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Newbie First Time Build - Component Help


stradle

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Hello All,

New here and looking for first build advice. I am UK based, so dont have the luxury of using all you guys NewEgg site sadly.

 

Main needs are:

 

File Storage

Streaming HD/SD

PS3MediaServer

SABNZBD+

RTorrent

 

So far these are the areas I have decided I want to use it for, but would like some future proofing with the hardware I choose.

 

Initially I intend on putting about 8 drives in it, but would want space to upgrade.

 

After looking around through the site and the Hardware Compatibility area, there is a lot of the UK Budget build stuff doesnt exist anymore on the Scan site and could do with some pointers.

I am looking to stretch to £300 - £500 for the build not including drives. And so far I have decided:

 

Case: Antec 300 - £50

http://tinyurl.com/38tuskd

 

Processor: AMD Sempron 140 - £30

http://tinyurl.com/36fcx6p

 

Motherboard: ?? Not very knowledgeable on the different ones here and the 2 from the hardware compatibility website are no longer available at Scan.

 

Memory: ?? How much would you recommend obviously the type DDR2,DDR3 is dependant on the motherboard I pick

 

Power Supply: - £35

430W Corsair CMPSU-430CX Builder Series, 80% Eff', 120mm Fan, Single 12V Rail, ATX, PS/2

http://tinyurl.com/35rvwyx

 

Hot Swap Drives:

2x Jou-Jye Black SNT-3141 4xHHD SATA/SAS Hot Swap Rack fits into 3x5.25" Bays - £150

http://tinyurl.com/36hfp2v

Would this be other peoples pick for the case?

 

SAS/SATA Card:

Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, 8-Port SAS/SATA 300MB/s PCI-e Controller Card

http://tinyurl.com/3a4twab

 

 

For the rest of the build would anyone recommend any additional fans that I could use in this case, I see a lot of you like to take out the stock ones for better ones, also any other cabling needed?

 

I hope I have included everything in there and any help regarding the components would be great.

Thanks all.

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Thanks for the replies guys.  :)

 

@prostuff1 - Thanks for that link, http://tinyurl.com/343gra4 < This one looks great, hotswap ready caught my eye.

 

@Rajahal - http://tinyurl.com/2wlazuz The Antec 900 doesnt seem to be too much more expensive and both the one above and the Antec are the same price, but the Antec seems to boast more about cooling which might be the crunch.

 

So...

 

Case: Antec 900

Processor: AMD Sempron 140

PSU: 430W Corsair

 

Anyone got any advice on the Motherboard?

 

 

 

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If you can find the Antec Nine Hundred Two for close to the same price, I do think the slight design improvements that were made between the models are worthwhile.  However, if it is hard to find or if it is much more expensive, then don't worry about it.  Either will perform just fine.

 

The cooling in the Antec Nine Hundred cases is indeed quite good, and decently quiet too.  I'm currently running my case fans on medium as my drives have no dedicated cooling fans, and it is still unobtrusive.  On low, the fans are almost silent.

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  • 1 month later...

Took the plunge last week and started building my NAS today, components I got were:

 

CPU                 Intel Core i3 540 Dual Core Clarkdale 32nm, 3.06GHz, 4MB Cache, 73W, Integrated GPU @ 733MHz, Retail

Mobo         Asus P7H55-M/USB3, Intel H55, S 1156, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 2200(OC), SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0, mATX

Case         Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two, Plastic/ Steel, ATX Case, Window, without PSU

PSU            650W Corsair CMPSU-650TXUK TX, 86% Eff', SLI/CrossFire, 37dB, EPS 12V, 120mm Quiet Fan, Single Rail

Memory         4GB Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.50V

Hotswap Bay Jou-Jye ST-3051SS 5.25" (3 Bay) Backplane for 5x 3.5" SAS/SATA HDD

 

Put it all together apart from the hotswap bays and drives and everything seems to be working.

My issue is that in the case there are horizontal ridges sticing out all the way up the inside front of the case stopping my hotswap bays from fitting.

 

Has anyone else had an issue like this and how did they solve it? Am I just going to have to bend them all out the way?

