Came upon this program/community as I was looking for ways to upgrade my three year old raid5 1.5tb server/main system into a separate server and game/video playing machine.  Already have 3t of media files on that and laying around on external drives.  While the advocates of WHS make their case (and I've only barely tinkered with Linux in the past) I will always tend toward the open source solution and more importantly, WHS doesn't really offer the protection and efficiency I'm looking for both now and with expected features in the future.  Most importantly, I am unexpectedly carrying two mortgages and so overall cost has become an over-riding concern.  After a week of researching hardware I realized I'd better ask the experts as to how warm/cold I am on bang for the buck with the direction I'm heading (and getting better directions if I'm cold.)

 

Current System:

Asus P5B-E

2.2Ghz Core2 (can't remember exact model with intel's crazy naming schemes these days.)

4 GB DDR-2

HTPC case (will stay with HT machine)

NVidia 7950pci-x

icy-dock 3 in 2 HD bay adapter

(3) 500 GB RE2 WD drives

(2) 1TB GP WD drives

(1) 320 GB samsung

(1) 150 GB WD raptor (will stay with HT machine)

 

Planned Unraid Server (pending your advice)

Asus P5B-E (supports 7 SATA drives directly and 1 with an e-sata to sata cable)

2.2Ghz Core2 (can't remember exact model with intel's crazy naming schemes these days.)

some sort of sata card (want to start with at least 12 drive capacity)

NVidia card, unless I need the pci-x slot for the sata card, in which case some sort of pci vid card.

CHIEFTEC Mesh CA-01B-B-SL-OP Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case (just seems to be the best many-drive case without having to buy hot-swap adapters)

(3) more samsung ecogreen f2, (cheapest 1tb drive, 2 platter)

 

This gives me a 4.8 TB server with one parity drive - or 4.5 if I use the 320gig drive as the caching drive - at least I think it does.  When will dual parity be available?  Am I missing something here?  Are there better, more trusted, more compatible parts that folks swear by?  Cost is a paramount concern - the HTPC is going to be what I can afford after the server is built (might have to put off playing cod/mw2 for a while after release unless home sales pick up.)

 

Hi and welcome,

 

First off your MB is a PCI-E mb not a PCI-X motherboard. Likewise your NVidia graphics card is a PCI-E card. Dont worry PCI-E and PCI-X are easily confused. 

The MB has three x PCI-E x1 slots and one PCI-E x16 slot. Keep the graphics card for something else (HTPC), buy a cheapo PCI graphics card (uses less power and frees a fast PCI-E slot).

 

CPU and MB look like good candidates for a unRaid board. Chipset has been tested and is OK, the only issue you might have is the onboard NIC. This might not be supported... Intel GB NIC is $20 so not a big deal.

 

( 3) 500 GB RE2 WD drives

(2) 1TB GP WD drives

(1) 320 GB samsung

 

+ 3 more 1TB drives (I suspect it would be as cheap to buy 2 x 1.5TB drives...)

 

You will lose the capacity of one drive (the largest size in the array).

4 x 1TB, 3 x 500GB + 320GB = 5.8TB (or 5.5 TB if you go with cache drive of 320GB).

or 5TB if you go with 2x1.5TB drives (one would be parity drive).

 

You'll need to budget for a good PSU as well (good make around 500-600W range).

 

Now for your extra SATA ports you have a couple of choices. Adaptec 1430SA is a x4 PCI-E card offering 4 sata ports, assuming your MB can run a x4 PCI-E card in its PCI-E x16 slot (some MB can, some can't). Lime Technology use these cards, so they are known good. Bad points some people complain boot-up time is long. Pros good performance, 4 ports per card. Cons cost more, might not work.

 

Rosewill 218 is same chipset but no long bios wait during boot, again PCI-E x4 and 4 sata ports. Pros/cons as above.

 

Or go with PCI-E x1 2 port sata cards, SIL or JMicron cards are very popular. You will have two empty x1 slots (assuming worst case onboard NIC doesnt work and you buy a PCI-E x1 Gigabit card). PCI GB nics are available. Pros cheap cards, will work, can add them as you need them. Cons, only two SATA ports per slot.

