Rusty

I have been wondering how to do this with my server (I am currently building it so havent actually tried my method yet, but in theorie it should work) Thought I would share, perhaps it can help you. My router supports the dd-wrt custom firmware, I am planning to flash it to this. What I will do that is setup a WOL daemon on the router that will wake up my server every day at a specific time. (http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/WOL) And run a cron job on the server itself to switch off at a certain time everyday

Just in case anyone ever has the same issue. I solved it by flashing my Motherboard to the latest firmware (should have done that as first thing really)

HiSoC8Y can you let me know what change you made in your BIOS? I am trying to get my M1015 to work on my ASUS A75-V PRO but it wont post either. Perhaps your changes can push me in the right direction

I have just ordered my unraid Pro license and been lurking here for ages. But now it is finally time to build my first unraid server. As everyone I would appreciate a quick check on my shopping list to see if it includes any stupidities. First the standard information: What is your budget? I am looking for bang for my buck, currently I am looking at spending around 600 Euro's (incl 2 new drives) How many drives? I will start off with 6 excisting drives, adding 2 newly bought ones. Maximum I expect to reach is 15. unRAID Add Ons? Yes, sickbeard, Couchpotato and SABNzb. Those are must haves, might add others once my server is running smoothly and I feel I am missing something. green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives? a combination of excisting drives, but any new drives will be green. Spare parts? Yes 6 drives which are now all in USB enclosers attached to my Asrock ION running XMBC in the living room. My current shopping list: Case: Fractal Design Define XL http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=2∏=69 MoBo: Asus F1A75-V PRO http://www.asus.nl/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_FM1/F1A75V_PRO/ CPU: AMD A6-3650 Boxed http://products.amd.com/en-gb/DesktopAPUDetail.aspx?id=16&f1=&f2=&f3=&f4=&f5=&f6=& Memory: Kingston ValueRAM KVR1066D3S8N7/4Ghttp://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/partsinfo.asp?ktcpartno=KVR1066D3S8N7/4G PSU: Corsair Builder CX600 V2 http://www.corsair.com/power-supplies/non-modular-psus/builder-series/builder-series-cx600-v2-80plus-certified-power-supply.html PSU: FSP Aurum 500 http://www.fsplifestyle.com/psu/aurum-series/aurum-500/ Controller: Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SASLP-MV8.cfm Controller: IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0740.html Reasonings:The case will hold 10 drives inside, once I reach more I will add a 5in3 to get to my maximum 15. Between the MoBo's 7 SATA ports and the controllers 8 I will get a maximum of 15. Any comments, concerns, obvious mistakes or general good luck wishes. Please do leave a message. [Edit]After some feedback on GoT (a dutch computer forum) I made some changes.

Great thanks for the info!

Would anyone know the answer to the question above? I am looking to build my first server (finally) and this board looks very temping. Having the ability to use 2 8-port SATA cards would make it perfect for me.

I plan to buy this tower for my build (if I can finally find the time to start) http://www.nexustek.nl/NXS-Nexus_EDGE_full_tower_case_with_noise_absorption_foam.htm Will take 9x 3.5" and 9x 5.25" 9 top slot has a bracket for 3.5". So with 3x 4in3 you have a total of 21 drives.

I believe you are mistaken. I checked the link that you provided in your OP and on the ASUS site it says the board has the following ports: 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 1 x PCIe x1 2 x PCI So no the Asus M4A78L-M will not accept two of the MV8 cards it will only accept one. Greybeard is correct this board can support 16 drives between onboard SATA and PCIe slots (8 in x16 + 2 in x1). I believe you can also add maybe 2-4 more with a PCI controller card. Some users avoid using the PCI slots because they share bandwidth which usually means that if you get more than 2 drives attached on the PCI bus then you could start to see a performance hit. The board you have selected will support 16 drives no problem with a potential to go as high as 20 if you are willing to accept a little lower throughput on those last 4 drives. There are ways to setup/allocate the disks in your array to minimize the impact of the PCI bandwith limitation. If you seach the forum you'll find numerous discussions of this topic Yes you are right obviously. I misread this "1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 " as in it has 2 ports. Right so back to thinking if I should go for an other MoBo which will support more drives or if I am happy to go with 16 as a max for now.

