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post #541 of 1466
8/6/12 at 2:46pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Defcon View Post

 


 


 


 





Trying not to think about it eek.gif I plan to start with the ones I have, about 9TB in various sizes, and slowly expand as I find good deals. I saw BestBuy was selling Seagate 3TB externals for <$100 a few weeks ago, missed that deal.

 

3T for <100. wow. I would buy right away:)
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post #542 of 1466
8/6/12 at 3:00pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by wkearney99 View Post

That's not the same SATA backplane board as the one in the previous intel versions. Mine has the LED plugs, but there's no single LED jumper, there's a four jumpers, with position 1 being connected. I'm assuming that's the LED setting but I'd wonder what the other positions control.
Meanwhile I've noticed the lights in one of my bays isn't working. I checked and the jumper is present; and works when used on another bay. Seems like that bay lights are burnt out or something, A drive connected in it still works fine.

Are you sure it's the LEDs? Did you try another drive from a bay with working lights... I had a few Seagates that would not activate the LEDs... That is until I updated the drive firmware.

Just an idea.
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post #543 of 1466
8/6/12 at 3:12pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by bima View Post

3T for <100. wow. I would buy right away:)

I purchased 12 of them when they were 139. Eight of the were DOA! No more seagate drives for me.
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post #544 of 1466
8/6/12 at 4:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Litlgi74 View Post

I purchased 12 of them when they were 139. Eight of the were DOA! No more seagate drives for me.
The key to drives (from any vendor) seems to be avoiding purchasing a quantity from the same production run. Most vendors seem to have suffered that kind of nonsense lately. I made the mistake of purchasing 4 WD 2tb EARS drives from one vendor. Two were DOA, the other two crapped out a week later. Suffice to say I was not pleased. At least with seagate they send you a paid postage sticker when you do an advance replacement. WD leaves you holding the bag to pay the shipping. I've had FAR more drive failures with WD than anyone else. But times change and vendors flip-flop on reliability. The only safe way around initial DOA seems to be avoiding everything being from the same production run. Pretty much impossible to determine with most online vendors, so you buy from more than one to spread the odds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Litlgi74 View Post

I had a few Seagates that would not activate the LEDs... That is until I updated the drive firmware. Just an idea.
Good idea, I'll swap something else into the dead bay. But when I moved that drive (which happened to be a seagate) to another bay those LEDs lit up just fine. As do the dozen other seagates in the other bays. Given these are passive backplanes I'm left to think it's the LEDs in just that bay. But I'll try rearranging just to see.
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post #545 of 1466
8/6/12 at 10:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wkearney99 View Post

The key to drives (from any vendor) seems to be avoiding purchasing a quantity from the same production run. Most vendors seem to have suffered that kind of nonsense lately. I made the mistake of purchasing 4 WD 2tb EARS drives from one vendor. Two were DOA, the other two crapped out a week later. Suffice to say I was not pleased. At least with seagate they send you a paid postage sticker when you do an advance replacement. WD leaves you holding the bag to pay the shipping. I've had FAR more drive failures with WD than anyone else. But times change and vendors flip-flop on reliability. The only safe way around initial DOA seems to be avoiding everything being from the same production run. Pretty much impossible to determine with most online vendors, so you buy from more than one to spread the odds.
Good idea, I'll swap something else into the dead bay. But when I moved that drive (which happened to be a seagate) to another bay those LEDs lit up just fine. As do the dozen other seagates in the other bays. Given these are passive backplanes I'm left to think it's the LEDs in just that bay. But I'll try rearranging just to see.

I got extremely lucky on this one. Right before the flooding last year, I purchased 24 3TB hitachi drives. 22 5400RPM(5700 Really), and 2 7200 RPM Drives. I got all the 5400's for 129, the 7200's for 160ish. I have pre-cleared all of these using unraid and have had zero problems so far.

Meanwhile, about 3 years ago I purchased 8 1TB's for seagate, 5 out of the 8 failed in less than a year, 2 within 1 month.

I know run tests on all drives right when they arrive, and also try to find recommendations from people who buy drives by the hundreds. Kinda bummed since I think I read somewhere that Hitachi sold their HDD division.

