I want to build a 2.8TB storage array

BACKGROUND:
Inspired by URL:http://www.finnie.org/terabyte/, a few months
ago I started a thread
(URL:http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/msg/3dfb362bbf8e94d2)
to discuss the idea of building my own 1.5TB storage array using
software RAID50 to hold video files.

The main hitch keeping me from going ahead was that I had trouble
finding eight 250GB drives at the price I wanted. Clearly, I wasn't
thinking big enough; just before Christmas, I lucked out and bought
nine Seagate *400GB* drives at $230 each (plus a $30 rebate on the
first one) from CompUSA. I now have 3.6TB of raw storage sitting in a
shipping carton in my apartment. Even with RAID 5 and keeping a drive
as a spare, I'll have 400GB*8-400GB=2.8TB of space.

PURPOSE:
Video files (episodes of TV shows I already watch and enjoy,
plus rips of TV shows on DVD sets I own). I'd like to build a MythTV
system too, but the storage array comes first. No games.

PRIORITIES, in order:
* Stability. I'm very much in favor of build-right-and-leave-it-be as
opposed to constant hardware tinkering.
* Minize heat/noise. I have a studio apartment.
* Price. I've already spent a fortune on the drives; I don't want to
spend more on the rest than I need to.
* Performance. Not that I'm against a fast machine, but I know that a
storage server doesn't need the latest-and-greatest in terms of
horsepower.

PARTS:
Advice is always appreciated. All prices are from ZipZoomFly.com
unless otherwise specified.

* Case: Antec SX1040BII, $92. I almost went with an Antec
PlusView1000AMG ($72), but decided that a) the SX1040BII's 430W
power supply might be enough for my purposes and b) if it isn't, a
quality Antec supply for $20 that I can use someplace else is hard
to pass up.
* Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 Rev 2, $98. I'm building a
system with *massive* amounts of PCI traffic, and I'm hoping a
Nvidia-chipset board will prove more stable than the hordes of
Via-based models out there.
* CPU: AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2400+, $89 at Newegg. The 2200+ is $10
cheaper but they're both rated at 35W. If there's a sub-35W
processor that supports a 266-MHz FSB I'd like to hear about it.
* CPU heat sink: I'm lost here. I've had a good experience with a
Thermalright SLK-800 I installed three years ago, but current
Thermalright heat sinks all seem to specify Athlon 2500+ and
up. What gives?
* CPU fan: A leftover Vantec 80mm fan. Loud but effective.
* Memory: One 512MB DDR PC3200 DIMM. $80 at Crucial. My leftover 256MB
PC133 168-pin DIMMs aren't going to work with the motherboard,
right?
* Power supply: Thermaltake PurePower 560W, $102. In case the Antec
430W supply mentioned above proves insufficient.
* Drives: Eight Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB ATA drives plus one
cold spare, $230 each at CompUSA without rebate; currently $230 each
after $70 rebate. Lite-On DVD+-RW drive, $60-100. Leftover Maxtor
13GB ATA drive for booting.
* ATA controller: Two Highpoint RocketRAID 454, $87 each at
Newegg. Unlike Ryan Finnie I am *not* planning on doing hardware
RAID features; rather, I'm simply looking for high-quality ATA
controller cards. If anyone can recommend high-quality non-RAID
controller cards with four channels (or more) on each, I'd like to
hear about it. For that matter, if four two-channel ATA controller
cards are doable with my motherboard setup, I'd like to hear about
that too.

So, what do y'all think?
--
Read my Deep Thoughts @ URL:http://www.ylee.org/blog/ PERTH ---- *
Cpu(s): 48.2% us, 2.2% sy, 49.0% ni, 0.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.3% hi, 0.2% si
Mem: 515800k total, 500204k used, 15596k free, 11996k buffers
Swap: 2101032k total, 493512k used, 1607520k free, 37164k cached

In article ,
Yeechang Lee wrote:
BACKGROUND:
Inspired by URL:http://www.finnie.org/terabyte/, a few months
ago I started a thread
(URL:http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/msg/3dfb362bbf8e94d2)
to discuss the idea of building my own 1.5TB storage array using
software RAID50 to hold video files.

