[Novalug] best hard disk setup for home file server?

Richard Ertel richard.ertel@gmail.com
Wed Oct 14 20:56:39 EDT 2009


cool, my server motherboard [
http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=1958
] happens to have two currently unused PCI-E 1x slots. after searching
newegg, looks like this [
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124027 ] is
my best bet, as the cheaper SYBA card has pretty horrible reviews
(albeit only 3) and only has two SATA II ports (along with two SATA I
ports)

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 20:07, Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@ieee.org> wrote:
> You're not the first, and the LVM marketing is all about making management
> simple so you don't need to know the underlying disk layout.  Microsoft does
> the same with LDM (Logical Disk Manager, aka "Dynamic Discs," long story).
>
> The ideal behind things like LVM, LDM, etc... is to "hide" the underlying disk
> attributes.  But in reality, you still have to know about them for optimization.
> Hence why I'm biased towards the 1:1 Array:VG relationship, because it just
> makes life easier for me.
>
> As far as getting a PCI SATA controller, I would recommend a PCIe x1 (or
> x4 if you have a slot) instead of PCI.  With a 32-bit@33MHz PCI card (typical
> 5V card), you're sharing your PCI with all other peripherials connected to it.
> It can easily be saturated and it only delivers a theoretical 133MBps (don't
> expect more than 60-80MBps maximum).
>
> There are also a lot of cheap, used PCI-X SATA controllers (intelligent and
> "dumb") with 8 channels.  My 3-year old mainboard is this $100 deal:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131160
>
> You can't find them anymore, and the few places that have them charge
> $200+.  I wouldn't recommend them since they are Socket-939 anyway,
> but I had an Opteron EE (low-power) to spare.  They are a nVidia
> SPP+MCP 4-series with x8 of the PCIe channels bridged to an Intel ESB/IXH
> that turns it into a single 64-bit x 133MHz PCI-X channel (1 card = 133MHz, 2
> cards = 100MHz, will auto-slow down to 66MHz or 33MHz for compatibility
> with PCI).
>
> It's replacement for Socket-AM2 is this:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131134
> It hasn't changed in price in the last 2 years.  It's basically a newer SPP+MCP,
> the nVidia Professional 3600 (SPP+MCP 5 or 6-series) with, again, x8 of the
> PCIe channels bridged into an Intel ESB/IXH.  Most other server boards use
> the AMD8132 (or older AMD8131) HyperTransport tunnel for dual-PCI-X
> (instead of this single PCI-X bus), supporting up to 266MHz (133 for 8131).
>
> But at $200 you could do better with a sub-$100, commodity mainboard
> with an PCIe x4 slot and a number of used or late model PCIe x4 storage
> cards with "dumb" SATA ports (and software-only options) or possible a
> real, hardware RAID card.  It wasn't like that 3 years ago when I bought,
> but more storage/communication options are in PCIe x1, x4 and x8 now.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Richard Ertel <richard.ertel@gmail.com>
>
> you keep coming up with obvious solutions that my brain somehow skips
> over. it seems to be in my nature to over-complicate things in an
> effort to reach some kind of nirvana.
>
> these 1.5 TB drives that i claimed are flaky could be ok, as one has
> passed the "Long DST" test in Seatools. once i get all the data onto
> the backup, i'll try the other tests that are not read-only. if these
> drives are ok, i think my plan is to get a PCI SATA controller, and
> just make 3 mirrored LVM2 arrays, one with two 1TB drives, one with
> these two 1.5TB drives, and one with two yet-to-be-purchased
> not-seagate 1.5TB drives.
>



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