JRS

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  1. paticao - I'm not a fan of that biostar board mostly because it looks like you'd have to add a video card (which takes up one of its few slots) and would negate its primary plus which is its cost and add to your power consumption.
  2. naxiand is correct - most or all Intel i3's have better power consumption than a Sempron 145 in most scenario's, iirc, especially when idling. walnuthead - you may be misunderstanding the TDP rating of cpu's. A cpu with a TDP of 65w, such as an I3 does not necessarily draw more power than a cpu of 45w, such as a Semperon 145. The TDP relates better to the max draw when the processor is at full load and is not an indicator of pure power consumption. I'm far from an expert, so do not take my description of TDP as gospel or anything close to it. Intel SB really idle "well", even the I5's and I7's idle very close to the same as the I3. When it comes to power consumption, an I5-2500k would serve unRaid well... not that I'd recommend it for many other reasons.
  3. Lian Li Rack Mount Kits EX-36A3/B1/A2 - These cages are 4-in-3 plus 2x2.5" drives on the sides. Interesting drive cages for any who mix in 2.5" drives into their unRaid box. http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=559&cl_index=2&sc_index=5&ss_index=12
  4. ditto on the "buy what you need when you need it". newegg has small specials on the EADS almost every month. In their email newsletter deals they just had one for WD10eads for $85 after the coupon code and the WD15eads for $130 last week.
  5. I can share my experience with Drive Xpert (2 total Xpert ports) on a P5Q Deluxe (same behavior in XP and Vista). When I put it in normal mode with just one drive and get it booted and configured, I could then shut it down and then add a second drive to the other Drive Xpert port, boot up, and it would see the second as a separate drive. IF I tried to start with two drives in normal mode right away, it wouldn't work see either, which is "as advertised". Maybe, just maybe, the same technique would work with unRaid.
  6. From Wiki: SATA 1.5 Gbit/s Frequency 1.5 GHz Real speed 150 MB/s SATA 3 Gbit/s Frequency 3 GHz Real speed 300 MB/s Note the Real speed metric - PCI cannot ever do 300MB/s. PCI has a theoretical limit of (iirc) 133MB/s and a clock speed of 66Mh\Hz. Some basic math here: 113MB/s < 300MB/s. 66MHz < 3 Ghz. So I stand by my statement "3Gb/s ports that are on the PCI bus as that would probably disqualify it from being 3Gb/s". The newegg specs on the Promise x4 PCI card states "...66 MHz PCI bus supports up to 266MB/sec burst data transfer rate" which is another way of saying "this is a standard PCI card", event though it is advertised as "SATA II", the numbers show, it is not. At sustained, in all the benchmarking I've done, I've never seen any PCI device do much over 100MB/s sustained - way off the SATA 3 Gbit/s spec . It may be possible to find a PCI card that claims to be Sata 3 Gbit/s, but as the numbers above show, it would be not be accurate.