The main hitch keeping me from going ahead was that I had trouble
finding eight 250GB drives at the price I wanted. Clearly, I wasn't
thinking big enough; just before Christmas, I lucked out and bought
nine Seagate *400GB* drives at $230 each (plus a $30 rebate on the
first one) from CompUSA. I now have 3.6TB of raw storage sitting in a
shipping carton in my apartment. Even with RAID 5 and keeping a drive
as a spare, I'll have 400GB*8-400GB=2.8TB of space.

PURPOSE:
Video files (episodes of TV shows I already watch and enjoy,
plus rips of TV shows on DVD sets I own). I'd like to build a MythTV
system too, but the storage array comes first. No games.

PRIORITIES, in order:
* Stability. I'm very much in favor of build-right-and-leave-it-be as
opposed to constant hardware tinkering.
* Minize heat/noise. I have a studio apartment.
* Price. I've already spent a fortune on the drives; I don't want to
spend more on the rest than I need to.
* Performance. Not that I'm against a fast machine, but I know that a
storage server doesn't need the latest-and-greatest in terms of
horsepower.

PARTS:
Advice is always appreciated. All prices are from ZipZoomFly.com
unless otherwise specified.

* Case: Antec SX1040BII, $92. I almost went with an Antec
PlusView1000AMG ($72), but decided that a) the SX1040BII's 430W
power supply might be enough for my purposes and b) if it isn't, a
quality Antec supply for $20 that I can use someplace else is hard
to pass up.
* Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 Rev 2, $98. I'm building a
system with *massive* amounts of PCI traffic, and I'm hoping a
Nvidia-chipset board will prove more stable than the hordes of
Via-based models out there.
* CPU: AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2400+, $89 at Newegg. The 2200+ is $10
cheaper but they're both rated at 35W. If there's a sub-35W
processor that supports a 266-MHz FSB I'd like to hear about it.
* CPU heat sink: I'm lost here. I've had a good experience with a
Thermalright SLK-800 I installed three years ago, but current
Thermalright heat sinks all seem to specify Athlon 2500+ and
up. What gives?
* CPU fan: A leftover Vantec 80mm fan. Loud but effective.
* Memory: One 512MB DDR PC3200 DIMM. $80 at Crucial. My leftover 256MB
PC133 168-pin DIMMs aren't going to work with the motherboard,
right?
* Power supply: Thermaltake PurePower 560W, $102. In case the Antec
430W supply mentioned above proves insufficient.
* Drives: Eight Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB ATA drives plus one
cold spare, $230 each at CompUSA without rebate; currently $230 each
after $70 rebate. Lite-On DVD+-RW drive, $60-100. Leftover Maxtor
13GB ATA drive for booting.
* ATA controller: Two Highpoint RocketRAID 454, $87 each at
Newegg. Unlike Ryan Finnie I am *not* planning on doing hardware
RAID features; rather, I'm simply looking for high-quality ATA
controller cards. If anyone can recommend high-quality non-RAID
controller cards with four channels (or more) on each, I'd like to
hear about it. For that matter, if four two-channel ATA controller
cards are doable with my motherboard setup, I'd like to hear about
that too.

So, what do y'all think?
--
Read my Deep Thoughts @ URL:http://www.ylee.org/blog/ PERTH ---- *
Cpu(s): 48.2% us, 2.2% sy, 49.0% ni, 0.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.3% hi, 0.2% si
Mem: 515800k total, 500204k used, 15596k free, 11996k buffers
Swap: 2101032k total, 493512k used, 1607520k free, 37164k cached



How ya' gonna back it up ? :-)

--

a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.

Sounds like a neat project.

