Looking for a Mini-ITX/DTX Motherboard with 6x SATA and raid 5

[Kozanator]

I'm trying to build a Windows Home Server and one of my primary goals is to make it as small as possible while trying to avoid using an expensive PCIe Raid controller. Also I'll need room for the following:

- Four, Five or Six 3.5" 2TB SATA HDDs (Hot Swap)
- One 2.5" 120GB SATA SDD
- One Slim SATA DVD Drive

I've fallen in love with the Chenbro 4-Bay Hot Swap ES34069 Case because it's so small (10.24"d x 5.51"w x 10.24"h), and it will fit all the above but just 4 Hot Swap HDD instead of 5 or 6. Does anyone know if there is a similar case out there that is just 1.5" wider so it can fit 2 more 3.5" Hot Swap Drives.

My other issue, which is mentioned in my title, is are their any Mini-ITX motherboards that have 8 or maybe just 6 SATA ports that can be put in Raid 5 ???

I've fallen in love with the Gigabyte H57M-USB3 mATX motherboard because it has a total of 8 SATA ports (5x SATA2 with Raid 5, 1x eSATA2, 2x SATA2), but it is too big for the case I want. I'm having a hard time meeting my wish list! Any help would be great!

Recap:

1. Looking for a minimum of 6 SATA ports (8 would be nice) with Raid 5 support in a Mini-ITX motherboard.
2. Looking for a case similar in size to the Chenbro ES34069 with either room for 2 more Hot Swap Drives or room for a mATX motherboard or both. I understand that the case might be 1.5" bigger but I don't want to purchase a huge beast of a case.

Thank you,

 

[Zap]

AFAIK there is nothing on the market right now, nor nothing announced that is exactly what you are looking for.

I'm not well versed with WHS, but it is my understanding that you don't want to run RAID on it. Maybe someone can chime in on this issue.

For cases, are you sure you need hot swap? That's usually for either those who need to swap drives often, or those who can't afford any downtime. I know of two cases on the market that are mini ITX with six drive bays and neither of them are hot swap capable.

One is the Fractal Design Array Mini ITX NAS case reviewed here. It doesn't have any room for your SSD unless you just use double sided tape (can mount to either side of the PSU). It also doesn't have an optical drive bay. It also just came out and is tough to find. I think it is available some places in Europe. In North America, NCIX has carried other Fractal Design cases, so maybe will have this one in the future.

The other case is the Lian Li PC-Q08. There was limited availability but looks like the first batch sold out, so you'll have to wait on another batch. This case can hold ITX as well as DTX boards, and has six drive bays plus a normal sized optical bay. You can mount the SSD on the bottom of the case as there should be room. It isn't that small of a case, but is the smallest case I know of with that many HDD bays plus an optical bay.

Your other alternative is to go with a micro ATX mini tower. There are several on the market with at least 7 drive bays (all types added up). You can also make your own drive mounts either on the side panel or bottom of the case by just drilling holes.

For motherboard SuperMicro makes a couple of ITX boards with six SATA ports and dual core Atom processor. Zotac makes a few socket 775 and socket 1156 boards with 5 SATA ports. Jetway makes some mini ITX boards that you can put daughter cards on to make six SATA ports total.

Are you sure you need the optical drive and SSD? SSDs are purely for application/boot performance. A WHS just gets powered on and left alone, so IMO it would be a total waste of a few hundred dollars. Also, once WHS is installed on the box, you would not need the optical drive again.

How much storage space will you be needing? 2TB drives are pretty common now. If you can live with only four drives, then your options totally open up. You can use that Chenbro case, or go with the Intel NAS if you can find one. Acer and HP makes some tiny WHS boxes with four hot swap drive bays. Acer's box, in particular, is really cheap. Often it is under $400, and that's for the case, the mobo, WHS software and a snigle HDD. Note that the Intel/Acer/HP solutions do not have any video card in them, as they were designed to be totally controlled remotely through the network.

