Budget smudget. You really need to shop better!
I work an $8 an hr job as a security guard and I have a pretty decent fileserver myself. You could easily double-up on mine!
I've been using the Promise SuperTrak SX6000 6-channel RAID5 card. It can be had for around $150 on eBay and supports up to 256MB of SDRAM cache memory with the latest BIOS (Standard DIMM). Most sellers either include 128MB (The previous maximum) or none, but you will need at least 32MB.
Originally posted by: Arcanedeath
I'd suggest buying a 3ware raid card that fits your needs and 5 of the 400GB 7k400 Hitachi HDDs and set up a raid 5 array
that would be the cheapest way to do it, but due to formating capa
city it gets you more like 1.45-1.5TB formated so you might need 6 drives as w/ raid 5 you get the capa
city of all the drives minus one. Hope this helps....
HA! Yeah, right. 120GB IDE is the sweet-spot for RAID5. WD 1200JB drives keep dropping as low as $39 after rebate at Circuit City! I just bought two more last week for even less, much less, after pricematch to OfficeMax.
I buy 'em nearly every time they get cheap and have been doing so for nearly a year. As a result, I now have ten (Count 'em! 10. One Zero.) of them! I've been running six of them in a RAID5 array for some time. I plan on trading them for 7k400 400GB drives once I get enough.
GizmoCC: Get some friends to receive the rebates for you or fill out some address forwarding forms at the US Post Office so you can buy more than one per sale (Luckilly, I was moving often this past year and had three addresses for the majority of this!). Sweet!
I suggest getting two of these cards + 2x256MB SDRAM modules + 1 freakin' huge and insane PSU and two RAID5 arrays of 720GB each striped in a RAID0 using Windows XP Pro's built-in software RAID. You will loose 240GB of data total from the array but you will have double the fault-tolerance and nearly double the speed of a single RAID5 array (Possibly more than double when you factor in the reduced RAID5 overhead and second dedicate processor). It's even better than a 12-channel card because you have two dedicated processors handling the XOR operations and twice the supported cache memory (The card was originally only up to 128, so 512MB is really 4x that)
Imagine how much cache memory that totals to! 608MB!
There are some nice drive cages that can fit five drives in three 5.25" CD-ROM bays with fans to cool them and rubber grommets to dampen the vibration. You'll probably want a few, but the place selling the best for a good price is having credit card fraud issues last I heard even though people are getting their merchandise so I will only link if you have a 1-time use card number to order or happen to live in the area for local pickup (I think it was Ohio). They were CHEAP and hopefully still are (You had to add a case to your cart, add it as an accessory then remove the case and check out). Something like $24. Heck, you don't even need that. I bought these
drive cage extenders (Installed) at CompUSA for $10 and this
Zalman thin fan (Installed) for pretty cheap and found a couple chipset fans to vent the top of the stack through the normal double-drive cage vent holes (Not shown, installed after pictures taken).
I used an Antec TruePower 430w PSU for mine but I'd suggest the best TruePower available for yours. I was ticked off that it had less connectors than the manual and the review sites because they sacrificed two connectors for a so-called "SerialATA upgrade" where they included those pseudo-SATA power connectors that are missing the new 3.3v lines rather than just include a freaking adapter like everybody else but it actually turned out better. Most SX6000 cards include the power splitters but my used one did not so I found a long extention cable with several in-line plugs on it that would power most of my drives with neat cabling. I have no pictures of that either, but you can use
these to make your own like
this.
It may take a long time to piece it all together while deal hunting but you'll need it to stock up on cheap drives anyway so I'll go ahead and try to put out my little estimate... About $150x2=$300 for two SuperTrak SX6000 cards with memory plus I dunno about $20 for shipping so that's $320 so far. Sounds steep, but you do not need to do this all at once. Hell, you can have a much smaller RAID5 array running on your current PSU with only one card and a few drives as long as you are prepared to back it all up as you expand the array. My point it, do not consider $320 the entry price before you can get something started. Get a few friends together for the next sub-$50 1200JB deals at Circuit City, OfficeMax or wherever it pops up next and front the money for a few of them. I spent $20 to $70 per drive but they now hit $59.99 and under more often than they were hitting $69.99 and over before because it's been more than a year so I estimate $40-50 average per-drive. Of course you expected to be spending a lot on the drives so once I ratchet that estimate up to 12 don't be "shocked". Just remember how much cheaper they are per GB than Hitachi 400GB 7x400 or Western Digital 250GB 2500JB drives. EASILY enough price-difference to pay for those RAID cards. So I'll say about $45 per-drive (Usually including tax
), but you can probably get 'em for less by paying attention to Anandtech Hot Deals. Times 12 for two maxed RAID5 arrays and you've spent another $540. I suggest using
RebateRebate to manage your rebates, one database per address and MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT MESS UP ANY REBATES (
I did ). Make a check-list with things like "Does it ask for my signature? Did I sign? Did I make copies for my records? etc". Absolutely critical when you are handling that many (Usually two per drive). This brings the complete costs to an estimated $860 so far. Add the cost of a TRUE and high-quality name-brand ~500w+ PSU (ie, Antec TruePower 550w PSU = $111) and you've got your estimate. I'd say about $970. That's for 1.3 Terrabytes of useable data (You lose the capacity of two 120GB drives in a striped RAID5 array). Again, that's 1.3
TB. Just short of what you were initially talking about, but I'm sure you were estimating and you can't beat the value. I can't possibly know what you'll need from here (If anything) well enough to start adding to the estimate, but your cards will probably include the power splitters, memory and other basics which you may want to improve on and with that many drives. I'd imagine you'll have to buy some thing to mount them in
Perhaps one of those cases with 5.25" drive bays all the way down the front so you can have some near the card slots? You'll definately need something.
Rather than splurging initially and having spare 120GB drives around in case of failure, I suggest perhaps using an identical drive as your boot drive. Should anything go wrong and you lose a drive from the array, you can dump the contents to the critical array and then throw it in and rebuild over it. Yes, that's sacrificing your boot drive but at least you'll still have all your data while you shop for another and you will have the flexability to buy a different drive to boot to. Of course, it cost me too much to invest in spares immediately and I passed on a couple $39.99 sales but I eventually got some and I suggest you do the same. I use them in other non-critical computers and I can back them up and throw them in the array if I ever need to.
BTW, the last two 1200JB's I bought are a slick-looking black all over. No more silver top. Looks good!
Hope I helped! It's a hell of a lot cheaper than storing everything on DVD and getting some 400-disc DVD changer (GOD I wish Sony would make a PC drive version of
that DVD player!).
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