I've been lurking for a long time, but have just recently joined the forum. I currently have a WHS up and running on an Asus P5Q-EM motherboard, E6600 Conroe 2.4GHZ CPU, 2 Gigs of ram, SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card, 8 TB of storage using 1TB WD Green drives. The system drive is in a RAID 1 configuration using WD Scorpio Blue 2.5" 320 gig drives.

The drive pool sits in an Atech Fabrication drive box. Looking back at the amount of money I spent on the 8X Mass Storage case, I could have spent far less on a box that held everything. The server itself sits in a Lian-Li PC-C36B low profile case. It's extremely quiet because it sits in my bedroom, but it's not very serviceable. It's time for an upgrade because I'm running out of storage space!

I've been collecting the components, and I'm almost ready to build. It's going to be a two staged approach because the house is not wired up yet, so for the time being I'll have the new server setup in a mid tower case using 3 in 5 hot swaps for now. Eventually the new hardware will be transfered to a Norco 4020 case that will be located in the garage once the house is wired up.

Here is a list of the components so far:
SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SBE LGA 775 Intel 3210 ATX

SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B Black 5 Bay Hot-Swapable SATA HDD Enclosure

SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card

Intel Pentium E6300 Wolfdale 2.8GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core

Rosewill R901-P BK Mid Tower Case

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply

I don't have any hard drives yet. The ones that I want are the 2TB WD Green Drives. I plan to leave the old server up then migrate everything over once the new server is online before decomissioning the old server. I already have the Norco 4020 case along with a Cyberpower 1500AVR 950 watt UPS, Dell 2716 Webmanaged Switch, Dantraknet SKELETEK C24U-4P-EX12 Rack. Eventually everything will be transfered to the Norco case when the house is wired, but I have to continue to feed my DVD/Blu-ray addiction

I have to say that this appears to be a really nice community.

Welcome to the forums! Sounds like a good build, I'm really enjoying hearing all the "massive storage" build stories.

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Alex Kuretz
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Thanks Alex!

I like Supermicro products. They're top notch. I don't mind spending a little more for a sever class board. Once I migrate everything over to the norco case, I'll be able to team the onboard nics with the Dell switch. It'll end up being a really nice home sever. I should have made my original build with the supermicro board and hot swaps because the money I spent on the Atech drive case could have gone towards the components. Oh well live and learn... There is always ebay... At least I'll be able to recoup some of the cost when I sell the components. I have a ton of stuff that I need to sell.

I just hope HDDs keep getting bigger and cheaper, I have my 16 bay WHS and cant imagine how many more drives I might need down the road if I keep up at this pace. The Supermicro SATA cards have been solid for me. I can get SMART data of the SAT2-MV8 but for whatever reason cannot get SMART data off the SASLP

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Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

I agree. I've been waiting for the price to drop on the 2TB WD Greens and they are slowly going down in price. The Supermicro cards work great. The card is well worth the money. Eight Sata ports for $100 bucks. The performance is pretty good even in a PCI slot.

I'll end up with 15 drives when all the 3in5 hot swaps are installed. I'm replacing the 92mm fans with Nexus fans and a 120mm Nexus fan on the back of the case. I may undervolt them to 7v to get them to be even more quiet.

How is the Atech case? I'm looking to pick up 2 of them but my main concern is not looks but absolute quietness. It will be put inside a cabinet but I really would like a quiet case and I'm willing to pay their high price if it is indeed quiet and I mean no spindle/platter noise. But really I don't see any other quiet cases for storage.

The Atech case is really nice looking, but it's not a very servicable case for hard drives. Which is part of the reason I'm going away from it. It is quiet, and the largest fan you can put in there is an 80mm fan if you choose to use the AC/DC power converter and power brick option which is what I have. Remember that a case is only as quiet as your loudest component. I use the WD Green drives, and you can hear the drives on occasion as they traverse the platters. It's not really bad at all, and it doesn't keep me up at night . The case does not deaden all sound completely, but it does make an effort to isolate the drives using rubber bumpers as noise dampers from the rest of the case. It's a pain in the butt to dissasemble the drive case to access the drives. You basically have to unscrew the lid from the case then remove the hard drive chassis in order to service a drive. Aligning the bumpers is irritating. You only have to take the drive case apart a couple of times to realize this.

The Atech hard drive case is great for someone that lives in an apartment, small condo, or studio with limited space, but I think I can get quietness and servicablility with my next interim build before the big build. The big build will consist of a new Norco 4020 case sitting in a rack in the server closet. That build will be all new hardware with a business class 16 port Dell switch. The Norco case will have the fan bracket replaced either by my own design or using Cavedivers Fan Bracket with slight modification to fit the 4020 case properly. Along with some quiet Nexus fans and some Acousti-Mat. It should be very quiet.

I'm moving my components into a 9 bay Rosewill case for the time being until I can run cat6 through the walls to the new server closet in the living room. I have 3 Supermicro 5 in 3 Hot Swaps, and I'm replacing all the fans on the Hot Swaps with the same size 92mm fan only Nexus. The case fan will be a 120mm Nexus fan, and all of them will be undervolted to 7v. Add a little Acousti-Mat sound proofing material, and I'll be set. This interim build will give me some expandability, better air flow, and it should be quiet. At this point in time the interim build is a case swap. I already have the components for the big build.

The Atech case is nice, but it's very limited and expensive. If I had to do it all over again, I would have gone another route.