 

[Kozanator]

Thanks Zap, for the thorough reply.

I've been looking for a while and I came to a similar conclusion but just hoped I was wrong, but thanks for verifying my thoughts that I was looking for a product that doesn't exist. That SuperMicro board looks pretty cool but I'm concerned about the performance of the Atom processor. I'll be installing PS3 Media Server on this thing and it needs a bit of horse power to encode some videos. I was thinking of a socket 775/1156 board. Too bad that new Zotac H55-ITX board wasn't based on H57. That would have been a nice board for a Home Media Server. Maybe they will release one soon? This summer? I could wait a couple months.

I don't need Hot-Swap Drives I just wanted them. I just liked the convenience of a Hot Swap Drive in the rare chance that a drive fails. I might change my mind if it becomes too difficult to find a small case that I like.

I've decided to forgo the SSD based on your suggestions and just use a spare 2.5" 80GB drive for my OS/Applications. Like you said, I'd be leaving the Server on all the time anyway.

As for the optical drive, I see your point. I might just use an external DVD Drive for the initial install, but I won't make that decision until I find some more case options. I do like those cases you mentioned but I'm just not 100% sold yet. Thanks again for your help, I think I just needed someone to reconfirm what I was currently thinking.

I need a minimum of 6TB right now but would like to triple or quadruple that in the coming years, but that's a different conversation. I'll definitely be looking at raid cards then. I want to backup my entire DVD/Blu-Ray Collection complete with menus and special features.

Thank you once again.

 

[Zap]

thanks for verifying my thoughts that I was looking for a product that doesn't exist yet

Fixed!

The problem is that unless you have definate product announcements, you can't plan on products that don't exist.

 

[theone111]

How about this setup (not hot-swappable though)?

Case:
Lian Li - PC-Q08 case (6x 3.5" internal bays and 1x 5.25" external bay - standard power supply)

Motherboard:
SuperMicro X7SPA-H

This is what I intend to build when the opportunity arises.

 

[Kozanator]

Motherboard:
SuperMicro X7SPA-H

Nice board! The only two things that worry me about that board is the performance of the Atom Chip when encoding videos via PS3 media server to my PS3 and the fact that on the spec sheet it says the raid only works with Windows...??? That is weird. If it's a good hardware raid it shouldn't matter what OS you use. That concerns me.

At the moment, I'm still preferring the Gigabyte H57M-USB3 mATX motherboard. I know it's not a Mini-ITX board but it's the smallest board I can find that supports every feature I could possibly want. (I really like it's 8x SATA Ports) I just haven't found a small enough case using a small SFX power supply that I like yet to accommodate this board. I can be patient and wait a little longer.

PS. Those new 2010 Intel Core i3/i5/i7 32nm Ultra-Low Voltage processors (18W TDP) look pretty nice, too bad they are designed for laptops and we might not see any Mini-ITX boards using them.

 

[bibib]

Just wondering what you ended up getting?

I'm also undecided between the Fractal Design Array Mini ITX R2 and the Chenbro ES34069.

2 points though:
The Array is cool but it's inpractical in certain ways and not a great overal design.
The Chenbro is cool but expensive and I don't really need hot swop... I just like the look of it.

The idea is to have a nas/storage device which I can also use as a media centre.

I was thinking of using a Asrock A330ION as the motherboard.

I won't buy all the HD's straight away either.

Software wise I want to use OpenMediaVault when it comes out.

 

[Zap]

I'm also undecided between the Fractal Design Array Mini ITX R2 and the Chenbro ES34069.

Is the Fractal Design Array available in the USA yet?

 

[bibib]

Is the Fractal Design Array available in the USA yet?

It's out in the UK in about 2 weeks.

 

[Kozanator]

Hi bibib,

I didn't buy anything yet. Mostly for two reasons... My life just got a little busy with my new born son and... I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.

Once things get a little less hectic around home, I'll start seriously looking again.

