eSata server

Had a great spot to place a little server
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111177

plan on loading some 3TB drives in it, but I ran into the problem that eSata doesn't plug into anything I have, so I can get a eSata port to my PCI, but I was really hoping to find a way to hook it up to my laptop, or even better straight to my modem so I don't need to have a pc/laptop connected to the damn thing.

any ideas?

 

i think to get that to work, you have to get an eSata controller addin card that supports port multipliers... not all eSata controllers will be compatible...

 

haven't pulled the trigger on anything, i hear good things about synology.. but a bit out of my price range! looking like i need to grab about 8.5TB of room.

from research it seems matching drives are the way to go.
this is what i used for above

i almost feel it would be cheaper to build a crap computer and throw some hdd's in it.

 

what are you looking to do?... if you're looking to just back stuff up to HDDs every once in a while, i'd just buy a little USB-attached HDD "dock"... if you want a large RAID/JBOD for constant nearline storage, then i guess you'd want the type of thing you're looking at... iStarUSA makes some nice modular trayless HDD modules (one is 3 bays, one is 4 bays) - they have aluminum doors...

http://istarusa.com/drivecages/bpndefeature.php

 

I file share all my data throughout my house and have ran out of space in my computer to throw in another hard drive. data is on 24/7.

i will look into the istarusa when i get home. thank you.

 

Sounds like you want a NAS. Unfortunately a 4 bay NAS is 5 times the price of the enclosure you listed. Might be cheaper to build a cheap PC and make it a NAS. That way you can leave it on the network and free up your laptop/PC.

 

Ya I was doing some more looking, looks like nas is what ill be doing. Not any time soon though the price range is out of my budget for now. the enclosure above. Would work as a temporary for what i need ? Or would i be better if buying a 2 bay for now.

 

esata is wack, shoulda went with usb3 .. not as fast but compatible with more hardware

 

Yes and no. Unless it's an eSATA 6 Gbit/s port with 6 Gbit/s HDDs inside the enclosure, it'll only be a little faster than USB 3.0's 5 Gbit/s speed. Which is all theoretical speeds anyway. And all of that doesn't really matter. Unless the OP is filling this thing with SSDs, HDDs will never see those speeds. Especially if he wants it on the network, then that's about 1 Gbit/s assuming he has a Gigabit network going.

 

eSATA to USB 3 is going to be negligible from what I've seen. IIRC, your network is going to be the slowdown unless you multiplex things... but then we get into industry-grade servers, which is overkill.

A NAS can be less than $200

You do NOT want SSDs for storage. SSDs have a finite number of read/writes before they reach EOL. If you need extreme IOPs, go for SAS drives... but really, I seriously doubt you are pushing that much through the drives.
Moreover, for home filesharing (which I'm guessing is more like centralized storage and HTPC use), the most you need is speed for 1080p video.

First, do you really need 8.5TB?
If there's stuff you rarely use, put it on offline storage
Do you have clutter? Get rid of that old ISO of Windows ME, find instances where you have 5 copies of a song, etc.

Really, I'm thinking your solution is a nicely built HTPC, where your two main concerns are storage space and kW hours used. There's a nice article here with a sample build, and I encourage you to read the comments. One of the suggestions was to go through a company called ZOTAC, which seems intriguing to me.

 

The 8.5 tb is projection for the next 2 years, with space for backups/mirroring.

I'll read through that at home, most of my files I prefer to have online at all times, due to the extra work when wanting to view a movie or television series moving it offline/online etc.

 

In 2 years those drives will be half the price they are now. I'd rather have a good raid controller, a reasonable amount of space, and merge a new drive in when the time comes.

When you say 'backups', you are planning on having your backups continuously connected? Not a great idea. With the amount of effort I'm guessing you are putting into this, plus the concern you have for your files, you need to be using offline media.

 

From my understand the raid would either be mirrored or I preferred to have a 5th spare drive so the other four can rebuild. Honestly, all my files could be replaced.. the time and effort would be hurendious. i lost a tb of movies, and still haven't recovered them.

What's a built HTPC run for you think? Still haven't been able to read the article, but will when im at homr.

 

So how is a HTPC going to solve his offline backup requirements?

Assuming Taiwan doesn't flood again, HDD prices will get cheaper as larger capacity drives come out. Last time I was in Best Buy, I could buy two 2TB HDDs cheaper than a single 4TB HDD.

There are several configurations of RAID. It'll be easier for me to drop this link here than to explain it.

 

so it seems to me, my laptop is already serving as my htpc? just without the lack of more space. so mike, to get it straight, your just recommending building a small htpc with a couple large hard drives in it and call it good.
would be nice to have my laptop back.. lol

after some more reading, an HTPC doesn't sound half bad. but what software will play my stuff seamlessly? from mp4 to avi

 

HTPC is for is online requirements and provides more versatility than a straight NAS. For offline storage, it comes down to a horrendous load of Blu-Rays, or ideally, a tape backup (however, the tape backup rockets the price back up). HDDs for backup is a bad idea because they are prone to too much failure.

Yup. I didn't see if they had RAID controllers, so you might scratch the idea of something like an atom based proc board, or you might need a RAID card... you'll figure it out when you price things. The point in designing a lightweight proc and mobo is to save power. Consider that an always-on comp is a major contributor to your power bill unless it has been built for low consumption. Some of those Zotac boxes run 20W under load - that's nice, considering your home light bulbs use more power, and your home computer is going to be 60-250 watts (basically equivalent to leaving your TV on forever).

Well... if you wanted to do it right, you'd just get in touch with the people at kaleidescape and let them deal with all that silly green stuff you have laying around

but, if you're going to be all miserly, then you are going to need to do your research.

You can simply have it host files like you already do
You can try your best with Media Center
...or you can look into a specialized OS. I used XBMC on a hacked xbox wayyy back in the day, and I know it's still around and much more prominent for HTPCs. There's a bunch more suggestions in that article I linked as well.

 

sounds good Mike, thank you! I should actually start turning my main computer off or at least to sleep, it's on 24/7 and not power efficient by any means.

 

Well if you end up doing the offline back up solution, you should leave your backups out of the house. (friends house, safety deposit box, etc..) If you house burns down or floods your backups are useless if they get destroyed with everything else.

 

not a bad idea, but that would be a lot of discs. o.o

 

I would use HDDs over disc since it's the best GB per $$, and the fastest way to transfer from one device to another. I don't find HDDs to be as unreliable as Mike does. (I prefer Western Digital). Sure the risk is there, but what are the chances you'll face a home disaster and your backup HDDs crap out at the same time? Also if budget allows, multiple backups isn't a bad idea either.