I had replied to your original post a while back with comments about my
setup. I'm quite happy with it. (Though I'm feeling the need for
more storage!)

Have you given any thought into what OS you'll be using?

--
-WD

So, what do y'all think?

You may want to consider Gigabit ethernet for the thing.
My MythTV recordings average between 1 and 3GB, and moving them around
can get sluggish at 100Mb.


--
-WD

Yeechang Lee wrote:

BACKGROUND:
Inspired by URL:http://www.finnie.org/terabyte/, a few months
ago I started a thread

(URL:http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/msg/3dfb362bbf8e94d2)
to discuss the idea of building my own 1.5TB storage array using
software RAID50 to hold video files.

The main hitch keeping me from going ahead was that I had trouble
finding eight 250GB drives at the price I wanted. Clearly, I wasn't
thinking big enough; just before Christmas, I lucked out and bought
nine Seagate *400GB* drives at $230 each (plus a $30 rebate on the
first one) from CompUSA. I now have 3.6TB of raw storage sitting in a
shipping carton in my apartment. Even with RAID 5 and keeping a drive
as a spare, I'll have 400GB*8-400GB=2.8TB of space.

PURPOSE:
Video files (episodes of TV shows I already watch and enjoy,
plus rips of TV shows on DVD sets I own). I'd like to build a MythTV
system too, but the storage array comes first. No games.

PRIORITIES, in order:
* Stability. I'm very much in favor of build-right-and-leave-it-be as
opposed to constant hardware tinkering.
* Minize heat/noise. I have a studio apartment.
* Price. I've already spent a fortune on the drives; I don't want to
spend more on the rest than I need to.
* Performance. Not that I'm against a fast machine, but I know that a
storage server doesn't need the latest-and-greatest in terms of
horsepower.

PARTS:
Advice is always appreciated. All prices are from ZipZoomFly.com
unless otherwise specified.

* Case: Antec SX1040BII, $92. I almost went with an Antec
PlusView1000AMG ($72), but decided that a) the SX1040BII's 430W
power supply might be enough for my purposes and b) if it isn't, a
quality Antec supply for $20 that I can use someplace else is hard
to pass up.
* Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 Rev 2, $98. I'm building a
system with *massive* amounts of PCI traffic, and I'm hoping a
Nvidia-chipset board will prove more stable than the hordes of
Via-based models out there.
* CPU: AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2400+, $89 at Newegg. The 2200+ is $10
cheaper but they're both rated at 35W. If there's a sub-35W
processor that supports a 266-MHz FSB I'd like to hear about it.
* CPU heat sink: I'm lost here. I've had a good experience with a
Thermalright SLK-800 I installed three years ago, but current
Thermalright heat sinks all seem to specify Athlon 2500+ and
up. What gives?
* CPU fan: A leftover Vantec 80mm fan. Loud but effective.
* Memory: One 512MB DDR PC3200 DIMM. $80 at Crucial. My leftover 256MB
PC133 168-pin DIMMs aren't going to work with the motherboard,
right?
* Power supply: Thermaltake PurePower 560W, $102. In case the Antec
430W supply mentioned above proves insufficient.
* Drives: Eight Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB ATA drives plus one
cold spare, $230 each at CompUSA without rebate; currently $230 each
after $70 rebate. Lite-On DVD+-RW drive, $60-100. Leftover Maxtor
13GB ATA drive for booting.
* ATA controller: Two Highpoint RocketRAID 454, $87 each at
Newegg. Unlike Ryan Finnie I am *not* planning on doing hardware
RAID features; rather, I'm simply looking for high-quality ATA
controller cards. If anyone can recommend high-quality non-RAID
controller cards with four channels (or more) on each, I'd like to
hear about it. For that matter, if four two-channel ATA controller
cards are doable with my motherboard setup, I'd like to hear about
that too.

So, what do y'all think?

