OK, after spending a couple months researching combination's for a media server, and thankfully recently discovering this site, this is what I think I want. Much of this is based on Raj's recipe posted in another thread, to which I am very thankful!

 

Suggestions on changes would be appreciated. Am I missing anything?

 

I am not sure how the 2.5" SSH will be mounted, but that shouldn't be hard.

 

Mobo: MSI 880GMA-E53

 

CPU: AMD Sempron 145 2.8GHz 45W Single-Core

 

RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 2 x 1GB DDR3 1333

 

PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CMPSU-600CX 600W

 

Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 RC-590-KKN1-GP Black SECC / ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

 

SATA Expansion Card: SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI Express x4 Low Profile SAS SAS RAID Controller

 

Cables: <unsure advice appreciated>

 

Hot Swap Drive Bays:

    SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B Black 5 Bay Hot-Swapable SATA HDD Enclosure x 2

    Mobile Rack for 3.5 inches SATA HDD - Open Frame x 2

 

Hard Drives, already own: Four Seagate 2TB LP disks (on sale for $70 at CompUSA recently) plus four WD20EARS from my current Netgear once I move the data.

 

unRAID Pro license: unRAID

 

Cost: $785 /eek + cables + shipping so figure a tad o$ver 800

If building from scratch, the existing 8 drives would be a little over $700.

 

capacity*: ~10.8TB with room for 3 more disks disks adding another 5.4TB usable

 

 

* Assumptions are 2TB data and parity disks, one parity & one hot spare.

You can potentially have 15 drives in that case with the 5 in 3s. You will need 8 SATA cables from the motherboard. Monoprice is a great source. The SASLP requires forward breakout cables. You will need two of something like this:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116098

 

I think the 430CX is a little weak for 15 drives, I would look for 35+ A. on the 12 volt rail. The power supply is not someplace to skimp. Marginal power can create subtle problems.

 

Why not three 5 in 3s?

 

I would skip the cache drive, and certainly not a SSD. Try out unRAID without a cache drive and then add an old hard drive in later to see if you see any benefits.

 

 

40gb cache drive seems small to me.  You can get away with using a single core cpu and save some $$$ on power if you are just using it as storage.  PSU might also be borderline under-spec when you have 11 drives in there. ( 28A Single rail, 2A per green disk + system power, defer to others opinion here since I have 12 drives on my dual rail POS $15 PSU without any issues ).

I have 12 drives on my dual rail POS $15 PSU

 

I thought a 343-B would spontaneously abort a power supply like that.

I was on the fence on the PSU, and changed it in the OP. Thank you.

 

As for why not 15 bays, the reasoning is mainly to keep cost down. I can add it later if needed, but considering I will be doubling the amount of space I have now, with the ability to add what I have now yet once again by adding 3 disks, think I will be fine for the life of this hardware.

 

 

Would the dual core CPU make any noticeably difference in performance?

I have 12 drives on my dual rail POS $15 PSU

 

I thought a 343-B would spontaneously abort a power supply like that.

 

hehe,  Modular PSU has been on my list of things to buy for ages now,  I think it will go in my basket when I add another drive, 13 is definitely pushing my luck, superstition or not

What do you plan on using the storage for?

 

Dual core CPU if you read around is useless if just serving media as is. It is mainly useful if you want to transcode on the fly.

 

Cache drive: depends on what you use it for. Personally I might move some video files every now and again an mostly only a few GB at a time so the extra speed is not worth it. If I have a few hundred GB (which is more than your ssd can handle) I just leave the computer on over night to transfer. Unless you run some torrent stuff or want to keep other stuff there I'd ditch the cache.

 

Josh

This is going to mainly serve static media, full size BD folder copies, to three or maybe four eventually media players in the house, probably not more than 2 streams concurrently.

 

I will drop the cache drive and go down to a single core proc. Thank you!

For 12 green drives the Corsair 430w is perfectly adequate.  If you think you may ever upgrade to 15 drives, then go for the Corsair 500w instead.  The 600w is overkill.

