Toaster RAID Returns, Better Than Ever
The Finished Product
The new Toaster RAID model has:
- a Jetway NC62 motherboard
- an AMD Athlon 2.4 GHz dual-core CPU
- 1 GB of DDR2-800 memory
- an Nvidia NF-8200 MCP78s chipset
- an Nvidia video controller with VGA and DVI video ports
- two Gigabit Ethernet ports with a Realtek RTL-8211B controller
- two nine-pin serial ports
- six USB ports with headers for two more
I selected this board for several reasons. Most importantly, it had four SATA ports, which would allow for an implementation of RAID 5. I wanted a high-performance x86 CPU and I read that AMD CPUs perform well running storage servers. Also, I like yellow.
Since this is a headless file server, a high-performance Nvidia video controller and a DVI port were superfluous. The Nvidia chipset appealed to me because it seemed to have a good reputation. The abundant USB and A/V ports serve no real use on a file server, but they came with the board.
I used four Seagate 2.5", 5,400 RPM drives with 320 GB of capacity and 8 MB of cache, for an aggregate native capacity of 1.28 TB. For an additional $45 per drive, I could have used 500 GB hard drives for a capacity of 2 TB. The power supply is an external 12 V, 110 W unit.
The back of the motherboard and a small drive-cage were made from some aluminum "L" brackets. Using the small 2.5" drives, there is easily room for eight to 12 drives.
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I thought the idea in fitting a NAS into a toaster is that you plugged the disks through the bread slots!Reply
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boostercorp ytoledano3I thought the idea in fitting a NAS into a toaster is that you plugged the disks through the bread slots!yeah it would ve been nice if you could just shove in two hot plug & play drives in there.Reply
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Astara boostercorpyeah it would ve been nice if you could just shove in two hot plug & play drives in there.Imagine a backup-product like the various 'one-touch' backup offerings -- but in this case, you just push a drive into the toaster slot -- it begins the backup process, when done, it can eject** the drive. That sounds very sweet.Reply
**-raise drive, not physically throw it out of the toaster! :-)
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Shadow703793 Using the small 2.5" drives, there is easily room for eight to 12 drives.
Then why not use some of the 640/750GB or 1.5/2TB drives?
Any ways cool mod.
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