Ok my big server is running with 8 IDE drives in it. 1.5 terabytes of data storage. It works and runs. However I am having issues during the warmer months with drives getting errors and have lost a couple of drives. The PSU seems to be fine with voltages and I replaced all the cables. I am pretty sure it is a head issue as all 8 drives are stacked one on top of each other with about a half inch of space. Even with a 120mm fan cooling them, they are getting very hot to the touch. Not burning but way hotter than I would prefer.

I am looking into external USB drive containers. I bought 2 of them today. I plan on cutting the server back to 3 internal drives and 5 or 6 external USB drives.

All the external cages will be USB 2.0 and have there own power supply.

I am not sure if hooking them all into a USB 2.0 HUB and running a single line to the machine or buying extra add on PCI USB 2.0 cards will be needed. I know I am going to take a performance hit no matter how I go. I am not normally accessing one of the larger drives more than drive at a time. So I am thinking running a spare hub would be alright. The machine has 6 USB 2.0 ports, however 2 of them are used for Keyboard/mouse and a 1 gig thumb drive.

I know there are a few guys on here running with stacks of external drives. What are your opinions on it. I move about 3 gig per day on average onto the drives.

Recommendations gladly accepted.

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85GT 5spd ,93 Eldorado 4.9 Dual O2 Custom Chip, Archie Clutch. Custom Exhaust. MSD Everything 245/50/16's Not Your Average 4.9 Capt Fiero Com --- My Over View Cadero Pics Yellow 88GT 5spd Stock.

Me personally, I would not go that route. You would be taking a giant hit in performance, not a small one. USB can only talk to one device at a time. And the USB Bus is A LOT slower than the PCI bus. When hooked up IDE copy a directory that normally took 15 minutes to copy will take about two hours to copy over USB. Just a thought. Just so you know PCI Bus sends data in one burst, if you have a 100 meg file it sends the whole 100 meg file in one burst. USB uses packet write, where depending on registry settings will send 256K packets at a time and when it does this it has to send the packet then the destination has to acknowledge that it received the packet, then it sends the ok to receive. Then the host sends the next packet, so on and so forth. So don't go off of speed specs of the busses. It don't add up. If you were to hook them up firewire 800 (uses the burst technology as well) then it would be a little closer but still slower. Just something for you to think about.

As cheap as drives are why not just by a couple of large SATA drives (they run a little cooler)

Or you can purchase hard drive coolers as well. I have two in my server.

I use a couple of external drives, but they are connected via firewire (1394). I know the USB2.0 specs are the same (or better) than firewire, but in the REAL world, firewire drives are faster.

Except for the power draw and heat issue, internal drives are the best way to go by far.

Just keep the heat down, and keep it internal. have the drives spin down when not being used, and add some stuff to cool 'em down, like this thing:



I had a few drives die due to heat, but non since I plopped heat sinks on 'em...
(some with fans) they are dirt cheap, too...

Ok how bout this question.

Which is faster 10/100 ethernet or USB 2.0

Most of my copying to the drives has to first go through 10/100 and then into the drive. Will the bottleneck still be the ethernet or will the USB slow it down even further.

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85GT 5spd ,93 Eldorado 4.9 Dual O2 Custom Chip, Archie Clutch. Custom Exhaust. MSD Everything 245/50/16's Not Your Average 4.9 Capt Fiero Com --- My Over View Cadero Pics Yellow 88GT 5spd Stock.

quote Originally posted by FieroRumor: Just keep the heat down, and keep it internal. have the drives spin down when not being used, and add some stuff to cool 'em down, like this thing: I had a few drives die due to heat, but non since I plopped heat sinks on 'em... (some with fans) they are dirt cheap, too...

ya ya - theres a good idea. and they also make full size trays w/fans. and, finally - the RIGHT solution: they make networkable hard drive boxes. they are basicly a standalone OS, a NIC & a bank of hard drives. works all "normal" network protocols, security & topologies. much like a print server box, its a HD server box. they are MUCH more cost effective than trying to do the same with a full PC + a crammed box of drives.

Sell those drives and get 3-4 750GB drives.. Less drives = less heat..... Or add more fans.... External enclosures can get down right stupid hot.......

