T800's unRAID Server

After filling 13.5TB (3 x 2TB + 5 x 1.5TB) worth of drives with movies, using 2 x 4 bay eSATA DAS enclosures it was time to make a change. Plus double that for my back up (another laptop with 2 more DAS's etc).

I had heard of unRAID but all I knew was it used Linux and therefore it would be more complicated than it needed to be. I have set up and AppleTV gen 1 and even though I managed fine I absolutely despise command line.
Poofy advised me to go with unRAID and though I was skeptical, the more I read, the better it sounded. The use of one drive that could rebuild a lost drive is what sold it to me.

The hardware is based on Eskro's budget unRAID build. The only things I changed were the motherboard because I couldn't source the one he advised in the UK. I got a ASRock 880GMLE motherboard micro ATX AMD 880G. It has two less possible SATA ports than the motherboard in Eskros build. If I need them in the future that is when I will change the motherboard.
Even though once it's completely set up it will hardly be seen I had to get a good looking case. The case is a Fractal Design Case Define XL Titanium. I wanted black but it seemed to be £20-£30 more and not in stock. I was glad to see it was just the front face which has grown on me.

Empty case with side off and motherboard:



After installing an Intel/Scythe on my last PC this AMD chip and fan was a breeze.

Everything installed, 1 x 2TB parity and 4 x 2TB storage:



Even with 10TB in the case looks empty.
The room at the top right is 4 x 5.25" bays that will have a 5.25" - 3.5" caddy fitted at some point. There is already one 5.25" - 3.5" adapter in there so I can have 11 HDD in there before I need to change.

Other side, connections:



These need to tucked in quite neatly to get the side of the case back on. The one red cable is for the parity drive so I can distinguish which one it is very quickly.

Rear of case including fan controller and OS USB:



The fan controller came with the case. I used a Black Lexar Firefly USB drive for the OS.

Finished case:



Not in it's final resting place yet. When I have 10-11 drives in and precleared it will be semi hidden under the stairs. At the moment there is 6TB in there (one drive gave up!) with 2 x 2TB drives going through the preclear stage right now.
After having issues with one of my first drives I'm preclearing 3 times as advised on the unRAID forum.
In the next few weeks I will add an 8 port SATA card giving me drive a possible 14 hard drive options.

All in all I'm very pleased with how it turned out so thanks to Poofy, Eskro and all the others who chipped in with advice.

I can finally get back to my bedroom HTPC build that I put on hold to do this.


Some more pics:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=915...stcount=39

The case rocks ! I am also building my new server at the moment, and bought the same case and am absolutely satisfied.

The server itself will take a while, I went the full-out virtualisation route - unraid, debian, centos all in their own confined VMs, pci-passthrough to get performance for the s-ata ports and guest support for pci-addon cards (vdr tuners). Problem is finding a mainboard that does what is needed, my first try with a Gigabyte ga-q67m-d2h-b3 was a total failure, since the bios is absolutely aweful.

Wow thats a spiffy case with 11 drive spots without even changing the 5.25 slots on top. Is it as quiet as it claims?

Like the minimalist facing with side vents and fans a lot.

At $149 on newegg thats a pretty expensive case but considering it comes with sufficient drive cages and fans for 11 drives out of the box it really isn't too bad and it certainly looks sleek, for whats that worth.

Edit: it looks like the second intake fan is not included with the case but nonetheless.

sorry to be late T800

Very nice unRAID Rig!!

COngratz!!

Make sure the drives all stay cooL

Love this, I might try out this case thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the comments guys.

I had to get a case that didn't look like neon disco and plastic steroids!

It's hard to say how quiet it is as I don't know what sort of noise something like this should make.
The fan controller is set just over halfway but not totally sure where it should be.

The HDD's tend to get up to about 40-44°C with a maximum highest I've seen of 49°C if I'm adding content for hours.
I will play with the fan controller once its under the stairs with more drives in.

Am I better off adding the extra side fan so I can run them all slower and quieter?

I installed a PWM case fan in my server and I use a script to control the speed of the fan based upon the temperature of my HDDs. It works perfectly. Here are the two posts that I found helpful in getting my setup running ...

Temperature based fan speed control?

X7SPA-HF based small (perfect) server build

I like it!
I might be putting the server in a more remote cooler place than under the stairs now so the noise might not matter but if I don't I will have a go at the temperature based fan control.

Thanks for the idea.

i would add more fans to your rig,,,

i think it can handle 2 more front fans right?

That case is much more awesome than my Antec 300

Looking good, unraid rocks