Smurfin
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It was 2 years ago that I bought into the media streaming concept, and what started as basic thoughts around building a PC for general use but which could also be used as a server...well let's just say I've come a long way from there
I quickly discarded the PC/server route due to various reasons, but the primary one being that one of my hard drives failed in the first day and it rendered the entire PC unuseable while I sorted it out (and it took a while which was a major PITA).
Anyway, I was chuffed that I'd successfully built my first ever PC, but I turned to consumer NAS solutions to address my storage needs. I bought a Thecus N5200 NAS with 5 x 1TB hard drives......read up a bit on RAID and set everything up in a RAID5 array. Wow, 3.5TB of storage
It seemed like alot but once I'd got close to capacity I'd already decided that I wanted to rip my entire media collection, so I started looking for a bigger box. To be honest I'm surprised that Thecus doesn't get more coverage as particularly in the 7 drive arena they are by far the cheapest solution, they're well built and they're fast. What's not to like?
Enter the Thecus N7700, and with 7 x 2TB drives (@ £150 each at the time) I thought I'd got something to last me a good many years. Not so, as I'd really underestimated how big my collection was. No sooner had I ripped most of my HD stuff, I started thinking that from a jukebox perspective, having TV series on there would be great....and it was
The Thecus has done me well with 10.7TB of useable space but again....I'm up to capacity with at least a further 4-5TB of media to rip
My plans until recently were to buy the Synology DS1010 and the corresponding DX510 (or whatever the expansion unit is called) to expand to a 10 drive array. A mate of mine went out and bought this exact same setup with 10 x 2TB HDDs, but when we set it up (RAID6 for 2 drive redundancy), the built in file system options limits the maximum size of the array to 14.52TB.....pfft.
With that option firmly consigned to the graveyard of good ideas - especially given cost of over £900 for the units plus drives - I started to do a bit of digging.
I came across unRAID on these very forums, but there's little in the way of coverage as many people haven't even heard of it. After some more hunting, I read alot, thought alot and decided that unRAID ticks most of the boxes. More on that later, but I thought people might be interested in my build.
What was I looking for?
Plenty of storage.
Plenty of expandibility.
Ideally quiet and low power consumption.
The build I eventually went for was as follows:
Antec 1200 case
Asus M4A785TD-V-Evo motherboard
AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor Core AM3 2.9ghz processor
4GB of Corsair Dominator DDR RAM
Corsair 650w PSU
Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 SATA expansion card
2 x 3Ware forward SATA breakout cables
San Disk Cruzer Micro 2GB USB drive
USB motherboard adapter
4 x X-Case 5-in-3 hotswap HDD cages
unRAID Pro Server license
10 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda LP HDDs
3 x 2TB Samsung F3 LP HDDs
That little lot comes to just shy of £2000, with a roughly equal split between HDDs and the associated hardware. My reasons for the hardware choices are as follows:
Antec 1200 - It's big! It can accomodate 4 HDD cages giving me a total of 20 HDD capacity - that's 40TB in one case
X-Case drives cages - These certainly add to the cost, but at £58 each they're almost half of what other drive cages cost and as well as a "server" look, I also wanted the flexibility to be able to swap drives easily. In my experience, it's a royal PITA to open up a case and be faffing around with SATA and power cables if you need to swap something out.
The motherboard was chosen because it has onboard graphics, a healthy 5 SATA ports and 2 PCI-E x16 slots which is needed to get the full complement of 20 HDDs. To keep cost down and simply because I don't actually need 20 HDDs yet and probably won't for some time, I bought one of the Supermicro SATA expansion boards, and this gives me a total of 13 HDDs in the array at any one time.
The processor doesn't need to be powerful hence the one I've chosen, in fact many people use ancient processors and motherboards to run their unRAIDs.
As unRAID boots from a USB drive, I bought one from the unRAID recommended list, and a usb header motherboard adaptor which means that the usb drive is fixed inside the case. Especially with a one year old and curious fingers (and a wife who has no interest or understanding in this), I could just see it being pulled out while the array is booted. And that, if you hadn't guessed = seriously bad news.