I have thought about selling a few of the 300's and upgrade to larger drives, but then I run into the problem of having similar data on the same drive.

My current system is

320gb TV
300gb Movie
300gb misc videos
200gb Musis
200gb Appz
80gb incomming downloads
40gb partioned 20gb OS / instal dir for apps. (when windows wants an orignal disk to update something I point it there)
30gb Web Pages, HTML everything that goes on the internet.


My only real option would be to sell off the 320gb TV and the 300misc video's and combine those. However I would have to outlay a considerable amount of extra cash to pay for the really high price per gig price tage of the 750's. I might just want until next year when the new Terabyte drives start shipping.

David

quote Originally posted by FieroRumor: Just keep the heat down, and keep it internal. have the drives spin down when not being used, and add some stuff to cool 'em down, like this thing: I had a few drives die due to heat, but non since I plopped heat sinks on 'em... (some with fans) they are dirt cheap, too...

I checked that cooler here locally is $35

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=16429&vpn=ZM-2HC2&manufacture=ZALMAN%20TECH

I would need 8 of them 8x34x%14 sales tax comes to about $320


They do have a cheaper cooler but I don't think i like it as much as the one you posted.

I could probably get away with 4 in a cooler and 4 spaced out better on the current rack. It is all up in the air. But thanks for the suggestions.

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85GT 5spd ,93 Eldorado 4.9 Dual O2 Custom Chip, Archie Clutch. Custom Exhaust. MSD Everything 245/50/16's Not Your Average 4.9 Capt Fiero Com --- My Over View Cadero Pics Yellow 88GT 5spd Stock.

quote Originally posted by FieroRumor:

Those do almost nothing as far as heat goes. They actually work better as something to keep your hard drives quiet.

Capt Fiero, if I were you I would look into watercooling your drives. One of these will cool two drives.
http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=29_45&products_id=231

Funny story:
I have one of those on my 10,000 RPM hard drive in my server. They work so well! The first time I ran my server for about 48 hours, my server froze. I opened the case and put my finger on the hard drive to see if it was hot and it was cold. I paniced, I thought I lost it. Well turns out the keyboard came unplugged lol. I plugged it back in and everything was fine.

Its really all about how much do you want to spend to protect your data...

[This message has been edited by IEatRice (edited 10-03-2006).]

I have (2) SCSI drives with 3 IDE's in a single case for my print server. The case has the ability to have (2) 4" fans for cooling but this was not enough when the server was accessed alot. I opened up the side of the case and took a 10" box fan and mounted it in the side an now everything is very cool a little red neck looking but what the hay it works and it cost only $6.00.

Earl

quote Originally posted by IEatRice: Those do almost nothing as far as heat goes. They actually work better as something to keep your hard drives quiet. Capt Fiero, if I were you I would look into watercooling your drives. One of these will cool two drives. http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=29_45&products_id=231 Funny story: I have one of those on my 10,000 RPM hard drive in my server. They work so well! The first time I ran my server for about 48 hours, my server froze. I opened the case and put my finger on the hard drive to see if it was hot and it was cold. I paniced, I thought I lost it. Well turns out the keyboard came unplugged lol. I plugged it back in and everything was fine. Its really all about how much do you want to spend to protect your data...

As cool as that looks, watercooling my Hard Drives is a bit over top.

quote Originally posted by Capt Fiero: As cool as that looks, watercooling my Hard Drives is a bit over top.

Can't argue with results...

quote Originally posted by Pyrthian: ya ya - theres a good idea. and they also make full size trays w/fans. and, finally - the RIGHT solution: they make networkable hard drive boxes. they are basicly a standalone OS, a NIC & a bank of hard drives. works all "normal" network protocols, security & topologies. much like a print server box, its a HD server box. they are MUCH more cost effective than trying to do the same with a full PC + a crammed box of drives.

have ya looked into one of these?

high end - expensive: http://www.superwarehouse.com/p.cfm?p=396582&CMP=KAC-PositionTechFeed

but, there are also more reasonable ones - even some by LinkSYS
it is much like your external USB thinking, but with highspeed ethernet, and accesable over the whole network.

