January 20, 201115 yr After the motherboard died on my old hodge-podge budget-part server build, I decided to put a financial windfall toward a new server. Research into available OS options led me to unRAID I live in Denmark, so product links are to Komplett.dk, where I ordered my parts. Komplett also has stores in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Sweden and Norway, AFAIK. OS at time of building: unRAID 4.7-beta1 on Lexar Jumpdrive 2GB CPU: AMD Athlon II 250 w/Noctua NH-U12P SE2 cooler and Artic Silver Ceramique Motherboard: Asus M4A88T-V EVO RAM: 2x Crucial 2GB Case: Chieftec CA-01 An older version - I kept the case from my old build. To keep noise down, I've dremel'd the mesh covering the fans off, and lined the case with 2mm cork mats from Biltema. Power Supply: Corsair HX 650W SATA Expansion Card(s): HighPoint RocketRaid 2300 Cables: 4x Akasa 1m cables, 4x RocketRaid-included cables, 1x motherboard-included cable, 1x eSATA-SATA adapter cable Fans: 2x Fractal Design 120mm (case exhaust), 3x Fractal Design 92mm (disks), plus Nexus noise-dampening rubber frames. Parity Drive:WD20EARS Data Drives: 8x WD20EARS Cache Drive: WD20EARS Total Drive Capacity: ~14,6GB + cache. All drives are unjumpered. Primary Use: Media server, general backup, dedicated torrent box Likes: Ability to recover data from disks independently of unRAID Dislikes: none so far Add Ons Used: unMenu, preclear_disk.sh, a ton of installed packages. Future Plans:Save up for controller card + 5-in-3 or 4-in-3 drive cages + disks No multimeter, so no power readings. Sorry. Angle view, case open: Disks close-up: Total price of this build: DKK ~12000, (excluding case) of which DKK ~7000 are disks. The CPU cooler IS (way) overkill, but gives me some headroom. Currently preclearing 8 drives (9th drive holds migrated data from old server), and SMART-reported temps are stable @30-32 degrees celsius for all drives. Noise levels are also WAY down from my ghetto-build Note: the motherboard lets you reassign reported SATA channels, but does not report serial number, so there is no way to differentiate identical disks (like my WD20EARS). I'm crazy enough that I've messed around with BIOS settings and moved cables around to get my /dev/sd[n] entries to match the physical order of drives in the case ^^
January 20, 201115 yr Nice build. Since you are using unRAID 4.7-beta1, are you using the new "MBR 4k-aligned" option with your un-jumpered EARS drives? Joe L.
January 20, 201115 yr Author Nice build. Well, thank you, sir! Since you are using unRAID 4.7-beta1, are you using the new "MBR 4k-aligned" option with your un-jumpered EARS drives? Yup
January 20, 201115 yr Author I'm noticing something strange while preclearing: the motherboard-connected drives are getting ~50% higher speeds than the ones on the RR board - I started preclearing last night, just short of 15hrs ago. The drives on the mobo are at or very near the post-read phase, and had write sppeds of 90-100MB/s, while the controller-connected drives are limping along @ 40-45 MB/s. Some investigation seems to be in order!
January 20, 201115 yr Nice build. Well, thank you, sir! Since you are using unRAID 4.7-beta1, are you using the new "MBR 4k-aligned" option with your un-jumpered EARS drives? Yup I like the sidewise mounted disks, it makes it really easy to replace/uupgrade them even without the hot-swap style trays. I'm guessing you are also using the "-A" option on the preclear_disk.sh script to request unRAID to use a partition starting on sector 64. Hopefully you are using the most recent version of the preclear script. I've been constantly improving the final output report in the new versions over the past week or so sice 4.7b1 was released. Check with preclear_disk.sh -v as of today the newest is .9.9d As far as the difference in speeds... different controllers, different drivers, possibly connected to different buses on the MB. I'll be curious to see if you find anything you can change. Joe L.
January 20, 201115 yr yep case with potential i count 20 drives possible without adding something above the powersupply and i think you can add there easily a 4 in 3 hdd cage (coolermaster or something similar) 8 on the side 2 in the 3.5" bay in the front and 10 in 2 time "5 in 3" in the 6 5.25 bays another case that goes in my local search list ...
January 20, 201115 yr Author I remember picking this case precisely for it's massivosity . Yup, it'll fit 20 disks nicely w/some 5-in-3s, and with a bit of coaxing I can at LEAST fit 4 more drives from the "roof" of the case, maybe even 8 screw some 4-in-3s in there, sideways-like maybe? For the record: I am using latest preclear_disk.sh with the -A option
January 20, 201115 yr Nice build. I especially like the cork noise dampeners. It gives it this rustic look...like a wood-paneled station wagon
January 21, 201115 yr I used to have a Chieftec case like this a few years ago. I was wondering at that time what could possibly one could install in such a case ... now the answer is obvious Regarding you speed problem, it looks like your controller is PCI-E 1x which should have in theory 250MB bandwidth. If you are pre-clearing all 4 drives simultaneously that should give you about 62.5MB / disk including all overheads so I'm guessing this could be a possible bottleneck.
January 21, 201115 yr Author Regarding you speed problem, it looks like your controller is PCI-E 1x which should have in theory 250MB bandwidth. If you are pre-clearing all 4 drives simultaneously that should give you about 62.5MB / disk including all overheads so I'm guessing this could be a possible bottleneck. Ah ofc that would certainly explain things! typical usage shouldn't pull from more than one data drive at a time, so no worries there. I've gone and dropped DKK 900 on a eSATA-to-SATA cable and another WD20EARS - I'd completely forgotten those kinds of cables existed when I placed my initial order. And the math is perfect: 10 drives, 10 drive bays At some point before starting the array, I'll probably mess around w/the BIOS SATA mappings. I've installed them in the drive bays in descending order, and would like the /dev/sd[x] names to reflect that.
February 4, 201115 yr That case is exactly what I am looking for, but apparently they have discontinued it and any similar case..
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