This is not the way I'd have done it but I'd have compromised on the
capacity to get reliability if I had to. I'd want to see ECC RAM on any
storage server--got bitten by that once and never again. That means a
server board and they aren't cheap. While hot-swap isn't essential, it's
nice to have and SATA on a real RAID controller will give you that, PATA
won't.

I'd be interested in knowing how the soft RAID on a PCI bus works out for
you--in principle this array can internally generate about 4 times as much
traffic as the PCI bus can handle and when you add in traffic to the
network interface more than that. If it just bottlenecks that might be
acceptable, but I suspect that it's going to be unstable--he was getting
DMA timeouts with slower drives than yours.




--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

In article ,
Yeechang Lee wrote:
BACKGROUND:
Inspired by URL:http://www.finnie.org/terabyte/, a few months
ago I started a thread
(URL:http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/msg/3dfb362bbf8e94d2)
to discuss the idea of building my own 1.5TB storage array using
software RAID50 to hold video files.

The main hitch keeping me from going ahead was that I had trouble
finding eight 250GB drives at the price I wanted. Clearly, I wasn't
thinking big enough; just before Christmas, I lucked out and bought
nine Seagate *400GB* drives at $230 each (plus a $30 rebate on the
first one) from CompUSA. I now have 3.6TB of raw storage sitting in a
shipping carton in my apartment. Even with RAID 5 and keeping a drive
as a spare, I'll have 400GB*8-400GB=2.8TB of space.

PURPOSE:
Video files (episodes of TV shows I already watch and enjoy,
plus rips of TV shows on DVD sets I own). I'd like to build a MythTV
system too, but the storage array comes first. No games.

PRIORITIES, in order:
* Stability. I'm very much in favor of build-right-and-leave-it-be as
opposed to constant hardware tinkering.
* Minize heat/noise. I have a studio apartment.
* Price. I've already spent a fortune on the drives; I don't want to
spend more on the rest than I need to.
* Performance. Not that I'm against a fast machine, but I know that a
storage server doesn't need the latest-and-greatest in terms of
horsepower.

PARTS:
Advice is always appreciated. All prices are from ZipZoomFly.com
unless otherwise specified.

* Case: Antec SX1040BII, $92. I almost went with an Antec
PlusView1000AMG ($72), but decided that a) the SX1040BII's 430W
power supply might be enough for my purposes and b) if it isn't, a
quality Antec supply for $20 that I can use someplace else is hard
to pass up.
* Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 Rev 2, $98. I'm building a
system with *massive* amounts of PCI traffic, and I'm hoping a
Nvidia-chipset board will prove more stable than the hordes of
Via-based models out there.
* CPU: AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2400+, $89 at Newegg. The 2200+ is $10
cheaper but they're both rated at 35W. If there's a sub-35W
processor that supports a 266-MHz FSB I'd like to hear about it.
* CPU heat sink: I'm lost here. I've had a good experience with a
Thermalright SLK-800 I installed three years ago, but current
Thermalright heat sinks all seem to specify Athlon 2500+ and
up. What gives?
* CPU fan: A leftover Vantec 80mm fan. Loud but effective.
* Memory: One 512MB DDR PC3200 DIMM. $80 at Crucial. My leftover 256MB
PC133 168-pin DIMMs aren't going to work with the motherboard,
right?
* Power supply: Thermaltake PurePower 560W, $102. In case the Antec
430W supply mentioned above proves insufficient.
* Drives: Eight Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB ATA drives plus one
cold spare, $230 each at CompUSA without rebate; currently $230 each
after $70 rebate. Lite-On DVD+-RW drive, $60-100. Leftover Maxtor
13GB ATA drive for booting.
* ATA controller: Two Highpoint RocketRAID 454, $87 each at
Newegg. Unlike Ryan Finnie I am *not* planning on doing hardware
RAID features; rather, I'm simply looking for high-quality ATA
controller cards. If anyone can recommend high-quality non-RAID
controller cards with four channels (or more) on each, I'd like to
hear about it. For that matter, if four two-channel ATA controller
cards are doable with my motherboard setup, I'd like to hear about
that too.

