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I don't think that you want suction on the bottom. It will pull dust from the ground into the case,

 

Actually, it thermally isolates the power supply, so it pulls cool air in, and then exhausts it out the back. If dust is a worry, you can always add a filter. Personally I still prefer this approach to using the PSU as a secondary cooling fan for the system as a whole. I'd love to see some testing and comparisons between the two though.

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I believe most people on these forums suffer from some degree of digital hoarding so if you find a good helpline do let us know ;) But yes, what you say makes sense, and with the necessary RAID controllers it's a lot more expensive than running plain unRAID.

 

Hah!  I'm watching hoarders right now.  unRAID is the key to efficient digital hoarding.

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That internal USB connection thing is awesome. I might just have to throw that on to my next newegg order. Will it work with all mobo's? I got the biostar off of the old budget build. Thanks.

 

It connects to any USB 2.0 header on the motherboard. Just converts it to 2 USB inputs same as if you used wires to an external bracket. Should work with any motherboard. Just make sure you have clearance for the USB key once it's installed.

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It would be ideal if unRAID actually had capability of mirroring important root folders. That way you could simply have an extra textfield where you define across how many drives you want to mirror that particular folder and unRAID would do the rest for you. But that's a discussion for the suggestions forum :)

 

I REALLY like this idea.   :)

A share that is mirrored on multiple disks...

 

 

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Well, since I pretty much have a whole new unRAID build, I thought I would share.

 

Case:            SuperMicro SuperChassis 933T-R760B 3U Rackmount
Power Supply:    3 x SuperMicro PWS-0050M 380w (760w total w/ redundancy)
MB:              SuperMicro C2SEE
Processor:       Intel Core2 Quad Processor Q8300
Heatsink:        SuperMicro 1U SNK-P0016
Memory:          Single 2GB Kingston KVR1333D3N9K2
SATA:            SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8
Fans:            2 x Cooler Master BladeMaster 80mm PWM High Air Flow Silent Case Fan R4-BM8S-30PK-R0
                4 x Cooler Master BladeMaster 92mm PWM High Air Flow Silent Case Fan R4-BM9S-28PK-R0
Fan Cables:      6 x Supermicro CBL-0088L (since I needed 4 wire connections)
                PWM-Y Cable Adapter (since I only have 5 fan connectors on my motherboard)
Hard Drives:     1 x Western Digital RE4-GP WD2002FYPS (2TB Parity) 
                4 x Hitachi HDS72202 (2TB)
                3 x Seagate ST31500341AS (1.5TB)

 

 

A few folks have asked about the energy usage of this case. Here are the readings from my Kill-A-Watt with one power supply plugged in and three power supplies plugged in:

 

[b]  State	                          One PS (watts)	Three PS (watts)[/b]
 Standby	                              5	             15
 Initial Powerup	                    230	            250
 During Boot	                        130	            150
 Fans on LOW - All Drives Spinning	  104	            136
 Fans on LOW - No Drives Spinning    	65	             96
 Fans on HIGH - All Drives Spinning    112	            143
 Fans on HIGH - No Drives Spinning      73	            105
 Parity Check	                       132	            162

h6AM8.jpg

 

Ty3Or.jpg

 

j5fFK.jpg

 

sNrd7.jpg

 

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Spectacular! Question though, I have been thinking about unRAID with larger arrays such as yours, and to be honest I wouldn't be perfectly happy with a redundancy of just 1 disk. Wouldn't something with multiple drive redundancy like raid6 be more appropriate in your scenario?

 

 

I used to run raid 6 with traditional $1800.00 raid controllers.  This limited my flexibility with upgrading drives.  I would have to upgrade entire arrays after copying all of my data off somewhere ( part of the reason I have multiple arrays ).  I have never lost more than one drive at a time, yes it did give a little more peace of mind during a rebuild after a drive failure running raid 6.  But then again with unRaid if I did experience a multi drive failure my risk is still mitigated, as only the data on the failed drives is lost.

 

In my application (digital hoarder, I am trying to get help) I just want large amounts of protected space.  I am not concerned with iops or being able to write to the array at over 300MB/s.  I do have different classes of data, with a small subset of data I really care about.  Some of this is actually copied across all three arrays, as well as on an off site server.  An example of such data is family pictures and some (in my opinion, or my wife's) really important documents.

