The 4 Machine

[gjvrieze]

Hi, this is my first worklog so please bare with me as i try to make it entertaining.... It get its name from the fact that it will soon have 4 cpu cores, 4gbs ram, and 4tb of hdd...Here is list of my steps i want to get done in the coming weeks.
1. List all the past work with pictures.
2. get the current update listed..
3. Get a Zalamn watercooling kit to run the cpu on, i love the look of the Zalman Reserator 1, and it will really help get the heat of the quad core out of my case....
4. get a quad core Kentsfield and drop it in, then switch to Windows Server 2003..
5, prolly will need more space and hopefully the 1tb drives are out and cheap by then..

I love the work that Ockie, PS-RagE, and many others have done and would like to share what i have and am learning though out this project...
This all starting because i am a big tv show nut and i had a ton of tv shows compressed to xvid stored on dvds and i started finding disc after with read errors and i lost 50+ episodes, i was not real pleased to say the least..... I built this Media Center and the htpc which it holds....

I started moving to hdds running in my Gentoo server back last summer and the drama of worrying about data went away... I started out with a 320gb Seagate 7200.10 IDE with ext3 and life was good.. Till i started my tech job and started ripping bad hdds out of machines 3-5 per week and started to worry; about that time i found Hard through Avsforum when a guy building a theater showed off the worklog on PS-RagE's server and i was in love! So i starting reading more on RAID and better storage messures and settled on raid 5. I started off with my new build, painted the case red (this is the old rosewill case not the newer cheap aspire case, and is a very nice case for modding), all new parts, 4 320gb 7200.10 SATAs, an Asus P5B-D with an e6400 and 2gb of Cosair ddr2 800mhz with 4-4-4-12 timings, a zalman 120mm hsf, a 36gb 15k Seagate SCSI for a boot drive, and a dvd drive.... (see the picture of this stage right below)

This worked great, i had the 4 320gbs in raid 5 under the Intel ICH8R and i had very impressive performance... But as you all know, 1tb does not last long and i had the dieing need for more, so i could take all my optical discs and achieve them on hdds. So i went with 6 320gbs, but i found that the Intel chipset limits the number of drives in raid 5 to 4hdds, so i was already in trobble, so i went with the same old array of 4 in raid 5 and the other 2 in raid 1, and ran with my tv shows on the big array and everything else on the little array. Then in December 2006, i was very close to full on both arrays, so i decided that after reading the story in tomshardware on Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP Pro 32bit software and how well it moved with hardware changes i decided to go software raid, and bought 2 more 320gb 7200.10s, by this time i had move the dvd drive out of the machine and run hdd coolers in all the 5.25 bays... also upped the ram to 4gbs of Corsair XMS2 DDR 800mhz with 4-4-4-12 timings (wow i get over 4gbs/sec memory speed in memtest86 !!, picture right below of the machine following the Dec 2006 upgrade, this is 8 320gbs in raid 5, same array that still has my tv show collection on it, 2.03tb)

This is working great, i have 2.03tb in raid 5 and it is very fast and all the machines and tvs in our house all working at the same time, do not even out much of a 2% load on the array.... Now i have a going collection of podcasts and movies, so i want to get them off the big array, so i bought 2 500gb 7200.10s and put them in raid 1..... I also wanted to upgrade the ps from an nmediapc 500w (very good and quiet ps btw) to a PC Power and Cooling Silience 750w....Here is pictures from today,

more to follow...

 

[Black-Tom]

Slightly confusing explanation, but it looks like its going to be really cool

 

[gjvrieze]

glad to see there is some interest.
I also used 2 SPST momentary switches mounted on a pci slow cover for the power and reset (see the pix of the cord i soldered yesterday), my little sister, walked by and triped the reset and forced my raid array to rebuild a couple of weeks ago, so this was a mod that was highly needed. I do not shut down or restart very often, so I do not care that the switches in the back. I usually can run from 18-30days without a reboot, and every 30-60 i shut down and do good blow out on the hsf and fans.... And speaking of fans, right after Ockie went on and on about how quiet the Enermax Enlobal fans are, i bought a few and all my fans except the one on the blow hole are Emermax.... The one of the blow hole was the only fan i could find that looked nice mounted outside the case, but turned out to blow in, so i do not really care for that, but i have them all on the fan controller and just slow the top one down a lot....

 

[gjvrieze]

In case anyone is wondering, i used the Intel ICH8R for its 6 ports, the JMicron for its 2 ports, which one is a eSATA port outside the case, using a eSATA to SATA cable, and i installed the Rosewill RC-211 PCI-E x1 2 port card today and here is a benchmark from it, this is a brand new Seagate 7200.10 500gb......

 

[brasherman]

OK, so far so good. I like what I see, and I understand your reasoning. I grew up on a farm, so I even like the green wallpaper border. Though I am a Case man at heart!

But I think your description is a little confusing. Can you itemize which drives are hooked to where? I think I see three drives in the cage, five in the PC, and you have four RAID ports onboard and two ports on the add in card. Just looking for a little clarification as to your setup. I also see you got your two additional sticks of RAM in. Is that your 4 gig total? good luck with it and keep working on it.

 

[gjvrieze]

OK, i am actually more a Case/IH guy too, but this was all i could find, at the time i put it up; (always like being on the farm, putting up with a stressful city and job makes the country very relaxing....)

Ok, for starters back in the big December upgrades, i did bump the ram up to 4gbs, which was a little picky, as i had to up the volts on the North Bridge and Memory to get it to run stable at the factory 4-4-4-12 timings at 800mhz ddr2...
The drives currently are as follows: 8 320gb 7200.10s in raid 5 (Windows XP Pro 32bit hack), three of these are in the 5x3 bay Icy Dock, while the other five are case mounted with 3 80mm fans blowing on them. 6 are connected to the mobos ICH8R controller in the "IDE" mode, while the other 2 are connected to the JMicron controller. The 2 drives on the right side of the 5x3 bay are the 2 500gb 7200.10s which just came from newegg last week, i install them on the Rosewill raid 1 card and store backups, movies, programs, and misc on there, while keeping the big raid 5 array (2.03tb formated) for tvshows.
BTW, the new drives and the 5x3 bay all seem to work great, setting with 2 days uptime and have not noticed any issues with the raid 5 or raid 1 arrays...
also, was not sure if i posted, but the boot drive is a 15,000RPM SCSI connected to an adaptec controller....
hopefully this helps clear up some things......

 

[brasherman]

OK, I get it now. Thanks for entertaining my question!

 

[gjvrieze]

good to know i am little more clear, i mainly read all day long, so my writing skills are not as good as in high school....
Other news, over the weekend i also had a chance to play with Windows Home Server and it works nicely, so i am thinking that if comes out OEM, i may buy it and run it on the my server......The storage pool is great, not nearly as much overhead as raid, but not as much speed as raid array.......
I have been thinking about the ZALMAN ZM - Reserator1 V2 system for my cpu, so if anyone has personal thoughts on the unit, please inform me...
anyway, but to work.......