The biggest problem is to back up the data when building the raid, thus the need for big drive to be left with emachine. So if I buy another box with 160GB or they would have 160GB drives for $30 before they would have 320GB for $60 it would be 0.5TB for $100, otherwise with 320GB drives for $60 it would be 1TB for $150… that would start as a 0.32GB RAID (one 320GB drive goes into FreeNAS and one into emachine) that would get upgraded to 1TB RAID 5 once $30 drives would be in 0.5TB range…
Sunday, August 26, 2007
FreeNAS or 1TB for $150
My total capacity is 186.31GB+76.33GB+74.53GB=186.31+150.86=337.17GB. Two more 320GB SATA drives for $60/each (or another $20 off on each) + $30 IDE/SATA RAID card with RAID 5 would make about 1TB for $150 in 3 IDE + 2 SATA drives (i.e. I could still keep 25GB raid and extra IDE channel for CF-IDE if I buy power cable splitters). I could make 0.5T for $100 with 2 more 160GB drives at $30 (need just one really so it is $60 for 0.5TB, but then I need a drive for emachine) in 3 IDE = (150 + 180GB) + 1 SATA for overall 0.45TB. Using 25 GB in 13GB RAID (I still have 3 IDE channels left, but again just 5 overall drive slots and power supplies) I could probably boost it to 3*180=0.54TB, so 0.5TB for $100 is more doable then 1TB for $150 that would still need a drive for emachine (13GB just wouldn’t cut it you know)
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RAID-5 array size in (N-1)*disk_size, thus the array that I am going to build using old Dell would be 0.5T laid out as 2*250GB SATA-II (300MBps) and 73+186=260GB in old PATA used for redundancy. Since I busted 80GB drive I don’t have enough PATA drives to build an array with anything bigger than 250GB and building an array with 2*160GB SATA drives would be just 0.32T and 2 SATA drives per $30 controller is what limits the size. So with Dell it would be 0.5T RAID-5 (2 IDE, 2 SATA) and 2*13GB RAID-0 for scratch (bolt one 13GB to the chassis and throw 4GB drive away).
With $5 adapter I could use old 29.8GB laptop drive… this would bump IDE chain to 290GB and would use 3 IDE slots out of 4 – 30GB single drive scratch is about the same as 26GB in two drives. So it is not worth despite that I could chain laptop drive with one 13GB for 53GB scratch drive (laptop drive would be bolted to chassis and 13GB would stay in upper bay).
Without those SATA drives and a controller I am limited (by onboard IDE controller) to 3 drives in upper bay and the only thing I could do is play with RAID-0 on 3 drives with or without CF to IDE. With CF to IDE I could chain 4+2*13=30GB, without I would need to pull 80GB out of emachine and when I do 4GB drive goes out into spare Dell.
The build out would look like this – make it boot from CF and raid-0 4+2*13, pull 80GB and rebuild raid-0 as 80+2*13, buy SATA drives and controller and pull out 180GB drive and do final build. Since you cannot add drives extending RAID-5 array, re-building array implies that the data would have to be moved somewhere. This, in case of Dell array buildup imply that I would have to move everything from 180GB drive to somewhere – namely almost full new 160GB drive in emachine. Hmm, looks like I would still need extra drive to build an array… or a new computer… and new computer would either be 80GB Mini (mind that $599 Mini has just 2GB cache while refurb 2.0GHz Mini cost $679 and might have 4GB L2 and 120GB drive in addition to DVD RW) or any $250 computer with 1066FSB capable MB if I need another windows box.
Future NAS could use 10 (4 5.25” and 6 3.5”) drive computer case with power supply for $40 and some computer I need to pick up on garage sale for less then $10 (Dell extension board may or may not fit since it is 7.5" - should fit into 8" case). Alternatively emachine MB supports 4 IDE and 4 SATA which with SATA PCI controller would make it capable of 10 drives (6 SATA), but that would mean buying at least LGA775 processor for $50 not to mention new MB to go into emachine. I would do that only when I decide to upgrade emachine to run Quad and upgrade memory to 2-4GB by buying two 1GB sticks since emachine MB has just to slots… Upgrading to Quad would mean $275 for Quad, $50+ for MB or $325-$350 or as much as a new computer.
Next time at Frys look for SATA PCI card and write down $50 motherboards to see if they have a giggy, SPDIF and know integrated video… There is no MB with integrated DVI or HDMI, so from this perspective no reason to upgrade.
Overall looks like buying 2 250GB SATA drives (< $50), SATA PCI card (<$30), a Mini (and thus 19" monitor) and any $350 Core Duo computer with 1067FSB are pretty much all the upgrades I need to make until HD actually arrives.
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