Some hardware advice, please

[bobrap]

Just started using unRAID in a Tsunami case I have.  Got about 5x500G drives I'm using, plus a few 350's.  The drives are old so I expect some drive failures soon.  Wanting to go to either 1 or 1.5TB.  Any pros/cons or recommendations?  What about a new case?  I've looked at some rack mount (4U) and they seem to hold the amount of drives I would want.  I'd be putting an IP35Pro mb in the box with an Antec 500 smart power psu.  Since the mb only has 6 sata connections and one esata, some sort of add-in card for more ports would be required, right?  You guys have been so helpful to others, I was hoping you could help me build my little server.  Thanks so much!

[SSD]

I recommend the WD GP drives.  They are quieter, cooler, and consume about 1/2 the power of other drives.  They spin a little slower, but have high density which makes them about the same speed as lower density 7200 RPM drives.  They are more than fast enough to keep up with gigabit ethernet.

 

Suggest you read recent threads in the Hardware and Motherboard forums to help finalize your hardware choices.  You also might want to follow the "Best of the Forum" link in my sig for references to some threads the relate to hardware selection.

 

Sorry for the short post - gotta run.

[RobJ]

Don't have much time myself either, but in addition to his pointers, check out some of the links on the Getting Started with unRAID wiki page.

[bobrap]

OK, thanks guys.  One of the things I was looking for is personal experience/preference.

[Rajahal]

I don't claim to be terribly experienced with unRAID, since I'm pretty new to it also, but I second the WD Green drives.  I have a 1TB one running as my parity, and its great.  I hope to get more as data drives in the future. 

 

I've noticed that newer, faster drives lead to a significant increase in transfer speeds.  On my older drives I get 3-5 MB/sec transfers, whereas on my newer drives I get 12-15 MB/sec.  So you might want to restrict content that you access often (for me, TV and music) to your faster, newer drives.

 

For expansion cards, I have a Promise card (this one), and it works great.  Basically plug-n-play, didn't need to do any configuration for unRAID to recognize it.  It's only downside is that it is PCI and not PCI-E, so it's going to be slower than the SATA slots on your motherboard.  As long as you use it for your older, slower drives, it shouldn't matter.  Just try to put your faster drives on the mobo slots to optimize performance.

 

I can also tell you to steer clear of crappy SYBA expansion cards, specifically this one.  I had two of them fail on me, and after wasting a bunch of time trying to get tech support or RMAs for them (both of which are non-existent), I eventually gave up and bought the Promise card to replace them both.

[smino]

Well if it is speed you want the 1.5TB seagate drives are just as fast as the 10K veloraptor drives.

Which Tsunami case do you have? Does it look like this one?

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3536.0

If it does, you can add one more drive under the drive cage by drilling four little holes.

Then make your own 5-3 plate and slide it in to have 5 drives in the top 3 5.25 inch bays, plus 2 in the 3.5 inch bays, plus 1 in the 5.25 bay not used, plus the 5 3.25 inch tray, 1 underneath it, that makes 14 drives in that case. I have pictures of the 5-3 in the link below.

 

Also check out the thread on mb and testing I just finished:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3630.0