PeteAron

Here you can see the PS and the cabling. I am not skilled at making the inside of a computer look like art, but one complaint I have about the PS is that the cabling is hard to work with - perhaps the case is on the small side. The power connectors for SATA are too close together and then I have a bunch of unused molex connectors. hmm. On the back here I have added a case fan to pull air out of the box, but I havent needed it yet. The Cooling Box helped a lot. now that its cold, I have the cooling box fan unplugged to keep those two drives up at about 38 C during operation.

I set up my unraid server about two months ago. The computer is a Dimension 9200 / XPS 410 / DXP061 - I bought the 410 in 2006. I am running a Core2 Duo 6600 @ 2.40GHz. The system has 4 GB of ram and 6 sata ports. I had replaced the power supply some time ago with a 550W Corsair 80 plus PS. I installed a EverCool Dual 5.25 in. Drive Bay to Triple 3.5 in. HDD Cooling Box in the two 5.25 bays to hold three hard drives. The case is designed to house two hard drives on the bottom in an unusual setup but I placed two drives there. Now, because of the PS SATA power cabling, I was forced to put only three drives up top (there is room for an additional two drives beneath the two 5.25 bays), and a third drive on the bottom of the case with the other two. There is another reason for this - the distance between the SATA PS ports is too small to span the distance between the two drives situated horizontally, so using the third drive in between allows use of all three power ports. This drive I leave standing on its side - quite inelegant but the box does not move. I have two Hitachi HDS5C302 2 TB drives (one is parity), One Samsung HD204UI 2 TB drive, A WD WD20EARS 2 TB, A Hitachi HDS72101 1 TB, and a Samsung HD102UJ 1 TB drive

PS could someone update the wiki for me? http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility#An_explanation_of_what_the_.22Tested_Level.22_column_means From what I can tell, hardware strangeness aside, this is a very solid system to use for unraid. I could hold a total of three drives in my cooling box, two drives in the 3.5 in bays below that, two in the stock position on the floor, without case modiifications, or a total of 7 drives. There is room in the case for two more drives above the stock drive positions, but customized mounts would be needed. You would also need an SATA card.

I'd like to report that my XPS 410 is running smoothly enough that I can offer a Level 2 Certification. I have posted recently on the Level 1, and I just completed a second parity check yesterday. In between these two posts I have copied approximately 2.5 TB to the array. I have it nearly 1/2 full now, out of the 8 TB. The Syslog is posted below. Here is a link to the thread containing the photos http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=16056.0 Also, I am copying the hw info from my first post: I set up my unraid server about two months ago. The computer is a Dimension 9200 / XPS 410 / DXP061 - I bought the 410 in 2006. I am running a Core2 Duo 6600 @ 2.40GHz. The system has 4 GB of ram and 6 sata ports. I had replaced the power supply some time ago with a 550W Corsair 80 plus PS. This board will not boot without a video card. I sourced an 8 MB ATI rage card for the server =) and it works perfectly. As I state below, I also added an NIC for gigabit ethernet - the stock NIC is a bit flaky and I had added this NIC card in about 2008. I installed a EverCool Dual 5.25 in. Drive Bay to Triple 3.5 in. HDD Cooling Box in the two 5.25 bays to hold three hard drives. The case is designed to house two hard drives on the bottom in an unusual setup but I placed two drives there. Now, because of the PS SATA power cabling, I was forced to put only three drives up top (there is room for an additional two drives beneath the two 5.25 bays), and a third drive on the bottom of the case with the other two. There is another reason for this - the distance between the SATA PS ports is too small to span the distance between the two drives situated horizontally, so using the third drive in between allows use of all three power ports. This drive I leave standing on its side - quite inelegant but the box does not move. I have two Hitachi HDS5C302 2 TB drives (one is parity), One Samsung HD204UI 2 TB drive, A WD WD20EARS 2 TB, A Hitachi HDS72101 1 TB, and a Samsung HD102UJ 1 TB drive This gives me a total of 8 TB storage. The server has run pretty flawlessly. I have been steadily copying media to various shares - I am using only share directories. Disk temps have been below 35 almost always and are typically around 30 - I am worried this is too cold as when not in use, the drive temps get as low as 18 to 21, depending on the drive location. I also have a gigabit network card installed; the onboard ethernet was always a bit flaky. syslog-2011-10-25.txt

