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I've been trying to read up and this stuff, as well as ask questions on other forums, but I will throw this out here after reading the OP and back a few pages. I currently have the ridiculous situation of my main "office/den" computer having a load of hard drives in it, and a few HTPCs around the house. The main computer always has to be on because if we want to watch something on our HTPC in a different room or access a file, that computer has to be on for us to get the file, obviously. But it's also a gaming/video editing system that I feel like is pissing away electricity being on all the time. I'd like to build a little system, throw a ton of drives in it (like seven 3.5" SATA), put it in my basement somewhere, and not have to leave that Core i7 hog on any longer. I'd like to build mine as I don't need to buy a NAS from Newegg, as I already have a spare "green" power supply, a case that can actually hold 7 hard drives, and even a copy of Windows 7 I never used that I got for dirt cheap from my University. In the OP, it mentions that you can go barebones or use some really beefy specs. Why would something that's just storing hard drives and sending files across a network need beefy specs? What exactly would stop me from getting something like this and throwing that in a case with a bunch of hard drives and a power supply? I apologize for my ignorance in advance!
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Nov 29, 2011 20:07
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Ok so I need something called an SAS add-on card? Perusing Newegg the biggest one I see has 4 ports and they're over $100 just for the card. Is this right?
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Nov 29, 2011 23:40
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LmaoTheKid posted:Not sure what an add-on card is but if you scour ebay you can find an IBM m1015 (without the RAID5 key) for 100 or under on ebay. Oh wow, had no idea that you could split off like that. That's awesome. Here's where I get pretty dense. IT mode passes my drives direct to the OS? What is this for exactly? The way I'm used to doing this stuff is right clicking a hard drive and sharing it. Anything on the network can then access it. Why does it matter if the card is in IT mode? 
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Nov 30, 2011 04:07
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Thanks to everyone who replied. Especially LmaoTheKid, though I can't believe I am going to dabble in a new operating system for the first time in my 14 years of computing (unless I count the TI-99a). I was literally thinking I'd just buy a low powered Windows 7 machine, throw all my hard drives in it, share all the hard drives, and throw it in the basement. I see how utterly wrong I was!  Busy weekend ahead for me, so I apologize if I start asking some pretty dumb stuff. Thanks again.
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Nov 30, 2011 17:23
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LmaoTheKid posted:Go back and read some of the thread. Yeah, thanks again. If it weren't for this thread I'd be feverishly looking for a PCIe card with 8 ports on it or something. Speaking of: LmaoTheKid posted:IBM m1015 (without the RAID5 key) Is this what you are talking about? Meaning is it "without the RAID5 key"? I can't tell from looking at the auction.
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Nov 30, 2011 17:31
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I can live with no bracket. I'm sure it will be fairly stable in the motherboard...hopefully. Thanks again! Edit: In that thread, it says a downside to flashing to IT mode is this: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.msg124393#msg124393 posted:Cons: Where do you add hdparm -S242 /dev/sdX in a boot script? Or does that only apply if using Linux or something? (meaning I will have hdd spindown in Windows 7?) Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Nov 30, 2011 |
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Nov 30, 2011 18:32
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I'm surprised the 750ti isn't good enough for Plex decoding to be honest, especially since it had some sort of dedicated chip for video compression (possibly related to remote-play only; I'm not sure).
Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Mar 6, 2019 |
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Mar 6, 2019 01:20
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Sheep posted:Those 10TB Easystores are back on bestbuy.com for $160. With a free 32gb thumb drive no less
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Mar 8, 2019 15:30
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e: this should really be in the Plex thread
Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 15:33
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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CMH78R5 $79 for a 10TB Western Digital hard drive. Amazon Prime eligible 
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May 19, 2019 11:41
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Heners_UK posted:Unfortunately that's out of stock as of now Just do what I do, get the slickdeals app and put up keywords. I have alerts set for "western digital". I was alerted to it as I was getting ready for work this morning
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May 19, 2019 17:20
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gary oldmans diary posted:Can I power a several external hard drives with this or would that be a regrettable mistake? I personally wouldn't use something like that. Use the original power supplies and this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004LZ5XMU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_1I84CbPV3VMSB It's not as "neat" but it's way more safe for your drives.
