A 30 Drive Case From Lian Li

[fidget]

I am curious what this will wind up costing, but using two 5-in-3 cages would turn this into a 30 drive beast with wheels (scroll down until you see the PC-D8000).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5967/c...6-35-hdd-slots

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by fidget

I am curious what this will wind up costing, but using two 5-in-3 cages would turn this into a 30 drive beast with wheels (scroll down until you see the PC-D8000).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5967/c...6-35-hdd-slots

That reminds me of this case. With 5x3 cages you can get 30 in it too. With a 1x4 cage for laptop drives I've got 26 drives in my Lian Li V2000 case. And I can add 4-6 more with a little moding above the power supply.

[fidget]

I would have really preferred something like that to my NORCO RPC-4220.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

That reminds me of this case. With 5x3 cages you can get 30 in it too. With a 1x4 cage for laptop drives I've got 26 drives in my Lian Li V2000 case. And I can add 4-6 more with a little moding above the power supply.

That's the one my server is housed in. With the 5in3's I have filling up the right side, there's plenty of room for growth. But, I realized that with the way hard drive size keeps growing, I'm better off upgrading to larger drives than adding more. I'm currently running 10 1TB drives plus some other sized ones and am slowly swapping the 1TB ones for 3TB. If I had to do it over again, I'd prefer literally half the case of the PC-343. Cable routing is a bear going from one side of the case to the other, but there is a ton of room to work with.

[david1234]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

With a 1x4 cage for laptop drives I've got 26 drives in my Lian Li V2000 case.

I've got one of those 1x4 cages that I need to install. I absolutely love how quite the laptop drives are. Too bad the price per GB is still so high.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by david1234

I've got one of those 1x4 cages that I need to install. I absolutely love how quite the laptop drives are. Too bad the price per GB is still so high.

I got the cheapest one I could find. Was a mistake. Will get one that says it is all metal next time. Although the plastic trays are not really a problem as much as the cheap metal from which it is made.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by david1234

I've got one of those 1x4 cages that I need to install. I absolutely love how quite the laptop drives are. Too bad the price per GB is still so high.

I thought it was a bad idea for laptop drives to be used in a 24x7 server due to the fact that they aren't meant for that type of duty cycle?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by fidget

I would have really preferred something like that to my NORCO RPC-4220.

I have the Norco RPC-4220 as well. Kind of a bugger to route all of those SATA cables. Even though I have a whole box of them, I still had to go buy a ton since I ended up needing longer ones to go all the way from my RAID cards in the PCIE slots on the motherboard all the way to the top row (especially since you have to route the cables under the "firewall" and then back up if you want to keep things at least somewhat clean.

[david1234]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I thought it was a bad idea for laptop drives to be used in a 24x7 server due to the fact that they aren't meant for that type of duty cycle?

In something like an unraid box, the drives really don't spin all that much. But, a lot of servers are moving toward 2.5" drives, so we are starting to see laptop drives in a class like the WD Caviar Black's at better prices.

The biggest issue right now, is a 2.5 is 2 or 3 times more expensive than the same size 3.5" drive.

[david1234]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

I got the cheapest one I could find. Was a mistake. Will get one that says it is all metal next time. Although the plastic trays are not really a problem as much as the cheap metal from which it is made.

I've got an icy dock 1x4 tray, and it seems pretty solid, although I haven't used it yet.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by david1234

In something like an unraid box, the drives really don't spin all that much. But, a lot of servers are moving toward 2.5" drives, so we are starting to see laptop drives in a class like the WD Caviar Black's at better prices.

The biggest issue right now, is a 2.5 is 2 or 3 times more expensive than the same size 3.5" drive.

According to Newegg, the largest 2.5" drive is 1TB, while the largest 3.5" drive is 3TB. So if I wanted, say, a total of 6TB, I'd have to buy 6 2.5" drives or 2 3.5" drives. So when you look at it from a capacity perspective, do notebook drives really save that much physical space over desktop drives? And as you mentioned, they are quite a bit more expensive than the 3.5" drives, and possibly more prone to failure...

