Old Dell used as basic server?

[t2ffn]

Hi,

 

My first post here  Great work with unRaid, I hear nothing but good things!

 

I've known about unRaid for some time but have not used it yet.

 

I have half a dozen SATA drives, totalling around 5TB. Most of these are USB external drives. I want to take them out of their cases and insert them into a tower. My budget right now is pretty low, but I have recently acquired a Dell GX260 mini tower for free.

 

Spec here: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opgx260/en/ug/specs.htm#1110653

 

(P4 2.53Ghz, 512Mb Ram, CD, Floppy)

 

It is quite old, but I want to know if this could be used to store 4-5 drives for now, until I can build a purpose built media server. Plugging, unplugging, moving the external drives is tiresome and annoying finding certain films etc when they are spread around! 

 

I've never built a PC / server, but pick things up quickly.  Can i remove the CD, floppy etc and slide 3.5" drives into their place, or will I need to modify things?

 

The board has IDE connections, but has 4 PCI slots, could I add a SATA card and add the drives? Any suggestions?

 

I want to make an unRaid server, can I add 'full' drives or do they need to be empty when you add them? Any advice welcome.

 

Thanks

[jazzysmooth]

IMO, your biggest concern is going to be power.  I work with a lot of Dells and have noticed their power supplies typically don't have a lot of headroom.  And the P4 CPUs pull a lot of watts on their own.  Unfortunately their motherboards are customized so I don't believe you can easily swap the ps for another one.  You'll definitely want to pull the floppy, CD, soundcard, anything that could pull power.  Need to make certain that machine can boot from USB as well.

 

Basically try it and see what happens would be my recommendation.  Start with the free (3 drive) version of Unraid and see if that remains stable.  If it looks good, purchase the plus or pro version and then add additional drives, one at a time.

 

You can't add "full" drives directly - Unraid uses the Reiserfs file system and will wipe the drives when it preps them.  What you could do is build the server with a single drive, then either copy data over to it across the network, or physically connect a data drive to it, mount it and manually move the data over.  Then add that drive to the server and repeat...

[Thornwood]

Just for testing purposes you could even not mount the drives but after the initial tests you can use the floppy port for one of the drives. The other consern will be how hot it gets in the case. Since Dell is making the box as a pc that only has one to two drives there is few conserns regarding air flow so you might want to keep a eye on the heat levels. A great thing is that the unraid system is system independent so if this box is not your final box you can just transpher the drives to a new (newer) box and refind the drives and away you go.

 

[t2ffn]

Thanks for the responses.

 

I think I may try to add a PCI Sata card, and run say 3 drives, see if it runs fine.

 

The PSU is 300W so I would think this would handle 3/4 drives fine, on the basis the CPU is not doing a lot, and the drives will spin down if not in use...?

 

Jazzysmooth,

 

In your explanation, will I need to add a blank parity drive and a blank data drive, then start moving the files? In that case I will need 2 new blank drives. Correct?

 

I do aim to build a sexy purpose built server when funds allow, this could/will be my test server.

 

Thanks

 

 

[Joe L.]

Thanks for the responses.

 

I think I may try to add a PCI Sata card, and run say 3 drives, see if it runs fine.

 

The PSU is 300W so I would think this would handle 3/4 drives fine, on the basis the CPU is not doing a lot, and the drives will spin down if not in use...?

 

Jazzysmooth,

 

In your explanation, will I need to add a blank parity drive and a blank data drive, then start moving the files? In that case I will need 2 new blank drives. Correct?

 

I do aim to build a sexy purpose built server when funds allow, this could/will be my test server.

 

Thanks

 

 

You only need a data drive to begin moving files, you can add the parity disk at any time. Obviously, you will not be protected from a disk failure until you add a parity disk, but it is not needed to initially migrate data.

 

Joe L.

[Rajahal]

Monoprice sells some cheapo 4 port PCI-SATA cards.  Speedy they ain't.  Reliable they ain't (I've had two die on me).  However, they may get you by until you are able to build your 'real' server.

[t2ffn]

Rajahal,

 

Thanks for the link. I am in the UK, shipping is about twice the price of the card! 

 

Its crazy when I see how much things cost in the US compared to here! You guys have some very good value over there!