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Building a 20 Drive Rig out of Antec 1200 case


ReKK

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I am planning on using the Antec 1200 to create a 20 drive rig. Although it will be more expensive, I just think it looks a lot nicer than the Norco 4220. I have a few questions before I break out the wallet:

 

1) When you guys build a 20 drive rig, is it really only 18 of storage as 2 of the slots are for the cache and parity drive? Is there a certain case or build that lets you do the full 19+parity?

 

2) What would the difference be if I decided not to buy the recommended motherboard (SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SBE), but decided to instead by something like the following link which has (2) PCIe 2.0 slots for (2) Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8? 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131402R&cm_re=M4A79XTD-_-13-131-402R-_-Product

 

 

Any input for helping me create this bad boy at the best price possible will be appreciated.

 

I currently have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ that I can use from an old PC which is why I keep trying to figure out which of these AMD boards will work - but am willing to part with it if either I need more power for a 20 drive rig or if I can get a great motherboard/cpu deal somewhere. If you guys have any suggestions that will help me cut some costs and are loosely based around the 20 drive beast writeup - i'd love to hear them.

 

Thanks.

 

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1) When you guys build a 20 drive rig, is it really only 18 of storage as 2 of the slots are for the cache and parity drive? Is there a certain case or build that lets you do the full 19+parity?

 

Antec 1200 has 12 5-1/4 device space, so if you use 5-in-3 disk cage, you will have 20 disks capacity. your question is How you want to configure your unRAID has nothing to do with case unless your are looking for 21 and up disk, for 20 disks you can

 

  • 18 data + 1 cache + 1 parity
  • 19 data + 1 parity

 

Another solution is to use two cases and connected both cases together through eSATA cables. for example if you use two CM590 cases, then you can have as many as 30 disks when using 5-in-3 disk cage.

 

2) What would the difference be if I decided not to buy the recommended motherboard (SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SBE), but decided to instead by something like the following link which has (2) PCIe 2.0 slots for (2) Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8? 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131402R&cm_re=M4A79XTD-_-13-131-402R-_-Product

 

Should be the same, both MB you need to have two Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 for extra SATA ports

 

 

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It's my understanding that the cache drive is not counted as part of the array so the maximum number of drives is 19 data + 1 parity + 1 cache.

 

"Pro - Supporting up to 20 array hard drives, a Cache drive, User Level and Active Directory security models..."

 

Of course, I could be wrong.

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Any input for helping me create this bad boy at the best price possible will be appreciated.

 

I currently have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ that I can use from an old PC which is why I keep trying to figure out which of these AMD boards will work - but am willing to part with it if either I need more power for a 20 drive rig or if I can get a great motherboard/cpu deal somewhere. If you guys have any suggestions that will help me cut some costs and are loosely based around the 20 drive beast writeup - i'd love to hear them.

 

If you reuse your old CPU you probably will get the lowest cost as the AMD motherboards are generally less expensive than the Intel ones. The question is do you have extra memory to reuse or you plan to buy a new one anyway.

Go to Newegg and use the parametric search:

1. Select AMD motherboards

2. Select SATA 3GB/s with 6 ports as these will have the lowest cost - search - you will get 71 MBs

3. Go to form factor and select "ATX" as these are the boards that may have two or more PCIe x 16 connectors - choice is now down to 41 MBs

4. Sort by price and pick the one you like the most - just make sure it has:

  - at least one PCIe x 16 and one PCIe x 4

  - they use Realtek chip for on-board GB Lan.

  - there is on-board video

 

For example brand new with DDR2 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157180

Keep in mind that ASRock does not support ECC DDR2 (particular model 2GB is cheap to source - I had a post in the good deals)

 

Open Box with DDR3 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157167R

 

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