DIY Home NAS/Server Case + other parts suggestion?

Hi , can you please make a list of the parts needed ? you stated 400-600$ and I need to know exact parts needed ..

Motherboard , Case , Power , hotswap bay ... anything else ? drives included ? and tell me the exact drive ays you want , and the TOTAL SIZE its very important for calculations .. ie you aim at how many TB ? 10TB ? 20 TB ? 5 TB ?

I asked about total size for one reason , I want to calculate how many hotswap bays you need for 2.5 harddisks ...

using 3.5 harddisks today is a waste of space for mothing really, we have the 2,5 veloci raptors 10000RPM 1TB cheap and tiny ... and every DVD bay can take 4x2.5 inch 1.5cm harddisks , an 8 3.5 hotswap space you talked about will take 24x 2.5 hotwap , and given we have the 1TB Raptors 2.5 we dont need expensive SAS drives at all.

3.5 inch harddisk should die in a Server ... a waste of space for nothing ..

this is what I am talking about :

1- the sata3 2.5 hotswap bay : http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=142

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994142&Tpk=MB994SP-4SB-1

we start with 2 , totaling 8 x 2.5 bays , and when you need more you add more 4 and so on

2- the 2.5 1TB raptors http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=HD-W10CHTZ&c=CJ

3- this can be very compact size for even 24 harddisks , and can be installed in a Mini tower.

4- or you can go for this secured tower like this one :



and fill those bays as we wish

Hello again,

1- 2.5 inch is already taken over 3.5 inch drives , it is not the future it is today , they are small and short as well and very thin and can reach 2TB at low speed and 1 TB at high speed ... the also consume less power and run cooler and less noisy.

2- you can join all drives as a single big volume , this is called JBOD , they work at same speed no advantage in speed here.

3-in Raid system for fast data transfer, more drives is important , so having a 2x2TB 2.5 , or 4X1TB 2.5 is better than a single 4T in terms of speed .. it will be 2-4x the speed .

4- in Raid you aim at Speed , there are many kinds but for low budget the most common are Raid 0 , Raid 5 , and Raid 6 , and the Mirroring Raid 1 .

-Raid 0 is the fastest eah drive you add doubles the speed of the single drive speed , it splits the data between the drives and write them at the same time and Read them at the same time increasing the speed , but this is not reliable , if one drive fails you will loose all the data. this Raid is easy on the CPU and software raid is enough no need for a raid card , unless you want more ports then you need a SAS Raid Card for large numbers of drives.

-Raid 5 , this Raid sacrifices one drive to save Data , if one drive fails , you stop everything at once , and replace the failed drive , and the Raid software will reconstruct the Data again .. if 2 drives fail at the same time however you will loose all the data .. this raid needs a dedicated CPU to be effective and give you good performance like Raid 0 minus one drive (n-1) performance. the dangerous thing in raid 5 , is that while you are reconstructing the failed drive another drive fails before the reconstructing is finished .. here again you loose all data.

-Raod 6 uses 2 Disks for it .. it is safer and more reliable even if one drive fails , it can handle another drive failing while reconstructing.

-this is in short , you can learn more here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_6#RAID_6

- Raid 1 is mirroring , it mirrors the drive .. here you dont loose the data in your harddisks and have an automatic backup real time without you feeling it , if one drive fails you will be safe , get another drive and the copy mirrored drive to it. even if by hard chance the drive and its mirrored drive fail at same time , you will just loose the data on that particular driver forever , but the other drives will be safe , there is no split files here to worry about ..
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now do you need Raid or not? depends on the people accessing the drive at the same time.. and this is very important THE SAME TIME , not number of users ... if the total bandwidth requested is more than the drive bandwidth , it will slow down ...