[david1234]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

According to Newegg, the largest 2.5" drive is 1TB, while the largest 3.5" drive is 3TB. So if I wanted, say, a total of 6TB, I'd have to buy 6 2.5" drives or 2 3.5" drives. So when you look at it from a capacity perspective, do notebook drives really save that much physical space over desktop drives? And as you mentioned, they are quite a bit more expensive than the 3.5" drives, and possibly more prone to failure...

Unfortunately, the storage density is where the small drives just don't measure up. But everything I read says that the industry is transitioning out of 3.5" drives, so they should focus on better notebook capacities.

They are quite and they don't use a lot of energy though. I think a laptop drive tops out at 3W, which is where a lot of 3.5" drives idle. My drives have all been from old laptops, so the price/GB is really good and because they go into unraid, the sizes don't really matter.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

But, I realized that with the way hard drive size keeps growing, I'm better off upgrading to larger drives than adding more. I'm currently running 10 1TB drives plus some other sized ones and am slowly swapping the 1TB ones for 3TB.

Yeah, that's the basic conclusion I came to when I finally decided to build my unRAID box. Initially I was a little concerned about being "limited" to only 14 drives (due to my Supermicro X7SPA+SASLP-MV8). But then I realized that by the time I get close to filling all 14 ports, the old drives will be tiny compared to what I can buy at the time, so at that point I can just start swapping them out.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by david1234

They are quite and they don't use a lot of energy though. I think a laptop drive tops out at 3W, which is where a lot of 3.5" drives idle.

So laptop drives have a higher upfront cost, but lower monthly costs to operate. I wonder what the average number of months until you break even is?

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by david1234

In something like an unraid box, the drives really don't spin all that much. But, a lot of servers are moving toward 2.5" drives, so we are starting to see laptop drives in a class like the WD Caviar Black's at better prices.

The biggest issue right now, is a 2.5 is 2 or 3 times more expensive than the same size 3.5" drive.

Aren't the server class drives SAS and not SATA? They are also MUCH more expensive than any laptop drive. I guess it is easier to make a 10,000-15,000RPM drive in a smaller form factor.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

So laptop drives have a higher upfront cost, but lower monthly costs to operate. I wonder what the average number of months until you break even is?

This might put a little perspective on it.

[paulbeers]

Everyone forgets, that Enterprise level data centers are switching over to SSD's especially for database servers (with a good back up plan). Since SSD's basically only come in 2.5" drives, it is pointless to use a server with 3.5" drive bays. It's a matter of going from a 4U rack to a 2U rack. Further, Enterprise 2.5" drives come in a 15mm height package which can actually be found in 2TB forms. Here's some quick math for you...

2.5" drive:
15 x 70mm = 1050mm front "face"

3.5" drive
25mm x 102 = 2550mm front "face"

That means you can fit almost 5 2.5" drives in the same space as 2 3.5" drive. Thus you can get 10TB worth of 2.5" drives in the same space as only 8TB of 3.5" drives. This of course assumes you are using enclosures actually designed for 2.5" drives.

Edit: The above also doesn't take into consideration that the 2.5" drives aren't nearly as deep as the 3.5". If you want to talk about cubic mm density (rather than squared), it is even more in favor of the 2.5" drives.

[fidget]

Before Sage got bought by Google, I was wishing that they would add the ability to use an SSD as a cache dish. Write all files to the SSD and in the background move the files off to slower HDDs. Unfortunately, to do that right, you need to know if a file is being played before you delete it from the cache.

[will]

Originally Posted by fidget

Before Sage got bought by Google, I was wishing that they would add the ability to use an SSD as a cache dish. Write all files to the SSD and in the background move the files off to slower HDDs. Unfortunately, to do that right, you need to know if a file is being played before you delete it from the cache.

How would that help performance? Are the shows you are recording bottlenecking your hard drives? I often do four concurrent 1080p recordings while playing back other videos on two separate extenders with no issues. I'm using a higher-end RAID card but my drives are all consumer grade.

[fidget]

Originally Posted by will

How would that help performance? Are the shows you are recording bottlenecking your hard drives? I often do four concurrent 1080p recordings while playing back other videos on two separate extenders with no issues. I'm using a higher-end RAID card but my drives are all consumer grade.

How many drives, at what speed, are you recording onto? I have 4, 7200 RPM drives for recording 6 HD streams onto (and four HD extenders). By having acaching scheme, I would feel more comfortable only having larger, possibly slower, drives used for evrything.