You're buying 6x 3TB drives and worrying about the price of ECC?! There's not that much difference in price.

 

Here's what I used, which looks to be the same as the one you listed: http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/partsinfo.asp?root=&LinkBack=&ktcpartno=KVR1333D3N9/4G

 

Today, I ordered the Nexus Double Twin from here: http://www.aquatuning.co.uk/product_info.php/info/p6594_Nexus-Double-Twin-HDD-decoupling.html

N.B. it hasn't arrived yet, so I'm not endorsing this company. This and the Noiseblocker X-Swing are becoming very hard to find, as so many people are using them in Microservers and they both seem to have been discontinued, so if you can find one, I'd buy it quickly!

Today, I ordered the Nexus Double Twin from here: http://www.aquatuning.co.uk/product_info.php/info/p6594_Nexus-Double-Twin-HDD-decoupling.html

N.B. it hasn't arrived yet, so I'm not endorsing this company. This and the Noiseblocker X-Swing are becoming very hard to find, as so many people are using them in Microservers and they both seem to have been discontinued, so if you can find one, I'd buy it quickly!

Great link thanks!

 

Couldnt find them anywhere myself, have just ordered as well.

nick

 

Thank you, just ordered one too.

So it appears the Rocket 620 (2X SATA PCI-E card) WORKS in the N36L. Was able to put the server up with 8 drives just fine.

However, preclear is only running at about 35MB/sec on the two drives that I'm clearing on the Rocket 620 card. Is this normal or do I need to change some setting to get them up to full speed?

Should having the card in the x1 vs the x16 slot matter?

Should having the card in the x1 vs the x16 slot matter?

 

Yes.

Thanks. x16 did the trick

What is a recommended card for a 7-disk build? I am leaning towards the Rocket 620, but wouldn't mind cheaper alternatives.

What is a recommended card for a 7-disk build? I am leaning towards the Rocket 620, but wouldn't mind cheaper alternatives.

 

Picked up mine for $15 with shipping on EBay the other day...don't think you're going to find one much cheaper than that.

What is a recommended card for a 7-disk build? I am leaning towards the Rocket 620, but wouldn't mind cheaper alternatives.

 

Picked up mine for $15 with shipping on EBay the other day...don't think you're going to find one much cheaper than that.

 

Is that the one WD are bundling with the 3TB drives? That's why they're cheap, I guess.

The HP Microserver tends to pull in a fair bit of dust, as I found after opening it up after 6 months.

 

DDY on Hexus.net has come up with a solution -- installing a filter in the door.

 

http://forums.hexus.net/chassis-system-modding/201873-hp-microserver-dust-filter-mod.html

 

I've not got nearly as much dust in mine as his, probably because mine isn't on the floor, but this little mod is probably still worthwhile.

 

 

 

He used insect screen:

 

 

And another guy used a "HiFlow Dust filter": http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/390325378318?clk_rvr_id=260616885761&afsrc=1

 

You can find the full instructions at: http://forums.hexus.net/chassis-system-modding/201873-hp-microserver-dust-filter-mod.html

There's a new model of the Microserver. If you're not in the UK or Aus (i.e. you can't get the N36L cheap), this is probably going to a better option.

 

It's called the HP ProLiant N40L and has a faster CPU and more RAM:

 

AMD Turion™ II Model Neo N40L (1.5GHz)

2-4GB RAM

 

UK models: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF25a/15351-15351-4237916-4237917-4237917-4248009.html

U.S. models: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/15351-15351-4237916-4237918-4237917-4248009.html

Damn I just got my N36L today, should have waited. Only paid 153 Euros plus 14.99 Euro shipping though, can't beat that I guess.

 

 

OK, I had to try out your excellent idea, kapfel. I managed to fit 4 3.5" drives in the top and the 2.5" drive as well! Total drives: 9!

 

I think cooling may be an issue, but the case would act as a heatsink for most of the drives, so I will be trying this out.

 

So, what was the verdict on this?  What did your drive temps look like?

 

I didn't ever implement it, but I'm waiting on a 2TB Hitachi deal from Scan, then I'm planning on putting up to 3 drives in that space later this week. I'll post if and when I do so.

 

Well, I stuck an old(ish) Adaptec 1430SA card in and added a 7th drive.

 

I've been running this setup for about a week, but I've seen a few problems.

 

1) The power consumption of the card is pretty high. Even with most drives spun down, it seems to have added around 10W to the power usage, which is up about 1/3 from previous levels.

2-port Rocket Raid users, what power consumption have you seen?

 

2) I have 2x 7200rpm drives in my Microserver, so with 7 drives and the 1430SA, the boot peak is over 150W. The PSU is rated at 150W, so I'm not so happy about that.

 

3) I'm seeing some glitches and pauses in streaming. I'm not sure if it's the 1430SA but I think the pausing is only with the 2 drives attached to it. It may be a coincidence, but I'm going to to take out the 1430SA and see if that fixes it.

 

I think I'll probably end up with "just" 6 drives in this server and eventually upgrade them all to 3TB drives and migrate the 2TB and 1.5TB drives to my 22-drive second server.

Hmmmm. Hadn't even considered the power consumption from the card, hopefully my system is OK, no meter to monitor it with unfortunately. Maybe I'll buy one.

 

Mine has been running with 7 drives (6x Hitatchi Coolspin 2TB + 1x 80GB SSD Cache) without any heat/stuttering issues though.

Hmmmm. Hadn't even considered the power consumption from the card, hopefully my system is OK, no meter to monitor it with unfortunately. Maybe I'll buy one.

 

Mine has been running with 7 drives (6x Hitatchi Coolspin 2TB + 1x 80GB SSD Cache) without any heat/stuttering issues though.

