lewis Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 I have spent the past few months looking at options for a home server. I have spent a lot of time looking at Ready NAS, Buffalo, etc. After reading a ton of forums and subscribing to the theory “one can never have too much storage” – I have decided to build my own UnRaid Storage. I ordered the parts this weekend (after reading hours and hours of posts on Lime Technology’s forums). I will update this as it goes along – I found posts like these most helpful when I was looking to do this. Motherboard- ASUS P5LD2 R2.0 LGA 775 Intel 945P New (I made the same mistake others did – I did not buy the VM version, dumb mistake on my part)- $93.00 with shipping EBAY- Case - COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UWK Black - $154.00 from Newegg Chip - Intel Pentium D 820 Smithfield 2.8GHz LGA 775 Processor Model - $88.00 from Newegg PSU - Thermaltake TR2 W0070RUC ATX 430W Power Supply - $39.99 from Newegg Cooling - COOLER MASTER SAF-S83-E1 80mm Case Fan – (four extra fans for the case given that I will have running 24/7 - $9.99 from Newegg Chip cooling - ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink – (decided to go with extra cooling, again given that it will be running full time) - $47.99 from Newegg Memory - CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 - $54.99 from Newegg Hard drive 1 Seagate ST3750640NS SATA 3.0Gb/s 750GB Hard Drive 750 - $254 with shipping EBAY Hard drives 2-4 – (3) Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS 750GB 750GB Serial ATA - $235 each ($705 total) with shipping EBAY Jump Drive - Lexar JumpDrive Firefly 1 GB USB Flash Drive - $10.00 – EBAY Grand total is $498 with everything other than the hard drives, and $959 for the 4 750gb hard drives for a grand total of $1,457 for 2.25 terabytes with one 750gb drive for parity. This works out to about 64 cents per gb, however as I add drive this cost will come down to south of 40 cents per gb. I welcome any feedback or questions – thanks again for everyone’s posts on this forum, they have helped me tremendously so far. Quote Link to comment
BillK Posted May 2, 2007 Share Posted May 2, 2007 Just curious...why did you choose the Seagate ST3750640NS for your parity drive, but switched to the Seagate ST3750640AS for your three data drives? Quote Link to comment
lewis Posted May 3, 2007 Author Share Posted May 3, 2007 Just curious...why did you choose the Seagate ST3750640NS for your parity drive, but switched to the Seagate ST3750640AS for your three data drives? No reason - just didnt want to buy all four drives from same source in case some were bad Quote Link to comment
Billped Posted May 3, 2007 Share Posted May 3, 2007 Speaking of drive failures, this is a good read ... http://www.usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/schroeder/schroeder_html/index.html I can't say that I was surprised by the results, but it is nice to know that someone is looking at the situation with a broader perspective and more scientific approach than that espoused by the typical poster (not anyone here, btw), "I once had two Maxtor drives and they both went bad, I'll never buy Maxtor again". Bill Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted May 3, 2007 Share Posted May 3, 2007 "I once had two Maxtor drives and they both went bad, I'll never buy Maxtor again". Bill I once had western digital drives, They went bad. I once had maxtor drives, They went bad. I once had segate drives, They went bad. Frankly, I've had drives from all vendors, There is good and bad in each kind and also within batches. There are so many factors that lead up to drive faiilure. most of my drives spin 24x7. The wd drives that did fail were on a workstation that was turned off daily and turned on daily. This one hurt the most because there was no warning.... Boot one day and clickity clack, drive said thwack. Most of the other drives gave me some form of warning of impending doom. Generally I buy drives in pairs, mirror them, then wait a few months and buy spares to alleviate the issue of bad batches. I've found heat and constant on/off to be the silent killers. Quote Link to comment
BillK Posted May 4, 2007 Share Posted May 4, 2007 Memory - CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 - $54.99 from Newegg One word of caution. I purchased two sticks of Corsair ValueSelect 512MB 184-Pin DDR 400 (PC 3200) memory for my Asus P5PE-VM MB only to discover that my MB reported 1GB of SINGLE channel memory, not the 1GB of DUAL channel memory I expected. I dug around on the Asus website and found other frustrated users who purchased the same memory. As soon as I have some free time, I plan to upgrade my BIOS to see if that makes any difference, but I'm not holding out much hope. Quote Link to comment