 

Try to avoid putting HDDs on PCI SATA cards or limit HDDs to two HDDs max if possible, even more so if using PCI GB NIC. PCI bus is 133MB/s shared between all devices on the bus. Gigabit or a single hdd is capable of using the whole throughput.

 

You'll need 3 or 4 more sata ports for your planned build depending on what HDDs you buy and re-use.

 

Everything else looks just fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the quick reply - I know the difference on the -E vs -X, but I'm damn sloppy on the terminology  , thanks for making the point.

 

Is there a pci card folks recommend (works with linux, no conflicts, etc.) in my big box(es) of computer parts downstairs (and the wife made fun of me for moving them - you never know when you might need an old mac plus.) I realize I have no pci cards, only agp.

 

will keep the nic issue in mind

 

I have the http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153039 power supply, sorry for not mentioning that.  along with the 6 sata power connectors I figure i'll just use the 4pin to sata adapters from monoprice.  This should be more than enough power (700W at 80%+)  I also need to replace in the HTPC for use with current video cards (thermaltake's fault on this one)

 

Another posters suggested this sata card, far cheaper (with bulk discount!) than the other cards I've seen suggested: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=2530&seq=1&format=2  I assume he suggested because it worked, but I wouldn't mind a second opinion.  I do like monoprice.

 

Good advice on pci based extenders, guess this board is actually a pretty good deal in that respect.

 

I was thinking i have

 

6 intel chipset sata ports

1 internal secondary chipset port

1 esata port on the secondary chipset I could use with a multiplier cable looped back into the computer to make 2 more ports

2 of those pci-e 1x monoprice cards for 4 more ports

 

for a total of 12 ports, which should be enough until i've replaced all the 500GB drives, and the parity drive, with 2TB drives in the future.

 

Now that I think about it, with all the talk of raid (or unraid) not being a real back up unless you have the data saved in a separate place after I max out 12 drives it might make sense to start a new box again so that I've got two different, separated arrays in case the unthinkable happens to the first box.  But that's for another day.

 

Last thing - I have been building computers since I put together an apple kit as a kid.  I was pretty good sophisticated with dos and apple os back when it was all command line, pascal and lisp as languages, anything involving device drivers, but that was a different day and age.  I'm sorry to say I've gotten to this point never really using Linux or any other open source variant.  I gather from the many posts I've read that Unraid is best when you add scripts and tinker with it - my question is how difficult should it be for a novice to pick up what they need to make unraid dance and sing?

 

I'm going to be using this to serve a number of media players (vlc, ps3 media player, others)  From what I've read, if you are at all technically proficient you should be able to keep an unraid array pumping out enough bandwidth to keep them all happy at full bandwidth HD, is there anything I'm missing?

 

 

Last thing - I have been building computers since I put together an apple kit as a kid.  I was pretty good sophisticated with dos and apple os back when it was all command line, pascal and lisp as languages, anything involving device drivers, but that was a different day and age.  I'm sorry to say I've gotten to this point never really using Linux or any other open source variant.  I gather from the many posts I've read that Unraid is best when you add scripts and tinker with it - my question is how difficult should it be for a novice to pick up what they need to make unraid dance and sing?

 

You will be fine once you learn some basic concepts.

unRAID only needs a few enhancements for filesharing.  Consider it as a more advanced butler rather then an entertainer.

 

I'm going to be using this to serve a number of media players (vlc, ps3 media player, others)  From what I've read, if you are at all technically proficient you should be able to keep an unraid array pumping out enough bandwidth to keep them all happy at full bandwidth HD, is there anything I'm missing?

 

for reads unRAID does fine, you usually do not need to be technically proficient unless you have very old or unsupported hardware.

Where it requires tweaking is if you need high speed writes, and even then a cache drive usually solves that situation.

 

 

Monoprice card is a sil3132 based card, no problems with that choice. Will work with port multipliers too should you decide to fill that case up.

 

agp video card wont work either, a different bus. Worth checking "the box" or any old pcs for a pci video card. I found a s3 vesa one the other day, no use but made me chuckle .