Build me a data backup rig (Using what I have)

J

Jeffman

Gawd
Joined
Jul 23, 2008
Messages
917
Hey guys

Looking to actually put together a backup rig finally. Here's what I have:

7 2TB SATA drives
1 3TB SATA drive

Spare parts:
1 AMD 6 core processor and mobo
16 GB DDR3 for the board
Antec case with a 430Watt Corsair power supply

I had 2 different setups with them, a 4 drive eSATA enclosure running 4 of the drives, and then the spare parts were a rig running 3 of the drives, and the 3TB is an external I am using for a backup. It's a mess of things I'd like to clean up and get into one righ that has reduncancy built into it.

Problem is, I probably can't use the case/power supply/board, becuase it doesn't have enough power and space for the drives.

I'd like to get 10-12TB usable out of the drives, and use the rest of the space for redundancy. I'd be willing to sell the parts I have, and use the money to buy whatever I may need for the build. I don't have any spare funds now to put into the rig otherwise, so I want to keep it to what I have, or what I could get in trades/sales to use.

If there are parts that aren't awfully expensive I'd need to do this, let me know what they may be so I can check them out.

Thanks!
 
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hard drives do not draw much power, 12v 3a at most loading phase, in this case 24a so you are probably quite close, but still shouldn`t be an issue.
 
I would change the case but aside from that your PSU will work. Just downclock the processor and you'll be good to go. A cheap case with tons of slots can be had for as low as 40 bucks.
 
I think the PSU may not be enough considering that the OP might have a rather power hungry six-core AMD CPU. With that said, worth a try anyway:
Which AMD CPU and mobo do you have?
Which Antec case do you have?
Are you comfortable with or are willing to learn how to use non-Windows OSes?
You're 100% certain that you cannot spend any money at all on this build? (i.e out of pocket money, not money made from selling of the old parts)
 
If the 4 drive enclosure is eSATA It would be external to the case and would have it's own power supply, Sounds like something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817576009

If your problem is that the enclosure is eSATA only, and your mobo has no eSATA ports, there are adapters you can connect to a mobo SATA header that heve an eSATA connecter on a bus card bracket.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812196141

Note: motherboard ports might not support hot plugging like an eSATA port should.

If the enclosure uses a SATA hub to connect all 4 drives natively to the computer you will need to have an eSATA port that supports that.

secondly, do you actually have 10 GB of data that you need to back up or are you just looking for a solution that tolerates the loss of 1-2 drives, or do you think you need 10-12TB to be able to keep enough back versions of files.

If it's back versions you need, and your total volume is less than 2TB you could use 1 2TB internal, the eSATA enclosure for bulk storage and the 3TB external, and the remaining 2x 2TB drives as grandfather-father-son "Tapes" that you can store at work or something so they are away from the computer and unlikely to be damaged in an "Act of God" that destroys your computer.

As the power supply goes, if you are using integrated video, or a PCI-e card that does NOT have a power connector, 430 should be good, but, I'm not entirely certain on how to judge such things.
 
if he is using an AMD 6 core cpu(Phenom II x6 or FX 6) then 99% likely it is a gpu of some sort not an igp motherboard side, in which case if lower end somewhere in the 75w max range maybe(figure around 50w for motherboard, another 95w or so minimum for cpu maybe 75w or so gpu(dependant) plus all the harddrives, not that they are all that power hungry but still, I would definitely find more information on this before I make the go ahead.

just an example, WD caviar blue 1tb EALX calls for •Power: Read/Write: 6.80W so 6.8w at 12v=.56a
I am terrible at math, just trying quick numbers here
8 hard drives 6.8w @12v=54.4w total or 4.53a load
cpu either 95w or 125w tdp so if underclocked slightly is very unlikely to hit this 125w @12v=10.41a
motherboard/ram 65w(over shoot) [email protected]
graphics well that all depends generally has to be 75w or less if IGP type as far as I am aware this is what limits are for board supplied power 6.25a
I come up with a rough total 26.61a @12v or 319.32w so from a wattage standpoint you should be fine, but the 12v loading will be quite high, and unlikely to be supported by that 430corsair power supply(more then likely their "budget" line)

OP could get a boost power supply, or even just a dummy plug to allow 2 power supplies to kick on at same time, so you could run X off 1 power supply and X off the 2nd power supply, this way here you will have ample plugs and enough 12v power to go around.

But yes, would be very helpful to know what power supply you have(usually a sticker on the side of it for its model number or at least the various available wattage ratings for the +3 +5 +12v rails) and what graphics card you are using, what motherboard etc, this information can easily be found by using CPU-Z http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
this will tell the processor, as well as motherboard information.

Also you are very very unlikely to need 16gb of ram in there, it would be "wasted" far as I can tell unless you are using some of it as a ram disk, which if its for a storage unit wouldn`t make much sence to me but hey, the hard drives are not the "problem" here, its the other components that may make things a little close for comfort if you do not want something blowing out you know.