  7. Any Intel ICH8, ICH9, or ICH10 (expecially "R") chipsets will NOT have those ports on the PCI bus. In fact, I seriously doubt you can find a motherboard with Sata 3Gb/s ports that are on the PCI bus as that would probably disqualify it from being 3Gb/s. My primary desktop has a P5Q Deluxe. I have done a fair amount of testing with single drives and Raid0 pair combinations between the ICH10R, the Drive Xpert ports, cheap PCIe Raid0 cards, a pricier High Point Raid0 PCIe x4 card, and PCI Raid0 cards. In Raid0, the best was ICH10R (~200MB/s), followed by the x4 HighPoint, followed by the cheap PCIe card (~150MB/s), followed by the Drive Xpert ports(~130MB/s), followed by the PCI card (~100 MB/s). Those numbers are sustained data transfer rates off HDTune and transfering a large file yielded similiar rates. Drive access times were all close enough that the drive (vs. the controller) seemed to be the biggest. Drives used were WD640gb blacks. I also did tests with Seagate 500gb 32mb 7200.11 drives and single plater Seagate 250gb 7200.10 drives. From my testing, it was obvious that there is "something" limiting the total bandwidth of drives connected to the Drive Xpert ports when in Raid0. However, I could only see or measure the difference with faster drives, such as 2 platter 640gb drives. With older single plater Seagate 250gb 7200.10 drives, the drives barely did any better on ICH10R vs. Drive Xpert (Raid0). Those drives tended to top out at around 130MB/s on any controller, except PCI where it was less. In Raid0 with quality drives, compared to ICH10R, the Drive Xpert ports, well, kinda stink, but they are fair amount better than PCI. If the Drive Xpert ports are to be used in unRaid in Raid0 mode for the cache drive, I thiink they would work well. I also do NOT see real parity build bandwidth issues using these ports in unRaid for data drives. I would NOT recommend putting a pair of Velociraptors on Drive Xpert ports for desktop Raid0 use as the ports would really hold those drives back. For anyone looking for lots of Raid0 use on a desktop motherboard and really needed a lot of ports, I would NOT recommend an Asus board with Drive Xpert. But my hunch is any non-Intel sata motherboard ports are going to be so-so performers for good drives in Raid0. For single drives, only the burst was held back much at all for Drive Xpert. From my testing, it really appeared that there is a max bandwidth limitation on the Drive Xpert ports and it was really only possible to hit it with quality drives running in Raid0. I do not see these ports as a "negative" for unRaid usage. Another note on Drive Xpert ports - in normal mode (Windows XP and Vista), I could use the second port IF I first connected just one drive to the "Drive 0" port and got it running with the one drive and then shut down, and then add the second drive. I'm not sure this technique would work with unRaid.
  8. I agree. Some folks have got around the mirror/redundant inefficiency by configuring a Raid5 array and exposing it to WHS as a single disk. Of course, this has all the existing limitations/inefficiencies of Raid5 vs unRaid, and is must be more complicated managing (growing it or replacing drives) as the base OS sees the array as a single drive... so I suppose the array has to be managed outside of WHS.
  9. first - ditto to WeeboTech's post. I've learned a lot from his threads here as well as Joe L, bjp999, and RobJ and a few others. I'd recommend reading every thread these guys have posted in. On rails... that's short for a reference to the +12V rail(s). The initial Intel PSU spec called for limits on a single rail, so PSU makers started making multi-rail PSU's when GPUs started showing up that needed more +12V. So PSU's would generally come with a dedicated rail for the cpu/motherboard and a 2nd rail for everything else, at least as I know the history. Looking at the links you provided, the Antec 430 is listed with two - +12V1@17A,+12V2@17A (but that is marketing, I believe it really just has one, more on that follows). I find a single rail PSU preferable as then I don't have to worry about how much is on which rail... coincidently, my preferred PSU's are all single rail. For unRaid, you want one +12V rail as all the hard drives will be on the same one, and someday that load will be 80 or 90% of the load of your system. So if you have two equal rails, one will be really loaded up and the other hardly used. To muddy up this topic up some, how many rails a PSU is marketed to have vs. how many it really has is not always equal. For example, I believe the Antec Earthwatts in 380/430/500 are all actually single rails even though they are marketed as two. I believe the same holds for Corsair 520/620 modular PSUs. I like all the Antec Earthwatts, but I would not equate the Corsair 450vx to the Antec 430 Earthwatts, it would compare closer to the Antec 500 Earthwatts. The wattage rating PSU makers label their PSUs with is somewhat ambigous as it is a general sum of +12v, +3.3v, +5v, etc. I'd give Corsair the nod over Antic in quality. If noise is an issue, go with the Corsair as it has a 120mm fan, which typically means it turns slower and therefore quieter. I think you could easily go to 10 or 11 drives with either the Corsair 450vx or the Antec 500 Earthwatts. But if you see yourself hitting 12+ drives within a year or two, you may be better off