October 2, 201015 yr Hey guys. I got my shopping list here. Am I missing anything? COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 RC-590-KKN1-GP Black SECC / ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 59.99$ Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive 109.99$ COOLER MASTER STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module Hardisk Cage 20.00$ CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 CMPSU-430CX 430W ATX12V Active PFC Power Supply 39.99$(Plus 20$ mail in rebate) PROMISE SATA300 TX4 PCI SATA II 4-Port Adapter (X2) 139.98$ Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) ECC Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model .. 45.99$ ASUS M4A785-M AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard AMD Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Processor SDX140HBGQBOX 92.98$(Combo) =508.92 I got this list of stuff from the forum here. let me know of anything more i need changed or added. also all this stuff i found on newegg but they dont seem to ship to canada? any help there?
October 3, 201015 yr I would swap the Promise adapters for the eight port Highpoint PCIE adapter. It will cost about the same, but I think it should get better throughput.
October 3, 201015 yr I agree on the PCI SATA controller. Most here are using the Supermicro SASLP. Try newegg.ca.
October 3, 201015 yr Author The supermicro is about 150$ less. is there any reason i should go for the highpoint? I dont know what they do, im not very tecky im just trying to set one of these servers up and learn somthing in the process
October 3, 201015 yr The SATA card just provides a place to plug in a drive, much like the SATA ports on the motherboard. The highly desirable thing is that these ports operate at high speeds and cost little. It turns out that is fairly rare, not because it is difficult, but because not many companies operate in this space. Here is a good blog post that lists many options. http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10 Now unRAID does not have drivers for all the cards, so only a few on the list are truly options. Take a look at Rajahal's recommended builds in the wiki. He lays thing out very well and states very clearly all that is needed to use the SASLP. http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility#20_Drive_Beast So why do you want speed? Because the way unRAID works is that it accesses all disks at the same time when a failed drive is being replaced. It is also prudent to perform periodic "parity checks" to ensure your machine is working well. What this does is reads from each bit of each hard disk and calculates parity and compares it with the parity that was calculated and stored on the parity disk. If there are zero errors then you get this warm fuzzy that you machine is working well and your data is protected. If you get errors, then it is time to resolve the problems before the unthinkable happens and you need your parity drive to help recover from a failed drive. With 2T. drives, on a machine that has plenty of bandwidth to allow your disks to operate at their full speed parity generation/check takes ~7.5 hours if you are using "green" drives. With disks attached to the PCI bus instead of the PCIe bus this can really slow down, depending on the number of disks on the PCI bus, this time can increase by 6 times or more. Now parity generation/check takes two days. The performance of your server is degraded during that time, but more importantly, your data is at greater risk, because it will take that same amount of time to rebuild a failed disk and the chances of another disk failing during that time increases.
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