 

No doubt I will have more questions as I continue this project, but just the one for the minute  :)

 

Martin

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Superb, thanks for that, will look in to getting that sorted out.

 

In the meantime, I seem to be getting stuck at stupid hurdles trying to get this thing going.

 

Tried unRAID for the first time and booted via USB, but I am stuck at "Tower Login/Password" - not sure if I screwed up the password initially or I am being an idiot, cannot get the correct login and formatting and retrying the USB isnt doing the trick.

 

I am sure I am just missing something here, but trying to do this via a monitor/keyboard attached to my UNRAID server.

 

Thanks again.

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If you get to the login prompt you are 99% there.

 

For most new installations, there nothing to do at the login prompt, so for now, concentrate on the web-interface.

But if you wish, log in by typing at the login prompt:

root

and just pressing enter at the password prompt.

 

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What Joe Said. I got a bit confused at the start but you don't need to login to the unRAID machine. Most people don't use that to control it (ie run unRAID headless).

 

The default username is root with no password and that will get you to the CLI for the unraid machine.

 

The method most people use is another computer on the network, open a browser and either type tower or the IP address of the unraid machine and that will open up the management of unRAID.

 

Josh

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Superb, thanks for that, will look in to getting that sorted out.

 

In the meantime, I seem to be getting stuck at stupid hurdles trying to get this thing going.

 

Tried unRAID for the first time and booted via USB, but I am stuck at "Tower Login/Password" - not sure if I screwed up the password initially or I am being an idiot, cannot get the correct login and formatting and retrying the USB isnt doing the trick.

 

I am sure I am just missing something here, but trying to do this via a monitor/keyboard attached to my UNRAID server.

 

Thanks again.

 

The configuration tutorial should help you along the way.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial

 

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Thanks all, had completly missed that configuration document, so that is great.

 

Also managed to saw off the extra metal case drive holders to fit in my HotSwap drives (Jou-Jye ST-3051SS 5.25" (3 Bay) Backplane for 5x 3.5" SAS/SATA HDD)

 

Can anyone think why they are not powering up? I bought 2 hotswap cases, plugged them in to the same line of power that the fans are running off and the fans are not even turning on, none of the LED's on the front?

 

Tried both seperatly and nothing. Is there something that has to be done to enable these somewhere?

 

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Did you plug both of the motherboard's power cords in?  One is a huge 20 pin deal, the other is a small 4/8 pin.  If the motherboard takes only 4 pins, you can generally split the 8 pin cord from the PSU into two 4 pin ones.  Use either one.

 

Past that, it might just be a defective PSU.  Maybe try a different power cord if you have one.

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Thanks for getting back to me, yes both of those were plugged in.

I had missed that on the front of the hotswap drives I needed to use the NIB of a pen to power up each individual drive.

 

Got through that bit finally, now got a couple of more questions:

 

1. Now that those drives are working, the system wont boot in to UNRAID? - In the boot menu it is using removable dev first before the HDD's. But bringing up the "Please enter a bootable device, press any key|reboot"

Just powered down all the HDD's and it works again. Anyone got any ideas?

 

2. Trying to Verify HDD's - while in the command prompt, using a monitor attached to the server, I am trying to type:

dmesg|greg SATA|grep link, but cannot get a '|' pipe symbol it just shows up a greater than. Is there a different keyboard configuration within the unraid command prompt?

 

Thanks again everyone for answering my very basic questions. Hopefully once I get this all installed and up/running I will be sticking around for a while and helping others.

Martin

 

 

 

 

 

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1. Try the flash drive in HDD emulation mode.  Then again set it as the first boot device and disable all the others.  Save changes and exit.  If that doesn't work, try all the other emulation modes (FDD, etc).

 

There are some more BIOS setup tips at the bottom of this page:

 

http://www.lime-technology.com/support/unraid-server-installation

 

2. Not sure, I don't know much linux command line syntax.  On my US keyboard the pipe symbol is typed by pressing ctrl-\.

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1. Try the flash drive in HDD emulation mode.  Then again set it as the first boot device and disable all the others.  Save changes and exit.  If that doesn't work, try all the other emulation modes (FDD, etc).