 

This has been said I think more that thousand times in all the subforums and it is really time to put it somewhere on #1 in the FAQs so that all new or potentially interested users see this first prior seeing anything else!

 

And btw, a large array is not one holding 14 disks but something with several thousand. 14x drives is just a disk group in such array usually protected by 1 or two parity drives (and yes they are smaller diskgroups and even mirrored ones, just depends on needs). Anyway, what unRAID does is exactly what anyone (experienced enough) would expect (from unRAID) and is exactly the reason why unRAID is chosen (for that particular need).

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Very nice Steven! Makes me feel like my new server was made out of wood. :D

 

If money is a constraint then just get the Norco 4220 or 4224, put 3x 120mm DELTA fans in it and be done instead of getting all those Antec's and then load them with 5-in-3s... Yeah, rack is cool, but it is not silent because high CFM fans are needed to pull the air through the high-density drive bays.

 

ccharmatz, btw, how do you cool that rack? Do you have a HVAC running to the back? And where is it located, is the room special purpose for equipment?

 

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Hard Drives:     2 x Hitachi HDS72202 (2GB) - Adding 2 more now that my build is done

                3 x Seagate ST31500341AS (1.5GB)

Hm... TB maybe?

 

LOVE the look of that case.  That all drive look is very sexy.

 

No, 6.5GB hold everything I need!  ;D ;D

 

Post corrected.

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Very nice Steven! Makes me feel like my new server was made out of wood. :D

 

If money is a constraint then just get the Norco 4220 or 4224, put 3x 120mm DELTA fans in it and be done instead of getting all those Antec's and then load them with 5-in-3s... Yeah, rack is cool, but it is not silent because high CFM fans are needed to pull the air through the high-density drive bays.

 

Steven, btw, how do you cool that rack? Do you have a HVAC running to the back? And where is it located, is the room special purpose for equipment?

 

 

I don't have a rack yet, but Ive been looking for a 1/2 rack or two for the last year or so.  Not many nice ones have shown up on craigslist lately and I don't want to spend the money on a new one.  I have a "play room" that I keep all of my "toys" in.  I do have a portable 14,000btu A/C just to help cool that room (I usually keep it around 66 degrees).  Besides my unRAID server, I have two ESX servers hooked up to an OpenFiler Fiber Channel SAN, and standalone Windows Server 2008 that backups up everything else on my network.  So, I do generate a lot of heat for this room (you'd be surprised how much heat a fiber channel switch puts out).  

 

As mentioned in my previous post, I did replace the fans in this case because the ones that came in it constantly ran at 5000RPM.  With the new fans, none of my drives went above 38 degrees during a parity check.

 

I'm seriously considering buying one more of these cases for my OpenFiler box.  I should have when they were still $199.  If I can, I'll have a CM590 with two SuperMicro 5-in-3's for sale.  Of course, that will then lead me to upgrading my ESX boxes to rackmounts.  Im looking at the TYAN B7002G20V4H for those.

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How do you cool that rack? Do you have a HVAC running to the back? And where is it located, is the room special purpose for equipment?

 

 

My rack is in a special purpose room, which has added cooling.

 

Any dedicated cooling for the rack or do you just cool the room? Where goes the exhausted hot air from the back of the rack? Are there more racks in that room or is this half height rack the only one?

 

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Any dedicated cooling for the rack or do you just cool the room? Where goes the exhausted hot air from the back of the rack? Are there more racks in that room or is this half height rack the only one?

 

 

Additional vents, and returns were added for the room, the house has zoned air so this room can be cooled differently from the rest of the house.

 

That is the only rack in that room, but one of two racks in the house.  The other rack, which is a full 44u rack is in a media / wiring closet.  It too has it's own separate cooling zone.  The pictured rack is all of the storage.  Media has htpc, home automation, switchers, players ect.

 

cc-

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hey everyone, I am new to the forums but fell in love with unRAID quickly and just finished my first unRAID server build. ~6TB of storage. My previous solution was using internal SATA drives in a USB-SATA dock. Worked just fine but offered no protections. Here are some pictures. I did a whole writeup to include my parts list, cost, and a brief walk-through of how I made the server.

 

complete1.jpg

complete2.jpg

sata_cables_2.jpg

sata_cables_1.jpg

 

You can see the whole detailed parts list and a few more pictures here

 

Thanks for the great forums and wiki....both were integral in getting this server built.

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