neilt0

What are the drive temps during a parity check?

After the modded BIOS is installed on an N36L, you'll see this screen: If you don't see it on the N40L, you may need a modded BIOS. http://www.avforums.com may have a new N40L BIOS -- you'll need to look for it. This says it works on the N40L and is required if you want to run all the N40L SATA ports at full speed. Don't blame me if your N40L explodes and burns down your house though: http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1521657-hp-n36l-microserver-updated-ahci-bios-support-3.html

Sharkoon sell them as spares (Europe, possibly Asia), but that case has probably been discontinued, so may not be easy to find. I'm sure other cases use similar ones, so you might find a vendor selling spares. Or maybe try a speciality cooling web site.

That fan at the back has to draw air from somewhere, so having some of the air come through that grill will cool the drive better than having the lid off, when the air could come from that big hole in the top!

neilt0, I'm interested in the Black Friday Newegg deal on the N40L. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859107052&Tpk=N82E16859107052 But it only has a 150w PSU. What do you think the limitations of that would be? Mine also has a 150W PSU. Boots fine with 2x RAM modules, 2x7200rpm drives and 4x5400rpm drives. Idles at 27-37W.

One of the two drives in that top area is my cache drive, so it's spun down during the parity check. Also, in the 5.25" opening I inserted a mesh grill thingy from another case: My temps in that area during a parity check are about the same (or lower) than in the regular 4 bays.

Of course it's with the lid on, otherwise it would have said "the drive temps are insane!11!!! I have to run it with the lid off!!!111!!!". It doesn't.

Power -- already answered in this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11585.msg146008#msg146008 Heat -- already answered in this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11585.msg139990#msg139990

For 6 drives (one being 2.5"), you would also need an eSATA to SATA cable. For 6 drives, all being 3.5", you wouldn't use the IB-168SK-B (you'd use an X-Swing or equivalent). I can't remember if it comes with a SATA cable, but that should be listed on the Icy Box or supplier web site. 2GB would be enough to run unRAID plus some add-ons. SABnzbd and cache_dirs can both use a lot of RAM, so I'd put in another 2GB or 4GB myself if you wanted to use both of those. Or try it first. Use an N40L compatible BIOS (I think one has been posted on avforums). Thinking of going for the 6 drive option, all 3.5. For this, I would use the spare sata for one of the drives up top, but what about the other? Still use eSata to Sata for it? And would I have to have the lid removed to fit in the drives and keep them cool enough? All the information you have asked about is in this thread. I'm not going to keep answering the same questions over and over when I've already spent a considerable amount of time writing up how-tos. Someone with more patience than me might want to do that, but I'm going to suggest you read the entire thread. Or at least skim it. Or just look at the pictures.

http://www.aquatuning.co.uk/product_info.php/info/p6594_Nexus-Double-Twin-HDD-decoupling.html

For 6 drives (one being 2.5"), you would also need an eSATA to SATA cable. For 6 drives, all being 3.5", you wouldn't use the IB-168SK-B (you'd use an X-Swing or equivalent). I can't remember if it comes with a SATA cable, but that should be listed on the Icy Box or supplier web site. 2GB would be enough to run unRAID plus some add-ons. SABnzbd and cache_dirs can both use a lot of RAM, so I'd put in another 2GB or 4GB myself if you wanted to use both of those. Or try it first. Use an N40L compatible BIOS (I think one has been posted on avforums).

All your answers are in this thread. All you have to do is read it.

You mean apart from "This promotion is only available to end user customers based in the UK" ?

Yeah, shut it Dirty Yanks! You'll save way more than the rebate price just in the savings you would have made (2 months ago) by buying enough hard drives to fill the HP Microserver compared to what we paid (2 months ago) for drives.