I looked into the Asrock A330ION and it looks like a nice board but it doesn't look like it supports Raid 5 which is something I'd want. But regardless, I'm sure it's a good board.

I've never heard of OpenMediaVault so that is something I'll have to look into once I start looking again.

Thanks

 

[bibib]

Hi bibib,

I didn't buy anything yet. Mostly for two reasons... My life just got a little busy with my new born son and... I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.

Once things get a little less hectic around home, I'll start seriously looking again.

I looked into the Asrock A330ION and it looks like a nice board but it doesn't look like it supports Raid 5 which is something I'd want. But regardless, I'm sure it's a good board.

I've never heard of OpenMediaVault so that is something I'll have to look into once I start looking again.

Thanks

Oh right.
Well as you can tell I'm still not too clued up on all of this. I assumed that I would have to use software raid and that I could do raid 5 like this on the asrock. Probably should look into spending a little bit more for proper hardware raid 5. Any recommendations on a similiar spec'd board?

Openmediavault looks good, done by 1 of the people involved with freenas. It's not out yet though and it seems to have a slow development cycle.

Oh and congrats with your kid.

I'll post later when at a pc about some of my other ideas.

 

[Kozanator]

I've never used software Raid5 but I am currently running hardware Raid5 which came built-in to my motherboard. I think it's the best thing ever cause my computer has crashed many times due to my poorly vented top floor computer room. It gets really hot up here in the summer. An other option would be to get a dedicated Raid5 card which would probably give you a little more reliability, performance and expansion (in some cases 24 more SATA ports) but at the cost of being pretty expensive.

Anyway, as for a Mini ITX boards that support Raid 5... I've got 2 options for you but both require a separate Socket LGA CPU, I'm sure other users can provide a lot more options. I like the Socket LGA because it gives me a little more performance then just the Atom Chip especially when I'm encoding videos on the fly via my PS3 media server which would be installed.

1. ZOTAC GeForce GF9300-K-E ITX WiFi LGA 775 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard. It has Raid5 but only 4 SATA (one being eSATA) but good graphics performance if you want it to pull double duty as a HTPC.

2. ZOTAC G45ITX-B-E LGA 775 Mini ITX WiFi Intel Motherboard. It has Raid5 and 6 SATA (one being eSATA).

I prefer option 2 because of the 5 internal SATA ports that work with Raid5. Good for a Media Server. You could easily hook up five 2TB drive which would give you a little less than 8TB of storage in a Raid5 array. Then you can always use the eSATA for backup or any other things.

Good Luck.

 

[bibib]

informed, thanks.

at the moment my plan is to use a dual atom with a ion chips. I haven't checked how well this would cope with encoding. that's not actually essential either as media would be accessed from pcs and tvs and not games consoles, although it is a option.

I like the idea of fanless atoms for power consumption and price.

I doubt I would get a dedicated raid card either but info like the idea of the motherboard supporting raid 5.

this is all trickerier than pc building asbo reply have to plan and think about what you need.

ill post later when home with some specs.

 

[bibib]

Ok here are some of my new ideas:

Jetway JNC63P-330-LF (You can get these with or without DC power supply)
This supports hardware raid 5 and has 4x sata ports and you can get expansion cards.

CFI A7879 Mini-ITX NAS Case
I think the plastic door looks cheap but it actually seems like a decent case.

or

Lian-Li V352B
I could then get the motherboard with DC power supply

There is also the 6 bay Lian-Li but the LED fan front fan bothers me.... I know it would be easy to change.

I'm trying to stay away from cases that just look good.... They tend to be more expensive and don't really add anything and in the Fractal Designs case it actually takes away some nice features. (Front facing connections, LED status lights)

I imagine this would only need a gig of ram ?

 

[Kozanator]

You've got some nice options there.

The Jetway looks like a nice board and the CFI Case looks pretty good too. I think it's going to come down to your own personal preferences.