So this is how the goodies looked before I started:
Anyway...on with the build. It took me a fair few hours to complete, mainly because I really took my time and also the case presented a few challenges which I wasn't expecting.
Firstly, I removed the existing cages and front fans from the case, however both sides of the case are lined with melded metal tabs and 2 of every 3 needed to be removed or flattened in order to get the drive cages in. This turned out to be a major pain in the arse as my initial bright idea of using a pair of pliers turned out to be as successly as a chocolate teapot in a desert. Those tabs are seriously tough to bend and you can't get the leverage required as the pliers are blocked by the case sides.
Plan B involved a clamp which worked an aboluste treat for a single line - the whole lot that needed to be flattened were completed in all of 5 minutes. I didn't have - nor could I buy locally - a deep throat clamp to get to the others, so I ended up using a pad saw with a hacksaw blade for the front tabs on the same side of the case as the clamped ones. The opposite side just wasn't working though, so in the end I managed to bend them as much as I could with the pliers, and wriggled the cages in.
As you can see, from the photo below, it's not a pretty sight (though I was smiling when thankfully the first two cages actually slid into place because all the time I was thinking...these buggers aren't coming out in a hurry
A view from the open side of the case with two cages in...they do stick out a long way so I was glad I'd bought a full tower case:
Processor and RAM fitted onto the motherboard - the white and the dark blue PCI-e slots will take the SATA expansion cards:
All drive cages in, power supply fitted, motherboard in With those cages all of a sudden the giant Antec 1200 doesn't look quite so big!
Also, to help with airflow and simply because I'm anal, I shoved every cable I didn't need behind the motherboard tray and routed as many other cables behind as well - at this point I was more than a little concerned that I wouldn't get the other side of the case back on!
This photo shows the USB drive mounted inside, and just above it is the supermicro SATA expansion card with 2 breakout cables:
Took me ages but I was quite pleased with my cable handiwork. It's not quite the neatest I've seen (I should really changed those UV SATA cables for some shorter ones), but I'm quite happy with it:
I know we're descending into PC porn but....
E finito!
I must admit, it's SO satisfying the first time you boot up a new build. Everything worked fine, and I was looking forward to the unRAID part...
TBC....
I quickly discarded the PC/server route due to various reasons, but the primary one being that one of my hard drives failed in the first day and it rendered the entire PC unuseable while I sorted it out (and it took a while which was a major PITA).
Anyway, I was chuffed that I'd successfully built my first ever PC, but I turned to consumer NAS solutions to address my storage needs. I bought a Thecus N5200 NAS with 5 x 1TB hard drives......read up a bit on RAID and set everything up in a RAID5 array. Wow, 3.5TB of storage
It seemed like alot but once I'd got close to capacity I'd already decided that I wanted to rip my entire media collection, so I started looking for a bigger box. To be honest I'm surprised that Thecus doesn't get more coverage as particularly in the 7 drive arena they are by far the cheapest solution, they're well built and they're fast. What's not to like?
Enter the Thecus N7700, and with 7 x 2TB drives (@ £150 each at the time) I thought I'd got something to last me a good many years. Not so, as I'd really underestimated how big my collection was. No sooner had I ripped most of my HD stuff, I started thinking that from a jukebox perspective, having TV series on there would be great....and it was
The Thecus has done me well with 10.7TB of useable space but again....I'm up to capacity with at least a further 4-5TB of media to rip
My plans until recently were to buy the Synology DS1010 and the corresponding DX510 (or whatever the expansion unit is called) to expand to a 10 drive array. A mate of mine went out and bought this exact same setup with 10 x 2TB HDDs, but when we set it up (RAID6 for 2 drive redundancy), the built in file system options limits the maximum size of the array to 14.52TB.....pfft.
With that option firmly consigned to the graveyard of good ideas - especially given cost of over £900 for the units plus drives - I started to do a bit of digging.
I came across unRAID on these very forums, but there's little in the way of coverage as many people haven't even heard of it. After some more hunting, I read alot, thought alot and decided that unRAID ticks most of the boxes. More on that later, but I thought people might be interested in my build.
What was I looking for?
Plenty of storage.
Plenty of expandibility.
