As a fun project, I've managed to get 16 SCSI drives from eBay (all
working, tested myself) of 23 GB each. I am planning on making a file
server out of these drives. I've already got two SCSI controllers for the
drives (as well as a SCSI CDROM and two other SCSI drives for other uses in
the server), and I'm curious if anyone has done anything similar before.
The toughest part I've had so far is finding a way to power the drives,
thankfully they will draw a peak of 25.6A on the +12V and 16A on the +5V,
and I found a supply that will give 36A on the +12 and 29A on the +5. So
power is good. I'm working on an enclosure to house them, and I've got
long enough cabling and external hookups for all the drives to connect to
and stuff.

Basically, has anyone undergone something this massive (and pointless)
before, and if so, what pitfalls should I watch for?

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email: de_on-lag@co_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services

http://www.hoffmanonline.com/

http://www.hoffmanonline.com/Product...ducts_Data.htm

http://www.hoffmanonline.com/pdf/DataComPriceList.pdf


- -- - -- - --
-- - -- - - -- - - - -- - - -- --
- -- - - - -- - -- - -- -- -- -- - -- -
--
Necessity is the Mother of invention.

I'd tell you a secret, but it wouldn't be a secret anymore.

damn thing will sound like a jet airliner taking off when those babies all
spin up. Better stand back or get sucked into the gravity well. ;-)



...
"DeMoN LaG" <n@a> wrote in message
news:Xns942418C271F91Wobbly@216.168.3.30...

Thor wrote:

Thor:

Have you ever thought about setting up a for-pay support system? I have
some clients/friends/colleagues who might be willing to pay you for your
expertise, but they are not going to post in a newsgroup. (I would have
sent you this message privately, but you don't have a valid email
address. If you have a throw away Yahoo or Hotmail address, send it to
me privately and I'll tell you my thoughts.

Mike

DeMoN LaG wrote:

An overabundance of dead goats :-)

JJ

mcp6453 <mcp28352@bellsouth.net> wrote in news:3FA10CF4.F36@bellsouth.net:

I personally can not answer for Thor on this question, but one must realize
one thing about this newsgroup and it's participants:
Most (if not all of us) don't do this with the hope of being paid. We do
this because it is a talent we have for some reason that not everyone does,
and if we can take 30 minutes of our day to give out free advice and help,
we are giving back to the community. I can't say that Thor wouldn't take
your offer, but I can say I would be very surprised if he did.

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk (actually me)
email: de_on-lag@co_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services

DeMoN LaG wrote:
do-or did. (When they hired a new support tech they moved me to mostly
programming.) We (or at least I) participate here not only to 'give
back' as you mentioned but also to learn & expand my skills.

IMO the hardest part about support is 'remote' support. I'm lucky in
that most of my paid support duties are within this building-if I can't
understand the user's explanation of what's going on then I can get off
my lazy butt & go over to see for myself. In my side job (self-employed
support) that often isn't possible so I need to keep my communication
skills sharp-diagnosing problems from inadequate descriptions,
communicating solutions to people who have only the slightest idea what
I'm telling them to do, etc. Participating here-both what I offer & what
I see from others-helps me with that.

So personally, I participate here for two reasons-gratitude for the help
I've received, both here & elsewhere, in the past & self-benefit for
what I'm receiving now.

Thanks.

"mcp6453" <mcp28352@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:3FA10CF4.F36@bellsouth.net...
Thanks for the offer, but I must decline. I already have plenty on my
business plate to handle. :-)

"DeMoN LaG" <n@a> wrote in message
news:Xns942418C271F91Wobbly@216.168.3.30...
Never tried this before. I imagine that the noise will be pretty bad. But
do keep us updated on how it turns out.

"Adam Steiner" <ajst@ym.yu.edu> wrote in
news:21923cdb786e5c9d0293cafd26fec114@news.teranew s.com:

Noise is negligible (if that's spelled right). I've connected 2 of the 16
drives at once and they are near silent (only 5400 RPMs too, so low heat
output). The two 23 gig drives I hooked up (they are Seagate ST4 series
drives) are quieter than a single IBM 18 GB drive (model number not handy).

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk (actually me)
email: de_on-lag@co_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
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"DeMoN LaG" <n@a> wrote in message
news:Xns9425CBC29B80Wobbly@216.168.3.30...
Either way, good luck. Besides, even if it's a bit noisy, who cares . Do
you have any plans for it? Or will you just leave it running for fun.

--Adam

"Adam Steiner" <ajst@ym.yu.edu> wrote in
news:3011d8fecd81ee4c089e863496f2692d@news.teranew s.com:

I plan on using the drives as a replacement for the single 80 GB maxtor
drive that currently is a network share for music and applications. Though
it is only at 65% full, I would just like to set up a massive 300GB+
storage dump. If not for having 4x the storage, then for the experience
and being able to say "Hey, I set up a 16 drive RAID array"

--
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email: de_on-lag@co_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services

"DeMoN LaG" <n@a> wrote in message
news:Xns942512D8612EWobbly@216.168.3.30...
Sounds great. Are all of the drives the same type? Or just the same size?
I haven't touched RAID arrays yet, although my curent project involves
building a computer cluster in my university. We have no clue what we're
doing with it, but hey, half the fun is building it .

"Adam Steiner" <ajst@ym.yu.edu> wrote in
news:5c95ca431175de8e316bc85cde0efcfb@news.teranew s.com:

Not only are they all the same size, they are all the exact same model.
Here is a link to their spec sheet:
http://www.seagate.com/cgi-bin/view....csi/st423451.w

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk (actually me)
email: de_on-lag@co_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 06:50:47 -0000, DeMoN LaG <n@a> wrote:

Now you're making me jealous...lol
I say go for it, I believe it's never a waste of time or money if you
enjoy doing it, it's your time and money :-)
Think of it as a learning experience, which is never a waste as it's
an asset which no one can take away from you.
I have a room full of old computers and parts, 15 I got from a medical
center when they upgraded, some I do up and give away others I just
strip for parts to sell.
I have a 5 computers networked, MSDOS, RedHat, Win98, Win2000, and
XP....Why? because I can :-)
Always something to learn or experiment with.

Good luck and enjoy.



RedBack

Get a bottle of Tylenol. The premise is ridiculous.

"DeMoN LaG" <n@a> wrote in message
news:Xns942418C271F91Wobbly@216.168.3.30...

"DeMoN LaG" <n@a> wrote in message
news:Xns942418C271F91Wobbly@216.168.3.30...
Two scsi controllers won't help much, what you need is a raid 5 controller, then
you can get a usable system.
I have a server here with 5 9Gb scsi drives in raid 5. (its a P 133 with 256Mb
or ram)

Derek

derek / nul <abuseonly@sgrall.org> wrote in
news:8jb6qv4teru1cjutnrjplnb8ir3faijd4r@4ax.com:

A RAID5 controller would be nice, however the OS being installed onto it
can do software RAID5, which for what I want to do would be fine, I don't
care about the speed hit, the machine just sits there doing this all day,
so it needing to use it's CPU cycles for calculating parity information and
handling the array is not a big deal at all. If it wasn't doing that, it
would just sit there idling.

The machine handling this will be one of:
A Duron 1.2 w/512 megs of RAM
A Duron 800 w/256 megs of RAM
A P2 350 w/256 megs of RAM

The load on the server shouldn't be very large, just 3 or 4 machines
hitting it for music and movies, some home built applications, roaming
profiles, etc. Nothing major.

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk (actually me)
email: de_on-lag@co_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services