Assassin Server Project - Page 4

Just screwing with you a bit man

The Shadow was a radio show from the 1950s. The tag line of the show was "only the shadow knows". No I am not that old. My Dad use to ramble on about it when I was a kid.

These are the cables . In fact , all the cables came from this supplier including a cpu power extension as well . They are not cheap but when you consider the amount of connections that are being made it's not really bad and the quality is really excellent. I use this supplier a lot but never thought to look at them in this situation.

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/11...uVsf&mv_pc=159

That supplier link was provided to me by Assassin . Thanks man !

That cable has an end cap on the SATA connector. But website pictures may not be right. May be funnyfuka is correct.

Look like nice cables

two questions:

1) is the server guide separate from the HTPC guide?

2) hardware question: I'm using an older, but nice tower PC to build a server. The hard drive rack is just the standard 5.25" rack. I'm wondering what hardware you might recommend to make drive installation/removal easier? I'm considering removable docking bays, but not sure what brands work well. I'll have 4 x 2 tb drives.

These are two good 5 in 3 hot swap cages. These will be the most convent although more expensive than a non hot-swap cage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816133030

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817121405

I have 4 x 5.25" bays available. I am thinking about using those bays to house six (6) 3.5" HDDs using a pair of the following 2 x 5.25" -> 3 x 3.5" converters:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835110018

Has anyone here had any experience with this particular bay converter/cooler product? Thanks.

Not willing to junk the tower case I had for so many years, I reused it for my new media server. Here is the list of parts:
Old tower case
BCM RX67Q mother board
G530T 35W Celeron
Skill 2GB x2 RAM
Cooler Master 4-in-3 3.5in HDD module
Thermaltake MAX-1562 6 bay 2.5in HDD rack
Highpoint 2300 RocketRAID 4 port PCIe adapter
Seasonic SS-330ET 80+ PSU
Samsung 64GB SSD for OS


The 6 bay 2.5in rack is visible. One bay is used by the OS SSD. The other 4 are connected to the RocketRAID 2300 4 port card.

The RocketRAID card is to the left and 3x 3.5in HDDs are in the 4-in-3 module to the right. There are total of 9 internal SATA ports.

A cold/hot air separator is fashioned out of card board and placed just above the CPU heatsink and below the fan. Behind the separator to the left is a Gelid TC (thermal controlled) case fan pulling hot air out. The 120mm fan on the 4-in-3 HDD module was replaced with a thermal controlled fan also. On top is a SS-350ET PSU. One of the smallest 80+ rated PSU I could find.

This BCM RX67Q MB has dual gigabit ethernet ports. Since they are not the V type found on desktop boards, WHS 2011 installed with no problems. The black rubber stud at corner of the fan replaced screws to reduce vibration. The case panels were lined with rubber sound insulation sheets.

The server is normally running at 60-70W with 7 HDDs and one SSD. At 80% PSU efficiency, the server is using about 50-55W.

Not quite what Assassin built but built with low power and noise as the objective.
Edited by dksc318 - 6/26/12 at 11:01pm

this may be an obvious question, however, i figured someone here would have a good answer. I have many used hard drives from old computers. What is the best way to clean one so it could be used for the operating system drive. The drive wont be used for data.
thanks
eric

Not sure what your asking.

Here is a couple random thoughts:

#1. It's not worth the effort spent to bother installing an OS to a standard HDD when SSD's are $60. It just makes no sense to me. My personal time is worth more than the cost of the SSD. If I paid myself $15 an hour, and being near expert level experience in doing clean installs and set ups- I would still not break even.
I would look into an SSD for any new clean installation purpose. HDD's are for storage only IMO.
Additionally- I am expecting someone to chime in here and say "yeah but for a server you can get away with using an HDD" but I still feel that is decidedly wrong. Anyone who feels that is wrong or misguided. Factor in- many people installing WHS or a server OS with flexraid or some type of drive pooling- and setting it all up- is probably even more rookie at that than installing a standard windows OS. The learning curve and set up time is even greater and the demand on your time and the effort required are increased. It's not something you want to do a second time when upgrading to an SSD. And- HDD even for a server is a performance penalty I would not choose given the low cost of SSD. I saw an Agility 60GB for $40 last week, I have one in my server it it works great. (I paid $52 for mine)

#2. "Cleaning" a HDD is as simple as formatting it. NOTE: This will erase everything on the drive. StartMenu-->MyComputer-->Rightclick it-->Manage-->DiskManagement. In there you can format and manage your hard drives. You can delete, repartition or simply format. I fresh formatted HDD is totally empty and ready for installation of HDD.

#3. For what purpose and what are you installing? Might have better advice.

Mfusick,
thanks for reply. i was going to use it for an OS drive. After reading what you wrote i rethought and decided to just go with SSD. I have one in my current HTPC and why not just put one in the server also.
thanks

Assassin
i purchased and am following your server guide. In the Installing Hard Drive section, there is no mention of adding drives which already contain data. Is it possible to add? I have a half full 2TB drive from the HTPC which Id like to move to the server. Maybe its just best to move the MKV's to one of the other two 2TB drives which will be in the server? I ultimately will have three 2tb drives and one 3tb parity drive.

You should be okay to install the 2nd drive (the one that contains the data) into your system.

 

Your new OS will recognize the drive and apply appropriate file system permissions.

 

One thing I would highly recommend...install the 2nd drive after you've installed your OS onto the new drive:

 

• You may want to be 100% sure that Windows Setup does not attempt to install to the 2nd drive, subsequently killing your existing data. You never know, Setup might see the drive as Disc 0 and you may inadvertently choose to install to Disc 0...
• I like to have all my drivers, firmware, etc installed and updated first before adding any extra hardware...makes things go a little smoother 

Always. It's usually not a problem but I made this mistake back on a socket 939 build..(yeah that was a while ago) and learned my lesson since. 5 years later it just seems automatic to do it this way.

great, thank you for the information. I currently only have an SSD installed for the OS. Im at the piont of installing all the hard drives and wanted to make sure before proceeding.
my plan... I will install the 3tb parity drive, two 2tb drives and set up WHS, per the guide, then install the 2tb drive with data on it.
THANKS

Assassin, does your server guide have the trick for getting MSE on WHS2011?

It is in the guide. I put it on my WHS server per the guides directions.

Asassin- Did you or Flocko pick out the parts for this build ?

I love how the white PSU matches the inside of the case so slick... a stupid thing but it looks cool. Was that planned or an accident ?