Spec Help with Home Fileserver Upgrade

Valo · 12 Mar 2006 at 16:59

I'm needing to upgrade my home fileserver/download box as I'm running out of hd space

.

Spec

1Ghz P3 (Passive Cooling)
512 MB RAM
Intel Motherboard (ide)

2x 60GB Maxtor HD - 1x System Disk - 1x Storage(ditch)
1x 160GB Maxtor HD - Storage(possibly ditch)

I'm wanting some serious storage with easy expandabity but runs quitely...is SATA worth the investment?
I'm also needing a new case which has been made for silence, as it's in my study and the existing case is cheap and vibrates... I was thinking of the Antec Sonata II views?

BUDGET = £300

Options Please!

Budget

BigDom · 12 Mar 2006 at 17:58

The Antec Cases are nice enough

. Hard Disk wise, Samsung Spinpoint SATA is a good choice.

Given your budget I've gone not just for data increase but also data security.

CA-027-AN Antec SLK3000B Midi Tower Case - No PSU (CA-027-AN)
£29.95 £29.95
CC-004-HP Highpoint Rocket RAID 1640 4-channel SATA RAID 5 Host Adapter (CC-004-HP)
£67.55 £67.55
HD-018-SA Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-018-SA)
£54.95 £164.85
Subtotal £262.35
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.95
VAT £47.48
Total £318.78

If you decide to RAID 5 the 3 disks you'll end up with 500GB of data.

I took the assumption that you needed a SATA controller. (EDIT I MEANT SATA NOT RAID... hehe sowwy)

noxidjkram@hotm · 12 Mar 2006 at 18:05

I'd look at the fact the present disks are IDE and not SATA.

I don't think you could RAID 5 them with that set up, as you can't attach em to the SATA RAID card (unless you use IDE-->SATA converters).

Or am I mistaken in some way?

M

Amp34 · 12 Mar 2006 at 18:13

I'm intrigued as to why he needs the HD's in RAID anyway. If its just for storing video and downloads etc he might as well just have them as standalone drives so having 750GB of space instead of 500.

noxidjkram@hotm · 12 Mar 2006 at 18:19

Amp34 said:
I'm intrigued as to why he needs the HD's in RAID anyway. If its just for storing video and downloads etc he might as well just have them as standalone drives so having 750GB of space instead of 500.

Maybe to save the annoyance of choosing drives to save stuff on... a little easier to structure your filespace?

But yeah, no real need for RAID, you are right.

M

Amp34 · 12 Mar 2006 at 18:26

I dont really know much about RAIDing drives, usually it's for making sure data is safe or to speed up transfer, thats why i was interested as to why RAID would be a good idea in this case.

Craig321 · 12 Mar 2006 at 18:27

Tumbler^ said:
I'm needing to upgrade my home fileserver/download box as I'm running out of hd space .

Spec

1Ghz P3 (Passive Cooling)
512 MB RAM
Intel Motherboard (ide)

2x 60GB Maxtor HD - 1x System Disk - 1x Storage(ditch)
1x 160GB Maxtor HD - Storage(possibly ditch)

I'm wanting some serious storage with easy expandabity but runs quitely...is SATA worth the investment?
I'm also needing a new case which has been made for silence, as it's in my study and the existing case is cheap and vibrates... I was thinking of the Antec Sonata II views?

BUDGET = £300

Options Please!

Budget

My [size=+1]Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 200GB 6V200E0 SATA-II 8MB Cache is very nice and quiet[/size]

noxidjkram@hotm · 12 Mar 2006 at 18:36

Tumbler^ said:
I was thinking of the Antec Sonata II views?

Very nice and quiet case - though there are many others out there that could suit your needs for this too.

Its worth a looksee into the cases forum and ask Yewen over there for his opinion.

M

BigDom · 12 Mar 2006 at 19:02

noxidjkram@hotm said:
Maybe to save the annoyance of choosing drives to save stuff on... a little easier to structure your filespace?

But yeah, no real need for RAID, you are right.

M

It's an OPTION available with that card, just an option, which allows two things.

1) Security to reduce the annoyance should a disk fail.
2) single partition to store stuff on, not essential of course.

Basically there isn't a huge difference in price between a PCI card with just 4 SATA port and this card, so I figured I'd put this one in in order to give more options. Nothing more, nothing less.

BigDom · 12 Mar 2006 at 19:03

Craig321 said:
My [size=+1]Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 200GB 6V200E0 SATA-II 8MB Cache is very nice and quiet[/size]

Maxtor have a VERY bad failure rate reputation at the moment. Naturally not all fail, and some are reliable, but they don't have a good enough current reputation to use reliably.

noxidjkram@hotm · 12 Mar 2006 at 19:09

BigDom said:
It's an OPTION available with that card, just an option, which allows two things.