 

Any particular reason you are choosing that motherboard?  I'm not saying it is a bad choice, but there are cheaper options.  Plus, the features of that mobo (SATA III slots, etc.) will be somewhat wasted on unRAID.  I know the 8 total SATA ports are tempting, but keep in mind that a cheaper mobo with 6 SATA ports and a Supermicro card will still get you to 14 drives.  I don't see any reason to pay a premium for a motherboard with features you won't use.

 

The Sempron 140 is slightly cheaper.  The 145 is fine too.

 

For your EARS drives, you'll have to install a jumper and then run them through preclear to make sure they will work.  There have been issues reported in the past in which users tried to repurpose EARS drives that had been run for a long time without a jumper and run into lots of problems.  If that happens to you, you'll have to RMA the drives...

 

I personally love cache drives, but I do agree that they are unnecessary for most users.  Read all about it here.

 

As for cables, you'll need two forward breakout cables, such as these 0.6m cables.  These 0.5m cables are also fine if they are back in stock by the time you order.  You will also need 6 - 8 regular SATA cables, depending on which motherboard you choose.  The motherboard will likely ship with one or two, the rest you can get at monoprice.com.  You may also need some power splitters, which can also be bought at monoprice.  Keep in mind that the Supermicro drive cages use 4 pin Molex power, so you'll need this style of power splitters for them.  You might also find some of these useful to make use of some of those SATA power cables on the PSU that will otherwise go unused.

 

For your 12 drive build, consider laying it out in the CM 590 like this:

 

single hot swap

supermicro 5-in-3

supermicro 5-in-3

single hot swap

-empty bay-

 

No real reason, I just think it would look kind of cool

 

The rational approach would be to put the supermicro cages on the top or bottom so that you could easily add a third if you ever decide to upgrade.

 

Also remember that you'll need to flatten out the tabs in the CM 590 to accommodate the flat sides of the Supermicro cages.  Sort of a pain, but not too big of a deal.  I start the bend with a pair of plyers, then use a C clamp to finish the job.  I went to Home Depot and bought the deepest C clamp I could find, which helps a lot.

The only reason for that mobo was the 8 ports. I wasn't sure if there were four or eight SATA ports on the supermicro card, and guessed on the safe side. I was also thinking the parity and cache drives would be best served on the sata III ports, but I am thinking that may not be true.

 

Most of the writes I would like to speed up are 15-30GB, up to 40GB, basically a BD copy, so that is why I felt the 40GB SSD would benefit me. But I can always add one later and prices are trending down.

 

How usable / complete is the Linux install? Basically bash or ksh plus wget and ssh would be all I need. I like to write scripts and often use wget.

the slackware install is pretty basic,  wget is there.  ssh isn't but it can easily be added (via unMenu? search the forum )

Thanks Chris and all.

 

I went to place the order and newegg has sold out of the Cooler Master 590's. Anyone have a suggestion on a replacement case?

Antec 900?

Have fun building...here's a few more case suggestions: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9537.0

Well the case I wanted is out of stock and hard to find. I have a couple Antec Sonata cases I bought years back, and decided to reuse one. The mobo has 8 SATA ports, which lines up well with the 8 disk bays in the chassis; 4 OEM and 4 from a cheap add on drive cage. I decided to do this as cheap as possible. For now I will keep the Netgear and should have 10.8TB of parity protected file system in a couple weeks. If this works as well as expected, I will migrate the data, and either pull the 20EARS out of the Netgear or sell them with it.

 

 

Mobo ($100): MSI 880GMA-E53

 

CPU ($37): AMD Sempron 140 2.7GHz 45W Single-Core

 

RAM ($30): Kingston ValueRAM 2 x 1GB DDR3 1333

 

PSU ($20, $10% instant, $20 mail in): CORSAIR Builder Series CX430

 

Case: Antec Sonata first gen, owned since 2005

 

Hot Swap Drive Bays $64): SNT 4x3.5" Hard drive in 3x5.25" Bay Cage

 

unRAID Pro license ($109): unRAID

 

USB flash drive 4GB ($10)

 

Shipping ($14): UPS baby 3rd day guaranteed to have a project next weekend

 

Cost: $384 + the four Seagate disks I paid $70 + tax each for a couple weeks back. Total with tax was like $310, so figure 5.4TB usable for $700, with the ability to add four more for just the cost of the disks.