--8.11w full bore constant write so .68 amps x8 =5.44a 65.28 watts this is the max rated I see according to http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_blue_1tb_review_wd10ealx so yeh, I know startup power is a big deal hence why the OP needs to provide more real data for the parts he has(most of it is quite easily found out)
 
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dragonstongue said:
just an example, WD caviar blue 1tb EALX calls for •Power: Read/Write: 6.80W so 6.8w at 12v=.56a
I am terrible at math, just trying quick numbers here
8 hard drives 6.8w @12v=54.4w total or 4.53a load
cpu either 95w or 125w tdp so if underclocked slightly is very unlikely to hit this 125w @12v=10.41a
motherboard/ram 65w(over shoot) [email protected]
graphics well that all depends generally has to be 75w or less if IGP type as far as I am aware this is what limits are for board supplied power 6.25a
I come up with a rough total 26.61a @12v or 319.32w so from a wattage standpoint you should be fine, but the 12v loading will be quite high, and unlikely to be supported by that 430corsair power supply(more then likely their "budget" line)
Click to expand...
The read/write or idle power isn't the big issue. It's the startup power that's the bigger problem: Hard drives like the Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB and Seagate ST2000DM001 2TB do have a startup power of 2.5A. 8 hard drives x 2.5A = 20A or 240W at startup. If we use the rest of your quick numbers, the PSU may not have enough strength or power to to handle that sudden initial load.
 
Here's a thought since the OP already has these parts.....try them. These are old parts. At worst you kill the PSU, but I doubt that seriously. Most likely you are looking at not being able to post or only some of the hard drives spinning up. Without knowing the exact mobo (if you have an IGP you don't have a problem at all) nor exactly which X6 we are dealing with most of it is just guessing (since we don't know the exact parts) how much headroom exists.

But you can even avoid that fate. Remove everything minus the memory (you only need 2GB ...4GB at best) and the processor and video card (if u have one). Power it on. Go to the BIOS tell the machine not to halt upon absence of the video card. Might as well downclock and undervolt since you are there (you should be able to set the processor somewhere between 800 MHz & 1.0 GHz- no you don't need more than that). Hopefully you are using Linux, or FreeBSD or something like that. Reboot and put in 1 hard drive. Once you have the OS installed install the OpenSSH package. Then reboot make sure it makes it past the bootloader by itself. Once that happens power down the box plug in the other hard drives and remove the video card. Then power it on. Log in via SSH and set up your RAID. Done.
 
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With a quality PSU nothing will happen if you draw too much power, it'll just shut down.
 
Thanks for all the help so far guys. Sorry for the absense, wasn't around much yesterday to check the forum.

The power supply is a Corsair 430W CX series, it's the most budget you can get from them, and just something I had lying around.

The processor is an AMD FX6100 and the board a Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3. It's all in an Antec Sonata which can only hold 4 3.5" HDDs.

Most of the drives are 5900RPM Seagate drives. I think 2-3 are 7200RPM.

I currently have 3 drives in there, and a cheap 60GB SSD for the OS. It was running WHS, and I had installed Server 2008 R2 on it for kicks.

As for budget, at the moment it's pretty tight. I may be able to swing something if it's really needed, but if we're talking parts for a whole new build it'll need to wait. I thought about selling the PC for parts and just buying an 8 drive enclosure, which I could just use with my main rig. Not sure if that'll be a better option of not.
 
760g based matx board so the graphics is Integrated ATI Radeon HD 3000 graphics so very low power draw.

You definitely are not getting the most out of the fx6100 but that's ok for this task(as you can very much down clock it to get it below 125w) however, from the spec sheet you can only have 6 drives over sata.

For the drives themselves they will have stickers on them to say what model they are which will help figure out their power draw, but seems 2.0a startup and more or less max of 10w usage http://www.anandtech.com/show/5042/seagates-new-barracuda-3tb-st3000dm001-review seems about right
so 6x2=12a or 144w max in startup
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026 is the power supply with 32a available 12v or 384w maximum on the 12v

so again quick maths
hard drives=12a
cpu 10.41a(less when declocked to reduce power/temps) 125w full load at stock clocks according to HERE would be 127w so just for simple calcs this number makes sence, at the same time declocking the memory(memory controller or cpu/nb as well as declocking the HT would definitely reduce power consumption
motherboard/ram maximum would be 150w if a 8pin extra power was available or 75w with the 4 pin the motherboard 24pin is somewhere in the 300w range, but motherboard simply would not allow this much without burning out the parts, I cannot get concrete info on this so we will say 150w or 12.5a, because the gpu is intergrated this seems a good # to go by.
so 12+10.41+12.5=34.91a or 418.92w which obviously is much higher then able, however, by declocking, using less ram etc, then like said earlier you are quite close, but it should be capable of doing so.
 
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