2TB disks. I think that's enough for the moment!

Hopefully I'll get all the components this week and start building it next weekend. The case is on pre-order and is due in on Monday. That's the only component holding up the order.
 
Should be a nice case, I have the Define R2 at the min, currently have 5 2TB hard drives in it with mainly blu-ray files.

I was looking for something similar to yourself so I could run WHS with folder duplication as a back up.
 
I can fit 11 in the 3.25 bays in my a70f, could add another 5 in the 5.25 bays if i removed the optical drive and fan controller.
 
I have just transfer 1TB from one hard drive to another and just set it away when I went to bed and it was all done when I got up :)
 
Well, it's finally done after waiting far too long for the Fractal Design XL case to come into stock.

Case: Fractal Design XL Black
Mobo: Supermicro X8SIL-F
CPU: Intel i3-540 + Stock HSF
RAM: Kingston 2x2GB ECC DDR3
Video: ATi 3650 with DVI, HDMI & DP
SATA Controller: Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Port SAS/SATA Card
Drives: 6 x 2TB Samsung F4 HD204UI + 4 x 2TB Western Digital WD20EARS
PSU: Corsair HX520
O/S: Windows 7 x64
Other: FlexRAID v1.4 beta 7




Many thanks to ubern00b for all the advice and helping me to build it :)
 
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That must be quite a heavy case now, at least at one end. ;) Still, your wallet will be a much lighter to compensate for this. :D

I must say I'm slightly surprised you can run that much off a 500w PSU.
 
I just carried it down to install it under the stairs behind the TV and it weighs a ****ing ton.

More sweat? Not possible.

The PSU doesn't seem to break a sweat. The air blowing out the back is barely warm to the touch. Would be cool to get something like a Kill-A-Watt meter to test the draw on the socket.
 
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get a tj07 and have it modded up to fit more hdds in the bottom. Ive replaced all teh standard 3.5" bays in mine (6) with water cooling bits and im only using the 5.25 bays and I took out the front usb port thing to give me another 3.5" bay that im using for ssd's.

Could fit 17 with no modding (using 2 5 by 3's) and either one 5.25 for a cd drive, or another hdd, but there is LOADS of potential for you to fit more in if you put a bit of work in and suspend some drives, or just screw some stuff in etc. Hell, you might even be able to fit a couple of 5 by 3's in the bottom of it, it is high enough and depth looks like it could be ok. that'd give you 20 with more space to play around with inside than the antec 1200 (i think?). Ive linked some pics to give an idea of space etc. They are old pics, but still. the thing in the bottom of my 5.25 bays is a 5 by 3 icy box enclosure (old type that is now EOL).
Edit: and the cards are gtx 280s for sizing purposes.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/Ch3m1c4L/03102008792.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/Ch3m1c4L/04102008793.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/Ch3m1c4L/06102008795.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/Ch3m1c4L/06102008796.jpg

There are sites that will do case modding for you, generally the services they offer are for anodiing or custom water cooling mounts etc but they are very happy to do bespoke systems.


nvm, didnt notice page 2 lol. stupid tired brain after working and travelling to and from london and not sleeping last night :/
 
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