I set up my unraid server about a month and a half ago and wanted to report on my setup and my experience with it. I am posting a log file from the last 30 days of use. Here is a link to the photos http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=16056.0 The computer is a Dimension 9200 / XPS 410 / DXP061 - I bought the 410 in 2006. I am running a Core2 Duo 6600 @ 2.40GHz. The system has 4 GB of ram and 6 sata ports. I had replaced the power supply some time ago with a 550W Corsair 80 plus PS. I installed a EverCool Dual 5.25 in. Drive Bay to Triple 3.5 in. HDD Cooling Box in the two 5.25 bays to hold three hard drives. The case is designed to house two hard drives on the bottom in an unusual setup but I placed two drives there. Now, because of the PS SATA power cabling, I was forced to put only three drives up top (there is room for an additional two drives beneath the two 5.25 bays), and a third drive on the bottom of the case with the other two. There is another reason for this - the distance between the SATA PS ports is too small to span the distance between the two drives situated horizontally, so using the third drive in between allows use of all three power ports. This drive I leave standing on its side - quite inelegant but the box does not move. I have two Hitachi HDS5C302 2 TB drives (one is parity), One Samsung HD204UI 2 TB drive, A WD WD20EARS 2 TB, A Hitachi HDS72101 1 TB, and a Samsung HD102UJ 1 TB drive This gives me a total of 8 TB storage. The server has run pretty flawlessly. I have been steadily copying media to various shares - I am using only share directories. Disk temps have been below 35 almost always and are typically around 30 - I am worried this is too cold as when not in use, the drive temps get as low as 18 to 21, depending on the drive location. I also have a gigabit network card installed; the onboard ethernet was always a bit flaky. I have a mixed network but when copying from a puter with gigabit ethernet, I typically get transfer rates in the 33 MB/s range, occasionally higher. Overall it is a bit flaky from a hardware layout perspective but it works fine. I am looking forward to building a bigger system down the road when I run out of storage. However, once Unraid 5 is released and I can add 3 TB drives, this configuration could handle as much as 15 TB of data, if I replace all the drives. If existing drives fail I will replace them with the larger drives. I am also considering upgrading my license to handle more drives and just build the larger array sooner. We will see. syslog-2011-10-08.txt

I am using unraid ver 4.7. I just bought a copy of Plus last weekend. thank you, I will try this and report back.

Hi All, I am a newb and I have my array up and running. I have about a TB of files on a 2 TB disk that I would like to copy using the drive as an internal drive to take advantage of the faster transfer rates. I have a problem. I started the array, and tried to mount the disk using the wiki instructions, but get an error: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sde, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so then: root@Repository:~# fdisk -l|grep ntfs WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sde'! The util fdisk doesn 't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. is there a way to transfer files from the GUID partition table disk or am I sol? Thanks!

Thanks everyone for helping me. I found out that my old dell xps 410 (dxp061) has been used before for unraid, and following that person's lead, I have been setting up my server on that. Instead I bought a new mb and an i5-2300 to replace my 410 as my computer and am using the 410 as my server =). After a long weekend, including a power loss, I am building parity and preclearing two additional drives at the moment. Here are some notes from my weekend. I cant seem to boot this computer without a video card - this is bad because the card sucks a fair amount of power. I have to find a low power card or it will not boot/or I will just use too much power. The previous poster noted that the case it a problem - this is NOT an ATX m/b. it is a mirror image, and cannot be used in a standard atx case - my original plan. So you are stuck with this case and its m/b. I have four drives in place right now. There are two slots on the bottom of the case for drives. it seems whacky but the drives in this position stay about 8 to 15 C cooler than drives placed in the top of the case near where the dvd drives are. I have two drives below the two 5.25 bays, and need to get a 5.25 to 3.5 adaptor for the dvd bays - probably with built in fans. I was unable to use the built in nic but since this was true in windows as well I already had a pci NIC in place. again I would like to ditch the card to save power but will get to this later. unraid seems to run w/o a problem on this hardware combination. I put in two hitachi 2 tb drives (new) and it took 27 hr to preclear them. I set one as parity and the rig is building parity right now. At the same time I shut down after preclearing and added a samsung 2 tb and 1 tb drive in place, and those are preclearing while parity is built. I have had no problems with lan connectivity or dhcp. it all looks good. Further comments welcome! thanks everyone!

Thanks guys. Of course, once I read Rajs review, I went to newegg to buy the mb. Now IT IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE, just like every other recommended inexpensive board. This is so frustrating. I spent several hours finding out that I wanted that board, and now it is gone. Any other advice? How about this one: MSI 880GM-E41 AM3 AMD 880G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130295 I want 6 SATA connectors on the mb if I can get it. It seems fast; will this wast power?

Thanks for reading. This is my first build. I am going to buy the $69 unraid software and plan to run (eventually) a 6-drive server. I already have an antec 100 case. MB: ASUS M4A78LT-M AM3 AMD 760G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131672 RAM: Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Desktop Memory Model KVR1066D3/2GR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134785 CPU: AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Desktop Processor SDX145HBGMBOX PS: COOLER MASTER GX 450W RS450-ACAAD3-US 450W ATX12V v2.31 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103888 I'm not worried about HDD's and plan to use the onboard NIC - from my reading this sounds like n.p. right? I plan to run 6 x 2 TB, beginning with 3 or 4 (incl parity) The problem with the suggested budget builds thread is the MB is no longer available thanks! kimifelipe