Have you thought about how you would add SATA ports? Looks like this board will take one MV8 and one PCIe two port card. Giving you a total of 16 ports. Where do you go from there? PCI slots? Port expanders? Might be worth giving consideration to a mobo that can take two MV8s if you think you will be adding a lot of drives down the road. I had an other look, but I am not sure I understand. Does the MV8 not go into a pci-e 16x port? Because the MoBo has 2 of these.

Have you thought about how you would add SATA ports? Looks like this board will take one MV8 and one PCIe two port card. Giving you a total of 16 ports. Where do you go from there? PCI slots? Port expanders? Might be worth giving consideration to a mobo that can take two MV8s if you think you will be adding a lot of drives down the road. That is a good point, but I do not think I will go beyond 16 drives soon. I opted for the case because in my experience in computer builds, the case can last a few years at least. Where the rest will probably be replaced soonish. So I might replace the MoBo before I get to the limit of 16 drives. Still I guess its worth having a look around for one that will support my total drive capacity already.

Yes. However I believe that you need to update the firmware to achieve good performance in unRAID. I think the firmware update converts the drive from 4k sectors (advanced format) to regular 512 byte sectors. Search around the forums and you should find more info about how to update the firmware. I have read a few posts where people have had difficulty updating the firmware. The easiest advanced format drive to use are WD EARS drives (I have 2 of them myself). To disable the 4k sectors you just install a jumper on pins 7-8 and you're good to go. The WD20EARS is the same price as the others. So will probably change to that.

The new Samsung 2TB is an Advanced format drive...without no jumper to offset from sector 63 to 64. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8012.0 Thanks, first time I read about that. Will do my homework and probably change drives. Would the Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS be a suitable replacement for the drives? http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=st32000542as-bcuda-lp-sata-2tb-hd&vgnextoid=1f70e5daa90b0210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&locale=en-US&reqPage=Model&modelReqTab=Features

So after reading this forum for a while to get as much info as needed to start to build my own server, the time has come to post my shopping list to see if I am missing something or if I have hardware that could be improved. My server is heavily based on nAffies server which you can read about here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6351.0 I thank him very much his effort, because it saved me a lot of time. The purpose: It will be a media server used to store all my movies, music, pictures etc... that will be mainly played from a XBMC based ION330 in the living room. Secondary use will backup for the different documents that we have around several different PC's and laptops. All crucial documents are also in an offsite backup. The shopping list: CPU: AMD Sempron 140 (http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=585) MoBo: Asus M4A78L-M (http://www.asus.nl/product.aspx?P_ID=YagmSfSD3EvKe6g7) PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro M500 (http://www.coolermaster.com/product.php?product_id=4196) Memory: Kingston ValueRAM KVR800D2N6/2G (http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/PartsInfo.asp?root=&LinkBack=&ktcpartno=KVR800D2N6/2G) Case: Nexus Edge (http://www.nexustek.nl/NXS-Nexus_EDGE_full_tower_case_with_noise_absorption_foam.htm) HD's (newly bought): Western Digital Caviar GreenPower WD20EARS (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=773) Changed HD's based on discussion below Current excisting HD's that will be put in: 3x 1TB's and 2x 500GB's. One of the 500GB's will be used as cache drive. Main goal of the server: Energy Efficient Future proof: hence the very large case which in total can hold 24 HDD's CPU power is less important, transfer speed to the server will be handles by the cache drive. Ideally I would like to use wake-on-ARP. But I am not sure what this could mean hardware wise (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6729.0) So my question is then in the end, does anyone see any potential issues with this hardware or think I should consider other hardware?

Congratulations! I am sure you will be happy with the process. When I did my build, it didn't go without a hitch, but I was able to go to the boards and find previous post that helped me get past any minor difficulties. There is some excellent support available here. Enjoy. thanks I will enjoy. Been lurking around here for a while now. Will be needing posting my shopping list soon to verify I didn't miss any obvious issues.

Very nice post and very recognizable. I am currently in the convert stage (have been a while already, but only now I am beginning to order things for my build. Didnt have time before.)

hi Naffie. I saw that you are building an unraid server on the DIY NAS thread on GoT and followed you here. I was already interested in having an unraid server, but my knowledge of server specific hardware made me hesitate. Now that I see your build has gone well I will use your research and probably will end up the same server (or very identical) as you have build. So your hard work is very much appreciated as it will safe me a lot of work on research and knowledge building. My need for a storage server comes from the same issue that you where facing, a HTPC with 5 USB drives hooked up is not an ideal situation. I think I will start the actual build in a few weeks. I hope you dont mind me asking a few questions every now and then while I gather my own info.