New Build

[Scott]

Just letting everyone know what I used and what worked.....FYI

 

Case =  COOLER MASTER Centurion 534 RC-534-KKN2-GP Black

MB  =  GIGABYTE GA-945GZM-S2 LGA 775 Intel 945GZ Micro ATX

CPU =  Intel Celeron D 347 Cedar Mill 3.06GHz 512KB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

PS  =  APEVIA ATX-AS680W-BL ATX12V / EPS12V 680W Power Supply

4 in 3 cage =  ICY DOCK MB454SPF-B Mulit-Bay Backplane Module

Drives = (2) Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3400833AS 400GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA - for storage

        = (1) Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA - for Parity Disk

Memory = 1 gig from crucial

Flash Drive = Sandisk Micro I had laying around

 

It took a while to get it too boot off of the flash, I kept avoiding using the HP Flash Formatting Tool, because I didn't think it would make a difference, well once I formatted it using the HP Flash Formatting Tool it booted right up. no problems....so far.

 

[Scott]

Update : again for anyone who is having similar problems this is posted for a FYI.

 

My parity sinc was very slow aroung 3000kb/sec.  at first I didn't even know that this was a problem.  It wasn't until I noticed a post in one of the forums that I realized this was not normal.

 

So I started digging around.  Tomm got me going in the right direction.  The problem was that my SATA drives were not being recognized as such, Tomm told me to look in my BIOS and make sure that the SATA was set to enhanced.  Well it was set to auto, so I changed it to ENHANCED  and rebooted, and had to reconfig my drives.  No big deal. I added my 500 as the parity disk, everything OK, I then added my 400 and was told invalid config.  I had to check the box about restore config and I was sure that I wanted to do that and everything clicked.  I was up and running, screaming actually.  My parity sync is around 47MB/sec and only took about about 1-1/2 hrs. 

 

Tomm was very helpfull, I don't know what I would have done without his help. 

 

This thing is great, I am so happy I went this route, I almost bought a buffalo terra station instead, but I wanted to try and build a PC instead.  This whole thing has been very easy, even the little problems I had were really no big deal, and I was sure that they would be worked out.  I am going to recommend this to everyone I see and even the IT people at work. Although they will probably just roll there eyes (after all I am not qualified to work in IT so everything I say must be wrong).

 

Hope this helps anyone who is having any problems.

[erikatcuse]

Is that sync with only 2 drives or do you have more than that?  Just remember as you add more drives the sync will get slower due to the multiple reads that have to happen to calculate parity.  On my 11 drive + parity, I average around 15,000KB/SEC oh and there all IDE.

[Scott]

Right now I am only using two drives. I will be adding a third in the next couple of days, then a 4 and 5 probably next week, as time allows.

The two drives I am using now are SATA and the third drive I will add is also SATA, however drives 4 & 5 are some old PATA drive I have laying around and will add them "just because I can".  I will repost my sync rates after drive 3 is added and after 4 & 5 are added as well.

 

thanx for the heads up.

[Scott]

Well added my third 400GB SATA drive and my parity sync is @ 59MB/sec.  I am not sure if I will be adding the PATA drives that I was planning on.  One of them flamed out just as I got done coping info off of it onto the tower, and I may just keep the other in my exernal USB enclosure.  There are alway deals on SATA drive lately, I will just wait for a good deal and through another one of them in the tower.