spending more now so you don't have to upgrade the PSU. If you see yourself hitting 14+ drives within a couple years, than a PC Power & Cooling 610 may be the way to go. Quality PSU's can generally run close to 100% load for an extended period of time (in good conditions - good airflow/temp) whereas cheap PSUs may blow if run close to 100% for more than a short while. More than likely, your motherboard, cpu, and cards will use less than 150w, maybe even <100w. On determine which bus your onboard nic is on - from within Windows, you can bring up network connections and almost allways, the "Device Name" column will either have "PCI" in it somewhere or "PCI-e". I think on some motherboards you may see it in the bios description if you go into the bios and boot and find the menu to enable/disable the onboard LAN. If you don't have the motherboard, then you have to find a block diagram or a more detailed spec. Here's the spec for your motherboard: http://america.giga-byte.com/FileList/Manual/motherboard_manual_ga-m61pm-s2_e.pdf On page 8 there is a block diagram and it has the LAN port connected directly to the controller - I'm afraid I am not sure if it truely is connected straight to the controller or on either bus. You are correct in the assumption that the only time you have to run a parity check is when you add/replace a drive, but a periodic check just to make sure everything is healthy is not a bad idea. I try to do it at least once a month. I like where you are laying out your hard drives. As far as streaming goes, it will make for less bandwidth contention to keep higher bitrate streams (like HD) off PCI, so yea, I like your idea of putting music on the PCI - I'll have to see where mine is at. I think you are getting the idea on how to address what your real needs are for bandwidth and how much you would want to spend. Keep in mind that a lot of folks are running many drives all off their PCI bus and just mitigate it with their usage habits, such as moving files to their unRaid box during non-use time, etc.
  10. For PSU's, I'm a big Corsair fan (havea 550vx for unRaid, 650tx in my desktop). I've got an Antec EarthWatts 380 running my htpc and Earthwatts 500 running my wife's desktop. I also like the specs on PC Power & Cooling although I don't own any. A single 12V rail power supply is also a good idea with unRaid as all those hard drives will be on the same rail (someone smarter on PSU's can elaborate better than I on this). On "1) Quality NIC that is on the PCIe bus (a fair number of motherboards with Gigabit onboard still have that port on the PCI bus - so check that)". Your onboard NIC (or LAN port) will either be on the PCIe bus, or the PCI bus. The big problem with the PCI bus is it everything on it shares its limit (133MB/s theoretical, ~100MB/s actual). As long as just one hard drive is being accessed on that bus, no problem, but if there is an intensive write process to one drive on that bus while another process is trying to read from another drive, they will fight over that limited bandwidth. So when you buy a motherboard with onboard LAN port, make sure that port is on the motherboard's PCI-e bus and not on the PCI bus. I would recommend this for any motherboard use, not just unRaid. It is not catastrophic and I wouldn't replace a board just for that, but if buying a motherboard and expect to use the onboard LAN, make sure it is on the PCIe bus. When multiple drives are sitting on a PCI card, again, as long as you only hit one of those drives at a time, you really won't notice the bandwidth limit of the PCI bus. But if you significant other is watching a movie streaming from one drive on the PCI bus and you are saving a blu-ray rip to another drive on that PCI bus, you are more likely to cause that movie to stutter than if either or both are not. It's up to you to evaluate how important that scenario is to you and your use. I write to unRaid nightly, but usually <30 min for backups and occasional media saves, but I can always work around whatever my wife may be doing, so for me, no big deal. You will get better parity checks with your smaller drives on PCI, your parity and bigger drives on your motherboard ports or on PCIe cards. I've seen on the forums where some say to alternate your data drives between PCI and non-PCI, so maybe Parity - on mobo; 1st drive mobo, 2nd drive PCI, 3rd drive mobo, 4th drive PCI, etc... As above, how applicable is a faster parity check to you? For me, as long as I can keep it under 12 or so hours, good enough. No, I don't recommend replacing your promise PCI card, but before you buy your next card, evaluate your needs and buy appropriately. More storage may be better for you than better simultaneous access and faster parity checks. Green drives won't help your overrall power requirements as much, as they still require close to the same amount of juice when booting up - figure 30w per hard drive to calculate how much of a PSU you need (+ mobo + cards + cpu) as most hard drives take 25-30w spinning up, but <10w in use. Green drives also do not save enough in use to make it worthwhile to replace a working drive with them. But I do lean toward green drive for new purchases for unRaid, but more so because they run very cool. Correct - and that is one of the elegant parts of unRaid as it is tolerant of the different sizes, which means you get to use them all.
