Rajahal

Server Part Deals deserves a shoutout in this thread, great source of manufacturer recertified drives, with free 2 day shipping within the continental US. I just ordered two individual drives from them, and they came very well packaged (ESD bag, and very strong custom bubble pack, in individual cardboard boxes, then both packed into a larger cardboard box with additional padding). https://serverpartdeals.com/

Thanks! I looked at the 804 as well, looks like a solid case, but I get the sense that its cooling for the hard drive bays isn't as strong. Have you had any drive temp issues with it? Meshify 2 is looking like the one.

Thank you, I'm afraid that one is out of budget. A decent value for someone who needs hot swap though.

Howdy, I'm contemplating a server facelift, as the old Thermaltake case I'm currently using has some noise/fan rattle issues. My server mostly lives in a closet where airflow can be an issue too, so I would like to improve the airflow for the drives (I have one in particular that sits above 50C most of the time, the rest stay in the 40s). I'm using old hardware and don't see much of a need to update it at the moment, so I'll stick with: - microATX motherboard, CPU has a standard factory heatsink and fan. - 5 HDDs (1 parity, 4 data, and I have another 3 or so spare smaller capacity drives I could add with a PCIe SATA card) - 1 SSD (2.5" SATA) - ATX PSU, can be mounted with fan up or fan down Based on recommendations in these and other forums, I've found these two cases that fit my budget: Meshify 2 - $150 https://www.newegg.com/black-fractal-design-meshify-2-atx-mid-tower/p/11-352-131 Define R5 - $125 https://www.newegg.com/black-fractal-design-define-r5-atx-micro-atx-mid-tower/p/N82E16811352048 I prefer the look of the R5, but I'm leaning towards the Meshify 2 since it comes with 3 x 140mm fans, whereas the R5 comes with only 1. So assuming I would have to add more fans to the R5, I figure the Meshify 2 is actually about the same price. The Meshify 2 also supports up to 11 x 3.5" drives, whereas the R5 maxes out at 8 x 3.5" drives. I'm fine with a total of 8 drives, that feels like plenty, but storing 'cold swap' drives in the extra drive bays of the Meshify might be nice to help with quick and easy recovery. What do y'all think? Both of these cases get rave reviews so I doubt I'll be disappointed with either. For fun: my 'workhorse' PC is still rocking the Antec P180 from many years back, what a rock solid (and silent!) case that's been. I wish they still made them! Not ideal for unRAID, but I love it nevertheless: https://www.newegg.com/silver-antec-performance-one-atx-mid-tower/p/N82E16811129154

I'm going through a similar failure recovery, and my server is of a similar vintage (hardware from 2010 - 2012, with only drive upgrades since then). When I first noticed the problem, I found that my server was running, but the dashboard was showing the flash drive had failed (was in read-only mode), and one of my data disks had failed and was being emulated for the past month. I did a backup of the flash drive contents, but much of it was corrupted, so it wasn't helpful. I do have older backups of the flash that I could reference if needed, but thus far I haven't needed to. So while all of this won't apply to your situation, some of this may help you or others who find this post: If prepping a new flash drive for older hardware, keep in mind that you may want an older model flash drive as well. I got the Sandisk Cruzer Glide USB 2.0 which was recommended in these forums. The motherboard I'm using doesn't support USB 3.0, so its a safer bet to use a USB 2.0 flash drive. Also keep in mind that while flashing the new drive, it is very likely that you'll need to uncheck the UEFI box on the drive flashing utility, as many motherboards of that era did not support UEFI. If you are swapping to a modern motherboard, then you probably want UEFI enabled. Either way, you'll have to tell the motherboard to boot from the flash drive, and may need to disable its attempts to boot from the other drives in the system. If you have the ability to grab a screenshot of the server dashboard Main page before powering it down, it is useful to do so, so you can associate the drive serial numbers with their disk assignment slots. If you aren't able to do this, its not a huge deal. When powered up the new server for the first time, if you are using your original flash drive then the disk assignments should be remembered. If you are using a new flash drive, then you will likely be faced with a blank config. If you have a screenshot to reference, you can easily assign the drives to the correct drive slots based on serial number. If you don't, then this is a critical step: DO NOT ASSIGN A PARITY DRIVE This is the biggest potential to lose data. If you accidentally assign a data drive to the parity slot and start a parity build, that data will be lost. If you don't know which is the parity drive(s), the safest bet is to assign drives one by one to the data slots, and make a note of which ones show as valid formatted drives. If the parity drive(s) is assigned to a data slot, unRAID will show it has having an invalid format, and that's your clue that it isn't a data drive. Now in some cases a failed data drive could show up as unformatted as well, so its still best to exercise caution here. If you previously had an array of 5 data drives and 1 parity drive, and through guess-and-check you are able to assign the 5 data drives and they all show up as valid, then you know the final one is the parity drive. If you wind up in a situation where you only had 1 parity drive previously, but more than one drive is showing as unformatted or invalid, then reach out here in the forums for help. You may want to start the array without parity assigned just to confirm the contents of the drives, that your data is all still there. The parity drive is the least important drive in this recovery process, and it should be saved for last in terms of assigning disks. Best of luck! In my case the recovery is going easier than planned. I had bought two new drives to upgrade parity and the failed data drive, in addition to the new flash drive. It turns out that just replacing the flash drive seems to be enough, and the rest of the array is OK after all. I'm still watching that previously flagged 'failed' data disk closely, and I'm ready to swap it out if in fact unRAID flags it again.