Try this it works, is cheap and easy but apperancewise it isn't pretty. Go to walmart, get one of those box fans for 12 or so and put it on the OPEN side of your COMPUTER CASE. Let fan blow directly into the open side of the case. Thats how I keep my server cool. It has 9 drives, an Athlon 64 bit CPU and ASUS MB. Before I did the fan thing, it crashed daily due to heat issues.
S. Williams

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1988 Fiero Formula T-tops
CJB 143 of 1252 "factory T-top cars"

Maybe a bigger case with better cooling would help. I just came across a case made by Lian Li that could house all of your hard drives, and should have no problem keeping them cool.

Here's a review of the case on overclockers.com.


Here, you can see that the heat from the PC components; and the heat from the power suppy are kept seperate. Plus, you have space for 3 120MM fans, and 3 80MM fans in the back.


Someone on the forums of bit-tech is using the same case, and here's what he has done with his.


As you can see, he's added a couple of Lian Li's hard drive cooler's; which house 3 hard drives in two 5.25" bays, and provide cooling with a 80MM fan.



A case like this would cost less than trying to cool the drives indivigually, and offer you room for more hard drives in the future.

[This message has been edited by Deabionni (edited 10-08-2006).]

Where is this model of case available in the US? All the sites I found are in Norway of all places.
S. Williams

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1988 Fiero Formula T-tops
CJB 143 of 1252 "factory T-top cars"

^^^ That, I don't know. I just came across the review, and will update when I see a US supplier.

It is a very nice, but also very expensive case.

I have a couple old SCSI CD-Rom servers, without the drives. I have been meaning to load them up with SCSI hard drives, but I just never come across any when I have cash I would however like to build one using SATA. Those drives are DIRT CHEAP now.

Well I have decided to put 2 of the drives on external USB 2.0 storage enclosures. Build a 2nd "junk" rig and put 3 drives in it, basically turn it into a NAS unit. From now on I am going to buy SATA drives and SATA external enclosures. With SATA external enclosures you get FULL speed just like the drive was hooked up inside the case. But the benefit of having there own separate power supplies and cooling solutions.

That big case posted above is awesome. I have actually looked into those. That style of case has been used since the days of windows 3.1 for old servers. They can be retrofitted with all the proper ATX components. Watts on the forum has something like that a Compaq Prolient server.

My Server tower that has all the drives in it is rather large already.

Its about a meter tall. (roughly 3 feet)

Other early pics can be seen at http://www.captfiero.com/server/index.html

Thanks for all the cool suggestions guys. I will post up when I have some more updates on how it is all going. P.S. if the pics are showing up, you are viewing pics of the rig from the rig. It does double duty as web server as well.

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85GT 5spd ,93 Eldorado 4.9 Dual O2 Custom Chip, Archie Clutch. Custom Exhaust. MSD Everything 245/50/16's Not Your Average 4.9 Capt Fiero Com --- My Over View Cadero Pics Yellow 88GT 5spd Stock.

[This message has been edited by Capt Fiero (edited 10-11-2006).]

Well an update.

I think I have solved 2 problems at once.

Moving 2 of the larger storage drives outside helped. But still the drives were running a touch on the hot side. 34C - 36C. I was also worried about the power usage with all the drives and fans.

So I had a brain storm. Although the HD's need clean power from the power supply the fans don't really have to have ubber regulated power. So I went digging in my electronics junk boxes. I found exactly what I needed. From a really old Motorola Desktop charger, a 12v 1amp wall power supply. I hacked off the end, attached a 4 pin molex plug on it, snipped off 2 of the wires so only a Positive and Ground were left on it. Ran it into the case and hooked it to the main case fans. Then took it one step further and picked up 2 relatively quite, yet pretty strong flow 92mm fans. I mounted them with some extra flexible steel straps.

I got everything mounted, wired and put the case back together. The HD temps dropped from an average of 35C down to 25C. The coolest drives are now running at 23C and the hottest are 26C. Thats huge for a hard drive. 10c drop from a couple of fans and some extra clean power. Now that I have the temp under control I gotta run out and buy more drives. =)