Need help solving my storage problem

M

Max-Powers

Gawd
Joined
Jan 9, 2005
Messages
558
My HTPC is quickly filling up. It has a 1TB internal WD cav black and 4 assorted 500 gig external hard drives. 2 maxor 1 touch pros, 1 freeagent, and 1 seagate freeagent pro. So a total of about 3 TB, and I am full. My plan was to get one of the TT BlacX with a hard drive, but I think I may change that plan.
Please tell me about the Norco or similar products that allow me to dock multiple hard drives in a case and connect to my computer via eSATA. I would love to get rid of my old, slow, ugly external hard drives in exchange for a slick box that holds multiple hot swappable drives. I also do not want to spend more than $100 on the dock.
 
If you're not willing to spend more than $100, I'd either delete things to make more room, or start burning things to discs and then deleting them. You'd probably be much better served investing in a decent NAS box. What is your HTPC filled with? If it's recorded TV, you might be able to get away with just recoding it all into a more storage efficient format.
 
Ok, if I don't have a price cap, what are my options? A NAS box seems a little complicated and expensive. How do the other storage and hard drive cages work? How do the RAID boxes work?
 
Max-Powers said:
Ok, if I don't have a price cap, what are my options? A NAS box seems a little complicated and expensive. How do the other storage and hard drive cages work? How do the RAID boxes work?
Click to expand...

If you have roughly $1000, you can get a somewhat standard Norco 4020 WHS NAS build:
$290 - NORCO RPC-4020 4U Rackmount Server Case
$60 - AMD Athlon II X2 240 CPU
$190 - ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO AM3 AMD 785G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard + Corsair 750TX 750W PSU
$45 - G.Skill 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$100 - Microsoft Windows Home Server with Power Pack 1
$200 - 2 x SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI-Ex4 8 Port SATA Controller Card
$36 - 2 x 3ware SFF-8087 to Multi-lane SATA Forward Break-out Cable
---
Total: $921 plus tax and shipping sans drives.

The above mobo has onboard video and two PCI-E slots which means that you can fit two of the SATA controller cards that I listed above for added drives. The mobo's 5 SATA ports + the 16 SATA ports offered by the Supermicro card will give you 21 drive capability. That's a perfect considering that the Norco has 20 hot-swap bays for storage drives and one fixed hard drive bay for the OS drive for a total 21 drives total.

The Corsair 750TX is more than enough power for 21 drives. The X2 240 is more than enough CPU power for NAS and file-serving duties. 2GB of RAM is more than enough for many file servers.

If you want a smaller NAS, you could go with this:
$370 - Acer Aspire Easystore H340 Windows Home Server

Or if you don't want a NAS and just want a bigger external hard drive, these eSATA External bays might be a better choice:
$150 - Sans Digital TR4M 4 Bay SATA to eSATA (Port Multiplier) JBOD Enclosure
 
Unless you plan on filling 20 drives, you should be able to put together a nice NAS box for less than 1k, with drives.

WHS seems to be one of the more popular options here and is easy to set up.

I bought a Jetway board and 1tb WD green a year or so ago with the intent to eventually do raid 5 under ubuntu. Since then I've decided OpenSolaris/ZFS is about the only way to go.
$200 for mb/cpu/ram
$75 a piece for 1tb drives (give or take depending on what you want, I plan on sticking with the WD greens.
Add in a decent PSU and whatever case works.
 
I would suggest reading some reviews here http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas From what youre saying it sounds like a NAS might be more suited for you versus a full blown server setup, although, if your collection is still growing, you will eventually look into the server solution I am sure.

Danny and Point have both shown some of the server type options and like both have pointed out, your server options can run from some old hard drives in a freenas box ( very very little money) to a full blown rack mount solution ( not quite so budget friendly) I personally went middle of the road with some new HD in a recycled pc running WHS. I have about 3 Tb in mine for around $300. ( note, I had a full blown PC so only had to buy WHS and a few new drives.)
 
In theory that will work well for what you need. In real life, its gonna depend on the manufacturer as far as how easy it is to set up,how fast it is, etc. Youll also , if the attached pc doesnt have it, install the E-sata card. I wish I could help you more, but I just dont have much experience to give on those types of devices. Maybe Google that particular model and see what others are saying.
 
Max-Powers said:
Thanks for the input, but I was looking for a solution that does not involve building a computer. I was looking for something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132015 A bay that I can put multiple hard drives into and connect to my computer via 1 cable. Do these things work well? I am not to familiar with how RAID works, but are these things fairly easy to set up?
Click to expand...

They work all right. Just don't use them in RAID as they will the PC's CPU to do all of the parity calculations which may impact system performance.
 
I've got a WDN-2000 that I've been using for a while. It's pretty nice, it supports up to 2Ter and can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. From what I've heard, Thecus also makes some pretty high quality ones. I guess it all depends on how big you need it to be. Obviously nothing is going to support as much space/go as fast as an actual dedicated computer/server, but a NAS isn't going to be far behind.
 
What is the deal with the 2 TB limit? How do you get around that? I just want to throw like 4 1.5 TB drives into something and make it 1 big 6 TB drive that I just plug in and don't have to access over a network. Something with the plug and play similar to an external hard drive enclosure, but for multiple hard drives. Does that exist?
 
I believe the 2Tb limit is a limitation of your operating system, although I am not 100% sure. I think some *nix OS'es can see more.
 
That is more of how the operating system "sets up" the hard drive. WHS has pooling ability so all your hard drives can pool together, and therefore you can continiously add hard drives.

Simply put, it is a give and take. If you don't want to spend money on this, you can't really do as much as if you would spend more money. And if you don't want to build a NAS, you are really limiting yourself to your storage needs. I understand your problem because I was in the same boat. I first burned everything to DVD's and now I've got ~300 to show for it. Since than, I've given up and started building the standard Norco NAS that Danny posted. Do I really need 20x 1.5Tb? At my current rate, it could be possible. You should ask yourself the same question.
 
Max-Powers said:
What is the deal with the 2 TB limit? How do you get around that? I just want to throw like 4 1.5 TB drives into something and make it 1 big 6 TB drive that I just plug in and don't have to access over a network. Something with the plug and play similar to an external hard drive enclosure, but for multiple hard drives. Does that exist?
Click to expand...

Yes in a way: the Sandisk external I linked in my first post in this thread. You just have to enable JBOD, place the drives in, and you should be able to see one large 6TB drive. However, the slight problem with that is that you will need an OS that supports GPT (which kind of removes the 2TB limitation per se) so that it can actually see and use all 6TB of storage. If you have Windows Vista and/or Windows 7, you're set. If you have Server 2003 with SP1 and/or Windows Server 2008, you're set. If you have XP, you might be SOL.
 
Max-Powers said:
What is the deal with the 2 TB limit? How do you get around that? I just want to throw like 4 1.5 TB drives into something and make it 1 big 6 TB drive that I just plug in and don't have to access over a network. Something with the plug and play similar to an external hard drive enclosure, but for multiple hard drives. Does that exist?
Click to expand...

My NAS only holds 2 drives. The ones that hold 4-6 don't have that limit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top