I actually purchased my drives basted on the back blaze published failure rate findings from their custom pods, which are amazing, have a look http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/
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post #546 of 1466
8/7/12 at 6:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Litlgi74 View Post

I purchased 12 of them when they were 139. Eight of the were DOA! No more seagate drives for me.

wow, the quality is going down?...

I remember, bough the last drives before flooding( they do make this condition to jack-up the HD price, oh well Seagate and WD) was 2T for $60. it is kind of regretting not buy as many 2T frown.gif.
I was expecting 3T price around $90, well never happens now.....
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post #547 of 1466
8/7/12 at 7:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bima View Post

wow, the quality is going down?...
I remember, bough the last drives before flooding( they do make this condition to jack-up the HD price, oh well Seagate and WD) was 2T for $60. it is kind of regretting not buy as many 2T frown.gif.
I was expecting 3T price around $90, well never happens now.....

Yeah, I had just started getting into building a media server a couple months before the floods, and deeply regret not buying drives in larger quantities. 2TB drives have been pretty stagnant over the last couple of months at around $100, but the 3TB prices have been coming down nicely. I'm still hoping that by the time my current array is full, 4TB drives will be available for around $100 (but I'm probably dreaming...)
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post #548 of 1466
8/7/12 at 8:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Defcon View Post

Found this info on heatsinks - http://imountain.com/blog/2009/06/22/socket-f-heatsink-and-fan-same-as-socket-940/

 

Can anyone confirm this?

Can anyone help me with finding a quiet HSF? I'll most likely replace the cpu with an Opetron 2419 which seems like the best bang for the buck.

 

e.g. will this work? - http://www.ebay.com/itm/Thermaltake-Tiny-Fin-A1819-Socket-940-AMD-Opteron-1U-Rack-Mount-Copper-Heatsink-/330767005139?pt=US_Fan_Heatsin_Brackets_Accs&hash=item4d033ff5d3. Or will it need a fan as well?

 

Will I need to get a mounting bracket for the HSF? Will any AM2 HSF work? I'm not familiar with AMD and server motherboards.

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post #549 of 1466
8/8/12 at 7:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mcturkey View Post

Yeah, I had just started getting into building a media server a couple months before the floods, and deeply regret not buying drives in larger quantities. 2TB drives have been pretty stagnant over the last couple of months at around $100, but the 3TB prices have been coming down nicely. I'm still hoping that by the time my current array is full, 4TB drives will be available for around $100 (but I'm probably dreaming...)
yap...

I guess, we just need relax and enjoy while waiting 2T-3T price is going down slowly.
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post #550 of 1466
8/8/12 at 8:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Defcon View Post

Can anyone help me with finding a quiet HSF? I'll most likely replace the cpu with an Opetron 2419 which seems like the best bang for the buck.

e.g. will this work? - http://www.ebay.com/itm/Thermaltake-Tiny-Fin-A1819-Socket-940-AMD-Opteron-1U-Rack-Mount-Copper-Heatsink-/330767005139?pt=US_Fan_Heatsin_Brackets_Accs&hash=item4d033ff5d3. Or will it need a fan as well?

Will I need to get a mounting bracket for the HSF? Will any AM2 HSF work? I'm not familiar with AMD and server motherboards.

I ended up going for this one. It clipped right on the mounting bracket and took 1 second to mount, and has been pretty darn quiet. It's hard to find HSF's for socket F that aren't really friggin' loud.
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post #551 of 1466
8/8/12 at 8:13am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewOrlnsDukie View Post

I ended up going for this one. It clipped right on the mounting bracket and took 1 second to mount, and has been pretty darn quiet. It's hard to find HSF's for socket F that aren't really friggin' loud.

Just a heads up... the new batch of Servers comes with a heatsink that requires no brackets... but if you are looking to mount a traditional HSF... you will need a set of these:



http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/cpu-retainer-clips-amd-1207-f.html
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post #552 of 1466
8/8/12 at 11:13pm
Just received my Supermicro unit and it would appear it is DOA. One dead power supply for sure and nothing from the VGA out. eMailing TAMS now. Hoping that the support you all have gotten is as good as you say smile.gif .