Ideally quiet and low power consumption.
The build I eventually went for was as follows:
Antec 1200 case
Asus M4A785TD-V-Evo motherboard
AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor Core AM3 2.9ghz processor
4GB of Corsair Dominator DDR RAM
Corsair 650w PSU
Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 SATA expansion card
2 x 3Ware forward SATA breakout cables
San Disk Cruzer Micro 2GB USB drive
USB motherboard adapter
4 x X-Case 5-in-3 hotswap HDD cages
unRAID Pro Server license
10 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda LP HDDs
3 x 2TB Samsung F3 LP HDDs
That little lot comes to just shy of £2000, with a roughly equal split between HDDs and the associated hardware. My reasons for the hardware choices are as follows:
Antec 1200 - It's big! It can accomodate 4 HDD cages giving me a total of 20 HDD capacity - that's 40TB in one case
X-Case drives cages - These certainly add to the cost, but at £58 each they're almost half of what other drive cages cost and as well as a "server" look, I also wanted the flexibility to be able to swap drives easily. In my experience, it's a royal PITA to open up a case and be faffing around with SATA and power cables if you need to swap something out.
The motherboard was chosen because it has onboard graphics, a healthy 5 SATA ports and 2 PCI-E x16 slots which is needed to get the full complement of 20 HDDs. To keep cost down and simply because I don't actually need 20 HDDs yet and probably won't for some time, I bought one of the Supermicro SATA expansion boards, and this gives me a total of 13 HDDs in the array at any one time.
The processor doesn't need to be powerful hence the one I've chosen, in fact many people use ancient processors and motherboards to run their unRAIDs.
As unRAID boots from a USB drive, I bought one from the unRAID recommended list, and a usb header motherboard adaptor which means that the usb drive is fixed inside the case. Especially with a one year old and curious fingers (and a wife who has no interest or understanding in this), I could just see it being pulled out while the array is booted. And that, if you hadn't guessed = seriously bad news.
So this is how the goodies looked before I started:
Anyway...on with the build. It took me a fair few hours to complete, mainly because I really took my time and also the case presented a few challenges which I wasn't expecting.
Firstly, I removed the existing cages and front fans from the case, however both sides of the case are lined with melded metal tabs and 2 of every 3 needed to be removed or flattened in order to get the drive cages in. This turned out to be a major pain in the arse as my initial bright idea of using a pair of pliers turned out to be as successly as a chocolate teapot in a desert. Those tabs are seriously tough to bend and you can't get the leverage required as the pliers are blocked by the case sides.
Plan B involved a clamp which worked an aboluste treat for a single line - the whole lot that needed to be flattened were completed in all of 5 minutes. I didn't have - nor could I buy locally - a deep throat clamp to get to the others, so I ended up using a pad saw with a hacksaw blade for the front tabs on the same side of the case as the clamped ones. The opposite side just wasn't working though, so in the end I managed to bend them as much as I could with the pliers, and wriggled the cages in.
As you can see, from the photo below, it's not a pretty sight (though I was smiling when thankfully the first two cages actually slid into place because all the time I was thinking...these buggers aren't coming out in a hurry
A view from the open side of the case with two cages in...they do stick out a long way so I was glad I'd bought a full tower case:
Processor and RAM fitted onto the motherboard - the white and the dark blue PCI-e slots will take the SATA expansion cards:
All drive cages in, power supply fitted, motherboard in With those cages all of a sudden the giant Antec 1200 doesn't look quite so big!
Also, to help with airflow and simply because I'm anal, I shoved every cable I didn't need behind the motherboard tray and routed as many other cables behind as well - at this point I was more than a little concerned that I wouldn't get the other side of the case back on!
This photo shows the USB drive mounted inside, and just above it is the supermicro SATA expansion card with 2 breakout cables:
Took me ages but I was quite pleased with my cable handiwork. It's not quite the neatest I've seen (I should really changed those UV SATA cables for some shorter ones), but I'm quite happy with it:
I know we're descending into PC porn but....
E finito!
I must admit, it's SO satisfying the first time you boot up a new build. Everything worked fine, and I was looking forward to the unRAID part...
TBC....
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