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May 21, 2019 10:47
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Heners_UK posted:I've seen a few stories now of people swapping old, smaller drives, for large ones. Call me cheap (lots of people do), but if you have these drives in a parity/raid protected array (and you have backups of truly important stuff that are not raid/parity, which you should, because raid/parity is not backup) then why not simply use the drives until they die? The data is merely a rebuild away at worst. I'm guessing it's usually due to a lack of physical space
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May 27, 2019 20:09
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A bunch of years ago this thread recommended I get the Dell Perc H310 and those specialty cables to hook up the 8 drives in my tower in a JBoD setup. Now it's time to buy a new motherboard and I can't exactly tell if that Dell card will physically fit in the motherboard's numerous PCIe slots. I seem to remember it will only fit in certain types? Can anyone tell me if is the case? I would hate to buy a new motherboard only to discover this. I'm usually pretty good with hardware compatibility stuff but this one is making me scratch my head for some reason. Also, that card is probably not compatible with more modern motherboards, is there a different but similar card that is? Preferably one that uses that weird 1 port to 4 port cable setup since I already have two of those for my 8 drives.
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Apr 27, 2020 01:11
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Thanks a ton! edit: Does it matter if the ports on the motherboard are PCI-E 2.0? 3.0? Will it work in either? Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Apr 27, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 02:11
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I just had something really bad happen. I have a case with 8 hard drives in it. It's mostly shucked 8tb white label Western Digitals that I took out of the USB enclosures over a year ago and had no issues with until today. I just got a new CPU for my system because my old one died. So I figured I would get a new PSU while replacing the CPU because my PSU was old anyway. I started up my machine and noticed 4 of my hard drives refused to show up in my BIOS and in Windows. After hours of troubleshooting, I came to the conclusion 4 of the hard drives are just completely dead (as in, not getting power). They don't have any clicks of death or anything, they just aren't getting power. I tried powered external USB enclosures, a different power supply, a different computer and it all came back the same. 4 of the drives are fine and 4 are dead. They are all dead the same way (powering them does absolutely nothing). They are all 8TB white shucked drives except for one which is a red. The surviving drives are two 4tb drives (one red, one blue), a 10 TB shucked white drive, and a sole 8 TB white shucked drive that survived. I guess my questions are the following: 1) Did I somehow fry these drives? The four that died were all "next" to each other in the case. I am guessing that it could be a coincidence but could it be that specific "strip" coming from my new power supply fried them? Is one "strip" of SATA plugs coming from my PSU a different voltage than the other one? (I have two SATA strips and two molex strips). Could it have been the Y adapters I was using? They were simple 1 port to 2 port SATA power adapters. 2) Is there any way to resurrect them without spending a thousand dollars per drive? I know if this was a situation where I dropped them I'd be screwed but I have a small glimmer of hope because they simply aren't receiving power. I am decent with a soldering iron and electronics but am not some supreme expert or anything. I really appreciate it. This has been a really really lovely week and this is just the icing on the cake.
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May 10, 2020 01:13
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Rexxed posted:Ii'm not sure but my guess is that either the new power supply is giving 3.3V to the pins that disable them with 3.3V, or you used a modular power cable from the old PSU on the new one when they're not compatible? Neither power supply is modular. The only thing I really used that didn't come with the new psu were these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01IBA3XCW Could those adapters have done it?
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May 10, 2020 01:31
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So how could this have happened then? 
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May 10, 2020 02:00
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Buff Hardback posted:At this point I'd break out a multimeter and check the rails on the SATA connector on the PSU you were using. Unfortunately I threw out the old PSU. But I feel like it can just as easily be this new PSU because I never had a hard drive issue with the old one and today, the first time I powered the tower on with the new one, four drives are dead. So I'm willing to test the new one. Here's a picture of my multimeter  Sorry for the dumb question but what should I turn the dial to? And then where should I put the red and black probes?
