Author Topic: NAS, Server or something else to do with hdd's (Read 1881 times)

sapsa · « **on:** September 01, 2010, 08:47:45 AM »

Dear Baka community,

after helping me with Moving Files problem and after reading External Hdd i thinked of making something with my hdds.

Currently i use 3 samsung hdd's as storage for anime (3x1TB) and I'm currently buying another one, but with the knowledge I got from the "moving files problem" topic, I thought about making a miniServer, NAS for those 4 hdds. If it was server then it have to be a power-friendly (low power usage) mobo+cpu with linux, the mobo need to have ahci (mine main mobo dont

)
If i pick NAS it should be something with 4 or more sata slots for hdds, but i dont think i will find something like that - probably will be a miniserver + linux.
I can leave everything alone, but the less times hdd work the longer they work, and I dont use them all the time, I just fill them up with anime, and then only watch them when i got time - so it would be good way to save some hdd's life.
The other option is to use external case's for hdds. but mine's are 3.5" so there will be needed external power supply, and I dont like the idea to keep them in wardrobe, and put them in and out the case just to copy/watch something.

Currently im looking for cheap-cheap-cheap-lowerpower-mobo that has everything integrated. Would be great if the mobo had PSU too. I looked at ATOM mobo's but they aint cheap.

But i'm looking for idea's from you Baka Community. I know you all use NAS/SERVERS/RACKS and all of you got few(and more) HDD's

Please help me, Sapsa

Pentium100 · « **Reply #1 on:** September 01, 2010, 10:25:32 AM »

Atom may not be cheapest, but it uses very little power, you could make a simple UPS* for it. The motherboard will probably use less power than your 4 hard drives.

Also, look into other mini-ITX ans similar motherboards, IIRC, VIA makes a low power CPU too.

I am using a regular PC with 8 hard drives (one of them system) and two tape drives as my main file server. I am also using a ~10 year old server as a VM server, running uTorrent and keeping the recently downloaded files (so I don't need to seed from a network drive, in case the main file server goes down). It also runa a couple of virtual machines (more if I need them). This one has 4 drives, 3x 10kRPM 18GB and 1x 7.2kRPM 300GB.

All in all, I use ~20 hard drives on 5 computers, smallest being 1.2GB (990MB), largest being 750GB. Total capacity - ~3.3TB

* 12V ATX PSU + 12V sealed lead-acid battery + 14V PSU = simple on-line UPS.

sapsa · « **Reply #2 on:** September 01, 2010, 10:52:49 AM »

when i looked for mini-ITX, i know it was more expensive than similar non mini-itx. I will give it a try, but the power consume is important here, even the mobo that boot from flash would be great ;]

Thanks for the tip with that on-line ups, you got any www howToBuildMyOwn ?

Pentium100 · « **Reply #3 on:** September 01, 2010, 11:19:56 AM »

I don't have any links, but I could draw a circuit diagram for you.

Though I have though about this and in theory it should work, I have not tried it (reason - I don't have a low power motherboard and the 12V ATX power supplies usually are not very powerful (100-200W).)

For low power consumption you need to use either a mobile CPU or a specifically designed low power CPU such as the Atom. Low power CPUs are more expensive to make, so they usually are not used in desktops. For laptops, every watt counts because you want it to run on the battery as long as possible and do not want to lug around a heavy battery. On the other hand, desktops usually work using the mains power so they do not need to be as low power as a laptop, that's why desktop motherboard + desktop CPU will use more power.

sapsa · « **Reply #4 on:** September 01, 2010, 02:57:39 PM »

But the main question is if i get that "atom" mobo with low power usage, will it handle 4 sata 3,5" disks?

bork · « **Reply #5 on:** September 01, 2010, 05:20:01 PM »

Not atom but small

Possible MB:
Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L
ZOTAC H55ITX-A-E
Gigabyte H55N-USB3

Possable CPU's:
Athlon II X2
Core i5-661

Under clock it, lower the voltage.

Make sure the case is strong and protects the disks from vibration, they can cause vibrations between themselves that will shorten a the disk life.

---------

should have looked up things a bit more, the Core i5-661 cost a bit more than you trying to aim for, sorry about that

Pentium100 · « **Reply #6 on:** September 01, 2010, 05:56:36 PM »

I do not know if there are Atom motherboards (didn't look for them that hard) with 4 SATA ports, but you could use:

a motherboard with a PATA+2xSATA and a couple of SATA-PATA adapters to connect the hard drives
or
a motherboard with 2xSATA and a PCI (or PCI-e, depending on the motherboard) dual port SATA controller.

bork,

A desktop mobo+CPU will use more power than Atom, Geode or whatever VIA offers.

