Backplane...explanation needed (looking at what to upgrade to add more capacity)

[spinbot]

I presently have the Coolmaster 590 case with 2 of these:

COOLER MASTER STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module Hardisk Cage

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817993002

 

Is this the same thing as a Backplane?

 

Where does the "back" in "backplane" have to do with anything?  It goes in the front of my case.

 

I was looking for options to be able to expand my array in the future.  Right now my Coolmaster 590 has 10 drives in it.  My mother board has 6 SATA connectors and the AOC SATA card add's 8 more.  My Gigabyte Motherboard (Ga-965P-DS3) has only one PCIe-16 slot, where the SATA card is in now.  It has 3 PCI and 3 PCIe slots available.  I can add 2 more drives before I max out my drive bays and I could upgrade two of my smaller drives ( 705GB and 1TB ) to 1.5TB drives ( as that is my parity drive size )

 

My "upgrade" point appears to be at drive 13, even though my SATA controller could handle 2 more drives off of it.

 

Where do others typically go, when they reach this point?

 

If upgraded to a motherboard with at least two PCIe-16 (or PCIe-4), then I could add a second SATA controller card to handle an additional 8 drives.    This is where I am wondering if I've mis-understood the term "backplane" and if its something I can add out the back of the case.  If I got a SATA controller with two of the SAS ports on the back, I could run cables from there to somewhere else (its the somewhere else that I am uncertain).    What's the economical and not too loud option(s)?

 

Thanks in advance for the advice!

 

[Kaygee]

Yes and no is the answer.

 

They are called backplanes because way back when that is what they were, they sat at the back and cards were plugged into them. They were discrete buses that each module would talk through to communicate with each other.

 

Thus the term backplane refers to anything that you plug things into. With hot plug cages they have a backplane where the drives are plugged into, hence they get called backplanes.

 

Your units however are just cages for holding more drives the in the same amount of space so arent technically backplanes. 

 

You have three PCI-e x1 slots which could host another 6 or more drives. The PCI bus is good for another 2 drives. That'll get you to unRaid max drive count without swapping motherboards. 

 

As for where to put them as you say your case is good for 12 drives. After that it is buy a bigger case or add an external case or two. I bought a thirteen bay DVD duplicator case. A couple of sata to Sas adapters to allow external Sas cables to be used to link the onboard ports to the external drives.

 

The choices you have are either discrete cabled cases, port mutliplier cases or Sas type cases. Port multipliers support 4 or 5 drives @ 60mb/s per drive, where as discrete type cases will support 1 drives per discrete cable at whatever speed the ports will run at natively. Or Sas type cases where each Sas cable will support 4 drives. I went with Sas cabled cases as they can be screwed or latched into place. eSATA cables dont latch (discrete or port multiplier cases).

 

If you buy a sil3132 with two external ports they will support port multipliers, you could hang ten drives of them in one or two external case, cheapest way to add expansion. Personally I'm not convinced over the long term reliability (one of mine burnt out and the other has one intermittent port).

[spinbot]

Thanks for taking the time to explain things.

 

That is good information about the PCI-e x1 slots.  I just wrote them off to being too slow to use, if I want to maximize the speed of my array.

 

What was the SAS type of case you got?

[Kaygee]

PCIex1 is 250MB/s, two drives means max 125mb/s. The SIL3132 maxes around 110-120MB/s. Monoprice one seems popular choice and at $15 represents great cost per port.

 

The case I bought was a DVD duplicator, which I added SAS ports too. THe Sas adapters basically take four sata ports and stuff them down a Sas cable. The one I used are host/target specific (PM2/SM2). Try and get adapters that come straight out of the PCI slot (PM1) come out at 90%.  This maybe beneficial on the target (short cases) but on a PC means you're using PCI slot real estate.

 

External case should accept SCSI I 50pin Low Density Centronics Connector Form Factor (pretty standard for external cases). Cases are the cheap bit. A 9 base external case is around $75. To take 12 drives, 4-3 backplanes will run another $200. Cabling/adapters another $200-$300. Sata cards $50.