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May 10, 2020 02:23
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priznat posted:You should turn it to the V with the flat line and dashed bellow it, that is DC. Position 2 will be the right range for 3.3V! Thank you! But I don't know where to place the red and black probes. In order to test the SATA lines I would need to touch them to certain pins on the SATA connector, correct? And there's like 10 tiny ones. Which ones go to what? (sorry if I'm dumb)
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May 10, 2020 03:11
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Thanks for all the helpful replies! I am getting 3.3v, 5.0v, and 12.2v, so I am guessing everything with my power supply is fine. So it can only be two culprits: either the old power supply, or my UPS backup unit. Has anyone in history ever heard of a UPS actually frying electronics somehow? It's an APC brand but I admit it's very old. Also does anyone know if I can ever get these drives to spin again? I just tried a board swap, using a working drive's PCB with a dead drive's PCB and the dead drive began spinning! Only issue is that Windows couldn't recognize the drive. I am guessing the PCB wasn't a 100% exact match or something so it doesn't know how to read the drive properly. Or are these drives tied to a BIOS much like the Seagate drives and I am basically screwed out of ever getting them to power up and be recognized ever again?
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May 10, 2020 04:34
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corgski posted:If you're getting 3.3v on the SATA line, that's your problem. WD white drives use the 3.3v as a disable line that stops the drive from operating. Swap the boards back the way they originally were and tape over the 3.3v pins on the whites. (And the red if it was also a shucked drive.) I wish it was that. I also have these SATA y-adapters that do not put anything at all on the 3.3v line and the drives still can't be powered up. priznat posted:That's impressive, we had one swapped in the lab and it just burned one of the contacts off for the NVME U.2 connector on the cable side but thankfully didn't kill the drive. It blew a diode on the cable side too. Does your lab have replacement PCBs I can buy? Will they work or do I need a BIOS swap? (Not sure if that's only needed for Seagates. I'm hoping it's not needed for Western Digitals) Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 04:46 on May 10, 2020 |
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May 10, 2020 04:44
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If you turn that on, what does that mean? If I try to watch a movie or show on my phone over cellular data it would force me to watch it at the highest quality with no option to lower it? Or am I reading that wrong?
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Jun 13, 2020 14:14
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Dick Nipples posted:Correct. It forces Plex to just serve the file as is. There’s no transcoding/encoding/decoding. Plex is literally just doing: That does sound awesome except I can see it being a huge problem if I ever want to watch something on my phone and I don't want to destroy my data cap watching one movie or something Just curious but what if you had that enabled and did want to watch something on your phone over cell data? Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Jun 13, 2020 |
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Jun 13, 2020 15:40
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I bought StableBit Drivepool at the recommendation of this fine thread a while back but am just now finally getting the "nerve" up to use it (I'm a bit of a grognard and am simply "used to" each physical drive having its own drive letter so switching to this scares me a bit, such as knowing which drive had which files when one dies). Anyway I'm doing baby steps and am just going to do it for TV shows on my Windows Plex server. Basically my E: currently has all my TV shows in an E:/TV folder. There is nothing else using space up on that 8tb drive (I do a lot of HD Homerun recording and a single 2 hour episode of Dateline is 9gb! I also rip all my Blu-ray Discs as lossless). Anyway the drive is almost full so I want to take another empty 8tb drive and I basically want there to be a single 16tb E:. I would prefer the drive letter to stay the same because I have so many things counting on the drive letter being E. Sorry for the stupid question but what's the easiest way to do this? I'm guessing renaming the current E drive to something like Z. Then going in StableBit Drivepool and making a new pool called E:? And adding the Z drive and the other drive to the pool? Also, how does Drivepool know where to dump shows? For example, I have E:/It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. When a new episode airs, is it going to put it on the drive that already has a folder and other episodes for it? I could see it being pretty annoying or even a disaster waiting to happen if all these TV shows are spread randomly across each drive. I'm just really confused on how Drivepool operates, I guess.
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Oct 6, 2020 15:30
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redeyes posted:So all you do is load Drivepool. Then add the 2 drive(s) to the Pool. The drive letters of the original disks do not matter and in fact you can turn them off in Windows in the end Next, you enable viewing hidden folders and surf to the new Drive Pool drive letter. You will find an new hidden folder in the root of your HD named something like PoolPart.630a2748-ae4c-4469-9445-031c8429ecd2 this is the pool folder. Thank you so much! Now let's say I want to take my E:, F:, G:, H:, I: , etc drives and combine them all together as a single drive (J: I guess?) so the unused space between them all is available as one drive (instead of the constant file-shuffling I do now). But as an added bonus, I'd also have all the files on one drive letter, so I don't need to go through each drive letter to find my stuff. How would this be accomplished? Create a J: drivepool, individually add the E:, F:, G:, H:, I:s, and then what? Cut and paste the entire contents of each drive to the new J:? Also I am not too concerned with drive failures, but it would be nice to know what stuff disappeared on a particular drive if it does die. Is there any way to figure this out if a drive dies in a DrivePool? As of right now I know what's on each individual drive. I am a bit nervous about losing that knowledge if they are all DrivePooled together.
