The price would definitely tend towards being problematic - how many people are going to be willing to pay towards $100 (or possibly more) for such a cable once parts and labor are accounted for? Unless there was a market for thousands of these, the parts cost really can't be brought down all that much as you wouldn't be buying the parts in high enough volumes to get meaningful discounts.

One of the variables that would need to be worked out is that not all modular power supplies use the same connector at the power supply end. It sounds like some power supplies use a 4 pin Molex connector while mine uses a 6 pin connector (PCI-Express V1 in FrozenCPU's nomenclature). It turns out that my power supply is already using 18 gauge wire, so the only incentive for me to build a custom cable is to make things look a bit nicer - I'm honestly not sure it's worth the effort as it doesn't look all that bad right now.

Exactly, thanks for adding clarity to my post as to why I'm not to keen to make cable for others.
Not to mention the obvious liability that comes with providing parts.
Cavediver did well with the fan board it doesn't play any rolls for electrical or structural use.
It doesn't modify anything if you don't like it put back the original.
In the case of cables if there were ever a smoker someones likely to get sued.
No Thanks.

This is strickly a friends and family area of operations.

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Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

Ah well. It was worth a shot. I know cavediver has looked into this and i had talked to him on his Fan Board thread about it. Says he is looking into it and going to price things out. Hopefully he can get the numbers good that it would work for him to do them and start selling them. I understand yes it would be say $ 100 or maybe a little more as Greynolds stated, but i know as for myself, i would be willing to pay that for a nice for a high quality cable that would have no problems handling the power supply for all 20 drives. I am sure there would be others as well. I understand though you point on it.

Anywho i still love your build. I love having spaces for more drives but you must be loving all the room you have to grow in one box no less. Without expanders or anything. Very slick for sure. Like i said though must be a nightmare to move that beast.

Is there much involved mating the 2 Norco's together ?

Where did you find your MB for the price you listed in the thread ? I looked everywhere on Ebay for one for that great price

No issues running the Drive cards and the SAS ports together on the MB ?

Nice work again !

The Mobo was used, and I opted not to use the on board Sas ports as they appeared to have a odd connector.
They didn't give me the warm and fuzzies.
As a result of not using thos ports the top two backplanes are not currently plugged in.
I am waiting to see if Areca ever produces a 6gb expander, they have the controller already.
The adaptec expanders allow for multiple input connections for throughput aggregation.

There are new hard drives available that support SATA III 6GB transfers so if your controllers and expanders handled that WOOOOOOO! that would be sweet.
So I am in no hurry to buy too many drives right now or new controllers, sort of dragging my feet to see what the next six months turns up.

I have read a handfull of reports that some guys have had success with Areca 1880 (beta) controllers and Adaptec expanders using multilane connections to 6GB sata III drives.
But I figure I will let it cook for awhile before jumping on that bandwagon.

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Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

Just thought I would post a followup on the whole stacking idea.
It would have been easier/simpler to use port expanders going out the back of two RPC-4220's

but I had other idea's

1. Be able to use true full band controllers.
2. Keep as much of the cable clutter to a minimum. (GF gives me grief for the cable octopus issue)
3. Have the power supplies tied together
4. Be able to easily work on internals without unstacking being required.
5. Be labeled as a nut job for cutting up brand new cases.
6. It is simply cool, wasn't shooting for practical at all, fun factor played a HUGE role.

Any way, this project gave me some new idea's and my bro just got a new I7-975 arrangement and I'm trying to talk him into allowing me to mount that bad boy in an antique radio cabinet with an even more hacked up pair of 4220's inside while disquising it as a 1930's era radio.

I don't have a lot of faith thats going to happen but I sure would love to do that.
With the new fans That system can almost sit in the TV room, with a bit more playing I could get it very quiet I think.

Has anyone on here seen/read about the mineral oil submerged systems?
I think a combo oil/tec for the main board, then some large thermocouple controlled slow rpm fans could make for a near silent 40+ drive box that looks like an art deco radio that would sit quietly in the TV room.

