Re: [OT] (A little) : Firewire cables...

[Mal Lansell <mal@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm counting on drives getting bigger!  I made my decision on the
media
server last week - a compromise between power consumption and grunt.
The mini-itx route seemed too limited, but my old server was using way
too much electricity.  There was also the spin-down issue I posted about.

In the end I went for the bottom-of-the-range Core2Duo (E2140).  Only
£45, but with more than enough horsepower for a media/email/HA server.
An Asus P5B-VM motherboard (5 internal plus 1 eSata) with integrated
graphics to keep the power consumption down.

Finally, I got over my rackmount fantasies (it's out of sight, so who
cares, right?), and went for a Coolermaster Elite 330 midi tower case -
room for 7 x 3.5" and 4 x 5.25" drives.  Throw in 1Gb of RAM and
the
whole lot clocked in at a mere £170, excluding hard drives (which I
already owned).

That's only 2.5Tb internally with my current 500Mb drives, but I can
easily double that with 1Tb disks (relegating pairs of old drives to
offsite backup duties).  My expectation (hope?!), is that drive
capacities will increase fast enough to keep pace with my growing media
storage needs.  If not, I guess I could always add a port multiplexer to
the eSata socket.

Even with 2 more disks than my old server, my UPS is now reporting 36
minutes of backup instead of 20, so my goal of reducing power
consumption has been achieved, and because the drives are all connected
directly to sata ports, they all spin down too.

Mal



Phil Harris wrote:

> > > LOL - You're lagging behind there Jim ... already replied to
my own
> > > post with that link earlier. ;-)
> > >
> >
> > Yeah, too slow.
>
> :-D
>
> (Or maybe I'm just too sad? ;-) )
>
> > > An "easy" possibility of handling up to 36Tb
should keep me going for
> > > the next 5 years or so though. ;-)
> > >
> >
> > Plus don't forget disk capacities should be 3-4 times higher by
then as
> > well :-)
>
> Yes ... When I started out building this current server 160Gb was the
> biggest drive you could buy!
>
> Phil
>
>