The best solution to avoid Raid is picking very fast drives .. like the Raptors I mentioned which can handle 200MB/s , that is like if you raid 0 2x normal slow drive ...

to put you in the picture , here is the comparison betaeen the 10KRPM Raptor drive and regular drives :

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5729/western-digital-velociraptor-1tb-wd1000dhtz-review/2

keep in mind once you use more than 2 drives in raid you will outperform the raptor ...

Now about which drives to use ? better get drives with 3 or even better 5 years warranty and avoid one year warranty drives.. the enterprise ones are aimed at 24/7 raid system , they are a must if your server will work all the time ...

and thats why I like the Raptor , it is a heavy duty class. 10K RPM were only SCSI/SAS drives , actually 15K rpm exist as well (very expensive) when WD brought this 10K rpm to the consumers they made a huge success.. and now they are offering it in 1TB , they are offering fast storage drives for movies without needing Raid 0 for alot of people ... and they pack 5 years warranty as well .

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5- 2.5 drives are not the future they are today and the best seagate SAS drives are 2.5 drives the 15K rpm ones.

6- If you have the cash , get only VelociRaptors 1TB ... if NOT you can go for lower ones but they will be at half speed ... and they have only 2 years warranty vs 5 years on raptors , and small cache 8MB vs 64 MB on the raptors. they are not as reliable , and are slow . and they are the same hight 15mm .

7- Be sure to pick only Sata 3 6Gb/s drives , avoid Sata2 , true both wont exceed the Sata 2 bandwidth , BUT the 64MB cache is a super fast memory , if your file is transfered from the Cache it will transfer at full SATA 3 speed.

8- 2.5 inch drives come in 7mm , 9mm, 12 mm , and 15 mm thickness .. if you use 12 mm drives , you can fit 6 of them in single DVD bay .. thats a crazy number of drives in small space ... but you wont find more than 1.5TB 12mm at lower speed.

the 15mm (can take 12mm, 9mm,7mm as well)



the 12mm (can take 9mm and 7mm as well)





9- be sure when you choose those bays that they support SATA 3 , NOT SATA 2 !!! Avoid SATA 2 models... and be sure they support hotswap.

10- If you pick the 15mm 4x ones , they support all drives thickness below 15mm so dont worry about that . and keep in mind Raptors are 15mm , and 2TB 2.5 are 15 mm as well ... 1.5 TB are 12 mm

11- you pay more for Raptors for 2 reasons , one they are enterprise level with 5 years warranty , and b- they are fast VERY fast .. and they have 64M cache and work on SATA3 , be careful , get only SATA 3 drives ... even the lower ones have SATA 3 .

12- if you are on budget , get lower priced ones .. but expect slow performance . get it 7200 RPM and 32MB cache , you can check the Travelstar 7K1000 , has 32MB cache and works on SATA 3 with 7200 rpm .. for cheap price per 1TB , has 3 years warranty. but is consumer level still. oh and its 9.5mm you can fit 6 of these in one DVD bay

http://www.hgst.com/hard-drives/mobile-drives/9.5mm-mobile-hard-drives/travelstar-7k1000

13- you can go all 3.5 inch if you wish ... if you dont want the Speed and dont want to save space ...but get the enterprise edition with 5 years warranty models only .. the point behind 2,5 beside the small size, is the more harddisks you put in raid the more speed you will get , and using 3.5 inch drives are huge for that .. can you put 6 of them in one DVD bay ? actually you can pick up any tiny case and make it a small server with like 12x2.5 drives .. and in mini towers you can put like 32 of them ... but again it is your choice .

