[poofyhairguy]

I have spent too many hours recovering data from raid arrays and the like when some random problem came up like the controller crashing or some other weird issue. My view is that storage is cheap enough to spend 50% of the space on redundancy. If your data is important, I prefer to be able to pull a drive at any time and read it as an independent drive.

I agree pulling out a drive and being able to read it is important, but redundancy is a waste compared to one disk parity. I also am against special RAID hardware- software is better in our budget range. Cue my usual Unraid plug.

[Mick1152]

I agree pulling out a drive and being able to read it is important, but redundancy is a waste compared to one disk parity. I also am against special RAID hardware- software is better in our budget range. Cue my usual Unraid plug.

+1 for unRaid! My system is a cheap system but it's so much better than all the special RAID setups in terms of cost. I have 4TB of storage in my unRaid with 3 2TB drives (1 parity, 2 storage) I'd need one more 2 TB drive for the same storage in a traditional RAID and, more importantly, for everything after this initial level, I'd have to buy 2 drives for every increase. With unRaid I can add 2 TB with just a single 2 TB drive which I LOVE!

EDIT: I meant to mention it but, great pictures! I love the cable routing! Being a noob at building computers but a veteran at storing my Christmas lights, my cables in my computer end up looking like that hornet's nest of mangled wires when you pull your Christmas lights out of storage for the season.

[class01]

This looks awesome.I plan on copying this build as my first HTPC build.Is there anything you would do different now? Was that large of a PSU necessary?

[assassin]

FlexRaid is what I use. I like that it does pooling and parity in one piece of software. You also can start with empty, partially full or completely full disks --- something you can't do with some of the others. It also supports up to 3 hard drive failures.

I researched these heavily and have guides on most of them.

[class01]

I plan on trying flexraid ill probably check out your guides./\

[aluders]

This looks awesome.I plan on copying this build as my first HTPC build.Is there anything you would do different now? Was that large of a PSU necessary?

All in all I would keep it the way it ended up. Certainly I would have liked not to have purchased 2 sata cards that didnt work before I found one that did but what are you gonna do. I need to try flexraid because Drive Bender has given me some issues. You may not run into these...

When ripping a disc using MakeMKV with the destination set to the Drive Bender volume, rip fails.
On my other media server which I switched over to Drive Bender, if Drive Bender volume is the recording/cache storage for TV playback in media center, you frequently get "files required for video playback missing" error.

I have moved my other media server off of Drive Bender and kept the Ivy Bridge machine on it. It doesnt have a tv tuner so the only problem I work around is ripping to the SSD for makemkv and then moving the files.

As far as the power supply, I'm sure the usage is under half of that power supply. Overkill for sure. I wanted to get one that was at least bronze rated but with that low of usage the efficiency will likely be below the optimal range.

The build cost about $1500.

[rflores2323]

PRICE??

[Kantal]

First of all... Like the pictures =)

I have a similar setup in hardware…

LIAN LI PC-Q08B
Asus P8H77-I
Corsair CX600v2
Intel Core i5-3450S
Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB
Intel 330 60GB SSD
WD Green 20EARS 4x2TB
Windows 7 Pro
XBMC 11.0 Eden

But i only have it as a server, i use another box for playing my media.
My plan is to exchange 4x2TB for 6x3TB and use unRAID.

[assassin]

Here is one of my favorite Ivy Bridge servers that I did recently...

http://www.assassinserver.com/?p=130

[Dougie Fresh]

Here is one of my favorite Ivy Bridge servers that I did recently...

http://www.assassinserver.com/?p=130

Awesome build.

A common question here is "how much power does 10 HDDs use?" Would you care to share any power consumption numbers if you measured them?

[assassin]

Here is one of my favorite Ivy Bridge servers that I did recently...

http://www.assassinserver.com/?p=130

Awesome build.

A common question here is "how much power does 10 HDDs use?" Would you care to share any power consumption numbers if you measured them?

Thanks.

A very good question. I didn't hook a kill-a-watt up to it mainly because with FlexRaid the unused drives are spun down so you are really going to get minimal readings. I would guess it was well under 100w at playback because of this. I will contact the person I built it for and see if he can tell us the wattage that it uses.

I do know that he absolutely loves it. He posts often over at AVS.

In general I think that 500-600w is plenty for a 10 drive server if using modern CPUs --- especially the 65w TDP CPUs like the G620 I used in this build.

[Dougie Fresh]

My WHS is 5 x 3.5", 1 x 2.5" and IIRC, it uses around 90W on startup and then settles down around 40W. It has an FSP SFX12V 300W PSU, E35M1-I motherboard and 4GB RAM in the Lian-Li PC-Q08. I even ran it for a while with a picoPSU 120-WI-25 and a 18.5V 120W AC adapter. I'd love to know how Goliath compares in power consumption to my "David" .

[assassin]

My WHS is 5 x 3.5", 1 x 2.5" and IIRC, it uses around 90W on startup and then settles down around 40W. It has an FSP SFX12V 300W PSU, E35M1-I motherboard and 4GB RAM in the Lian-Li PC-Q08. I even ran it for a while with a picoPSU 120-WI-25 and a 18.5V 120W AC adapter. I'd love to know how Goliath compares in power consumption to my "David" .

I have sent him an e-mail and asked him to post here. If he does not I will find out and post for you.

I have a feeling it will be less than 250w since he's running FlexRaid.

[Dougie Fresh]

Thanks!

[assassin]

Here is one of my favorite Ivy Bridge servers that I did recently...

http://www.assassinserver.com/?p=130

I'd love to know how Goliath compares in power consumption to my "David" .

Here are some results on the Goliath after kill-a-watt testing today by the owner.

Idle: 65 Watts. Cpu usage at idle was 4%.
Streaming GI Joe ( DTS HD BD @ 1080P ) for 1 hour: 75 watts
Boot time to full idle windows screen: 127 watts

Even I am impressed and I built the damn thing.