  11. I think some of the quick price drop to the Seagate 1.5T is because of the issues it was having, but how much, I dunno. I agree - cost to manufacture a hard drive regardless of size is probably close to the same. My brother used to own a golf bag company - their low end bag sold close to $100 retail, their high-end, many hundreds of $. The manufacturing cost difference was about five bucks. When they sold a low-end bag, they made almost no profit off the bag. I hope you are right on ~$200 by end of April. That would be nice.
  12. As far as I know, as long as you don't assign a drive, nothing happens to it. But you have backups... right? On PSU... it will only use what it needs, so you can't "over power" and waste electricity. Lower end PSU's are typically very good at wasting electricity as they tend to be inefficient, so they pull 250w from the wall to supply 130w to your system. An 80%+ efficiency rated quality PSU is a good idea for a server, more so for a server that stores a bunch of data and is a must if it runs 24/7. Using a low-end PSU to try out unRaid a bit... fine, to run 6+ drives 24/7, get a quality PSU. On RAM, I think the biggest impact is caching of drive contents to reduce how often drives will spinup when you are only browsing what is on your unRaid box. You can get by with 1gb, but considering you can get a pair of 2x2gb sticks for $40ish, why not. Speed or timings on the Ram is not important - just whether or not your motherboard will recognize it. I think dual channel memory was the most over-talked about concern when it comes to a Windows box (until triple channel came along). I think most PC users would never notice if "dual channel" was suddently turned off. imho it is a non-issue for unRaid. Flash drive - doesn't matter. If you boot/start your unRaid box daily, then I suppose a faster one may be a good idea. Once it is booted, I don't know of any impact the speed of the flash drive would have. unRaid has somewhat unique areas that impact your experience and its performance compared to a desktop box. My subject preferences are: 1) Quality NIC that is on the PCIe bus (a fair number of motherboards with Gigabit onboard still have that port on the PCI bus - so check that) 2) PCIe slots - keeping as many drives on PCIe (vs the PCI bus). 3) Energy efficient 4) Amount of RAM Note that I did not address ram performance, cpu performance or even hard drive performance. For CPU - the more energy efficient, the better. Hard drives, anything "modern" will work. I think the WD10EADS are the ideal unRaid drive - three platters so their data transfer performance is very close to most 7200rpm drives and use 1/3 the watts at idle and run very cool.
  13. I think you're right Joe - appears to be psu/case/motherboard only. vskatusa - it will probably work as it has IC7R. The nic is Broadcomm BCM5721 and Broadcomm BCM5751 is listed on the unRaid compatibility (http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility). but... that is a chunk of dough for motherboard, psu (that will need to be upgraded once you hit around a dozen hard drives) and a case that can hold maybe 8 drives. Its a server motherboard that doesn't have PCI-X and only 4 sata onboard ports, and is listed as for Zeon cpu's, which are not "ideal" for unRaid use. So yea, it would probably work, but wouldn't be my first recommendation.
  14. I doubt it is 7200rpm... like the other green drives, the WD site lists its rpm as "intellipower"... must be some new fangled speed... lol http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=576&language=en This is exciting just from the standpoint that we are not far from a 30TB unRaid box without having to run 20+ drives. Considering the newegg price and the "limit one per customer", there aren't many out yet. It could be awhile before we see sub $250 (summer?) and maybe a long while (fall?) to see <$200