BRiT Posted August 25, 2009 Share Posted August 25, 2009 Recently there were deals on 2TB drives for slightly under $190, at least in the US they were available. They will be getting cheaper over time too. I'm not sure why you said you'd only be able to shelve 2 500G drives. You'd be able to replace 4 500g drives with 1 2TB drives (ignoring the issue of parity drive replacement). Even doing the conversion of marketing "Gb" to "Gig" (1000 vs 1024), a 2TB drive ~= 1862 Gig and a 500G drive ~= 465 Gig. But it is very much a balancing act, between time, money, costs, reliability. Not sure if this is true or not, but isn't having less moving parts (drives) better for reliability? Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted August 26, 2009 Share Posted August 26, 2009 I mean I am not going to go spend $250 bucks on a 2TB drive just for the priveledge of shelving 2*500GB ones. Welllll... on what schedule do you replace drives? Wait till they fail? I maintain a hard limit of 30,000 hours... all drives are replaced when they get to that point. Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted August 26, 2009 Share Posted August 26, 2009 I mean I am not going to go spend $250 bucks on a 2TB drive just for the priveledge of shelving 2*500GB ones. Welllll... on what schedule do you replace drives? Wait till they fail? I maintain a hard limit of 30,000 hours... all drives are replaced when they get to that point. I have a formula that I never really thought about until now. When I've run out of contiguous space for a specific application, they are older then 2 years, the cost of merging a number of little drives is within the the cost of a single drive in the $100-$200 range. Generally even used drives are in the $40-$50 range just for the spindle. Example, 2 300GB boot drives + 2 data 500GB in a raid-1 configuration, 3 years old. getting tight on space for a specific music collection. Cost of 2 1TB drives + eliminating the boot drives equates to a savings in the long run.. Less electricity/heat with spindles. Since unRAID, this year will be the first time I've changed this rule. I ran out of space on a 1TB drive I bought last year. This has data that I want consolidated onto 1 spindle. (should the need arise that I have to take it out of unRAID and use it elsewhere). unRAID allowed me to replace the 1TB with a 1.5TB and expand in one fell swoop. I mean I am not going to go spend $250 bucks on a 2TB drive just for the priveledge of shelving 2*500GB ones. Certainly not when a complete server to run 6 of those drives costs only marginally more than one 2TB drive. Its a balancing act. If I had a 2TB Parity drive already, I might spend the $200-$250 and sell the 500's. (you don't sell.. Me, I use dBAN erase and sell, or give away). However, you said 2 drives.. I would not replace them with a 1TB unless I needed the space or ran out of room to expand as physical drives. If I were at 4-6 spindles, then I would start swapping them out. Interesting turn of the thread, perhaps continued elsewhere on "When do you retire old drives?" Link to comment
NAS Posted August 26, 2009 Author Share Posted August 26, 2009 Your right this would make for an excellent debate. Forking into a new thread. So this thread should really be called now: "Building a small rack mount, all SATA on MB native ports, 6-8 drives, supported, low power unRAID on a budget" I say 6-8 drives as its driven by 3 main reason: 1. unRAID Plus only only support 6 drives. That saves a few bucks. 2. Alot of mATX boards only support 5-6 drives 3. Cheap 80Plus PSUs are approx 350W (this is less of a factor with modern Eco friendly HDD but it is a factor) I am going to try and stay mATX as I see no reall need to go for more. With everything onboard a smaller MB just means more space in the case. This is my current favourite: XFX GeForce 8300 Socket AM2+ onboard graphics 8 channel audio mATX Motherboard As it is cheap, it has 6 SATA ports, is laid out in a logical manners and has good heatsinks onboard. The onboard GPU is OTT but for the sake of <$10 more this board could be retasked later in life as a full 1080p HD media board. With this 4U case Which supports at least 6 drives behind that 120mm fan I am unsure what is the best CPU to choose. Link to comment
NAS Posted January 22, 2010 Author Share Posted January 22, 2010 Well the XFX GeForce 8300 motherboard seems to have become super rare (and it was hard to find in the first place) However the new ZOTAC NM10 series looks like it ticks all the boxes (albeit its hard to actually find to buy yet). General details * New ZOTAC NM10-ITX WiFi & NM10-DTX WiFi * Intel® NM10 Express chipset * Intel® Atom™ D510 processor (dual-core, 1.66 GHz) * Intel® HyperThreading technology * Intel® Clear Video (SD) technology * ZOTAC NM10-DTX WiFi o PCI Express x16 (single lane) expansion o PCI Express x1 expansion o Mini PCI Express x1 (occupied by WiFi module) o 2 SATA 3.0Gb/s o 4 SATA 3.0Gb/s w/RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 o 1 eSATA 3.0Gb/s o 10 USB 2.0 ports o Mini-ITX form factor * ZOTAC NM10-ITX WiFi o PCI Express x1 expansion o 2 Mini PCI Express x1 expansion (one occupied by WiFi module) o 2 SATA 3.0Gb/s o 8 USB 2.0 ports o Mini-ITX form factor * HDMI (720p) & VGA outputs * HDCP compliant * Gigabit Ethernet * Onboard 802.11n WiFi * Microsoft® DirectX® 9 with Shader Model 3.0 compatible * OpenGL® 1.5 compatible At approx 115 Euro for a silent and energy efficient motherboard with CPU that supports 6 SATA we might have a new winner. Link to comment
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