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

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
> Of Mal Lansell
> Sent: 09 September 2007 09:35
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ukha_d] [OT] (A little) : Firewire cables...
>=20
> I'm counting on drives getting bigger!

That's what I did - and they have of course and should continue to do so
..=
.

> I made my decision on the media
> server last week - a compromise between power consumption and grunt.
> The mini-itx route seemed too limited,

Yup - was looking at Mini-ITX too but couldn't have economically got the
SATA support I was looking at needing from it...

> but my old server was using way
> too much electricity.  There was also the spin-down issue I posted
> about.

Well I was very pleased with what my server was taking and I don't usually
let the drives ever spin down. ;-)

> 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.

*cough* They can spin down on Firewire too if they're on a Mac... :-D

One thing that I do want to do (and this is simply down to experience over
the last four or five years with the current solution) is to make sure that
any "box" that is added to the server - including the server
itself - has
either SATA caddies (i.e. http://tinyurl.com/37vhf5 ) or SATA
backplanes
(i.e. http://tinyurl.com/3a35g9 ) fitted
from the outset *BEFORE* it ever
gets turned on so that it is easy to add or remove drives. (This means all
drives have to be accessible from the front of the machine too so no
internal 3.5" drive bays being used.)

Pulling off casings and unscrewing drive rails from enclosures gets to be a
major pain in the backside after a while!

Thing is though that the CM Stacker cases have nine open 5.25" bays
and SAT=
A
caddies still seem rather expensive so if I were to populate a CM Stacker
with SATA caddies then that would be about =A3360 if I used those RhinoJR
caddies above or about =A3300 if I used the RhinoJR backplanes ... that's a
sh*tload of money on just caddies!

(Yes, I know they could be bought as you need them but that means you're
still opening up the machine to fit a caddy each time and you ideally want
them all to match so you're screwed if they get discontinued half way
through.)

:-(

Phil