Motherboard               Asus P7H55-M LX

CPU                           Intel CORE i3 540 BOX

RAM                           Corsair TW3X4G1333C9A - 4GB DDR3 10600

POWER SUPPLY           Cooler Master SILENT PRO 700W MODULAR

CASE                         Icute Super 18-5G1-BB (Sharkoon Rebel 22 elsewhere??)

HDD DATA                 Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB x 4 pcs

HDD PARITY+CACHE   Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB x 2 pcs

4in3 HDD Cage           XIGMATEK 4 IN 3 HARD DRIVE CAGE  x 2 pcs

 

Please give me some comments and usggestion as to the above list.

I won't be using the hotswap HDD cage as it is too expensive for me (would rather go for more hard drive at the moment). Other than the hotswap capability, there is no other advantage I guess.

Thanks.

Looks like a great build!  Either you've done your homework or you got really lucky

 

A few comments:

1) I'm guessing you are in Australia?

2) Personally I prefer Hitachi CoolSpins and WD Greens over the Seagate Greens.  Of the three, the Seagates run the hottest and have the shortest warranty (2 years vs 3 years).  Still, if the others aren't available to you or are too expensive, then the Seagates will be fine.

3) Nothing wrong with forgoing hot swap bays for now, but there are other advantages that you are overlooking.  Hot swap bays make your server into more of an appliance and less of a project.  With your current build, any time you need to replace a drive (due to drive failure, upgrade, etc.) you will need to open the case and mess about in the cabling.  There's ample opportunity to accidentally knock a cable loose or cause some other accidental damage.  With hot swap bays you don't have to worry about that.  I suggest starting with the minimum number of internal drive cages that you need now, then slowly adding hot swap bays as you need them.  They are definitely expensive, but well worth it in my opinion.

 

Thanks for the reply Raj. The reason for seagate green instead of the WD green is that I had bad experiences with the WD. It worked ok for several months and suddenly slowed down to a crawl followed by a bucnh of bad sector. I am even having the same problem as we speak right now. Thanks for the advise on the hot swap bays, I will look into it in the future. Maybe I will forego the Xigmatek 4 in 3 drive cage because the case is able to handle it @ the moment.

Thanks for the reply Raj. The reason for seagate green instead of the WD green is that I had bad experiences with the WD. It worked ok for several months and suddenly slowed down to a crawl followed by a bucnh of bad sector. I am even having the same problem as we speak right now. Thanks for the advise on the hot swap bays, I will look into it in the future. Maybe I will forego the Xigmatek 4 in 3 drive cage because the case is able to handle it @ the moment.

 

I agree with Raj on the hot swap bays.  If a drive fails and you are trying to recover, having to open the case and risk disturbing existing cabling in the process adds risk and stress to an already tense situation.  Being able to exchange the disk without touching any of the cabling justifies the extra cost IMO.  But for a smaller array with 4 or 5 disks, not as much of a necessity as in a 21 drive monster in tight quarters.

 

For drives, I would definitely go with Hitachi.  Current generations of WD and Seagate have much higher failure rates.  Look at THIS LINK for an independent assessment from BackBlaze, a company that offers a cloud backup solution and raves about the Hitachis based on a sizable inventory of 9000 disks in service.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I have started buying stuff of the list. A question on the cable needed. If I am planning to use 20 data drives, which cable do I need to get to connect the 20 drives to the 2x Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Port? Thanks.

BTW, is there a 5-lane sata controller exist? It would be need to connect each 5 in 3 cage to 1 port on the controller

You need a forward breakout cable, such as this.  Each cable supports 4 drives, so you'll need four cables in total (two for each SASLP card).

 

Generally controller cards come in multiples of 2 or 4.  I don't know of any 5 lane controllers.  The SASLP is a 4 lane controller (2 drives per lane for a total of 8 drive support).  There are some 8 lane controllers as well that support up to 16 drives.