Products: Rackmount 24 Drive 20 Drive 16 Drive [*]Tower 20 Drive 16 Drive 13 Drive 10 Drive 6 Drive 5 Drive

Link to prototype builds thread, various hardware reviews/blogs we've published, tutorials Kyle has written, server sound test youtube video, etc. Reviews Antec 1200 v3 3.0 Small business software Dropbox+uTorrent Portable Lian Li case 4TB Hard Drive Testing Norco SS-500 Review 15 Drive Budget Board JVC Minibox 20 Drive Budget Board Prototye Builds Expansion Paths Alternative, Misc., and Old Components 3 to 9 Drive Prototype 10 to 15 Drive Prototype 20 -24 Drive Prototype Quiet Fans [*]The Search Continues [*]3TB Hard Drive Testing [*]The Search [*]unRAID Hardware Compatibility Testing [*]5-in-3 Drive Cage Review [*]Plugins Web Browser based Telnet - Shellinabox

This thread will be used to aggregate and link out to Reviews/Testimonials that our customers have been gracious enough to post here. Testimonial 1 - 9 Drive Cleverbox Testimonial 2 - 16 Drive Cleverbox (ESXi build) Testimonial 3 - 20 Drive Cleverbox Testimonial 4 - 16 Drive Cleverbox

I don't think the tiny slider looks very good next to the static images. I suggest a single static image to represent custom builds, then a large slider on another page. I'm also not a fan of the 'timer' bar, I find it distracting. Finally, for the photo of the Supermicro chassis that you credited to me, please use prostuff1's name instead, as he actually built that one (I know I didn't specify in my original post). Thanks!

Congratulations on your new site, it looks great! I'm sure you'll be much happier with WordPress, I know we are In case you haven't already picked one out, check out RoyalSlider, it works well on our site. You are welcome to use any of these photos: Dropbox link Some are from a professional photographer we hired, some are my own amateur photos. I resized them all to 460 x something (they don't all fix exactly as 460 x 300, but you can crop them if you like). They are all JPG, as the file size is actually smaller for JPG than PNG for these types of photos. PNG is better for computer-generated graphics, JPG is often better for photos. Using the smallest image size will help your site's load times. If you use any of them, you can credit them to myself, prostuff1, or just to Greenleaf Technology in general. Thanks! P.S. Let me know when you are done with the dropbox link so that I can take it down.

I've also used the Noctua NF-R8 as a replacement fan in the Norco SS-500 (I have the second generation SS-500, the one with the flat back). Works great. I've started using the ARCTIC F8 PWM as a fan replacement for the Norco SS-500 and Norco SS-400 units. Fairly cheap, and it works well.

