January 19, 201016 yr I am a noobie to Linux, NAS, and unRAID but I love to get my hands dirty and always want to try new things. I have some old hardware lying around and want to try and setup a NAS box for my Popcorn Hour C200. Motherboard: Intel D865PERL Processor: Pentium 4 2.4Ghz Memory: 768MB Power Supply: Generic 265W RAID card: 4 Port SATA Serial ATA PCI RAID - Silicon Image (suggested on this forum) Hard Drives: 3 x 1TB Western Digital Green Drives (have not purchased these yet but they seem to be in the right price range) Network Card: Intel Gigabit PCI Adapter (PWLA8391GT) This will all be connected to a Procurve 1400 8port Gigabit switch. Does anyone have any suggestions with any of the hardware? This board only has PCI slots so I cannot get any benfit from PCIe cards. Thank you for any help
January 19, 201016 yr The power supply may be too light. I've read elsewhere that you need a 300W or greater for a P4 2.4ghz. I think the recommendation was a power supply that could put out 8 amps on the 12v side. In my experience even a 300 wasn't enough for longterm stability. An Antec Earthwatts 380 or 430 will do fine. From what I can tell the board supports PCI 2.2 (At least from some searches) Which means the PCI can probably support 66Mhz cards. Therefore look for a PCI controller that supports the same and you will have a good transfer rate. The Promise TX4 comes highly recommended. # PCI 2.1, released on June 1, 1995, allows for 66 MHz signaling at 3.3 volt signal voltage (peak transfer rate of 533MB/s), but at 33 MHz both 5 volt and 3.3 volt signal voltages are still allowed. It also added transaction latency limits to the specification.[7] # PCI 2.2 Power rails to provide 3.3 volt supply voltage are now mandatory.[8] # PCI 2.3 permits use of 3.3 volt and universal keying, but does not allow 5 volt keyed add in cards.
January 20, 201016 yr Author Thanks for the reply, I did confirm with the tech manual that the PCI bus is v2.2 so the Promise card would work, but do you think that I should just splurge and get the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card? I know this card is PCI-X but it should be backward compatible with PCI (this will allow me to keep the same card if I upgrade to a new motherboard). The other question is what would be the expected amount of storage space I would have with the 3 1TB green drives using unraid? Thanks again
January 20, 201016 yr Thanks for the reply, I did confirm with the tech manual that the PCI bus is v2.2 so the Promise card would work, but do you think that I should just splurge and get the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card? I know this card is PCI-X but it should be backward compatible with PCI (this will allow me to keep the same card if I upgrade to a new motherboard). The other question is what would be the expected amount of storage space I would have with the 3 1TB green drives using unraid? Thanks again I don't know for sure if the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 will run at 66Mhz in a regular PCI 2.2 slot. It should since the card has to be compatible at 133,100,66 in a PCI-X slot. But I cannot say for sure. Would I recommend getting it. Yes. The card holds it's value even on the used market if you decide to switch to something else later on. 3 1tb drives will give you approx 1.8tb of usable space.
January 20, 201016 yr Author your suggestions have been extremely helpful. I really appreciate your informed responses and will let you guys know how it turns out. Thanks again
January 20, 201016 yr Just a suggestion, but the 1.5 TB drives have the sweet spot in $/GB atm. May be out of range of your budget, but 2 x 1.5 TB drives will get you almost as much initial storage, and will give you more expansion later.
January 21, 201016 yr Author Just a suggestion, but the 1.5 TB drives have the sweet spot in $/GB atm. May be out of range of your budget, but 2 x 1.5 TB drives will get you almost as much initial storage, and will give you more expansion later. Yeah I had looked at 1.5TB WD and Seagate drives but it seems that every single forum and about half of the customer feedback on Newegg says that 1.5TB drives have a much higher failure rate than smaller drives. Just a bit worried about that
January 21, 201016 yr Just a suggestion, but the 1.5 TB drives have the sweet spot in $/GB atm. If you factor in the unRAID license cost, and also the limitation of the number of disk slots you have in your server, then it will turn out that the 2TB drives have the "sweet spot."
January 21, 201016 yr If you factor in the unRAID license cost, and also the limitation of the number of disk slots you have in your server, then it will turn out that the 2TB drives have the "sweet spot." Which is why I'm rocking 2TB drives on a free license right now. I was just trying to avoid giving him sticker shock over the cost of drives.
January 22, 201016 yr I'm using these. It's the only 7200 rpm 2TB drive available for under $200. Sometimes Fry's will sell them for $129 on special, and that's when I pounce. I don't get some of those reviews, because my drives are quiet, fast, and relatively cool.
January 22, 201016 yr I'm using these. It's the only 7200 rpm 2TB drive available for under $200. Sometimes Fry's will sell them for $129 on special, and that's when I pounce. I don't get some of those reviews, because my drives are quiet, fast, and relatively cool. I have 2 of those drives in my setup also and they are running perfectly fine. No hotter then the others and not loud by any means. The warmest drive in my system is a Seagate 750GB
January 22, 201016 yr Author yeah I had looked at those and I have a Fry's in my hometown. Most of the reviews just complain of DOA or quick failure. So I guess if it lasts over a month then you probably have a good one I guess its worth it as long as they carry a long enough warranty
January 22, 201016 yr Well, remember ALL the manufacturers have DOA and quick death issues for a variety of drives. It's pretty prevalent regardless of who put the drive together. To make sure my drives were healthy, I ran a 5 cycle preclear on them, which took over a week. I'm sure Joe would advise that 3 cycles is more than enough.
January 22, 201016 yr Well, remember ALL the manufacturers have DOA and quick death issues for a variety of drives. It's pretty prevalent regardless of who put the drive together. To make sure my drives were healthy, I ran a 5 cycle preclear on them, which took over a week. I'm sure Joe would advise that 3 cycles is more than enough. I usually end up running 3 cycles on mine to see if they are good to go. With these new drives it can take forever to do that...
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