[Mr.Guvernment]

Hey all,

Yes, i need the room!..lol

i am aiming by the end of the year ot have a 1 terrabyte server (dont ask why..lol)

now, since WD has the 250g out - i was simply considering 4 of these in a single computer (leave one out soi cna format witha cdrom drive, then put in the forth) - i don't want raid really, as it is one more thing that can go wrong.

now i know the 250g drives are not actually 250g, so i will not have 1,000g with just them - but i already have 3 120g drives

Can anyone suggest the best way of going about making, if possible - 1 system with 4 HD's in it? IDE or SATA - since the 250g drives from WD are SATA i beleive....


what mobo? - do any mobos support more then 4 hard drives....(that dont use Xeon's - or could i could just get a lower 1.* something xeon....)
Ram amount? (512 should do it)
CPU - i will likey just throw in a low P4 (has some recent issues with an AMD so going intel)

[AndyFair]

There are motherboards around at the moment with 4 IDE connectors and 2 SATA connectors...so it is possible to have 10 IDE devices installed into 1 PC. I don't know whether it's possible to use all of the IDE connectors and the SATA connectors all at once though.

You'd better make sure you have a beefy enough PSU to provide all the juice, as well as plenty of cooling!

I've only ever come across terabyte installations in data centres though, and these tend to be multi-thousand pound installations, running SANs over F-CAL backbones...big chunky cases with lots of fans!!

Rgds
AndyF

[Mr.Guvernment]

as far as i kow if u use a SATA - it is the same as using an IDE - u can not use the 2 SATA and all the ide's

one person suggested a IDE card, which would allow 4 more idea drives, this could work, any word on the performance of thse cards?

as for cooling, no worries, i am an overclocking freak this server will have enough fans to fly away!..lol and i could possibly do dual power supplier in a server tower if needed.

[Jerry Atrik]

u might consider buying a ready made tb array
storage tech or along those lines.
they work with the old p3 xeon server systems.

[Mr.Guvernment]

what the price range on one of those, iam not really familiar with any "real" server hardware..

[duhmez]

I jave Dual AMD 2600+ system, with 5 Hard drives and 1 CDRW and 1 DVD RW.

I could easily fit 2 more hard drives if i needed.

I use promise controlers, 2 of them in fact. And my pc has 3 1/2 rive bays all the way to bottom.
If they were all 250 GB disks itd be more than a terrabyte

[Mr.Guvernment]

Wich controller are yur using, which promise ones?

and if i had 4 250g drives it would be more about 930g total....

[AndyFair]

OK, a StorageTek disk array will set you back something like thousands of dollars (if not tens of thousands for a terabyte range array), not to mention the fact that you'd need Fibre Channel (F-CAL) controllers as well (which will set you back somewhere between $500-$1000)
...something tells me that's a little out of your price range, that you're doing this for your home PC, right?

I would go along with duhmez's suggestion, and just add in a couple more Promise ATA133 controllers. Just check that it's not going to interfere with any onboard controllers you may have (especially if they're HighPoint!)

Just one question for Duhmez though: with more than one IDE controller, which one does the motherboard boot from - I know with one controller, you can boot from SCSI, and that will boot from the PCI card, but what if you have more than one controller card - which one boots first?

Rgds
AndyF

[Tomay]

Are high point onboard controlers less good than promise. You can just get a mobo that has a high point controler and use it without creating a raid 0 or 1.

[Newumbrella]

I find promise controller inferior cuz i saw lots of them with lower burst rate then highpoint (in average). And if you want to plug that many hd i suggest you buy a 3ware or adaptec card (these cards have dedicated DSP to do most of the work for you) at least.....since motherboard controllers(chipset, promise/highpoint onboard type) will not work very efficently with all channels full....these controllers is simply not designed to handle channels saturated with hd.

As always SCSI is always preferred :p

[Jerry Atrik]

http://www.wctdirect.com/raidindex.html

they do have some ata arrays up to 13tb.
as for price i have no idea, but the industry has been hit pretty hard so u might find sunthin reasonable and upgradable for a decent price.
and it might be easier to manage.

[Mr.Guvernment]

great info all!

i would go scsi - but they go not hav 250g SCSI drives out and to get 1 terra would likely cost me a fortune in many small scsi drives

this is just for my home PC, so yeah that whole array thing maybe a liuttle too much.

[SHS]

Mr.Guvernment your rigth they dont 250GB but want ture 1TB SCSI only problem is they cost $8,000.00 dallor I think that about 14 drive hehehe it a lot that for sure or 2TB IDE ver for the same cost and there only 8 drive which should be SCSI 160 host to IDE drive RAID system.
If want to do your self then would be good idea to get a high end IDE controler like from 3ware http://www.3ware.com/ keep in mind you need 64-bit PCI bus.

[Mr.Guvernment]

seem the pci contoller is my best route right now.

As for a64-bit pci bus - any decent mobos out there that have the 64bit? (non xeon boards if possible?)

[duhmez]

I'm ujsing a promise ultra 100 TX2, and a promise Ultra 133 TX2. They are cheap too. Should be about 60$ U.S.

They are smoking fast, and each of my 5 hard drives have their own dedicated channel.

If my case was big enough, I could add 5 more drives for a total of 10 too.

[Mr.Guvernment]

nice - yeah the 3ware ones were in the $500 + rnage for like 8 slot one, the 4 slot i saw about $300 US.

i will have a large case, will be buying a server case once i get this done.

[Brian Frank]

Sounds like one massive pr0n server you're setting up their

[duhmez]

My motherboard has 2 64 bit pci slots. All the AMD 760 MPX boards do. (Im runing my promise controllers on both the 64 bit slots, they are 32 bit cards but take advantage of the 66 Mhz capability)

Cheap too.$320.00 canadian. it came with a USB 2 card (too bad not ight on the board) and a Lan card (once again too bad not on the board itself)

the onboard audio is really weak, and I had to put my SBlive back in. (I need to capture 48000 hz for DVD authroing and the onboard can only capture 44100 Hz.

Also with the onboard audio when I play ago of mytholgy it doesnt make the clicking sound when i click soomething.