 

There are some more BIOS setup tips at the bottom of this page:

 

http://www.lime-technology.com/support/unraid-server-installation

 

2. Not sure, I don't know much linux command line syntax.  On my US keyboard the pipe symbol is typed by pressing ctrl-\.

Rajahal, do you mean Shift-\?  That is how it is on my US keyboard.
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That is what my keyboard should have been and has been, but for some reason it was "Shift+~".

Making progress with this now, but seem to have hit a bit of a wall (again).

 

I installed unMenu while following the Configuration Guide, but I am trying to Preclear the Harddrives (http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial#Preclear_Hard_Drives)

 

Currently have a monitor/keyboard setup to the machine and was trying to do the Preclear commands for my 3x harddrives sda,sdb,sdc.

 

I load "screen" absolutly fine, press [sPACE] to continue which takes me to the prompt, but when i type "./preclear_disk.sh /dev/sda" - to do my first drive, it comes up saying directory does not exist.

 

Anyone got any ideas? Typically I would like to set all of my drives to Preclear at once and be able to keep an eye on progress.

 

Thanks,

Martin

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That is what my keyboard should have been and has been, but for some reason it was "Shift+~".

Making progress with this now, but seem to have hit a bit of a wall (again).

 

I installed unMenu while following the Configuration Guide, but I am trying to Preclear the Harddrives (http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial#Preclear_Hard_Drives)

 

Currently have a monitor/keyboard setup to the machine and was trying to do the Preclear commands for my 3x harddrives sda,sdb,sdc.

 

I load "screen" absolutly fine, press [sPACE] to continue which takes me to the prompt, but when i type "./preclear_disk.sh /dev/sda" - to do my first drive, it comes up saying directory does not exist.

 

Anyone got any ideas? Typically I would like to set all of my drives to Preclear at once and be able to keep an eye on progress.

 

Thanks,

Martin

Did you download the preclear script?  try it without ./.
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That is what my keyboard should have been and has been, but for some reason it was "Shift+~".

Making progress with this now, but seem to have hit a bit of a wall (again).

 

I installed unMenu while following the Configuration Guide, but I am trying to Preclear the Harddrives (http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial#Preclear_Hard_Drives)

 

Currently have a monitor/keyboard setup to the machine and was trying to do the Preclear commands for my 3x harddrives sda,sdb,sdc.

 

I load "screen" absolutly fine, press [sPACE] to continue which takes me to the prompt, but when i type "./preclear_disk.sh /dev/sda" - to do my first drive, it comes up saying directory does not exist.

 

Anyone got any ideas? Typically I would like to set all of my drives to Preclear at once and be able to keep an eye on progress.

 

Thanks,

Martin

 

first make sure you copied the preclear_disk.sh script to you flash (\\tower\flash)

and make sure your current directory is /boot (use command cd /boot )

then try to run the script

 

(ps made a typo, fixed now)

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Thanks for all that, got it going I had forgotten to actually put the script on the USB stick.

 

Completed 1 preclear cycle on one of my drives and mounted it as disk1.

Got 2 preclears running via telnet using Screen at the same time just now. Couple of questions

 

1. While that is happening is it best for me to leave it be, or am I able to start setting up shares, copying data?

 

2. Is it possible to swap around SATA cables to drives on the array without any issues? - going to do this once my PCI-E card turns up, but currently the SATA cables are all plugged in to the MOBO.

 

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I just happened to post this on another thread.

 

Yes you can swap around cables on different drives.. but....................

 

Just make sure in the config > Disk devices panel you select what drives go to which slot. Not necessarily which cable on the motherboard. That is how unRAID knows hot to keep track of everything.

 

That's why I would highly recommend you number each drive with a marker, label or anything method you can with its slot so you know which drive is what and in what position in the Devices tab.

 

kwgcf.jpg

 

Notice how each of my drives has a number then 6 digits.

1st is the slot in my device config

2nd is the last 6 digits on my serial number.

 

P for parity on bottom and then on the very top nothing because I'm preclearing it. Of course I go one step farther with different color cables meaning different things, but that's just because I'm a little nuts. ;)

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