On a side note, the PSU's are not actually that loud. They are audible, but definitely tolerable, especially in a garage.

If anyone doing the PSU mod to these units wants to send me their PSU's, I will gladly pay for shipping. Please don't throw them out, I will take em biggrin.gif
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post #553 of 1466
8/8/12 at 11:46pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mexicanmike03 View Post

Just received my Supermicro unit and it would appear it is DOA. One dead power supply for sure and nothing from the VGA out. eMailing TAMS now. Hoping that the support you all have gotten is as good as you say smile.gif .
On a side note, the PSU's are not actually that loud. They are audible, but definitely tolerable, especially in a garage.
If anyone doing the PSU mod to these units wants to send me their PSU's, I will gladly pay for shipping. Please don't throw them out, I will take em biggrin.gif

My server "appeared" to be DOA as well... but it turned out it was either the SATA cards and or the memory sticks that had come loose during shipping. Try removing each card and memory stick and reinstall them... See if that does the trick.

Let us know.
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post #554 of 1466
8/9/12 at 6:00am
This could be an interesting deal for anyone looking to max out one of the xeon-based boards:
http://memoryx.com/2x-8gb-ddr2-667-poweredge-2950-ddr2-667mhz-pc2-5300-240-pin-cl5-dual-rank-ecc-fbdimm.php
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post #555 of 1466
8/9/12 at 7:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Litlgi74 View Post

My server "appeared" to be DOA as well... but it turned out it was either the SATA cards and or the memory sticks that had come loose during shipping. Try removing each card and memory stick and reinstall them... See if that does the trick.
Let us know.

I will take a look at that, either way, the PSU is DOA for sure. I already swapped the units to test the slots, but it is that one PSU that is dead.
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post #556 of 1466
8/9/12 at 8:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by wkearney99 View Post

This could be an interesting deal for anyone looking to max out one of the xeon-based boards:
http://memoryx.com/2x-8gb-ddr2-667-poweredge-2950-ddr2-667mhz-pc2-5300-240-pin-cl5-dual-rank-ecc-fbdimm.php

You are talking about memory for this board SuperMicro X7DBE-X . Supermicro lists the max at 32GB of ram, and that 8gb modules are unsupported. They will probably work, and were just never fully qualified by supermicro, but I wouldn't want to be the first one to take the risk wink.gif
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post #557 of 1466
8/9/12 at 12:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bima View Post

wow, the quality is going down?...
IMHO in this case it probably had less to do with Seagate's QC rather than improper handling. A cargo container getting banged around on the ship, a box falling off a pallet as the fork lift is running it around the warehouse, the UPS/Fedex guys throwing it into the truck. The statistical probability of 8 of 12 drives that worked in the factory but arrived DOA and it NOT being a handling issue is astronomically low.
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post #558 of 1466
8/9/12 at 12:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by cdru View Post

IMHO in this case it probably had less to do with Seagate's QC rather than improper handling. A cargo container getting banged around on the ship, a box falling off a pallet as the fork lift is running it around the warehouse, the UPS/Fedex guys throwing it into the truck. The statistical probability of 8 of 12 drives that worked in the factory but arrived DOA and it NOT being a handling issue is astronomically low.

Interesting viewpoint, but if that were the case then wouldn't it be the same for every other hard drive manufacturer?
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post #559 of 1466
8/9/12 at 12:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Biggrich76 View Post

Interesting viewpoint, but if that were the case then wouldn't it be the same for every other hard drive manufacturer?
That wasn't what I was meaning. I was suggesting that it's that, for instance, it's much more likely that some warehouse worker had a box full of bulk drives, accidentally dropped them, then put them back on a shelf and didn't tell anyone so they weren't reprimanded/fired. The problem wasn't with the manufacturer or the quality of the drives themselves, but rather some external event that happened to some set of drives that were purchased at the same time. If the drives were purchased at different times, at different retailers, etc then such an instance is minimized/eliminated. This kind of goes back to the comment above where it recommends not buying drives from the same drive batch.
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post #560 of 1466
8/9/12 at 5:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by cdru View Post