1) Security to reduce the annoyance should a disk fail.
2) single partition to store stuff on, not essential of course.

Basically there isn't a huge difference in price between a PCI card with just 4 SATA port and this card, so I figured I'd put this one in in order to give more options. Nothing more, nothing less.

Options are always good - to refer to my first point above though, are these actually options - since the other drives the OP has are IDE and not SATA?

M

BigDom · 12 Mar 2006 at 19:37

noxidjkram@hotm said:
Options are always good - to refer to my first point above though, are these actually options - since the other drives the OP has are IDE and not SATA?

M

Errmmm yes... :/

Doesn't matter what he currently has. Not sure why your asking :/

noxidjkram@hotm · 12 Mar 2006 at 19:49

BigDom said:
Errmmm yes... :/

Doesn't matter what he currently has. Not sure why your asking :/

Typical me being unclear... What i mean is that you stated:

BigDom said:
If you decide to RAID 5 the 3 disks you'll end up with 500GB of data.

Well - the RAID card you mention is SATA - and the new drive you mention is too... But the old ones are IDE.

The question is how can the OP RAID the 3 together with that card since it only supports SATA??

[EDIT] And i'm being an idiot - YAY!

You specced 3 of the drives!

*gives self award of the doofus*

[\EDIT]

M

BigDom · 12 Mar 2006 at 20:28

hehe I made a mistake too... meant I assumed he needed a SATA controler not a raid controller. Just went for RAID cos it wasn't much more and gave more options.

Valo · 12 Mar 2006 at 20:30

Cheers for the responces guys..... I've sorted what i'm going to get with the case and the raid card, however i really want to raid 5, three 500GB disks

to give me a 1TB of usable storage with redundancy.

So I'm going to have to wait until the price of those 500gb disks :eek:

come down a bit

What do you think?

BigDom · 12 Mar 2006 at 20:36

Tumbler^ said:
Cheers for the responces guys..... I've sorted what i'm going to get with the case and the raid card, however i really want to raid 5, three 500GB disks to give me a 1TB of usable storage with redundancy.

So I'm going to have to wait until the price of those 500gb disks come down a bit

What do you think?

Sounds good to me

NickK · 12 Mar 2006 at 22:07

It all depends on what you'll be using it for.

I have a fileserver with 800Gb as 6x200Gb drives, 5x200Gb in raid 5 with a hot swap 200Gb running as an automatic rebuild target. It has an 80Gb Samsung system drive. I have 2 Maxtor DM9s and 4 Maxtor DM10s with a Barton XP2500, NF7-S and 512Mb with a gf3ti200. All running at stock in a coolermaster case.

If you're running linux such as SuSE 9.3 and you use evms then you'll have RAID5 or even RAID6 in software. You can then use as many drives IDE or SATA as you like.
evms allows the raid 5 array to be reshaped - ie to expand by adding additional drives or shrinking by removing a drive's worth of capacity.
The Barton has more than enough CPU power to run the raid5 software, webserver, samba (PC access as a network drive) and MySQL.

Eitherway - if you run a RAID5 array then you should leave it running as stop/start power cycling will kill the drives quickly.
I would recommend you get an Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) to prevent brown outs, spikes and allow a controlled shutdown if the power goes. I have an APC 500VA BackUPS which supports 300W load for about 8-12 minutes. Both windows and linux can be set to perform a shutdown if the battery level reaches a configured point. Allowing all the cached and unwritten data to be written before the machine's power runs out.

Also with 160Gb you're more likely to back stuff up. Don't get lulled into the fact that RAID5 and 1Tb results in no backups.. RAID is about availability rather than a substitute for a backup plan.

adam3223 · 13 Mar 2006 at 02:53

Tumbler^ said:
I'm needing to upgrade my home fileserver/download box as I'm running out of hd space .

Spec

1Ghz P3 (Passive Cooling)

I expect to build a small router / filesharer later this year and i wanted something low power and quiet.

Can you still buy old CPUs like that from retailers, or is it strictly the 2nd hand market?
Will most CPUs < 1ghz in speed be able to be passively cooled?
And would i be able to find a micro atx mobo for older CPUs like that?

Thanks.

BigDom · 13 Mar 2006 at 09:16

adam3223 said:
I expect to build a small router / filesharer later this year and i wanted something low power and quiet.

Can you still buy old CPUs like that from retailers, or is it strictly the 2nd hand market?
Will most CPUs < 1ghz in speed be able to be passively cooled?
And would i be able to find a micro atx mobo for older CPUs like that?

Thanks.

Strictly second hand these days. Most probably you'll be able to get a setup of CPU/Mobo and maybe even RAM secondfand.

New your looking at a 754 Sempron setup.