Also, hard drives need to be cooled.

However, a mini-ITX board will fit in any micro-ATX, ATX or EATX case.

sapsa · « **Reply #7 on:** September 01, 2010, 07:46:42 PM »

I got NEW Idea, how about changing all of 3,5" hdd's into 2,5" + external cases.
Then i can change router with the USB slot one, and make NAS from router.
2'5 need less power suply.

Or buy router + 1HDD 2'5 + case, and store in that drive curently watching films.

Is my idea good? the only thing would be that i would need to make some "safe" place to hold hdd (the 3,5" one) somewhere else (not in pc)
and then need to buy case for hdd to copy something from it when i need it to be "online" all the time.

The idea is surpasses - to many ideas on not complicated thing.

curently:
Router + USB HDD 3,5 case = cheapest but only 1-2 hdd
Router + USB 2,5' case + HDD = cheap but only 1 hdd (currently) + energy saving
normal mobo + psu + case = expensive but unlimited hdd's and allways online
atom mobo + case = most expensive with hdd's limited with psu, but most energy saving.

I see the "energy saving" option is allways more expensive.

I'm currently little confuse

Pentium100 · « **Reply #8 on:** September 01, 2010, 08:13:28 PM »

2.5" HDDs are more expensive than 3.5" HDDs of the same capacity

While 2.5" HDDs need less power than 3.5" ones, a USB port may not be able to provide enough power for more than one of them, so you may still need the separate power supply.

Also, your "router" will most likely be slow as a file server. Watching movies does not take a lot of bandwidth, but if you ever want to move/copy from one drive to another you will have to wait. USB2 limits the bandwidth too.

Anyway, what's wrong with keeping all drives in your main (only?) PC? When I had only one PC, it had 8 drives in it. Well, unless you want your torrenting etc to be independent from your main PC, in which case you need some server.

As for energy saving being more expensive - that's how it is, you either pay now (more expensive components) or later (more energy used).

sapsa · « **Reply #9 on:** September 02, 2010, 12:28:19 AM »

hmmm.... I would like someone time not to use my hdd's (not turn them on) when i dont need them, and pluging and unpluging them is pain in a..
Other thing is i like to have access to them from few devices and not allways i want to use my main pc as "shearing device"

Probably i will stay with hdd's in pc then. but now i will have 4/4 sata slots and will need to buy SATA controller, but dont know will i will need change PSU.

fohfoh · « **Reply #10 on:** September 02, 2010, 03:37:53 AM »

AFAIK, WD Green HDDs are low power consumption. However, there were at first some reports of failure rates. I don't know if the newer ones have amended this issue. (Though I myself have one that works perfectly fine)

Pentium100 · « **Reply #11 on:** September 02, 2010, 05:30:21 AM »

Quote from: fohfoh on September 02, 2010, 03:37:53 AM

AFAIK, WD Green HDDs are low power consumption. However, there were at first some reports of failure rates. I don't know if the newer ones have amended this issue. (Though I myself have one that works perfectly fine)

The difference is not that big however, since modern drives use less than 10W.

Comparison - 1TB 7200RPM 3.5" drives:

WD Caviar Green - Idle 2.8W, Read/Write 5.4W
WD Caviar Black - Idle 7.8W, Read/Write 8.4W
WD RE4 - Idle 5.9W, Read/Write 7.9W

Difference in Idle power consumption between Green and Black is 5W. In my country, 1kWh of electricity costs ~0.13EUR.

Running the drive 24/7 for a year would save you 5.69 Euros.

Get RE4 (or RE3) drives, they are designed for 24/7 operation and with higher reliability in mind.

Freedom Kira · « **Reply #12 on:** September 02, 2010, 06:33:13 AM »

You seem to be aiming for the setup I have. I'll describe it. Prices in Canadian dollars.

Intel Atom (don't know exact model) - about $90
Case with integrated PSU - about $50 (switched out the PSU though, with the one in my desktop, when I found it couldn't handle a DVD drive that I put in later)
4x 1.5TB Samsung HDDs 5400rpm - about $600 total at the time, now about $350-400 total
1x 500GB Seagate HDD as boot disk, can't remember speed but it's probably 7200rpm - about $50
Ubuntu 10.04 (started on 9.04 and kept upgrading)
1 PCI SATA RAID card that connects up to 4 SATA devices - about $30?
1GB DDR2 RAM - about $40
IDE DVD writer - I got this free, but they cost about $20
No UPS - actually I had one that blew due to overload when the power died (basically I just plugged everything into it, though "everything" consists of two towers, a monitor, a wireless phone, a printer that wasn't powered on, and speakers that weren't powered on). It cost about $70

The RAID card isn't supported in Linux, but the drives are still readable, so I use mdadm. The system can't boot off of the drives, especially since they are in a RAID 5 array in mdadm, so I have the fifth drive installed, and that's where Linux is installed.
The parts above are a hybrid of things I bought in different places. The 4 Samsung drives came from Newegg, the DVD drive I had lying around, the boot HDD I got from a local supplier, the UPS came from TigerDirect, and everything else came from a second local supplier.

