christuf

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Everything posted by christuf

  1. Dear unRAID community, I love this exceptionally active community - I have learned *so* much from reading all the Wiki articles, blog posts and particularly these forums. Having done much reading, thinking, and planning, I am getting ready to pull the trigger on my first system. Before I set out the details though, here is my current setup, and goals for my new system. Currently I run an Scaleo home-server - it's effectively an inexpensive NAS storage device I got before I knew unRAID existed. It is set up with 4x 1.5TB drives configured in a RAID5 array. It has worked well with a web interface panel and the drive appears as a network device in OS X. But now it's getting near capacity, so am looking into building myself a new, scalable, unRAID system. So - these are my unRAID requirements: - A system that starts with a handful of drives, upgradable to 15 drives - A gradual build-out process - Able to use my current 1.5TB drives (no point in wasting them!) - Hot swap-able backplane (convenience, and honestly, it looks cool!) - While I don't want to go crazy, money isn't a huge factor Here's my plan... a build in three phases. Phase 1: Here are the components I've picked out for the initial build-out. - Case: Antec 900 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021) - Motherboard: Biostar A760G M2+ (http://cgi.ebay.com/BIOSTAR-A760G-M2-SOCKET-AM2-AM3-MOTHERBOARD-AMD-CHIPS-/370478094229?pt=Motherboards&hash=item5642371795#ht_2517wt_943) - Processor: 2.7 GHz AMD Sempron 140 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103698&Tpk=sempron%20140) - Memory: Kingston 2 GB DDR2 800 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134636) - PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005&cm_re=corsair_650-_-17-139-005-_-Product) - Hard disk: Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514) - Backplane: ICY DOCK MB455SPF-B Multi-Bay (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994028) - unRAID: Pro! I've picked out a case, motherboard, and PSU that should ultimately be able to support my 15-drive device. In the process I will take care of any 'hook' obstructions so that future backplane installs are painless. I plan to take advantage of the six on-board SATA ports on the motherboard for the first phase. Installing one of the backplanes and hooking up to five of the ports gets me up to 8TB of storage. I will then hard-install a sixth drive 2TB (7200rpm drive for speed given it's not part of the parity array) into one of the empty 5.25" bays and set it up as a cache disk. I'm using this both as a cache as well as warm spare drive in case of a drive failure. After setting up and migrating the data from my old RAID array, I will then retire that system for the time being. This gives me an opportunity to bring the new system up and road-test it for a good number of months before wiping the old drives for use in the new system... just in case something goes awry! Once, I'm at capacity in my 8TB system, then it's onto... Phase 2: In this phase, I'm adding another backplane to support an additional five drives. - Backplane: Icy Dock (as above) - SATA Controller: SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCIe (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101358&T) The SATA controller gives me an additional eight channels, of which I will use only four in this phase. I take my cache drive out of the case and place it into the 2nd backplane. I then take the four 1.5TB drives from my old NAS system and place them into the remaining bays - this gives me an additional 6TB of storage (up to a total of 14TB). I've also got four free SATA channels on the controller, useful for... Phase 3: In the final phase I put in the last backplane and drives - Backplane: Icy Dock (as above) - SATA Controller: TBD (PCIe x1) - Hard disk: Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB Given my four open SATA channels from Phase 2, and the availability of 1x PCI-e x1 slot, I use a 2-channel SATA Card to give me remaining connections. I put the remaining 5x 2TB drives into the new backplane - although unRAID might support 4TB hard-drives by then! I will also assess matters at this point - if space permits, I could place one final drive in the case somewhere to get the 15+1 cache (I have one spare SATA channel). Although at this point, who knows where technology will be! So - my questions really are: 1) How does my proposed strategy look? 2) Are the any other components I should consider instead of those listed above? 3) What about fans/ cooling? By looking at the case, it has plenty of ventilation to start with. But as I start using the front bays for backplanes, there will be reduced ventilation with an increasing number of drives. At what point should I start to worry about temperatures? 4) Do you have any advice for software (preferably OS X-based) for transferring data from my RAID5 server to the new unRAID box? I want something more reliable than an operating system copy to ensure the integrity of the files transferred. I have picked up the tip to not configure the parity drive until after the transfer to improve performance. My sincere thanks to those of you that made it all the way to the end. I am tremendously grateful for any advice or thoughts you may have about this project! Chris