Yes, you have to use the trays if you want a reliable server. Without the trays, the drive bay is too large for the drive and it will likely come loose and have an unreliable connection. I've seen trayless 4-in-3s and 3-in-2s, but no 5-in-3s unfortunately. Plus, the drive's serial number typically isn't written on the end of the drive, so even in a trayless cage it wouldn't be visible. You can print out some stickers and label the drive trays yourself, or just organize your trays in a logical manner (parity in tray 1, disk1 in tray 2, disk2 in tray 3, etc.) so that you can easily identify a failed drive.

New Defcon Special build (finally) posted! 16 Drive Defcon Build This is our beefiest server yet, sporting a Quad Core Xeon CPU, Intel server motherboard, and 4 GB of RAM right out of the box. There's also two optional 2.5" bays (bringing the total to 18 drives) for your cache and apps SSDs! Based on enterprise-quality Rackable Systems hardware, these servers lived a former life in Amazon's data centers running their EC2 cloud service!

They fit, but they strip the Norco's screw holes a bit. For future builds, I've decided that it is better to use the Norco-provided screws instead of the Antec thumb screws. They don't look as nice, but they do a better job of holding the cages securely.

I use the screws provided by Norco for this reason. Since they don't give you enough for the cages and the drive trays, you have to buy more: link. $10 for a bag of screws is pretty ridiculous, but they are the only ones I've found that are proven to work.

Basically yes. There are very few cases that don't have the tabs separating the 5.25" bays, and those are few and far between. At least in the US they are very difficult to obtain.

Heads up, Antec has modified the Twelve Hundred V3 on the sly! It is now the Twelve Hundred V3 3.0...see the Greenleaf blog for details.

Thank you! In response to your question, all Linux kernels since 2.6.31 have USB 3.0 support (see here). unRAID currently uses newer versions of the Linux kernel and therefore should have all the requisite drivers. However, as unRAID doesn't support USB devices in the array (with the exception of the USB flash drive), you will need to mount the external drive with unMenu or the SNAP add-on in order to access its data. We believe that USB 3.0 is a great way to migrate your data from an external hard drive into the unRAID array and for making off-site backups, but we don't recommend it for long-term use as all data on the external hard drive will not be parity-protected.

The Greenleaf team is gearing up to offer new products and services! However, we need your help! Please take our short, four question survey to help us gauge interest in the products and services we have in the works: Survey Link Thank you, we truly appreciate it!

You are welcome! I'm glad that fan is working out for everyone!

As long as your power supply is powerful enough to handle the spike of power needed whenever you boot or power down your server, then it will be fine. Figuring out what that spike of power amounts to can be tricky. You can use a Kill-a-watt or similar power meter to figure out the wattage, just like opentoe did. You then need to find a power supply that has at least that much wattage plus a single +12V rail with enough amps to handle all of your drives, motherboard, and fans. Figuring all of that out may cost more time and money than you would save by buying a smaller power supply, so the 400W option may end up being the best investment. If you do care to go forward with this testing, then you can take advantage of Newegg's generous return policy. Buy a 400W PSU up front and build your server. Run the tests and figure out the smallest PSU that you can use. Then return the 400W PSU and buy the new one.

A fellow RiffTrax fan I see I consider anything up to 45C to be safe for day-to-day use, 31 - 39C being the ideal range. Anything above 45C would warrant a reworking of your cooling approach, and 55C would warrant an immediate shut-down of your system. Thank you for your feedback on the fans, I'm glad they are working well for you and others.

As long as you are using green drives, the 500W will be enough. If you want to use 7200 RPM drives, the 650W will be better. The 600W will work for a mix of the two.

Corsair CMPSU-430CXV2 Builder Series™ CX430 Power Supply - 430W, 80 Plus, 120mm Fan, Single +12V Rail, Active PFC - $20 after MIR

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power Supply $60 shipped after promo EMCNFND28 (expires 11:59pm PST on 04/08/2012) and MIR (expires 4/12/2012) High quality PSU for large servers.