IMHO in this case it probably had less to do with Seagate's QC rather than improper handling. A cargo container getting banged around on the ship, a box falling off a pallet as the fork lift is running it around the warehouse, the UPS/Fedex guys throwing it into the truck. The statistical probability of 8 of 12 drives that worked in the factory but arrived DOA and it NOT being a handling issue is astronomically low.

knock on the wood smile.gif

I bought 500G & 1T & 2T before "flooding":
I never received DOA, even Newegg packaging was not good.
I bought from Amazon, Newegg, superbizz, and ehem.. compusa/tigerdirect.
Amazon was the best on packaging

total my old drive 500g is 10 HDs. RMA'd 6 drives as know. all RMAs were Seagate:), those are still running for my backup ZFS raidz smile.gif

handling is not the main issue as I understand since HD vendors will receive a shipment that HDs friendly container.

I even dropped my new HD in the box. nothing happened..the HD worked as expected.
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post #561 of 1466
8/9/12 at 5:04pm
.....
Edited by bima - 8/9/12 at 5:57pm
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post #562 of 1466
8/9/12 at 5:59pm
Quote:
This could be an interesting deal for anyone looking to max out one of the xeon-based boards:
http://memoryx.com/2x-8gb-ddr2-667-poweredge-2950-ddr2-667mhz-pc2-5300-240-pin-cl5-dual-rank-ecc-fbdimm.php
some LGA771 motherboard do not support 8G stick. mine seem do not like 8G
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post #563 of 1466
8/9/12 at 7:06pm
Awesome, Just got done reseating memory and SATA cards and the server seems to be alive. One of the PSU's is bad for sure though. Thing just lets out a constant high pitched beep. I have unseated it for now and will ask TAMS to send out a replacement, probably with a second server I will be purchasing biggrin.gif. These units are worth the extra cash. I have two of the other ones and they will probably sit unused and unmodified until after I fill up these supermicro's. The mods do not look to bad, but I don't have much free time and want to be able to just power things up and go right away.

The supermicro's are loud in comparison to a home CPU, but as far as server are concerned, not bad at all. I can barely hear it when standing on the other side of my garage door.

Anyone who is replacing or Modifying these units, I am more than willing to pay for the "Throw away" part shipping, just to have the spares.
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post #564 of 1466
8/9/12 at 7:08pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewOrlnsDukie View Post

BTW, for those that were wondering how much crap ends up being removed and not replaced, I took a pic of all the stuff that didn't go back in:

It's a tad lighter now!wink.gif

Here's whats left over after gutting the new SuperMicro Servers:



Notice my tool of choice! biggrin.gif
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post #565 of 1466
8/10/12 at 1:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mexicanmike03 View Post

....
Anyone who is replacing or Modifying these units, I am more than willing to pay for the "Throw away" part shipping, just to have the spares.

not cheap on ebay :P for supermicro PSU. get a replacement from them...

I usually sell unneeded parts. this is better than nothing for me.
Just need to post the motherboard+CPU on ebay that came from previous deal.
the old AIC PSU docking+modules is hard to sell, since the PSU is not having a well known/common branded name, such as supermicro biggrin.gif
Edited by bima - 8/10/12 at 1:05am
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post #566 of 1466
8/10/12 at 7:09am
Are these new servers ever going to show up on eBay? I've been waiting to buy one that way, but I'm wondering if maybe I'm just better off emailing them directly.
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post #567 of 1466
8/10/12 at 7:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by CloudVader View Post

Are these new servers ever going to show up on eBay? I've been waiting to buy one that way, but I'm wondering if maybe I'm just better off emailing them directly.

I think you're better off just calling them to see what's available. It's smarter for them to avoid eBay fees, Paypal fees, etc. if they can sell them outright. The ones they had ready to ship were already sold to people on the waiting list from what I understand, but they may have more.
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post #568 of 1466
8/10/12 at 8:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Biggrich76 View Post

I think you're better off just calling them to see what's available. It's smarter for them to avoid eBay fees, Paypal fees, etc. if they can sell them outright. The ones they had ready to ship were already sold to people on the waiting list from what I understand, but they may have more.

