daign Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 Hi all, appreciate the suggestions and input! Budget is not much of an issue, but I don't see the point of building a supercomputer thats only going to be hosting video to 2 clients. I'd like the ability to stuff as many drives as possible in the Antec 1200, which I understand is plenty. Green drives are preferable as my power bill during the summer is already upwards of $950!!! My name's Dane. I am currently running an old HTPC case stuffed with 5 1tb drives software raided using intel Matrix raid software. It is a Q8400 processor and an Asus P5Q-EM mobo with a 64gb Patriot SSD and 5 1tb drives raided Raid 5 in Intel Software Raid. It has a nice modular 600w power supply.. Running Raid 5 so its 4tb total size . It supports my needs but I am running out of space quickly. I now am running an Apple TV2 running XBMC so the server needs to do file server/sabnzb duty now. I recently moved it to the closet and am using WD Live Wire ethernet over powerline to connect. It streams 1080p fine to 2 clients just fine surprisingly. Time to Upgrade. I was hoping to retain my cpu/mobo as it serves my needs fine, but the mobo does not support UEFI which puts me in a predicament. If I could get it to work that way I could use my 5 1tb and add 4tb drives as needed. Can I get the P5Q-EM to support 4tb drives or is it better to just upgrade my mobo/cpu? Its been a while since I upgraded... Antec 1200 for case (add 5 in 3 cages as needed, Norco, Icydock, Supermicro, use SSD in 2.5 slot) I need a motherboard with lots of SATA ports. I'm an Asus man but am willing to branch out for extra sata ports. PCI-E card for SAS/Sata expansion SAS/Sata cables Need to choose between 4tb Hitachi's or 3tb cost. I'm leaning towards 3tbs... I appreciate the help guys! I'll be ordering everything through newegg. I'll update the thread with build pix. My wishlist: https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=20317432 Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 First, you don't need UEFI for unRAID. As far as I know 3TB drive support comes mostly from the operating system and recent ver 5 releases of unRAID provide that capability. Second, a quick glance on the spec's on your motherboard seems to indicate that it will work fine. You even have six SATA 2 ports on it. If you are going to use only SATA drives, you probably should to disable IDE support in the BIOS. That will probably speed the SATA operations. When you need more than six drives, there are a number of options that will make good use of that PCIe slot. You can easily add another eight drives for a total of fourteen to this system as it stands. That's 39TB of storage! One thing to think about is the use of front loading drive housings. As you get more and more drives into a case, you don't want to be diving inside and moving all of that wiring around to gain access to a drive bay to either install a new drive or replace a defective one. Connections to SATA devices are not that secure and it is so easy to generate problems by partially unseating one. EDITED: 39TB was 39GB. I still cannot get use to TB's. My first hard drive was 10MB and cost $500! Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 What are the added benefits of UEFI? Your current mobo/cpu looks fine. Maybe too much for unraid. Link to comment
PeterB Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 My first hard drive was 10MB and cost $500! My first hard drive was 5MB and cost me GBP500, second hand! I threw it out, with the CP/M-80 system I used it in, when I emigrated to Philippines in 2007. Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 Forgot one thing! Check your power supply. It should have a single +12V rail. Current recommendation is for 3amps for each non-green drive and 2amps for each green drive (these figures are quite conservative in my opinion). Many PS for general use systems have split +12V rails as one rail will be used for the video card and the other rail for the hard drives and CD/DVD/Bluray drives and their number of these devices is usually quite small. Link to comment
daign Posted August 23, 2012 Author Share Posted August 23, 2012 First, you don't need UEFI for unRAID. As far as I know 3TB drive support comes mostly from the operating system and recent ver 5 releases of unRAID provide that capability. Second, a quick glance on the spec's on your motherboard seems to indicate that it will work fine. You even have six SATA 2 ports on it. If you are going to use only SATA drives, you probably should to disable IDE support in the BIOS. That will probably speed the SATA operations. When you need more than six drives, there are a number of options that will make good use of that PCIe slot. You can easily add another eight drives for a total of fourteen to this system as it stands. That's 39TB of storage! One thing to think about is the use of front loading drive housings. As you get more and more drives into a case, you don't want to be diving inside and moving all of that wiring around to gain access to a drive bay to either install a new drive or replace a defective one. Connections to SATA devices are not that secure and it is so easy to generate problems by partially unseating one. EDITED: 39TB was 39GB. I still cannot get use to TB's. My first hard drive was 10MB and cost $500! I purchased a Hitachi 4TB drive and on 2 different Windows 7 64 boxes it showed as 1.6tb. I took it out of the external case it was in, same thing connected to internal SATA. I took the drive back to Fry's, their test CPU shows 1.66tb as well. Upon doing research people are hacking UEFI bios for their mobos for UEFI and larger than 3tb drives. I'd like to keep the initial 6 drives connected to the mobo so I can get the data off first before I add the 1tb drives to the RAID. I was planning on using the Antec 1200 with the 5in1 housing so I have access to the drives from the front. I also plan to remove the front cover. It doesn't need to be pretty after all its sitting in a closet Link to comment
daign Posted August 23, 2012 Author Share Posted August 23, 2012 What are the added benefits of UEFI? Your current mobo/cpu looks fine. Maybe too much for unraid. Good to know. I thought it was a pretty robust system for file serving and SABNZB etc... It was my understanding I needed UEFI to use drives larger than 3tb but apparently I am incorrect. Link to comment
daign Posted August 23, 2012 Author Share Posted August 23, 2012 Forgot one thing! Check your power supply. It should have a single +12V rail. Current recommendation is for 3amps for each non-green drive and 2amps for each green drive (these figures are quite conservative in my opinion). Many PS for general use systems have split +12V rails as one rail will be used for the video card and the other rail for the hard drives and CD/DVD/Bluray drives and their number of these devices is usually quite small. It has a Coolermaster RS-600 which has a single rail with 80amps. http://www.coolermaster.com/product.php?product_id=4199 Link to comment
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