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Oct 7, 2020 13:22
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redeyes posted:It's a bit hard to describe all of this but lets see. Thanks a billion for this write up. If don't care about backing anything up, but I want to know what I lost, what would be the best way to do that? For example, I have like 3 hard drives worth of Blu-Ray movie rips. I would prefer if movies named A-F were on one, F-P were on another, and P-Z were on the 3rd. This way if one drive dies, I know it's all my A-F movies, instead of it being a bunch of random movies across all 3 drives. Is there a way to do this in DrivePool? The whole "having folders with half-files all over the place" thing kind of makes me nervous to start using it.
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Oct 9, 2020 15:58
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redeyes posted:Yeah, in that case, make a set of Folders named A-F, F-P, P-Z. Then go into the settings as I showed up on the last post and specify those folders only go to which ever drive you want. Done. I really appreciate the help! I think I messed something up. Here's my settings:  The 8tb O: was completely empty. My 10TB Z: had all my TV shows. So I made a Drivepool with the letter X: combining both the O: and the Z:. Then I cut and pasted all of the TV shows out of the Z: and into the Drivepool (X:). It took nearly 2 days! Anyway, when I went to just check right now, it filled up both the O: and the Z: equally, despite the fact that I would greatly prefer all the TV shows to only be on the Z: (my TV show collection is under 10TB). Now I have random episodes of 30 Rock across both drives which is making me nuts. Are my settings messed up somehow? I wanted everything to be on the Z:, and only wanted it to start using the O: when the Z: got full.
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Oct 11, 2020 18:45
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bobfather posted:Why don’t you go into the Windows partition settings and disable the drive letters for your O and Z drives? Because I'm an old-school Windows user (started in the 3.1 days) and I'm worried about not being able to see the individual drives in case I need to access them for some reason. If I disable the drive letters, can I still individually see the contents of each drive? Furthermore, I have a batch command that runs every Monday that looks like this: code:
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Oct 13, 2020 15:00
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TraderStav posted:I just did this command for one of my network drives on my NAS Hey text document buddy!  I made an individual txt document for each hard drive, and one "master" bat file that runs all the other bat files for each drive letter. If you want my "code" so you can use it too, let me know! Anyway what would I type in to do it for a specific drive? Lets say I remove the E: and F: what would I type? dir \\Tower.local\ sounds like your server's name is "Tower" I'm guessing. But what drive is it doing it for? How does your script know? Sorry if this is a dumb question. I've been using Windows and drive letters since I was in middle school so this is all a bit new/scary to me! 
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Oct 13, 2020 15:29
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redeyes posted:TURN THE DRIVE LETTERS OFF DUDE. LOL! The data will not vanish. No I know. I just don't know how I will be able to reference the local drives in stuff like my batch file? TraderStav posted:Right, my server name is Tower, but Windows resolves it as Tower.local. There is no drive, it's a network drive and putting it in just like that works Ah, okay. All my drives are local. If they don't have a drive letter, how are they differentiated in Windows? If I remove the drive letter for my G:, but lets say I wanted to run a file on my drive previously named G: but through the command prompt, what would I be putting in instead of G:? I hope I am making sense.
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Oct 13, 2020 15:58
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redeyes posted:Can't you just reference the drive pool letter with your batch file? Well in my scenario I would need to know which drive has which files on it in case one dies. I was just wondering how I could get a weekly file list dump of a drive with no letter associated to it. So if one of the drives in my TV show DrivePool shits the bed, I can easily figure out what went missing. I am really braindead when it comes to using Windows without drive letters, so I apologize if these are stupid questions.
