Re: 8TB of external storage?

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 7:19 AM, Greg Neumarke <[email protected]> wrote:

> I've built something like you've described, but I'll need to dig around to
> find what parts I used. I no longer work at the place I build it, so I need
> to reconstruct it from memory, but it was basically a dumb hot-swap drive
> cage and a SATA cable from each drive to the Intel server motherboard, and
> then a simple add-in SATA card for the extra drives. I think it was 5 or 6
> 1TB drives, running in Ubuntu software RAID5.
>


This was the rack-mount case I used:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811129049
Note that you have to buy sliding rails separately, find that info on
the Antec site if you get that far. I think I bought both from CDW.

I used one of these 5 drives in the space of 3 half-height slots enclosures:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16817332011
There is a SATA plug for each of the five bays, so you need to run 5
cables to your motherboard or SATA expansion card.
Also, the enclosure has 3 molex power connectors and 2 SATA
connections, I believe you only need to use one or the other.

I also used the enterprise version of Western Digital's 1TB drives. If
I were doing it again, I'd consider the 2TB version:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16822136579

The motherboard I used only had 4 usable SATA ports, so I needed an
add-in SATA card to connect the 5th drive. I don't recall the brand of
that.

I notice on Newegg that you can find motherboards with up to 10 SATA
ports now. You'd have to research Linux compatibility. Usually the
Intel chipset supplied ports are fine, it's the ones beyond that,
supplied by a different controller, that might not be detected by
Linux.

-Greg
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