Final Thoughts...
This has been a real unique build for me. So it
turns out that this is allot more practical that
I realized when the thought started stirring in
the old noggin. But its not without its problem
areas. For instance the heat factor is still something
to contend with. I have actually built out an additional
fan array that fits real well in the gap between
the rails. It dropped the temperature of the drives
by an additional 10 degrees. The one problem I needed
to address in this build was the need for a second
fan in the front of the case on the filter side
of the case. This would have required some serious
metal work to pull off.
Another down side I did run into is the limitation
of the SCSI 2 based drives. They top out at about
20 Mbs. but that usually isn't an issue with raid
and a good raid controller with some memory onboard.
All in all I have to say this is allot cooler rig
than I thought it would be at first. One thing I
would love to have had the time to do is build out
a custom LED array for the drive activity lights.
Each drive has its own LED and a unique LED jumper
on them. With 2 of these units running 28 drives
that's one hell of a light show. The drives really
light up with the raid 5 on them when data access
is occurring. Running all the leds to a separate
panel that has just a ton of apparently random flashing
LEDS would be very cool, and functional as well.
It acts as a visual indicator, or conbon of the
drives status. So there you have it. The poor mans
raid array. For under the price of a comparably
sized drive you can have the ultimate redundant
array of them. And that's got to amount to a geek
level up right?
Hi
guys, I thought this a good chance to jump in here
and discuss this project as i wrote it. So here
some quick Q&A for all those opinions i have
seen floating around on the ole www.
Q. Was this already dugg and there for not cool?
A. Yes it was. But a lot of peeps don't seem to
dig in the depths of Digg to often, so its always
refreshing to get more eyes on a project, selfish
as it may sound.
Q. Was this cool once?
A. I think it still is if you need a redundant cheep
storage solution. This doesn't have a lot of use
other than archiving. When this project was originally
done it was at a point that 2 or 4 drives were reaching
a similar combined size affordably.
Q. Does onboard Raid suck?
A. Not for home users. Unless your overclocking
your more likely to loose items with moving parts
before motherboards.
Q. What is the better raid?
A. That depends on the application.. Raid 1/0 is
really great for anyone that wants higher bandwidth
and some redundancy. For a home user that's really
the best all around solution. High end raid 5 or
6 solutions in SCSI or Sata are great for business
solutions, and Sata raid 5 solutions are becoming
more affordable and standard on some high end consumer
grade motherboards.
Q. Is it faster than Sata?
A. well if the bandwidth is what's being referenced
here then in this instance, No. The drives that
were used run at basically SCSI2 or some where about
20 meg per seconds.
Q. is raid 5 better than other raid types?
A. Yes and No. you see its all about application
of raid. For instance raid 5 is a 90% read to 10%
write type architecture. So if your reading a lot
its less latent and much more redundant than other
solutions. Also it gives you the ability of a hot
spare so in the event that a drive fails then you
can have the array rebuild on the fly. Also its
dynamically scaleable, you would need a very expensive
Sata raid controller to provide something comparable.
Q. Is it out of date?
A. For 99.9% of users.. Yes. But its still cool!
Q. Is it a power hog?
A. No more than a standard 450 watt computer. It
uses the same power supply.