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Oct 13, 2020 16:09
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Okay so I removed the drive letter for the hard drive with most of my TV shows. To access the drive, from now on I have to go to the Run window, type this: "\\?\Volume{5d62ece9-892f-4342-ad6e-68bbb128c9ea}\ ", and then it will show me that drive's contents. But is there any way to use that drive from a command prompt? For example, my script is: code:code:Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Oct 13, 2020 |
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Oct 13, 2020 16:57
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Flipperwaldt posted:Here it says to double the trailing backslash. Seems to work on my end. Wow, simply adding a backslash to the end worked! Thanks a billion!
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Oct 13, 2020 19:07
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The Diddler posted:I grabbed a few of those Easystores. They'll be shucked and put in my freenas server: a Supermicro case with a SAS2 backplane. Is there any way to know if I need to tape the pin before I slam the drives in? But some Y adapters because they never include that pin. I found placing the tape properly to be almost impossible.
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Oct 14, 2020 15:54
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I have a Windows 10 desktop that is on 24/7 because it runs my Plex, NVidia Gamestream, and a few other things. I have no more physical space for hard drives in the desktop. Is there some sort of 4 drive (or even more, I don't mind) non-raid enclosure/NAS that I can use with it? I know this is an odd question because typically a NAS is supposed to be its own thing. But I am not going to "do" anything on the NAS. I am not going to run Plex from it or anything like that. My Windows machine will still do that. So the NAS I am seeking barely has to have an OS on it (if it has one at all). Does such a thing exist? How would I get it to "talk" to Windows?
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Nov 23, 2020 20:22
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Thanks so much for the replies! I actually have a bunch of drives already, so I don't need anything that includes them. I guess something like this would also be OK? https://www.amazon.com/Yottamaster-Aluminum-External-Enclosure-SATA3-0/dp/B071ZP2HFK A huge bonus is it looks like it supports something called "combined" mode?  If I set the DIP switches to combined mode I take it it will take all of my drives together and combine them as one drive? I would actually love that because dealing with drive letters in Windows is getting pretty overwhelming. Am I basically setting myself up for failure using a $160 no-name enclosure to combine all my drives together?
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Nov 23, 2020 21:14
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tuyop posted:How frequently are you all encountering drive failures? I think I’ve lost two drives in my adult life and neither of them failed suddenly and led to data loss. I've only had one drive die on me outright; the only Seagate I ever owned. It was a 2 TB drive and just completely died while I was transferring files to it. It had to do something with the flash chip on it. What a piece of poo poo. As for Western Digital, out of maybe 50 drives in my lifetime, I've had 3 die on me. One was one of the first 1TB laptop drives (one of those thick as poo poo ones, like 12.5mm or whatever) that never properly fit in my laptop. The other two were both 400GB drives. In all 3 cases with the Western Digital drives, I was able to tell well in advance that they were about to die and I was always able to get my data off of them. So basically what I am saying is Western Digital supremacy and Seagate sucks. redeyes posted:NO! Forget this BS thing. I will use Drivepool. Is it ok if I use this enclosure otherwise? In "basic" mode with Drivepool I mean.
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Nov 24, 2020 18:35
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bobfather posted:One negative of keeping it in an enclosure is that many enclosures aren't well ventilated. For example, when I ran a surface scan (using Stablebit Scanner, get it with DrivePool IMO) on a new 14TB EasyStore, it reached 54 C in its enclosure. After shucking, and with a fan blowing over it, it reaches 33 C. Yeah it looks like people on Amazon actually did fan mods to this thing which is hilarious. Yet, I'm probably going to do it too! haha edit: I am having trouble figuring out what fan this is:  Unfortunately the person didn't say which fan that is, just that it's 120mm. Does anyone know what brand the one on the bottom might be? And how would I power those fans? Typically they need to be plugged into a molex connector or one of those motherboard headers. Also is it just me or does he literally have two fans on top of one another? I can't find any fan that looks like that. Did he just combine them somehow? I would reply to the review asking these questions but unfortunately amazon isn't letting me for some reason. Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Nov 24, 2020 |
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Nov 24, 2020 20:03
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The Diddler posted:It looks like each fan has it's own power cable, so I would guess it's something like plastic epoxy gluing them together. I feel like if it was a bolt or screw, you would be able to see them. I found USB powered case fans for $15/each, or you could just splice a case fan to a USB connector and plug them in. I didn't realize they made USB fans; this will be perfect because my battery backup UPS will be right near it and it has USB ports! Thanks a ton!
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Nov 25, 2020 00:08
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