So, what do y'all think?
--


It needs a dedicated UPS, IMO.


What operating system ?

As a blue-sky discusion, I'd run Linux with VMWare, and W2k as a virtual
machine. Best of both worlds.

--

a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.

J. Clarke wrote:
While hot-swap isn't essential, it's nice to have and SATA on a real
RAID controller will give you that, PATA won't.

Hot swap simply isn't essential for me. Besides, if I really wanted
it, I could just put the ninth drive in place of the DVD drive.

I'd be interested in knowing how the soft RAID on a PCI bus works
out for you--in principle this array can internally generate about 4
times as much traffic as the PCI bus can handle and when you add in
traffic to the network interface more than that.

Is this something that a faster FSB would help? Doesn't sound like it
though. I presume switching to PCI Express would help.

If it just bottlenecks that might be acceptable, but I suspect that
it's going to be unstable--he was getting DMA timeouts with slower
drives than yours.

This is the key issue; elsewhere I've read that the likely cause of
Finnie's issues with all-software RAID was his initial choice of a
cheap Tyan motherboard followed by an even cheaper PC Chips board. I'm
willing to deal with suboptimal performance as long as the array can
pump out the video files (including HDTV) fast enough, and it sounds
like it can, but stability is certainly important.

In answer to others' questions:

* Backup: No plans. I'm storing video files for personal use; if the
array gets hit by a meteor I'd be saddened, but I'd get over it. I
expect the RAID 5 and a backup drive on hand will let me deal with
the typical failure scenarios.

* OS: As I stated in the referenced Usenet post, I'm planning on Linux
software RAID 50.

--
Read my Deep Thoughts @ URL:http://www.ylee.org/blog/ PERTH ---- *
Cpu(s): 41.3% us, 2.0% sy, 56.2% ni, 0.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.3% hi, 0.2% si
Mem: 515800k total, 494084k used, 21716k free, 61520k buffers
Swap: 2101032k total, 503588k used, 1597444k free, 39560k cached

Al Dykes wrote:

In article ,
Yeechang Lee wrote:
BACKGROUND:
Inspired by URL:http://www.finnie.org/terabyte/, a few months
ago I started a thread
(URL:http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/msg/3dfb362bbf8e94d2)
to discuss the idea of building my own 1.5TB storage array using
software RAID50 to hold video files.

The main hitch keeping me from going ahead was that I had trouble
finding eight 250GB drives at the price I wanted. Clearly, I wasn't
thinking big enough; just before Christmas, I lucked out and bought
nine Seagate *400GB* drives at $230 each (plus a $30 rebate on the
first one) from CompUSA. I now have 3.6TB of raw storage sitting in a
shipping carton in my apartment. Even with RAID 5 and keeping a drive
as a spare, I'll have 400GB*8-400GB=2.8TB of space.

PURPOSE:
Video files (episodes of TV shows I already watch and enjoy,
plus rips of TV shows on DVD sets I own). I'd like to build a MythTV
system too, but the storage array comes first. No games.

PRIORITIES, in order:
* Stability. I'm very much in favor of build-right-and-leave-it-be as
opposed to constant hardware tinkering.
* Minize heat/noise. I have a studio apartment.
* Price. I've already spent a fortune on the drives; I don't want to
spend more on the rest than I need to.
* Performance. Not that I'm against a fast machine, but I know that a
storage server doesn't need the latest-and-greatest in terms of
horsepower.

PARTS:
Advice is always appreciated. All prices are from ZipZoomFly.com
unless otherwise specified.

