ASRock's Fatal1ty i7 - Many HDs

[cokebabies]

I am starting my first build since 2011.

My one odd situation is that I have 6 backup hard drives. It is largely for PLEX, but also a lot of backups for photos, etc.

I've come to the Tom's boards many times via a Google search for a question, but this time I came specifically from a review of the Fatal1ty i7 board. The consensus was it was overkill for the price, as well as some inabilities to utilize all the connected devices.

A year after that review, the board is now $140, which is fine by me. But my question is about the connection. I'm looking to get an M.2 drive. It'll likely be Sata, since as tempting as the PCI speeds are, I don't know if I can justify the price.

I will also have an optical drive connected (I still like having one). The Fatal1ty technically has 10 ports, but apparently using M.2 will cut off 3 of the Sata ports.

But with the way the pipelines work, if I'm running my OS off m.2, will that mean I can only have access to X amount of backup drives at a time?

I'm not looking to build a server for my backup drives, and would like to keep everything in one box. So I'm just trying to find the best mobo to take care of this.

Thanks in advance.

 

[WyomingKnott]

In my somewhat experienced opinion, backup drives should not be inside the machine, which it sounds like you are trying to do. If the backup is online all the time, it is subject to being destroyed along with the primary by floods, exploding power supplies, virus infestations, and the real-life example of a small child banging the computer against a wall.

If you are really talking about backup drives, use external drives or removable drive bays. With USB 3.0 external drives, you can attach as many at a time as you need. My personal solution is hot-swap drive bays. I plug in a bare hard drive, do my backup, and remove and store the bare hard drive.


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That's my exposition on backup drives. If you need all of the drives online all of the time for something like automated continuous backup, you must build a network server to keep those drives out of the primary machine. Otherwise, they are not backups.

Please forgive my rant if this is totally off-topic and you really, really need to have all of those drives attached at once. Other members will be able to suggest boards for you. My personal opinion would be to use fewer, larger drives and, if you have to go over the limit of what the board supports, use external USB 3.0 drives.

 

[cokebabies]

In my somewhat experienced opinion, backup drives should not be inside the machine, which it sounds like you are trying to do. If the backup is online all the time, it is subject to being destroyed along with the primary by floods, exploding power supplies, virus infestations, and the real-life example of a small child banging the computer against a wall.

If you are really talking about backup drives, use external drives or removable drive bays. With USB 3.0 external drives, you can attach as many at a time as you need. My personal solution is hot-swap drive bays. I plug in a bare hard drive, do my backup, and remove and store the bare hard drive.


===============

That's my exposition on backup drives. If you need all of the drives online all of the time for something like automated continuous backup, you must build a network server to keep those drives out of the primary machine. Otherwise, they are not backups.

Please forgive my rant if this is totally off-topic and you really, really need to have all of those drives attached at once. Other members will be able to suggest boards for you. My personal opinion would be to use fewer, larger drives and, if you have to go over the limit of what the board supports, use external USB 3.0 drives.

Rant definitely forgiven! It is a good reminder that I need to have some external backups going. I have some stuff backed up on different HDs - photos, etc. I figured if a drive died, I'd have them on another. But like you said, that doesn't help if the whole computer gets wrecked somehow.

I'll be adding an external or two on my next Newegg / other place shopping trip. Thanks.