While I am waiting for Newegg and monoprice orders to arrive, I am precleaning the disks. I grabbed the preclean zip file and it is running fine on my Suse Linux box. Only concern was a message about not being able to zero out the MBR. Is this something I should be concerned with?

 

The mobo in the Suse box is too old to support USB boot.

 

Thanks again for all the help, both in this thread and others. Ya'all saved me a ton of cash and I appreciate it.

While I am waiting for Newegg and monoprice orders to arrive, I am precleaning the disks. I grabbed the preclean zip file and it is running fine on my Suse Linux box. Only concern was a message about not being able to zero out the MBR. Is this something I should be concerned with?

 

The mobo in the Suse box is too old to support USB boot.

 

Thanks again for all the help, both in this thread and others. Ya'all saved me a ton of cash and I appreciate it.

 

The entire drive should have been zeroed.  If it did not then it could cause the preclear to fail.  Look in the wiki for "Plop Boot manager" it should allow you to boot the unRAID USB drive.

While I am waiting for Newegg and monoprice orders to arrive, I am precleaning the disks. I grabbed the preclean zip file and it is running fine on my Suse Linux box. Only concern was a message about not being able to zero out the MBR. Is this something I should be concerned with?

 

The mobo in the Suse box is too old to support USB boot.

 

Thanks again for all the help, both in this thread and others. Ya'all saved me a ton of cash and I appreciate it.

The message indicates the MBR did not have the expected values after the pre-clear (in other words, does not have a "signature" unRAID will recognize.  unRAID would not bypass its own clearing step.)

 

Just this past week another forum member reported the exact same issue when he used the pre-clear script in a later release of Slackware and I figured out the cause.  The "bash" shell in unRAID takes a slightly different syntax than that in some other version in other releases of Linux.  (Others need leading zeros when given hex numbers in a string, unRAID's shell does not seem to care)

 

You can probably fix your "signature" in the MBR by typing:

echo -ne "\0252" | dd bs=1 count=1 seek=511 of=/dev/sdX

echo -ne "\0125" | dd bs=1 count=1 seek=510 of=/dev/sdX

(where sdX = the correct "device" for your disk being cleared)

 

You can then test if the signature is correct by typing:

preclear_disk.sh -t /dev/sdX

(again where /dev/sdX = the device you are testing)

 

Joe L.

Thank you. That worked Joe; much appreciated. I guess now I just wait for the big brown truck.

The big brown truck showed up a few hours ago.

 

memtest is running now.

 

 

I am more impressed with the drive cage than I expected to be. For $64 it is decent.

 

So how long is it going to take to copy 4.3TB from my Netgear (have seen 47MB/s write speeds over NFS, never read tested it as I never had a client fast enough to stress it)? Initially I plan to add three disks into a volume, no parity or cache, do the copy, then add parity. When the other four disks show up, they will be flashed to CC35, precleaned and installed. Hopefully they show up tomorrow. But one of them will become the hot spare. One will be used as a cache disk until the space is needed for data.

Sorry to bump my own thread, but I wanted to close out. The original setup was LOUD. I replaced the SNT provided fans with some that move half the air and are pretty quiet. It seems the jet engine noise is turbulence on the air inlet side. I might dremel them at some point, but wish I had sprung for the Icy Dock 5-in-4. Oh well.

 

I also dropped the drive fan inside, and swapped out the OEM fan & heatsink for a passive unit. It is now running headless with no issues.

 

 

It is 10% into a parity check and temps seem to have leveled off. Drive temps range from 30-42º C. All three disks in the SNT 4-in-3 are running at 30º; the 4 in the case are 36, 38, 38 & 42. The one running hotter always runs hottest. The case fan is running at 50%, which i may bump up to 75% next time I reboot. One more disk will be going in the SNT when Seagate gets it here (DOA/RMA).

 

I will pull off the side and hit the CPU with an infared shortly. I haven't set up CPU temp monitoring in the OS yet.

Glad to hear all is well with your build.  Once you are done with all the initial stuff, perhaps you would like to start a thread about your build in UCD?  I'm sure others would appreciate it.  Guidelines here.

Done, thanks.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9953.0

 

I made some additional cooling changes that have the disks all under 40ºC 27% into a parity check. It is also a LOT more quiet than it was.