 

Off course you dont need to do it all at once. You can buy three bay case, 4-3 adapter, sas cable and port adapter. Add extra four drive capacity at a time. This becomes inefficient as running two/three/four PSUs in low draw is wasteful. If your thinking of adding another 12 drives, go with a big case and just add a single backplane at a time as needed.   

 

http://www.span.com/index.php?cPath=28_1214 (UK based sorry dont have US equivalent link).

[BlackClouds]

Does anybody know where to find a 5 in 3 version of this? I'd like to avoid paying 130$ for a full backplane if I can. I have a Antec 300 case so I'm all about low budget.

[Rajahal]

This is the cheapest hot swap 5-in-3 that I've seen:

 

SNT SNT-SAC3051TL 5 x 3.5" HDD in 3 x 5.25" Bay SAS/SATA Trayless Backplane Hot Swap RAID Cage - $75

 

I've never personally used it, but I've been curious to give it a try.  I expect the two rear 50mm fans will be a bit loud, so I would plan on replacing them.  Please let me know what you think of it if you do try it.

[spinbot]

Why do some users like the Hot Swap Trays?  Do you change your hard drives out often?  Or do you just like the ability to add a new drive or replace a faulty one without removing all the case screws?

[SSD]

It's partly convenience and partly safety. Every time you open your case , uninstall and/or install disk, plug/unplug cables, you run the risk of knocking a cable loose. With 4 or 5 disks maybe not so hard to fix, but with 12, 15, or more it becomes a major PITA. Using the backplanes/cages avoids all that.

[SSD]

I presently have the Coolmaster 590 case with 2 of these:

COOLER MASTER STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module Hardisk Cage

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817993002

 

Is this the same thing as a Backplane?

 

Where does the "back" in "backplane" have to do with anything?   It goes in the front of my case.

 

I was looking for options to be able to expand my array in the future.   Right now my Coolmaster 590 has 10 drives in it.  My mother board has 6 SATA connectors and the AOC SATA card add's 8 more.  My Gigabyte Motherboard (Ga-965P-DS3) has only one PCIe-16 slot, where the SATA card is in now.  It has 3 PCI and 3 PCIe slots available.   I can add 2 more drives before I max out my drive bays and I could upgrade two of my smaller drives ( 705GB and 1TB ) to 1.5TB drives ( as that is my parity drive size )

 

My "upgrade" point appears to be at drive 13, even though my SATA controller could handle 2 more drives off of it.

 

Where do others typically go, when they reach this point?

 

If upgraded to a motherboard with at least two PCIe-16 (or PCIe-4), then I could add a second SATA controller card to handle an additional 8 drives.    This is where I am wondering if I've mis-understood the term "backplane" and if its something I can add out the back of the case.   If I got a SATA controller with two of the SAS ports on the back, I could run cables from there to somewhere else (its the somewhere else that I am uncertain).    What's the economical and not too loud option(s)?

 

Thanks in advance for the advice!

 

 

I'd suggest upping your parity to 2T and using 2T drives for expanding. Try to make do with that extra capacity until the 3T drives are supported.  Then maybe you won't feel too bad upgrading 1.5Ts to 3Ts.

 

You might consider trying to sell your 4 in 3s and buying 5 in 3s to get a few more drive slots.

 

There is a lesson in here for users building new rigs. Plan for more drives than you think you might need. It is cheaper to buy the next bigger case or buy 5 in 3s instead of 4 in 3s then it is to have to replace components or expand to external solutions.

[spinbot]

I had planned for a fair amount of storage space, however I also new my DVD addiction would result in me always needing more space (as it did with all the DVD cases and all my walls covered in them).

 

The CoolMaster Case was one of the talked about options, in these forums, at the time I did my build.  The ability to hold 12 drives in a standard tower was pretty decent and the price was really good too.