Agreed. Call them up, they are extremely helpful and have been great to work with. I have done most my communication with them over email, as I am at work all the time, but they have been stellar. Here is the info so you don't have to dig through the 20 pages of posts to find it.

jdye@tamsolutions.com
tamsolutions@hotmail.com
801-796-1696

Edit: Just spotted Litlgi74 has this on the first post, my bad. Hopefully it made it easier for 1 person.
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post #569 of 1466
8/10/12 at 10:37am
Thanks to this thread and a little creativity I've just finished building my new monster (8U) of a server. Thought I would share it with you all to stir up some more creativity:

Front:


Back:


Top View:


Angles:



Basically its 2 of the Xeon servers bolted together. Cut a hole through one, rebuilt the motherboard tray. Added a Norco fan wall and a new Norco back + a second Norco fan wall as the top back. I predrilled and countersunk screw holes for a third Norco fan wall should I find that I want extra cooling later. With the physical size of the case heat buildup is a far, far smaller concern than it would be with a single 4U box.

Specs:
******************
Case: 2x 4U AIC RSC-4ED2 (modded heavily)
Motherboard: Supermicro X7DBE-X
Processor: 2x Intel Quad Core E5430
RAM: 16 GB DDR2 Memory (original memory from the 2 servers, have a set of 32 GB coming)
Hard Drive: 320 GB SATA OS Drive
Hard Drive Trays: 4 SATA drives for testing (have 14ish more to add soon)
PSU: PC Power & Cooling 750W (since I'm building for lots of extra space I went with low cost PSU, and made it easy to swap out if I find I'm running it hard)
Controller Cards: 6x SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 (48 bays!!!)
OS: Windows Server 2012 + Hyper-V

***************************

Taking the server apart and hacking, drilling, countersinking, rebuilding etc. took about a week and a bit of part time effort. Its quite quiet now but I would consider replacing the CPU heatsink fans if I was going to have this thing sitting inside my office all day (they are the quietest of all the original fans but still louder than my desktop). Fortunately it'll be going in a server rack and won't really bother me at all.

For anyone looking for screws for the HDD trays, you can easily scrounge them from the parts you strip off. For instance each original PSU has 12 coarse thread counter sunk screws. Couple more from the case and your sitting quite nicely.
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post #570 of 1466
8/10/12 at 10:45am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tazmizzaz View Post

Thanks to this thread and a little creativity I've just finished building my new monster (8U) of a server. Thought I would share it with you all to stir up some more creativity:
Front:

Back:

Top View:

Angles:


Basically its 2 of the Xeon servers bolted together. Cut a hole through one, rebuilt the motherboard tray. Added a Norco fan wall and a new Norco back + a second Norco fan wall as the top back. I predrilled and countersunk screw holes for a third Norco fan wall should I find that I want extra cooling later. With the physical size of the case heat buildup is a far, far smaller concern than it would be with a single 4U box.
Specs:
******************
Case: 2x 4U AIC RSC-4ED2 (modded heavily)
Motherboard: Supermicro X7DBE-X
Processor: 2x Intel Quad Core E5430
RAM: 16 GB DDR2 Memory (original memory from the 2 servers, have a set of 32 GB coming)
Hard Drive: 320 GB SATA OS Drive
Hard Drive Trays: 4 SATA drives for testing (have 14ish more to add soon)
PSU: PC Power & Cooling 750W (since I'm building for lots of extra space I went with low cost PSU, and made it easy to swap out if I find I'm running it hard)
Controller Cards: 6x SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 (48 bays!!!)
OS: Windows Server 2012 + Hyper-V
***************************
Taking the server apart and hacking, drilling, countersinking, rebuilding etc. took about a week and a bit of part time effort. Its quite quiet now but I would consider replacing the CPU heatsink fans if I was going to have this thing sitting inside my office all day (they are the quietest of all the original fans but still louder than my desktop). Fortunately it'll be going in a server rack and won't really bother me at all.
For anyone looking for screws for the HDD trays, you can easily scrounge them from the parts you strip off. For instance each original PSU has 12 coarse thread counter sunk screws. Couple more from the case and your sitting quite nicely.

Now that is AWESOME!!!! Thanks for posting!
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