Hi Everyone,

I have been researching the last few months on unRAID and I think I am ready to pull the trigger.  I had posted one thread a few days ago asking for help on a MB; however, looking at it... all the MB that were cheap did not fall within what I wanted in terms of future proofing.  My primary use for this would be storage of Media and transcoding HD Video/Audio.

 

Let me break this down and I would love to hear comments and suggestions if anyone has any for me.

===============Preliminary Plan=======================================

Use an old case (currently holds 8 HDD, but i'm going to modify it to fit 14) and upgrade later to the 4U Norco 4224. 

PSU will also be upgrade later also (currently 600W).

Right now I the following HDD:

1x2TB Seagate 7.2K Sata III

2x1TB Seagate 7.2K Sata II

10x80GB WD Black 10K Sata II

My plan is to use the 2TB as Parity, 80GB as Cache -- that would leave me with 2.47TB of storage. 

 

I plan on buying the following parts:

Mobo: Supermicro X9SCM-F-O LGA1155 ($167.99 on Superbiiz -- I think it's the correct model)

CPU: Core i3-2100T ($134 on NewEgg)

SATA Card: AOC-SASLP-MV8 8Port SAS/SATA Card ($102 on Superbiiz)

Memory: Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G (2x4GB) ($62 on Superbiiz)

LSI/3Ware 1.0M forward break-out cable x2 ($13 on Superbiiz)

 

Total upfront cost of parts + license = $642

 

===============Below info will be filled out as soon as I have my build together=================

OS at time of building:

CPU:

Motherboard:

RAM:

Case:

Drive Cage(s):

Power Supply:

SATA Expansion Card(s):

Cables:

Fans:

 

Parity Drive:

Data Drives:

Cache Drive:

Total Drive Capacity:

 

Primary Use: Media streaming / HD Transcoding

Likes:

Dislikes:

Add Ons Used:

Future Plans: Norco 4224 + 8Port SAS/SATA Addon Card + Quiet Cooling Fans

 

Boot (peak):

Idle (avg):

Active (avg):

Light use (avg):

 

 

 

 

Closing comments

 

---

Sell the 10x80GB WD Black 10K Sata II. Even 9 of them sold at $10 each would get you a 1TB drive using far less power.

All of those raptors will genorate a good deal heat. Watch your cooling.

 

Personally, I would probably retire them and get a nice new 2tb drive to replace them. A modern 2tb hdd would probably outperform them, use a lot less power, generate less heat, be quieter, and less chance of a drive to fail. 

@C3

I would sell them; however, due to them having sensitive data on it, I cannot and will either have to use them until I upgrade drive by drive or properly dispose of them.  Otherwise I would .  If I do have some spare money left -- I will get a 4TB and make that the parity instead and start to build the unit with 4TB.

 

 

@Johnn

Part of my modification is to have both sides of the tower open. The room for which it will be in is relatively cool (in the basement, wide open) and I will only have it on 4-6 hours at night when i'm watching the movies.  Once I can get the Norco case and replace half the drives in a few months, I will actually take all the 80GBs offline and properly dispose of them.

 

Thanks both of you for the suggestions.

Why don't you run them through a heavy series of killdisk runs... week straight of pure torture for them . I'm sure nothing will be recoverable after that.

Hi Drealit

 

Hehe -- I totally would and will; however, the drives are or were from old workstations at work.  Policies dictates me from selling them .  I merely will use them as extra storage / learning experience with upgrading drives, etc..

 

Can you guys confirm that this is the correct board on Superbiiz for me?  Newegg shows it @ 200 bucks and Superbiiz 30 dollars lower.  I can't find a site with a price trend on it.

 

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-X9SCM-F

 

Thanks for the feedbacks.

what the heck.. my iphone deleted my post...

 

I think i said...

Unless i'm also missing something obvious, that is the correct board. some of the boards have a glued on backplate for a cpu cooler. this looks to be the correct OEM version.

 

As far as the drives, i guess to me, my time is worth more then dealing with so much work and resources for that many drives that total less then 1TB of storage.

While they might be great for learning or experimenting. I think in this day and age, they would be a poor choice for production storage.

 

DBAN will DOD wipe those drives rather quickly..

 

(you should talk to Raj, he might be willing to trade a single large drive for that stack for his burn in testing..)

 

 

PS. welcome to unRAID..

We are not trying to sound negative about your build. we are just trying to give sound advice on building a stable server.

@John

 

I totally respect and value the constructive criticism and feedback.  I will take no offense to it as I am not too familiar with it all yet so I do appreciate all the help.

 

Looking at your Atlas build -- I may end up following you. 

 

In regards to the 80Gbs -- I will see if I can killdisk/dban it and get a hold of Raj. 

 

Thanks!

 

I will make the purchase for the board and start building.

 

Fair price you think for that board?

 

 

That is a good price IMO.

 

If you are not going to go with ESXi, you might want to look at Goliath instead. it sounds more like what you are building.

Sell the 10x80GB WD Black 10K Sata II. Even 9 of them sold at $10 each would get you a 1TB drive using far less power.

 

+1

Johnm,

 

On your Goliath build -- you recommended 1xIBM m1015 card and 2x Supermicro 8Port.  If the m1015 cards are cheaper on ebay, would there not be a reason to just do 3x IBM m1015 cards for better parity?

 

Also, which Xeon would you suggest for a bit more umph but average TDP to the i3-2100/2100T ?

Johnm,

 

On your Goliath build -- you recommended 1xIBM m1015 card and 2x Supermicro 8Port.  If the m1015 cards are cheaper on ebay, would there not be a reason to just do 3x IBM m1015 cards for better parity?

 

Also, which Xeon would you suggest for a bit more umph but average TDP to the i3-2100/2100T ?

 

just go with one or the other. MV8's or M1015's

I need to update that build spec. 

 

the M1015's are faster and cheaper. but take some work to get them reflashed to work with unraid. work that cannot be done on the X9 board.

you would also need to run beta 12 for now due to driver issues.

 

the MV8's work out of the box and work on all unRaid 4.7-5b14 (except b12&13)

 

you also only need 2 cards for most builds. i added the extra m1015 instead of a cheap 2 port card to get to 22 drives.