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Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

I was able to order parts from FrozenCPU.com, and duplicate the power cable sets that cavediver fabricated for his 4220, it came out fine, but in my opnion, it was probably not worth the effort and time it took to get it done. I used heat shrink tubing, as well as the flexabile webbing, and it came out fine, but, the time required just wasn't worth it.. I am glad I did it, and I do have some cabling tools, as I used to be in the cabling business in the mid 90's, so it wasn't a huge challenge for me, having access to molex crimp tools, etc.

If you have 3-4 hours to kill, a volt/ohm meter, and you don't mind spending ridculous money for pretty cables, go for it, otherwise the ones that come with your modular PS will work just fine.

That was the other point I was making.
To the average person the outcome would not be worth the money.
You have to have a hatred of run amuk cabling to do this and be ok with the expense.

Keep in mind once your system is up and running how often are you going to see them.
For me it just felt like unfinished business, and as I was swapping out fans it bugged me.
But I do think if someone were to try to sell these it would be cost prohibative to anyone not OCD about their wires.

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

OMG!!!! Dudes, I was poking around over at WGS and found an add-in that is the SHEEEEZNIT for me anyway.
It's called program launcher, it allows you to launch anything from your console.
Where this becomes really cool is remotely when you web into your WHS from somewhere and it then lets you treat it as an RDP session.
Without having to run RDP seperately.
I have had many an occassion where port 3389 was blocked but never port 80 WAHOOOOO!

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

Just an update, The beast has been 100% flawless and stable.
The add-ins are working well, my power bill has not been effected appreciably.
Not a single lockup or mystery reboot.

All in all a great system, watching vail with interest to see if the bugs get worked out.

Here's my idea for a migration,

1. shut down the server physically remove all the storage pool drives.
2. reformat and install vail on the system drive 64bit (exclude from pool)
3. insert a single new 2tb drive allow to go into pool.
4. insert a drive from the old pool into the server, do not add to pool.
5. move the data from old drive to new storage pool drive.
6. add now empty old drive to storage pool and repeat process until all old drives have been migrated.

Does anyone see issue with this idea?

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

Another option is to install Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V. Set up a VM for WHS and do a server recovery in the VM for WHS preserving all of the WHS storage pool data. Then install Vail in another VM with a few drives for the initial storage pool. Migrate the data from the WHS VM to the Vail VM inserting new drives in the Vail VM as they're emptied in the WHS VM. Since it's all internal to the same machine, the file copies should be pretty fast.

That will work just fine. I have done it and it's not very time consuming and you just work at the server level. My problem is the unstability of the beta. I suppose it will get better. When I exclude the the system drive from default server storage, everything looks great except the system won't reboot the next time. So, I have also gotten a lot of experience reinstalling and then migrating the data back on to default storage. When I put the last tries data files back on the system they go to non-default storage so it's a simple matter to create the shared folders again and copy the data from non-default to default storage.

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HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

I sort of hate to say it but with a bunch of the features I wanted left out of Vail, I'm having a hard time imagining moving any time soon.
My system is rock solid, and being from a IT back ground I'm perfectly happy staying with an older OS thats stable, the old "If it aint broke don't fix it" addage comes to mind.
I am less inclined to upgrade to vail just for the fun of having a new version, there needs to be a real value to the process and expense as we all know their not going to give that away free.
But who wants to repeat the experience of upgrading from XP to Vista just because it's new?
So I'm holding my breath for some real substantive reason to want Vail, so far I havent seen it.

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

Help...I had a server melt down yesterday and after trying everything else I tried a server restore. The restore worked okay...it finds the drives but will not find the data. It looks like I'm going to have to take the data from the individual drives and put them back in as you suggested in your vail conversion. My question is...do I transfer all the data on the drives...or just the individual files. When the failure happened, duplication was on...so I have duplicate data on drives. How will that work??? Will the server know it's duplicate data or will it assume it's original data... Please give a more comprehensive explanation of the procedure.

Sounds like the drivers didn't load properly when you did the server recovery. What is your setup?

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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 have an ex470 with a 4 bay e-sata and an 8 bay usb (total 18T). I tried the restore a couple of times and it kept doing the same thing. I also tried a fresh install with a new drive and all the drives removed and it worked fine.