Rackmount hard drive array?

[fireforsin]

Hello all. I have a somewhat confusing question that I believe you guys can answer. Here it goes.

 

I have a 19" EIA Rack setup alongside my computer. This is what I want to do. I want to get one of these: RACKMOUNT SATA HARD DRIVE ENCLOSURE

 

The problem with that is I do not want to spend 500-1000 dollars for just a hard drive enclosure. I want to set up about 5 eSATA drives for use in my video editing setup. I would love to have a nice rack system like the one above that could hold all the drives.

 

So begins my idea and question.

 

I was thinking about buying one of these: RACK MOUNT SERVER CASE

 

Since that is much cheaper I could just buy these HARD DRIVE ENCLOSURE and put hard drives in them. So I think I would still be under roughly $500 with the case and hard drives. Now if I just throw some cheap 250W power supply in the case and hook everything up I was hoping it would work. Last but not least I get this: SATA to eSATA

 

What do you think of all this. Would this work? I would greatly appreciate the help.

 

Thanks,

Mike

[Nemo]

First off, to answer your question, yes that should work.

 

But if you look at that Athena server case, it comes with a 550W power supply, so you're good to go there. But you'll be paying $176 + (4 x $14) = $232 before shipping. Add in a couple of internal/external SATA adapters and the price comes out almost the same as spending $250 for the Stardom unit. Figure in shipping and I bet the Stardom is cheaper. The Stardom gives you hot swap capability but the Athena server case gives you more room.

 

You didn't mention whether you wanted JBOD or possibly some form of RAID array, so we'll skip that discussion for the moment. But, if you decide to go with the server case, I'd ditch those hard drive carriers for something along the lines of the Enlight SATA 5BAY Drive Module Black Hot Swap SATA or the SupermicroMobile Rack Black 5BAY SATA Hot Swap Cage. Lots of other companies make 2-4 drive variations as well.

 

For you host computer you might consider a multi-lane adapter like this one. The cables aren't cheap, but not that much more than 4 separate eSATA cables. Plus it cuts down on cable clutter.

 

For a RAID setup, you could use your onboard controller or get a controller card with 4 eSATA connectors. Either solution gives you a software-based RAID option, not true hardware RAID, but then the cost is a lot lower as well.

[fireforsin]

Okay I believe most of that makes sense to me.

 

I want to have 2 RAID 0 Arrays and the rest of the hard drives just for storage and such.

 

Will I be able to power the hard drives. I was thinking that a switch from a computer case goes to the motherboard and than to the power supply. So without a motherboard how would I power on the hard drives.

[Nemo]

You could always short pins 14 (green) and 16 (black) on a 20-pin supply or pins 16 (green) and 18 (black) on a 24-pin supply and just turn the unit on with the on/off switch on the back of the power supply. You can also buy connectors that have a jumper on those pins. Something like this.

[fireforsin]

Sweet, thanks, that is the perfect thing. Also what is the difference between a hardware RAID array and a software array?

 

the motherboard I am getting is an ASUS P5W and it has RAID. Here is a glimpse of the stats.

 

Intel ICH7R South Bridge:

* 1 x UltraDMA 100/66/33

* 3 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s with Intel

[fireforsin]

Could I use that adapter that puts 4 sata into one eSATA cable for both my RAID 0 ARRAYS. Hook up all four to that one adapter and use the one cord to run both my RAID 0 Arrays?

[Nemo]

Hardware RAID controllers have a dedicated processor where the functionality is handled on the controller itself through hardware and offloads the processing from the CPU and is generally much faster - with today's CPUs, I doubt it would make a significant difference in RAID 0 or RAID 1 arrays. Where it really comes in to play is with the XOR calculations needed for the parity algorithm used in RAID5/6 setups.

 

As for the multilane SATA adapter, I don't see why you couldn't use it for both arrays - it's just a means of establishing a path to the external drives. Your RAID controller should just see them as four drives and won't know whether they're internal or connected through eSATA, but I've never done it personally.

[fireforsin]

Since we are on the subject of SATA and hard drives...would this(eSATA HUB) device let you connect 5 eSATA hard drives to itself and use only one eSATA cable to the computer, then let you choose to only have 2 of the eSATA drives in a RAID 0?

 

also, is there any speed changes having all the hard drives going through one cable?

Edited February 11, 2008 by fireforsin