lewis Posted May 6, 2007 Author Share Posted May 6, 2007 Well, good news bad news; I put the server together this weekend and I was ready roll and went to plug in my VGA cable and guess what - no VGA out. I am at a loss on how to hook this up to my monitor, the only input my monitor has is VGA. Any wisdom would be much appreciated. I also only hoooked up two drives to make it a little easier to start. The Coolmaster Stacker is an awesome case - everything you need is in there - i am really impressed See pics of the build below: Thanks Lewis Quote Link to comment
BillK Posted May 6, 2007 Share Posted May 6, 2007 As you've discovered...the Asus P5LD2 mb has no built-in video capability. At this point, you really have no other option other than buy/borrow a cheap PCI or PCI-E video card. I'd recommend picking one up, but if you choose to borrow one, you can return it after you've got everything set up, since most of the real work is done through the web interface and/or telnet screen. Just don't forget to modify the BIOS to ignore the lack of keyboard/mouse and to boot up automatically in a case of a power loss. BillK Quote Link to comment
lewis Posted May 7, 2007 Author Share Posted May 7, 2007 As you've discovered...the Asus P5LD2 mb has no built-in video capability. At this point, you really have no other option other than buy/borrow a cheap PCI or PCI-E video card. I'd recommend picking one up, but if you choose to borrow one, you can return it after you've got everything set up, since most of the real work is done through the web interface and/or telnet screen. Just don't forget to modify the BIOS to ignore the lack of keyboard/mouse and to boot up automatically in a case of a power loss. BillK Got it - thanks, in reading others builds using this Mobo i didnt see where they had also bought a video card - thanks so much. Another order in Newegg Quote Link to comment
lewis Posted May 19, 2007 Author Share Posted May 19, 2007 Well i finally got my VIdeo card this week and installed it. I also now have all 4 750 gig hardrives installed....but Now a new problem I loading the UNRAID software onto the jump drive as detailed on the UnRAID Server Basic webpage and i am getting an error on my new server when i am booting from the jump dirve saying "Missing Operting System" I tried loading verion 3.0 and 4.0 and reformatting the disk 3 different times Below are the files on my flash drive from which i am booting: bzimage 1,066kb bzroot 25,253kb disk.cfg 1kb go 1kb ident.cfg 1kb ldinux 10kb license 5kb network.cfg 1kb readme 3kb share.cfg 1kb syslinux.cfg 1kb Any help would be much appreciated and worthy of at least one beer Thanks Lewis Quote Link to comment
lewis Posted May 19, 2007 Author Share Posted May 19, 2007 did you remember to name the flash "UNRAID" ? /Rene Yes, think i did it correct, to overcommuncate it is UNRAID all in caps and no quotes. I tried twice again this morning, reformatting the flash drive and same thing. I am sure i missing somthing simple, but i cant figure it out Quote Link to comment
RobJ Posted May 19, 2007 Share Posted May 19, 2007 Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't see the Config directory mentioned above, containing 5 of those files, the rest in the root. You may have done it correctly, but it is not obvious from the above, so I'm wondering if you extracted the files without preserving their correct path. Quote from the page you mentioned: http://www.lime-technology.com/wordpress/?page_id=19 "Step 3 Download unRAID Server and extract the files from the zip archive to your Flash." This should possibly be amended to add something like: "making sure to select the 'preserve paths' option of your extraction/unzip/unrar tool". After a first extraction, the root of the flash drive will contain: Config <Folder> bzimage bzroot ldinux readme syslinux.cfg and the Config folder should contain: disk.cfg go ident.cfg license network.cfg share.cfg Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted May 19, 2007 Share Posted May 19, 2007 did you remember to name the flash "UNRAID" ? /Rene Yes, think i did it correct, to overcommuncate it is UNRAID all in caps and no quotes. I tried twice again this morning, reformatting the flash drive and same thing. I am sure i missing somthing simple, but i cant figure it out Some flash drives have U3 software partitioning... does yours? did you remove it? did you try the HP formatting tool to format the USB drive? Many find it necessary... Did you run the syslinux tool to make it bootable? Did you specify the correct windows drive letter when you invoked it? Did you go into the bios of your motherboard to select the USB drive as your boot device? (I did not ask about the USB disk label... others have. ) Quote Link to comment