* Case: Antec SX1040BII, $92. I almost went with an Antec
PlusView1000AMG ($72), but decided that a) the SX1040BII's 430W
power supply might be enough for my purposes and b) if it isn't, a
quality Antec supply for $20 that I can use someplace else is hard
to pass up.
* Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 Rev 2, $98. I'm building a
system with *massive* amounts of PCI traffic, and I'm hoping a
Nvidia-chipset board will prove more stable than the hordes of
Via-based models out there.
* CPU: AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2400+, $89 at Newegg. The 2200+ is $10
cheaper but they're both rated at 35W. If there's a sub-35W
processor that supports a 266-MHz FSB I'd like to hear about it.
* CPU heat sink: I'm lost here. I've had a good experience with a
Thermalright SLK-800 I installed three years ago, but current
Thermalright heat sinks all seem to specify Athlon 2500+ and
up. What gives?
* CPU fan: A leftover Vantec 80mm fan. Loud but effective.
* Memory: One 512MB DDR PC3200 DIMM. $80 at Crucial. My leftover 256MB
PC133 168-pin DIMMs aren't going to work with the motherboard,
right?
* Power supply: Thermaltake PurePower 560W, $102. In case the Antec
430W supply mentioned above proves insufficient.
* Drives: Eight Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB ATA drives plus one
cold spare, $230 each at CompUSA without rebate; currently $230 each
after $70 rebate. Lite-On DVD+-RW drive, $60-100. Leftover Maxtor
13GB ATA drive for booting.
* ATA controller: Two Highpoint RocketRAID 454, $87 each at
Newegg. Unlike Ryan Finnie I am *not* planning on doing hardware
RAID features; rather, I'm simply looking for high-quality ATA
controller cards. If anyone can recommend high-quality non-RAID
controller cards with four channels (or more) on each, I'd like to
hear about it. For that matter, if four two-channel ATA controller
cards are doable with my motherboard setup, I'd like to hear about
that too.

So, what do y'all think?
--


It needs a dedicated UPS, IMO.


What operating system ?

As a blue-sky discusion, I'd run Linux with VMWare, and W2k as a virtual
machine. Best of both worlds.

Personally I'd put Netware on any file server that contained data that I
cared about. But the license is paid for and if I had to buy it again I
might reconsider.


--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Al Dykes wrote:
In article ,
Yeechang Lee wrote:
BACKGROUND:
Inspired by URL:http://www.finnie.org/terabyte/, a few months
ago I started a thread
(URL:http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/msg/3dfb362bbf8e94d2)
to discuss the idea of building my own 1.5TB storage array using
software RAID50 to hold video files.

The main hitch keeping me from going ahead was that I had trouble
finding eight 250GB drives at the price I wanted. Clearly, I wasn't
thinking big enough; just before Christmas, I lucked out and bought
nine Seagate *400GB* drives at $230 each (plus a $30 rebate on the
first one) from CompUSA. I now have 3.6TB of raw storage sitting in a
shipping carton in my apartment. Even with RAID 5 and keeping a drive
as a spare, I'll have 400GB*8-400GB=2.8TB of space.

PURPOSE:
Video files (episodes of TV shows I already watch and enjoy,
plus rips of TV shows on DVD sets I own). I'd like to build a MythTV
system too, but the storage array comes first. No games.


[...]


How ya' gonna back it up ? :-)

Re-download the movies in case it fails? Might be a bit slow on
restore... ;-)

Arno
--
For email address: lastname AT tik DOT ee DOT ethz DOT ch
GnuPG: ID:1E25338F FP:0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws" - Tacitus

Yeechang Lee wrote:

* Minize heat/noise.

Unless you intend to run your server 24/7 and stream the contents to
users other than yourself, I'd suggest looking at disk drawer/caddy
systems. This will certainly help meet this objective. They are cheap,
too (abut $20 for the drawer, $10 for each caddy).

I'm speaking from experience -- I have a 2.3TB collection of TV shows
and family videos on a number of IDE drives of different sizes ranging
from 160GB to 400GB. The drives are all installed in StarTech caddies.
When I need to make some videos on-line, I simply shutdown the PC,
insert the appropriate drive and power up the PC. I think there are hot
swappable caddy systems out there but I have no experience with them.

- bl