[bmcclure937]

Ah, that's not too bad. I don't really understand how that works, but I'll consider it for the setup.

I would definitely consider it! Using RAID5 is the most logical because you will use the least amount for parity disks and will still have protection for 1 disk failure.

[diafygi]

1 disk failure

Speaking of disk failure, does it matter how you orient the hard drive? Can it be at an angle and last just as long as a horizontal drive? I'm thinking of the Black Dwarf as an example.

[drewy]

I wouldn't expect those disks to last too long

[poofyhairguy]

Speaking of disk failure, does it matter how you orient the hard drive?

Yes. You want it level with good airflow and if possible with vibration padding.

[BigO]

Yeah man dont skimp out on a PSU, it can take your entire system with it. Everything else you listed looks pretty good.

[jthunder]

I would also think about the software end of it now, if you don't care about raid, because these are just backups of media you already have then you can stripe them in one big fast array. If you plan on storing other media that isn't as replaceable I would go with at least software raid 5. I used zfs on my nas as it was easy to setup and opensolaris provided lots of functionality.

If you don't have a sysadmin background you might want to look at freenas software or other forms of NAS software.

Good luck!

[billybarty]

A few thoughts:
1) Definitely need to figure out what you're doing with software. Unraid is very well suited to a media library because it has RAID 5 like fault tolerence, but doesn't need to spin up all of your drives every time you want to get at a single file. It also allows expansion, so if you don't need all 8 drives immediately, you don't need to buy them all up front. Check http://www.lime-technology.com
2) Even if you have the physical media as a back-up, having a fault tolerant storage system (e.g. RAID 5, mirroring, or Unraid) is VERY beneficial because you will invest a lot of time ripping and organizing your media files.
3) Power supply seems undersized & like others have said, a bad power supply can bring down your entire system (and maybe some of your components).
4) That many drives in one box need to be well ventilated.

Have fun!
BB

[P.Kosunen]

If you DO plan on using RAID of any sort, you're f*cked with the WD Caviar drives.

I have no problems with those (WD20EARS) and 3ware 9650SE-8LPML @ raid5.

Depending from OS you just have to align partitions properly (or do some other workarounds).

FreeBSD
Solaris

[Ogi010]

I haven't purchased the hard drives yet. I'll probably add them as needed since the price will only go downward.

Honest question: I'm going to be using this just as a storage point for my media for XBMC, so why would I use RAID? I can just keep each drive as a separate volume and add each one to the XBMC source list.

Forget about the WD Green Drives, get these instead:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

(This is coming from an owner of 3 WD Green 2TB drives).

Ogi

[waldo22]

Custom Case: ? ($?)

I'm using the Cooler Master Stacker case, which doesn't seem to be in production any longer But it's still available...

It has 12 5.25" bays. (if you remove the front panel connectors)

I'm using 4 of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

To put 5 drives (vertically) in the space of 3 5.25" bays. They will also blow your budget all to pieces. They can be had for as little as $115 shipped if you use Google Product search.

I'm using 20 750GB hard drives, configured in RAID 6 for dual drive failure tolerance. I built this almost 3 years ago.

Nowadays, you can use 2TB drives and do much better.

I'm using this 24-port RAID card to do it. (I bought it on eBay for ~$800 or so).

-Wes

[darkscout]

I'm using the Cooler Master Stacker case, which doesn't seem to be in production any longer But it's still available...

It has 12 5.25" bays. (if you remove the front panel connectors)

I'm using 4 of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

To put 5 drives (vertically) in the space of 3 5.25" bays. They will also blow your budget all to pieces. They can be had for as little as $115 shipped if you use Google Product search.

4x$115. You might as well just get one of these.

[teaguecl]

I haven't purchased the hard drives yet. I'll probably add them as needed since the price will only go downward.

Honest question: I'm going to be using this just as a storage point for my media for XBMC, so why would I use RAID? I can just keep each drive as a separate volume and add each one to the XBMC source list.

Good question, my opinion is that you should not use RAID for storing movies. Just use plain old non-backed-up drives. Or, if you want some protection against the pain-in-the-@#$ of re-ripping media, use Unraid or ZFS.
Since you haven't purchased drives yet - research those WD EARS drives. They use 4K sectors but report themselves as 512b sectors. Some versions of Windows automagically fix this, but real operating systems (Linux, Solaris) will do the correct thing and the drives won't work well. There are workarounds (jumpers, aligning sectors at format time), but I've personally been buying EADS drives instead to avoid that mess.

[waldo22]

4x$115. You might as well just get one of these.

Yeah, those are really nice... and I don't think available for under $1000 when I bought mine. Nice find!

[diafygi]

[UPDATED MAIN POST]

Well, everyone who was ragging on the cheap PSU were right. It was dead on arrival. When plugged in, the fan didn't spin and the only wire with a voltage was the purple +5V standby wire. The 12V wires did have about +0.2V, so it's pretty clear that something was messed up.

I'm looking for another PSU. I made some savings on the first two hard drives ($69.99 each!), so I can spend a little more on the PSU and still be on budget. Now, I'd like to see if I can keep the total hardware cost (except for hard drives) under $250. That means a PSU for <$50. The main reason I'm looking at lower power PSUs is because the high powered ones get really inefficient at lower loads. I expect to be running <50W most of the time. Also, I'd like to keep the form factor to micro ATX, because that would fit nicely on the rack I'm building.

I started out just getting two WD hard drives to see how they acted. I'll expand the stack from there.

Unraid is very well suited to a media library because it has RAID 5 like fault tolerence, but doesn't need to spin up all of your drives every time you want to get at a single file.

Billbarty brought up an excellent point. Since this will be used for movies and accessed by a single HTPC, it seems pretty inefficient to spin up all the drives for one file.

Question: can I use different hard drives in a RAID array? If I were to buy two Samsung 2TB drives, would I be able to use all four in the same RAID 5 array?

[Blofeld]

I second the unRAID suggestion. For what you need it for, it seems ideally suited. It's cheap, reliable, scales extremely well - and you've got redundancy. I'm lovin' mine, that's for sure.