lewis Posted May 20, 2007 Author Share Posted May 20, 2007 did you remember to name the flash "UNRAID" ? /Rene Yes, think i did it correct, to overcommuncate it is UNRAID all in caps and no quotes. I tried twice again this morning, reformatting the flash drive and same thing. I am sure i missing somthing simple, but i cant figure it out Some flash drives have U3 software partitioning... does yours? did you remove it? did you try the HP formatting tool to format the USB drive? Many find it necessary... Did you run the syslinux tool to make it bootable? Did you specify the correct windows drive letter when you invoked it? Did you go into the bios of your motherboard to select the USB drive as your boot device? (I did not ask about the USB disk label... others have. ) Well guys, I appreciate everyone's help but I am afraid I am going to give up trying to get this to work - clearly I must be doing something wrong. I tried a different Lexar drive - reformatted it as recommended via the HP formatting tool; loaded up syslinux as recommended and checked to make sure it loaded (it did) - I then extracted the 3.0 and 4.0 version (tried different ones separately, not at the same time) and confirmed the files were on the drive as RobJ described. I confirmed my BIOS boots via the Flash drive as it says so in the BIOS and i can see the light flash on the Jump drive while it is booting up right before the error message - got the same error. Interestingly enough - i tried a non-Lexar drive and this time I did not get the Operating System error - instead it just got hung on "j" with a blinking cursor. This leads me to believe it may be something with my motherboard or perhaps the BIOS, I don't know, but i am getting in over my head. Very frustrated as i cant get it to work - very frustrated. Guys - thanks for all your help, and I really appreciate the advice, input and feedback. This is an incredible forum, it appears i just may be out of my league here . Lewis Quote Link to comment
lewis Posted May 20, 2007 Author Share Posted May 20, 2007 Wow - what a difference a nights sleep makes. I decided there had to be something wrong with the Lexar Firefly 1gb drives - becuase i was the same problems from my two Lexar drives and something different (the hanging "J" prompt) from my old generic jump drive i had sitting around the house. So this morning i reformated the old jump drive and BANG - its working. Has anyone else had any problems with the Lexar Firefly 1gb drive? Again thanks for all the help - more updates as I get it up and running Lews Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted May 20, 2007 Share Posted May 20, 2007 Wow - what a difference a nights sleep makes. I decided there had to be something wrong with the Lexar Firefly 1gb drives - because i was the same problems from my two Lexar drives and something different (the hanging "J" prompt) from my old generic jump drive i had sitting around the house. So this morning i reformated the old jump drive and BANG - its working. Has anyone else had any problems with the Lexar Firefly 1gb drive? Again thanks for all the help - more updates as I get it up and running Lews I had a similar problem with a 1 gig drive... it is a geometry problem --- the BIOS in your motherboard is at fault and cannot boot from USB drives that report their geometry in certain ways. My USB drive would boot perfectly on my laptop... but on on my unRaid server. I got the exact same letter 'j' the thread showing my experience is here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=540.msg3527#msg3527 and here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=359.0 before you try anything else you might try using the following options to syslinux... on your firefly USB drive. syslinux -sam g: (where g is the drive letter assigned by windows) Now that you have booted on the old USB drive and can plug the lexar firefly into a second USB port you can use the fdisk command expert mode to change the Lexar's reported geometry and make it bootable for unRaid too. Joe L. Quote Link to comment
flambot Posted May 21, 2007 Share Posted May 21, 2007 Wow - what a difference a nights sleep makes. Yeah...I found the same thing. Stick with it. If I can do it, then I'm sure anyone can Following the process here certainly help, as did all the help from fellow Unraidians. Quote Link to comment
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