MrLeek

At the risk of being awarded with "newbie question of the day", what is wrong with this? - Set up CPU, mobo and 1 hard drive. - Connect it to the power supply/monitor and do the initial test (i.e. make sure it's all working, CPU is not overheating, etc). - Gigabyte does its thing and adds the BIOS copy to the hard drive. - Switch off and add the second hard drive - this will be your parity drive! - Boot into unRAID, configure the first drive (with the BIOS copy) as a data drive and the second drive as the parity one. For what I'm reading, the major problem comes when the HPA copies the BOIS onto the parity drive. Get this to happen onto a data drive and there's not a problem. Or is that too simple a solution?

It'll be the next government (election in May most likely) that'll put our prices up; 2.5% Value Added Tax increase is almost certain to happen Best I get my gear soon!

Most do. Many of them have a BIOS option to disable it though. And those that don't have this option can usually (but not all of them) have the BIOS updated. That's worth knowing. I did a quick investigation on Gigabyte's website and looked at the spec sheet of a dozen or so random motherboards - some have dual BIOS on-board (so if the main BIOS gets corrupted the board has a backup to copy into the main BIOS) but other Gigabyte boards only have a single BOIS. I'm wondering therefore if there's a correlation between a single BIOS board and HPA - since if there's a backup BIOS already on the board then it doesn't need to put anything on the HDD? I looked at around 3-4 other mobo manuals (plus the OP's one and the one I'm planning to get for my own server) and none of them mentioned HPA - chances are Gigabyte call HPA something less obvious. So it's a theory at this stage - is it worth scratching at to see if it works?

Do all Gigabyte motherboards come with HPA? Just spotted this thread as I was about to buy a different Gigabyte mobo - GA-G31M-ES2L - and realised that I might run into the same problem....

then don't waste a slot on 1.5gb disk. there's cost per slot in your server. Yep - my thinking as well. Saving £30 now may come back to haunt me in the months ahead - false economy IMO.

Thanks for the comments unraided & Barzija. I noticed that the GA-G31M-ES2L motherboard was list on the compatibility link that you posted - in particular test logs have been provided for this board (the tick marks for the other newbies ). It's a fair shout on the 1.5TB drive; I am thinking about getting a 2TB parity drive and then a 1.5TB data drive to start the array off with. That way I get the option of adding 2TB drives in the future. The prices in the UK for 1.5TB and 2TB are largely comparable - around £90 for 1.5TB and £120 for 2TB, so there's no cost saving there. Finally the reviews I've read thus far on these items is very good, although Google searches for the hard drives tends to hide the reviews in the shopping results. It seems that any of those drives are good for the job, but if people have thoughts on that then I'm eager to hear then.

Before I do hit "order" I'd appreciate some thoughts on my component list: Celeron Dual Core E3300 Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L Corsair XMS2 1GB PC2-6400 WD Caviar Green 2Tb drives (WD20EARS) x 2 Corsair CMPSU-450 PSU I'm a little worried about the HD options - I thought about Seagate ST32000542AS Barracuda or Spinpoint F3EG, EcoGreen (both 2Tb). Got an old case to store it all in, but it's got lots of room and the cooling is fine. Help?? Edit: Hopefully a better title. I'm planning to use this to store DVDs, streaming them to my TV via Media Lobby from Cinemar. First time I've taken on this sort of challenge before (I've built PCs before, but this feels like a big step up!) so I want to avoid as many problems as possible.

Thanks for the advice. I did some digging and picked out a Celeron Dual Core E3300, the Gigbyte mobo mentioned above plus 1GB of Corsair XMS2 RAM for around £90 ($140). I could have gone a little cheaper with these items (and shopped around), but they all seem to check out and I've used scan.co.uk before and their service is excellent.

Hi guys I'm just getting started with fleshing out the requirements for the server I'll be building. My original plan was to use an old Athlon XP 2500+ with an MSI mobo. Trouble is, this board uses a nForce2 chipset...which is highlighted as potentially causing data corruption. Urgh! So - what's my best option? Is it worth tracking down a mobo that will fit the Athlon cpu? I found an Asus A7S8X for £30 (about $50) which the wiki suggests might be good. Or should I give up on the Athlon and get the best CPU/mobo package I can find - maybe a Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L? Add a cpu (P4? or should I go higher?) and I'm all set! Appreciate your help! Edit: Sorry, I should say that this post sort-of fits in both the mobo and cpu forums...so apologies to those that think this is a cpu question post.