Great news for UK peeps! The £100 cashback offer is now available on the N40L! I think the main differences are a CPU bump from 1.3GHz (dual core) to 1.5GHz and a RAM bump from 1GB to 2GB (I hear that's a single 2GB DIMM). http://www.serversplus.com/pdfs/PA0058.pdf Available at ebuyer for £250: http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-hp-proliant-turion-ii-n40l-microserver-658553-421 = £150 after cashback. Authorised HP dealers only. Make sure you get the model with the right part number or the deal won't be honoured. I think I'm going to wait to see if that price goes down a little from other suppliers. Someone had the N36L for £89 after cashback recently, which is ridiculous. Specs of the model on offer: HP Part number: 658553-421 http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF06b/15351-15351-4237916-4237917-4237917-4248009-5163346.html Processor: AMD Turion™ II Model Neo N40L Number of processors: 1 Memory, standard: 2 GB Processor core available: 2 Memory slots: 2 DIMM slots Memory type: PC3-10600E UDIMMs DDR3 Expansion slots: 2 Network controller: (1) 1GbE NC107i 1 Port Storage controller: Integrated 4 port SATA RAID Power supply type: (1) 150 W Management software: N/A Processor cache: 2 MB L2 Optical drive type: None ship standard Form factor (fully configured): Ultra Micro Tower Warranty - year(s) (parts/labor/onsite): 1/0/0

You may want to read the very comprehensive review/comparison of the different 5in3s someone here put together.

Hello. The four bay iStar is 80 pounds and the Icy Box is 97 pounds for five drives. Apart from the differnce of 10 UK pounds is there something i am missing that you think is better? £60: http://www.xcase.co.uk/hotswap-stoarge-kit-p/hddkit-xx-500.htm Or just get a Norco case: http://www.xcase.co.uk/24-bay-Hotswap-rackmount-chassis-norco-RPC-4224-p/case-xcase-rm424.htm

Silly money! Consider something from http://www.xcase.co.uk/

You're better off adding an ESATA card with port multiplier support (if it works with unRAID) and adding an external enclosure. Or stuffing more drives in one case. I've easily put 6 in mine. With a case mod, you can have 7x 3.5" and probably 1x 2.5".

http://www.avforums.com/forums/14289120-post3.html http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=958208

If you're in the UK (or Australia), get the 1.3GHz version for almost 1/2 price with the rebate. If you're not in the UK or Oz, take a look at the pricing of both and make your decision. I don't think the CPU bump will make much difference in the power consumption. It's pretty low on this machine. If you're not running anything CPU intensive like transcoding or multiple add-ons or SABnzbd (when it's doing a par repair), you may not notice a difference with the new CPU.

Correct. You can do that for USB or SATA drives. If you have a free unRAID license, this lets you mount a drive so you can do stuff like SAB/nzbget/Transmission on a non-array drive.

Literally everything you need to know is in that post: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11585.msg144444#msg144444 Now, if what I posted is "all Greek" to you, you've got two options: 1) If you're a techie, like me (NERDS!) read up a bit on telnet, Putty and the Linux command line. 2) If you're not a techie (NERD!) you'll need to find a friendly one to help out. Typing commands when you're not sure what you're doing can lead to data loss, so do be careful if you're a n00b! The nature of unRAID means that if you're doing something besides booting it up as a plain vanilla server and adding the odd package via unMENU, you need to "get your hands dirty". You probably need something like this for your SATA power: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Molex-to-2-SATA-Internal-Power-Splitter-Cable/dp/B0002GRUV4 The microserver has a spare Molex connection, so you connect that to this.

Assuming you flash the BIOS, the eSATA port will run at the same speed as the other SATA ports. I wouldn't use an SSD, I'd use a 2.5" 5400rpm drive if you want to save power. A quick look at a WD Scorpio Blue: Power Dissipation Read/Write 2.50 Watts Idle 0.85 Watts Standby 0.25 Watts Sleep 0.10 Watts As for using a Plus license to get the cache drive, you could mount a drive outside the array without it being a cache drive. I detailed that earlier in the thread. The Power connection for a 2.5" SATA drive is the same as it is for a 3.5". You don't need to disable the cache to send data. Or disable parity. Just write stuff to the array. Don't assign parity initially if you want to speed up writes when filling drives, then assign parity later. Also, the UK offer has been extended (again) to October 31st: http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/campaign/proliantmicroserver/offer.html

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