This setup has lasted about a year now (I built it August 2009, but setup of everything took me a few weeks, into September). No problems so far. It was a good way to learn Linux.

Remember you'll have to install lots of stuff, like Samba and Mdadm, to get this functioning properly with Linux. In the end, it's well worth it, especially if you lack Linux experience and want some.

P.S. I've never heard of a PSU integrated onto the mobo. Does that exist? I thought they were usually only included in the case.

Pentium100 · « **Reply #13 on:** September 02, 2010, 05:26:31 PM »

I also never saw a 220V PSU integrated in a motherboard. However, I have one old PC that has a 12V PSU integrated in the motherboard. The PSU in the case takes 220V AC and produces 12V DC only, while the motherboard makes the other voltages. Power to the hard drive is taken from the motherboard.

UPS - You need to use a decent size UPS - I have connected 5 computers, my CRT monitor and network switches to my UPS (total power consumption - 600-1000W), but the UPS is a big 2200VA model (about the size of a mini or midi tower case), the batteries hold for ~30 minutes under 34.8% load (~760VA). This UPS (I bought it used, made in 1998) cost me ~290EUR, including batteries, new batteries (4x 12V/18Ah) cost ~140EUR.

Also, why a huge 500GB drive for system? I'd rather buy a smaller drive and either save money or get a faster and more reliable drive (or two of them for RAID1). Not even Windows 7 needs 500GB system drive.

As for the OS, I recommend Debian - more stable OS and less upgrades (older versions are supported for a long time).

bork · « **Reply #14 on:** September 03, 2010, 01:55:33 AM »

If you can get the power required under 150 watts more, you can use something like this as the power supply -

http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.1097/.f

They look interesting but have not played with one yet.

Pentium100 · « **Reply #15 on:** September 03, 2010, 02:23:09 AM »

That PSU can be used to make a simple UPS, since you would not need the inverter and switches.

However, you have to be careful with these low power PSUs - since the power is divided among many voltages, you need to find you how much current is required at those voltages (for example, older motherboards use draw a lot of current from the +5V rail, while new motherboards draw more current from +12V rail).

Freedom Kira · « **Reply #16 on:** September 03, 2010, 05:11:19 AM »

Quote from: Pentium100 on September 02, 2010, 05:26:31 PM

Also, why a huge 500GB drive for system? I'd rather buy a smaller drive and either save money or get a faster and more reliable drive (or two of them for RAID1). Not even Windows 7 needs 500GB system drive.

Basically, best value for cost. I think 80GB was around $40 or so at the time. Drives smaller than 500GB don't get much cheaper than $50. So I figured, what the heck, might as well. Extra space isn't such a bad thing, maybe it'll come in handy. Especially if you can get that much more for only that much more. 25% more for 500% more space is pretty good IMO.

And I might have remembered wrong, it might have been $55 or $60. Still a worthwhile purchase, I'd say.

Pentium100 · « **Reply #17 on:** September 03, 2010, 05:43:25 AM »

But you are not using that space, are you?

Anyway, when I needed a couple of hard drives for system use, I bought 9GB 10kRPM ones, since I already had a SCSI bus in each computer. Probably weren't cheaper than 200GB drives, but now at least I'm not tempted to use that extra space and system drives remain system.

I like enterprise grade drives and buy them when I can afford them. Those drives were designed with reliable 24/7 operation in mind.

sapsa · « **Reply #18 on:** September 03, 2010, 07:09:03 PM »

true, but still alot of use when they see 500GB hdd and 100GB hdd with same price, they pick the bigger want thinking they will "maybe use it latter"

Theres not allot of people that dedicate full hdd for OS.

IMO i would pick the faster one but not all computers got SCSI bus ;]

Pentium100 · « **Reply #19 on:** September 03, 2010, 07:33:43 PM »

Few motherboards have integrated SCSI, but PCI host bus adapters are quite cheap. Also, wide SCSI can support up to 15 devices on a single cable (narrow up to 7).

I dedicate entire hard drive for the OS - makes it easier if I want to try another OS - get another hard drive and replace the old one. I usually do this if I want to see if my current problem is hardware or software related. If I install Windows on a blank hard drive and still have the problem, then it's most likely hardware and I can go back to my old drive.

And now some fast hard drives have SATA interface.