I also like the idea of using a "dual atom with an ion chip" for my Media Server but couldn't because I needed a little more horsepower to encode my "MKV" files on the fly into something my PS3 could understand. I'm using my main computer as my media server right now but would rather have a dedicated Media Server that doesn't eat up as much juice so that is why I was looking at the LGA socket and built-in gpu.

If I have some more money in the future, then I'll look at building a HTPC with an Atom cpu but right now a Media Server is more important to me since my PS3 basically functions like a HTPC already (minus a few supported formats).

As for RAM... The more the better. I'd go with 2GB minimum and maybe you'll find that it's enough.

 

[bibib]

Possible spec below:

CFI A7879 Mini-ITX NAS/Server Case - 4 Hot Swap Bays
Jetway JNC63-330-LF 1.6GHz Dual Core ATOM + nVidia ION Mainboard
Samsung Spinpoint F3 (EcoGreen)
Kingston 2GB 800MHz/PC2-6400

I would start with 1hd to play around with and then purchase the same again when I have money and the installation planned out.

I have a spair 2.5"hd but I will try and install onto a memory card instead.

 

[bibib]

Probably a silly question but can you do software raid on any motherboard? basically I would save £50 getting the asrock board.

also I imagine performance would be the same as both motherboard raid and software raid use the cpu?

 

[damvcoool]

Personally i would go witht the Chenbro case, no only for the size but because it would be easier to place as a Media Center. Also since there are Fusion boards already available specially the ASUS E35m1-i deluxe, it has just enough ports, 1 for a fast bootable drive, like a cheap SSD, and four BIG Harddrives for storage, altho personally i would go with FreeNAS and not WHS, i rather use ZFS to keep my data safe. so no need for MB raid, or if FreeNAS does not support Fusion yet, i will Ubuntu Server edition and use XFS since it was designed to hold media files (SGI developed it).

The hardest components to come by are the Chenbro case, and the Asus Board :'(

 

[aims]

Hi, I was going for a similar project and for now settled with a commercial NAS until I have some weeks off from work, but I have some suggestions that might be worth reading.

First of all I would prefer an external raid-case attached via eSATA. Sharkoon has a 8 bay eSATA raid-enclosure that supports raid 50 (that is what i would go for). Not sure if it brings hot-swap though. (350 &#8364

Then I would get a mini-ITX board with SATA3, 2x Gbit Lan and an PCIe x8+ to mount a 10 Gbit-Ethernet. and put it in a very small case attached to the raid-enclosure. (about 400€ + the 10GbE card)

My processor of choice is the i3 2120T because it has a max. power draw of 35 watts and has good idle values too.

OS of choice is of course debian as i dont need fancy webGUIs and everything is well documented on the web. It has all the good stuff like AFP, CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and brings all the good services you want have running on your home-server, like apache, php, mysql, webdav, upnp, antivirus, syslog, etc, etc...

A SSD of ~60GB is sufficient if not overkill for that (50&#8364.

And finally be sure to take 24/7 drives and not some caviar green or other power savers. Those drives idle after a few seconds, which means they put the heads to rest-postition - manufacturers guarantee ~100.000 cycles till failure so if you are constantly copying small badges all day long and the drive goes to sleep in between it will not last for long...

Using WD 3tb red drives I calculated 2000€ + the 10GbE, which will follow when my Hackintosh got his, for a 8*3TB raid 50 NAS homeserver (21 TB fast and reliable usable Disk space) - and you could easily add as much 21TB raid-towers as you have free SATA-ports. Commercial solutions can cost twice as much and I did not find one that brings raid 50 yet.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

How about this setup (not hot-swappable though)?

Case:
Lian Li - PC-Q08 case (6x 3.5" internal bays and 1x 5.25" external bay - standard power supply)

Motherboard:
SuperMicro X7SPA-H

This is what I intend to build when the opportunity arises.

That's a great board. If you want to save some money the ASUS C60M1-I is a great, cheap little NAS board. I have one running my NAS. For 500DKK (~$80) I'm not complaining...