 

Well, with no changes made yet, the stuttering has stopped, so it appears to have been coincidental.

 

I think I'll still take it back to 6 drives, and maybe add a 7th 3.5" when the warranty runs out so I can Dremel out a space for it, and if I get a free 2-port Rocket RAID card when/if I get one bundled with a WD 3TB drive (Scan has one on offer cheaply today, but I resisted).

Hi all. I'm pretty new with this HP Microserver.

My boss sent me one with a couple of sata 2 250 giga drives.

His intent is to install Windows 2003 Srv (32bit) on a RAID1 array.

 

I had a look on reseller tech-parameters and it reports 32/64 bit for all Windows / RedHat Seever OS.

By the way, once i did RAID1 from BIOS, i had a look for RAID drivers on HP site, and found just one for Windows 2008 R2.

Guide on Server CD reports of an integrated AMD drivers like "one fits all". Is it ok?

This morning ( 09.00 CET 13.09.2011) i will try to provide it to 2003 from a usb floppy, but not sure it will work.

 

Have you any suggestion?

 

Thx in advance.

Hi all. I'm pretty new with this HP Microserver.

.....

 

Sorry....  You seem to be under the impression that this is a Windows support forum.  It isn't.  unRAID is (normally) a stand-alone file server based on Slackware (Linux).

I think I'll still take it back to 6 drives, and maybe add a 7th 3.5" when the warranty runs out so I can Dremel out a space for it, and if I get a free 2-port Rocket RAID card when/if I get one bundled with a WD 3TB drive (Scan has one on offer cheaply today, but I resisted).

 

I took it back to 6 drives, with one 2TB drive as cache. However, I wasn't comfortable with having that much data unprotected, and didn't want to "waste" my 4-port 1430SA by only using one port, so a new plan was cooked!

 

I used all 6 SATA ports for 3.5" drives -- utilising the Nexus Double Twin for the 5th and 6th drives in the 5.25" bay, and I added a small 2.5" drive below the 5.25" bay, but rather than using SATA, I connected it via USB and manually told the OS it was a "cache" drive -- it's not really a cache drive, but the apps I use don't care, and I don't use the mover script.

I ran a USB cable from a rear USB port up through the same expansion card slot that I ran the E-SATA cable. The USB interface is a tiny one salvaged from a WD Passport drive, so the 2.5" drive is USB powered.

 

To mount it, on each boot, I manually run these commands (I could script them, but just in case the drive is not ever mounted as sdg, I'd rather not risk it, and I rarely reboot):

 

mkdir /mnt/cache
mount -t reiserfs /dev/sdg1 /mnt/cache

 

I added the following to smb-extra.conf :

 

[cache]
  path = /mnt/cache
  read only = no
  guest ok = yes
  browseable = yes
  browsable = yes

 

I also removed the transmission files from the packages folder to a "transmission" folder on the USB flash drive, so they don't auto-install, because they reference the cache drive that isn't mounted yet, and if I want to run Transmission, I run:

 

/boot/transmission/transmission-unraid-0.0.2-i386-bubba.tgz.auto_install

 

and start it using the button in User Scripts.

 

So, I now have a Microserver with:

 

6x 3.5" SATA drives

1x 2.5" USB drive

1x USB flash drive

 

Using a 5400rpm 2.5" drive on USB, the "cache" drive is pretty slow, but it's plenty fast for transmission and nzbget. I modified the nzbget post-processing script to unpack to an array drive, so data doesn't stay on the "cache" drive very long, and I only stream media from the array drives -- the "cache" drive is too slow for that.

 

EDIT: The USB attached drive was just too slow, so I went back to 6 drives.   The power consumption with one drive spun up is still under 40W.

Hey neilt,

 

sorry for being offtopic, but what is the advantage of running nzbget instead of hellanzb or sab?

 

Is there a webinterface for it?

 

p1lot

Hey neilt,

 

sorry for being offtopic, but what is the advantage of running nzbget instead of hellanzb or sab?

 

Is there a webinterface for it?

 

p1lot

 

Look at my signature...

Totally overlooked that.

 

Sounds great, I might give it a try soon.

Over at avforums somebody patched the newest N36L-Bios to have AHCI-Support for the ODD-port: http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1521657-hp-n36l-microserver-updated-ahci-bios-support.html

 

Still using the Russian BIOS, but I might give it a shot.

I've been toying around around with getting a media server for a while now. After lots and lots of reading I made the decision to go unRaid and stumbling on this thread in my search for hardware was a god send - pretty much exactly what I want (but with more drives and more dust ). The only experience I have in getting my hands dirty is adding Ram and upgrading harddrives. I just have a few questions to ask if that is alright.

 

I plan on getting unraid plus mainly to have a cache drive running nzbget/sab and maybe transmission. I chose a kingston ssd 96gb since there was a great offer, it consumes 1w (or so i read) and wont heat/move like a regular drive to be my cache drive. I notice Neil has his cache connected to esata and I was thinking of doing the same.  I assume using an esata will limit the ssd quite a bit which doesnt concern me too much since I wont be uploading alot but what I cant find out is how will the ssd be powered? I assumed Molex 4 Pins Male to Female SATA Power Cable but I read that a 2.5" only takes 5v vs 12v that a 3.5" would. I spend a while trying to find the answer to this but to no avail.

 

i made a list of questions earlier to be posted here but on reading the thread I have them all answered, ecc ram, flash bios, hardware etc.

 

I havent researched this yet and I know its off topic but i've been thinking about it all day.. When i get the server setup what is the easiest way to upload my media to the nas- disable the cache, plug in a network cable and start sending over?