 

I wasn't aware of the 5 in 3's when I got my 4 in 3's ( didn't realize there was enough physical space to do that ).  Considering how little space there is between the drives now, I would be concerned about having insufficient air flow between the drives with the 5 in 3.  Is that a concern/issue for anyone that's using them?

 

The idea of upgrading my parity to 2TB and then making my final 2 drives in the case 2TB data drives is something I was looking at doing and then hopefully not needing any other space until the 3TB drives are down to mass market prices.  My hold up was that I felt I should get a decent speed parity drive ( I didn't want a Green drive ), however the 7200RPM drives were still priced significantly higher.

 

Ultimately, the need to upgrade will arrive some day, likely this year.  My server sits 5 feet from me, so I don't really want to move to commercial server style setups as they all seem really loud ( I have two DNS servers in my office, at the very back and those things can be heard though-out the office I leave the door open to the room they are in ).

[SSD]

I had planned for a fair amount of storage space, however I also new my DVD addiction would result in me always needing more space (as it did with all the DVD cases and all my walls covered in them).

 

The CoolMaster Case was one of the talked about options, in these forums, at the time I did my build.   The ability to hold 12 drives in a standard tower was pretty decent and the price was really good too.

 

I wasn't aware of the 5 in 3's when I got my 4 in 3's ( didn't realize there was enough physical space to do that ).   Considering how little space there is between the drives now, I would be concerned about having insufficient air flow between the drives with the 5 in 3.   Is that a concern/issue for anyone that's using them?

 

You do need active cooling with 5 in 3s.  But with a quiet fan they work well. The 5 in 3s orient disks vertically.

 

The idea of upgrading my parity to 2TB and then making my final 2 drives in the case 2TB data drives is something I was looking at doing and then hopefully not needing any other space until the 3TB drives are down to mass market prices.   My hold up was that I felt I should get a decent speed parity drive ( I didn't want a Green drive ), however the 7200RPM drives were still priced significantly higher.

 

2T drives have been really well priced lately.  The Hitachi's (7200RPM) make great parity drives.

 

Ultimately, the need to upgrade will arrive some day, likely this year.   My server sits 5 feet from me, so I don't really want to move to commercial server style setups as they all seem really loud ( I have two DNS servers in my office, at the very back and those things can be heard though-out the office I leave the door open to the room they are in ).

 

I really hate to have to pull out drives I spent $$$s on only to replace them with something only 50% bigger.  I just replaced a bunch of 750G drives with 2T, which didn't feel too bad.  I'm hoping to be able to hold out for the 4T drives to upgrade some of my 1T.  By then I don't think number of disks will be as much of an issue as now.  44T with a 12 disk array.  Sweet!

[spinbot]

You do need active cooling with 5 in 3s.  But with a quiet fan they work well. The 5 in 3s orient disks vertically.

 

Okay.. that makes more sense ( the orientation of them ).  When you say active cooling I'm assuming that means fans, which I already have ( one in each drive cage, one at the back and two exhausts at the top ).

 

2T drives have been really well priced lately.  The Hitachi's (7200RPM) make great parity drives.

 

I'll keep my eyes open for the Hitachi 2TB drive.  The 1.5TB drives I got were $69, which is a great price to me

[dgaschk]

Reads, writes, and parity checks are limited by the speed of the slowest drive. If writing to multiple drives then a faster parity drive may help a little. For most applications ethernet and network protocol overhead is the limiting factor. A single new green 2TB drive is about as fast as gigabyte ethernet.

[spinbot]

I guess there really is no harm in trying a green drive for parity.  If for any reason I didn't like it, I could just push it into the array as a data drive.

 

Having an understanding of the transfer speeds of the various devices definitely helps wrap one's head around this.

 

I don't use a cache drive on my system.  I typically rip a batch of movies on my primary computer, build an nfo file for each movie as well as get poster artwork and fan artwork.    Once I have a bunch of them prepared, I drag and drop them over to my media/dvd share on the server.  If the files are being written to one of my 7200RPM drives and my Parity drive is 5400RPM, then would you say there is a 25% approximate drop in overall speeds over my gigabit network?