unRAID Server Upgrade


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Hi Guys,

 

I built my original server about a year and a half ago but recently needed to increase the 4TB capacity.  Having purchased a SATA expansion card and a second drive caddy for my case I found an issue whereby the right angle mounted SATA sockets on my motherboard were interfering with my caddy.  I have now purchased a new motherboard which required new RAM and a new CPU.  I don't have any before photos but will be adding after photos soon.

 

OS at time of building: 4.6 (previously 4.5.6)

CPU: AMD AM3 Sempron 145 (previously AMD AM2 Athlon X2) - Hoping to unlock other core on Sempron.

Motherboard: ASUS M4A78LT-M LE (Socket AM3, 6x Sata, 1x PCIe 16x, 1x PCIe 1x)

RAM: 2x1GB Crucial DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 CL9

Case: Silverstone Technology Kublai KL01 (Black, No Window)

Drive Cage(s): Silverstone Technology CFP52B (4 in 3 plus 120mm fan)

Power Supply: Corsair 600w Modular

SATA Expansion Card(s): Adaptec 1430SA (Which is PCIe 4x running in the PCIe 16x slot)

Cables: Silverstone Technology CP05 Backplane Adapters.

Fans: Case Included 120mm Rear Fan

 

Parity Drive: Western Digital WD20EARS

Data Drives: 3x Western Digital WD10EADS, 1x Western Digital WD10EACS, 2x Western Digital WD5000AADS, 1x Western Digital WD15EARS

Cache Drive: Western Digital 250GB

Total Drive Capacity: 6.5TB

 

Primary Use: Movies, Music, TV, Torrent Server, General Storage

Likes: The way the RAID array works, feature set of plugins thanks to an open OS.

Dislikes: Waiting for some of the 5.0 goodness although unMENU is good :)

Add Ons Used: unMENU (latest version) - Using several packages, notably Transmission

Future Plans: Adding more storage as and when needed. I need to sort out one more drive tray and its backplane.

 

Overall the server is stylish looking, runs fairly quietly and has good capacity for drives for someone who does not warrant the need for a massive server. 

 

A small piece on the drive caddies:

The biggest problem with the build was the drive caddies, they are quite fiddly to get into the case if you put the cable adapters on first, the trays don't always line up properly with the 'backplane' even though they are locked in. This for a while led me to believe the adapters were faulty (internally broken cables) as they were not being picked up in the BIOS.  However, I would recommend them for UK buys because they are a lot cheaper than IcyDock caddies - as nice as they are.

 

I will add photos here soon. Along with a syslog - at the moment I have the drives configured in the BIOS as AHCI, the other options are RAID and IDE.  I am not sure if this should be IDE as I am getting a few AHCI lines in the syslog.

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Nice one, I thought so :) Cheers for the confirmation though.

 

It completed a parity check last night with 0 errors but it sent temperatures sky high as I only have one drive caddy with an active fan as I need another power adapter at the moment.

 

Is someone able to add this motherboard to the wiki? It should be ready for Level 1 compatibility once I have time to grab a syslog.

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