14- the case I posted is a real one , and there are many like it , the idea is the door and lock so no one pulls the hotswap drives when you are not around and mess with your server. even the power button is behind the door. and that case is 5U also , you can mount it in a rack.

it is a German made case , Inter-Tech IPC-9008 5U

http://www.inter-tech.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=712%3Aipc-9008-5u&catid=59%3Aipc-19-zoll&Itemid=627&lang=en



15- if you want the 3.5 route , here is an alternative :

here is a 5x3.5 harddisks in a 3 DVD bays , as you see the comparison to 2,5 bay , in 3 DVD bays you can mount 12x2.5 or 18x2.5 VS only 5x3.5 this is what I meant by saving space ...

for 10 of 3.5 you will need 6 DVD bays ... two of those

http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=163



I would never go 3.5 after seeing this lol

for 10 3,5 drives you need full huge tower with 6xDVD bays ...

for 12 drives 2.5 you need only 2xDVD bays found on ANY tiny mini tower..


My advice ? Veloci Raptors and 2.5 bays even at more cost.


here is what 2.5 can give you 32 of them in a DELL server .. as you see t is today not the future



Edit : if you want to make Raid , we talk about Raid cards , but good raid cards are expensive. they start at $300

oh one more thing

see this tiny case ?



using the 2xDVD you can out 8x2.5 or 12x2.5 hotswapp there !!! and in the 3.5 low cn add andothe 2x2.5 for total of 14 drives 2.5

here is the 3.5 inch bay to 2x2.5



using that tiny case !!!

You dont need server board for that .. but for more than 6 HDD you will need a Raid CARD or a mobo with SAS on it .. there are cheap ones ..

as for the case well there are cases with many DVD bays , but things are getting out of hand here , you talked 400$ only .. that wont do in your price range .. each of those 4x2.5 bays are $50-70 depending on the store , the case also around $100 minimum for full tower .. the Raid card minimum $200 ...

as for the Speed , dont worry , you are talking about 8+ Drives and for that you will have to buy a Raid SAS 6 card , each SAS 6.port can be used for 4 Sata3 Drives , and more if you use SAS drives and expanders , but they are VERY expensive so we will Avoid SAS drives in your case. for 8 Drives you will need 2 ports SAS raid card ... that will be enough I think for you ... unless you want more.

you said that you will be recording TV channels all the time , well if this is the case , your drive wont stop spinning and you will need enterprise level harddisks Avoid the green and blue WD drives ... look at 5 years warranty enterprise drives that are tested to work 24/7 ...

you will also need LANs the number of the users will add cheap LAN cards for that. , is cheaper than buying expensive switch ...

and for cheap , you should buy a full modular power supple , so in case it fails , will be replaced in no time just unplug the cables , and switch the power supply and plug the cables again , no need to route the cables to the mobo and HDD again ...

more expensive is the redundant power supply , but you dont need that at all.

Hello again ,

1- you will allways have the bays , the :upto means if you install hard disks in those bays , like you said , install 2.5 or 3.5 in them , they are placed inside the bays .. if you look carefull the bays are taking all the fron of the case , so anything you will install will be inside them .

If you want to install 2.5 , and not loose space the optimal solution is to add the 2.5x6 or 2.5x4 front bay , so instead of one in the bay using braket , you will install six or four. if you fo this direction put any harddisk you get in Front bays ...

That is, order it and order the 6x2.5 or 4.2.5 with it , and the same if you want to use 3.5 ... make it easy for your self , no need to open cage and mess with cables and so .. so I suggest for the beginning , 4x2.5 take s a bay , and 5x3.5 takes 3 bays you are ready to go , this will use up 1+3=4 bays , and you will have 8 DVD bays left.

2- The hot swap up is no big deal if you buy front bays .. they are hot swaps

3- I see no reason for higher capacities Harddisk not to work .. The Sata 3 port has nothing to do with the size of the harddisk .

I will continue in a minute ..

I forgot about this case :

http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001788

This comes ready with 5 x 3.5 hotswap bays , and are locked by a key as well

in addition , it has 4 total DVD 5.25 bays ...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005F7794S/?tag=pcpapi-20

watch about it here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFBl3YkmONs


Edit : I want to know one more thing , you will be recording all the time , is this encoded recording or raw recording ?

this is very important to know because it will need a fast CPU if you want to record and compress at the same time.